Progressive Pathways

Feeding Jah

2009-03-29T10:10:00.000-07:00

Not sure why I haven't been writing. It hasn't been calling and I have been occupied enough I suppose with work and family. Today I fed Jah an egg for breakfast. I cracked the third egg and dropped it into the sizzling pan while the boys ate theirs. Then, I dropped it into Jah's dish and waited for it to cool before leading him by voice command and tapping on the bowl to his food. Every guidance has to be done now with the knowledge that he can't see. I bump into him constantly when he is in the house and the boys will stop in front of him while we are on a walk and he will just run them over. Ahhh! They cry. Remember that he can't see you you I scold. I am thinking about starting my own blog to combat the ramblings of a nuclear developer that has now aimed squarely at me, my work and my integrity. It is strange to find oneself described publicly in such an unflattering way. Despite the comforting of friends and colleagues that these attacks indicate I am doing my job it is difficult for me to accept that instead of the possibility that I really am as they describe. I know I am not though. Even while I worry about how my core ways of doing my work are perceived in ways that I did not expect nor desire to propagate. He is sleeping under the table now. I know he wants to go on a walk but the ordeal of leading him on a walk, up the curbs, across the street, away from edges is too much in this blustery weather.

Jah Love

2009-01-09T19:02:00.000-08:00

We got Jah the summer that Japhy died. Somehow, it made sense-lose a friend get a dog...find yourself responsible for a life in order to substantiate that you still have one. We named him Jah, since Japhy liked reggae and, well, for me anyways, it was cool that Jah means "God" in rastafarian and "Dog" backwards is "God." Jah was such a sweet spirited bundle when we got him. He made college more rounded, adding an element of responsibility and fun that somehow enhanced the experience. He would ride with us as we pedaled bikes, running fast, leading the way to campus, tied loosely to a bench while we were in class. He became a campus wide name, everyone loved Jah. He was our fist baby, the glue that held us together, the representation of our connection, the committing factor. Sometimes it would occur to me that he was a metaphor for our love, he was the symbolic embodiment of our connect. When I went to Jersey to find a place I was devastated to find that no one would rent for a dog. I wanted him with me so badly, even though I knew he would be happier in Idaho. Then, he came to Jersey, in a place chosen for a baby and a dog and 2 cats. The night I went into labor with River was Jah's last night as my baby. I held onto him through contractions and when River was born, and Jah heard me scream and smelled the birth blood, he knew he became a dog. He is blind now. Totally blind. Almost a year ago, he wandered out of the yard and was hit in the behind, and then the cataracts overcame him, the trauma shocked his system. He bumps into things now. He searches for us and his food with his nose. Sometimes I think he is truly a metaphor for us. Sometimes I think we died when Japhy did and then Jah lived.

Making Almond Milk

2008-12-16T15:27:00.001-08:00

Take 2 cups of raw, organic almonds (organic are recommended, but not required). Soak in a bowl of room temp water for 8 hours. The water should cover the almonds completely (the soaking removes protease inhibitors--which inhibit digestion-- and begin the sprouting process of the nut which makes the almonds more enzymatically "alive"). Rinse the almonds using a strainer or colander (notice the amount of excess "gunk" that is in the water--now you don't have to consume that stuff). Place almonds in blender using as much as 5 cups water and as little as 3 cups depending on how thick you want your final milk to be. A Vitamix or Champ blender is preferable as I blew out 5 regular blenders from making almond milk daily over a 3 month period. Blend until the almonds are completely pulverized--I usually count to 27. Place nutmilk bag over an adequately sized pan or bowl. Allow all contents to fill the bag. Carefully remove the bag from the bowl's rim, being sure to not let any of the insides come out. Cinch the bag at the top. Holding the top closed with your non-dominant hand "milk" the bag like you would a goat, or a cow, or a...well whatever it is is you have milked. Once all liquid is squeezed from the bag, squeeze more to get that extra rich almond yummy still left in the bag. Place bag of almond pulp in soaking bowl. Rinse blender of all first round remnants. Place clean almond milk liquid in the blender. Open section of real vanilla bean using a sharp blade to splice the bean in half. Scrape deeply at the beans inside shell to remove the precious, delicious brown vanilla seed. Carefully balance the knives edge on your way to the blender and place seeds in the liquid. Go back and scrape the bean more--its o.k. if some of the outer bean shell is used in the mixture (Sometimes vanilla bean seeds get under your fingernails--get them out and eat them). Add a generous amount of sweetner of your choice (soaked and pitted dates, raw honey, agave, maple syrup). Blend again until lovely white foam is prevalent at the top of the liquid. Pour, enjoy, refrigerate. (Raw cacao can be added for chocolate lovers at the vanilla sweetner stage). And what to do with the almond pulp? Make bread. That recipe is forthcoming.

Carefull

2008-12-15T21:42:00.000-08:00

I'm srue it is perfectly normal. I emean, it is like movin from the infant stage right? Except at super rapid speed. Weeks are onths, and months are years and years are a lifetime. If I felt reborn then u=of course this is what would happen next. That process of differentiation. HTe freudian moment when one realizes that they actully are an autonomous unit. Not attached to the breast. not sucking a the the mother. So I caome here to write. And if anyone reads this, which i do not know, but if they do--be warned this is the post that comes from the place where nothing else is safe enough to be a mode of expression. Even the waterclor seems to small--my strokes want to be braod and beyons the tine card canvas I have chosen. I could roll out the Statesman endrolls but that would take too much energy and know this my body still feels week. Maybe that is the otehr explanation, I am just nerve frazzled. I mean I worked 5 hours today. i cleaned the ouse three times, I wnet to R's wninter performance--we had dinner out afterwards. Ihaven't done that much in the 3 weeks since my emergency entry into the hospital. I had this dream the other night. I know ishouldn't talk about my dreams at night, but maybe i can write about them and it will be o.k. one of the nurses took me out to dinner and gbasically tried to suck my soul out. enough with the dreams. if i go there i havae to go there. the scary dark cold buildigns and the hot deep pools. the hurt kittens. enough. so this ins one of those posts where i will refuse to fix the typos refuse. so allso it makes sesne. i am autonomous. and the hollow feeling it is mine and it is real. i am not sure about the sense of isolation thae sesne theat i havve sold out--myself. the sense that somehow the morphine toxified my brain into a state of dumb acceptance. dammit. so i have this alter. i have 4 alters. make that fivecause one is to Obama. what a totla wste of surface space really--but they are all beautiful and if you count the fire mantel taht is six. why son't i just stop this and pray? i thinkk i will. ithink i will sit and contemplate. tirshgave me a book in the hosipaital called the red scarf it is about stalinist russia and the labor campes oand love and starvation and love and death and love and toruture and love and it iwas hell to read in pain, but it was my friend by the tie=ime i left the hospital and it was so long and it draggdthrough snow covered russia and itit made me woander if marx wwas in on it. if he made his own opium on purpose. and that scares me. but it eneded. and now i don't have i itanymore and i have to say goodbyw to sophia and i am sad. i think i will pray now.

There were no knives

2008-12-09T21:03:00.000-08:00

I have noticed, since following my appendectomy, that there is a general conception that surgery entails traditional cutting devices such as knives. Many people have talked about them "cutting into me" and a few friends have mentioned the knives. In the moment it didn't even occur to me to clarify what was actually done to my body to remove my appendix (and a small section of my colon). While some "cutting" instruments were used, my abdominal surgery was performed laparoscopically In laparoscopic surgery they puff up the body cavity and make microincisions using special microscopes and lasers to conduct the operation. In my instance, the surgery was, what my father described (my dad is a retired physician), as the best laparoscopic surgeon in the Northwest if not the nation. That, was dumb luck, considering I had let the infection go for 4 days before ending up in the emergency room after working all day. When my surgeon told me about the operation he said there would be one small incision on my lower right side (very near my only tattoo). It ended up that when he went in things were a lot worse than he had thought. It took him a long time to clean up the infection which had spread throughout my body cavity. My dad said most surgeons would have switched at this point and made a large cut vertically up my abdomen. My guy didn't. He stayed laproscopic and made another small incision above my belly button (directly below what was previously my only abdominal scar from a hernia repair when I was 18). He then used this technique to remove a section of my colon and then stitched my colon back together. Because the infection was so bad, he had to insert a drainage tube that went into my abdomen from an additional circular incision on the left side of my lower abdomen, and then stretched across my abdomen internally to the are aon the right side where my appendix had been (removing that thing, btw, was not the most pleasant experience I have had). So "knives" traditionally defined, were not at play here. Nevertheless, the broader thing I want to write about, using this bit of Western medicine technology as a bridge to the miracles of Eastern medicine is the way in which any surgery, whether traditional or more modern, does in fact sever more than the physicality of embodied flesh. Immediately after my surgery I called my Chinese medicine caregiver. I have seen him, and him only with my family fr the past three and a half years. He explained that he had to wait till 1 week after my surgery to administer any care, but that he would be able to help reduce the severity of any scar tissue I experienced internally, namely on my colon (anyone familiar with nutritional health and digestion would appreciate how scar tissue on your colon could really mess you up). I was eager to see him, because I am really into proper passage of, well, fecal matter. My Chinese med guy does acupuncture on me, but on my visit to his clinic shortly after getting out of the hospital, I did not think he would do acupuncture. I don't know why, I just didn't. But he did and while doing it explained to me that in surgery one of the main issues, from an Eastern med perspective is that the body's energetic meridians are severed. In abdominal surgery this severing creates energetic blockages in all direction. He explained that many people heal physically fine from surgery, but because they don't heal energetically, they get a lot of scar tissue build up and never really feel the same. The way he practices is to find the mirror of the injured area in a different location. So, the needles he inserted were placed in my angle, leg, wrist and shoulder. After my treatment, even right as i got off the table, I noticed a big difference in what had previously been soreness in every part of my abdomen. The rest of the day the whole area tingled as blood flow was restored, by the next day I was at least 50% better. I was also lucky to have a friend who is training in Ama body work give me a treatment in my home and another dear friend purchase me an Ama treatment fro the owner of one of the best school in Boise. Both of these treatments focused on energetic repair as well. I just had my second acupuncture treatment today and will have 2 more. Last night I was reading from a really good book called, "Shaman, Healer, Sage" by Alberto Villoldo. I bought this book this summer, for mostly addressing emotional trauma. It has sat by my bed, virtually unread, until I returned form the hospital. When I had tried to read it before, I was very overwhlemed by the ways it pointed out so much unhealth in my life. Now, confronted undeniably with that unhealth, I am making a point of reading it daily. In a section where the author describes the body as a magnet which can be energetically shifted through attracting elements to move (like that cool think with iron nails and glass we all played with as children), rather than forcing them to do so he writes, " ...I understood that Western medicine, in an effort to change the physical body, was merely moving the iron filings around the glass. Surgery and medication often brought about violent, traumatic change on the body. This approach struck me as crude and invasive, like scattering the iron filings with my hand, rather than moving them by shifting the magnet underneath the glass." The author, argues that this approach takes little regard for the effect on the body's energetic field, and I would have to agree. Later on, Villaldo talks about acupuncture meridians , known also to the Inca in a different form. These embodied meridians are also present in the earth. he writes, " Along the surface of the planet run flux lines or cekes, similar to the acupuncture meridiancs, connecting the major chakras of the Earth. The meridians of the Earth traverse the globe, transporting energy and information from one part of the planet to another." We have all heard of the earth's electro-magnetic field right? Well, that is the same thing. And apparently we are currently living through a time where that field's potency is significantly declined. Villaldo continues, "Many people in our technological society are disconnected from the matrix of the Universe." Amen to that, I say. And it all makes sense really, disconnect from the earth, leads to disconnect from ourselves, leads to dis-ease. I feel incredibly lucky and to have experienced my illness within the frame of both these styles of medicine. I am so totally intrigued by the many lessons I am learning form this trial. And I am so grateful to have access to energetic healing as well as physical healing. if these two forms of medicine were more integrated culturally I believe we would be a much happier people on a much healthier planet.

In My Immanence

2008-12-07T13:36:00.000-08:00

There is a theme I follow. I have written of it here before--the dichotomy of transcendence and immanence. In my feminist training this became a foundational theoretical paradigm. Not in the sense that I adopted that paradigm as a reality, but in the sense that it is one of the most critical dualisms to deconstruct in any feminist work. The body, traditionally, is associated with the feminine. The origin of this association is understood as linked to childrearing for the most part and the way in which the female body has been historically perceived as a receptical. (Women learn to know this is not true and that their search for pleasure is not passive, but nevertheless this understanding comes from opposing the dominant norm. Male is associated with the cerebral, the thinking, the rational, the knowing. Men are physicians, scholars, lawyers, etc. they use their heads once the needs of their bodies are met through penetrating women's immanence. Or, something like that anyways--I am a little rusty at this stuff. Of course there is also the whole critique of the two sexes themselves and the descriptive clarification between gender and sex...but none of that is relevant to what I would like to say right now. I am at an interesting place in my healing. In the hospital I was uber-immanent. Grounded, literally to a bed, held there by tubes and machines that would go with me, even to the bathroom (I would have to unplug my little techno friend for any trip from bed). And for a few days going to the bathroom was a heavy task. Only five feet from my bed, each time I would spend several minutes mustering the nerve to raise my body, place my feet on the ground shuffle into the bathroom and sit down. The first day after surgery the nurses aid told me we needed to go on a walk and I really couldn't fathom donig any such thing. Because she was insistent and sweet I sat up and really tried to stand, but it made me feel sick and sore and I said "Please, can I wait" and she said "Of course, just the fact you sat up is really good. " Totally immanent. And this was me, the me who used to train for marathons (even if my shins never allowed me to actually race in them). The me who always moves more quickly then my size leads people to expect I will. The me who loves to walk and run and ride and hike. I simply did not want to move at all. One night, I felt pretty good. I managed 3 laps round the floor and paused at the fishtank. Feleing very zen and meditative I tried some calf raising and a tiny little bit of knee bending. Boy did I pay for that in the morning I was sore, and sick and grumpy. Immanent. Once home, my mobility increased significantly. Whereas the first night home I really needed help getting out of bed (the hospital beds automatic recline and raise function is definately the only thing I miss) soon I could raise my body on my own. After my birthday celebration with family at my house, I was very spent and could not get in the bed. C had to bring the step stool that the boys use to reach the sink and that is what I have been using ever sense. it just makes it much easier. At night I become profoundly immanent. All my nerves seem to collapse after the boys go down and I fall into the sensation of the wounds that are healing. My heart races and I find it hard to breathe--I get scared and have some series of irrational fears about being alone and not able to be, well, capable of transcending the limits within which my body is currently required to function. I am alone with the kids this week (but not really as family and friends are ever present it seems.) But in some ways I am, as only another parent holds the same responsibility for the care of the children. My immanence scares me in this case. What if they need me to transcend the limits of my body and I can't? Today the boys and I actually ventured out on a walk. For the first time, I was, by far, the slowest pedestrian. I had to be conscious of how far we went, not so that my youngest would be able to make it back, but so I could make it back and make it back without him wanting to be carried. It felt so good to feel my feet on a foothills trail. I could sense the uneveness of the ground penetrating my loafers contributing to my body's healing via stimulating the meridians on my soles. I could see myself at the interchange in the dualism. Standing in the cool sun with my boys, unable to scamper up the hill, but still so much further from that bed and those beeps and needles and tubes. Already moving away from the requirements of basic bodily functions. But this is the trick: Those requirements are always present. We never do transcend them. Sure, we may bridge the divide in a daily synthesis where the hierarchy of the rational mind takes precedence over bodily need. But nevertheless, they are not mutually exclusive phenomena of life. They are mutually reliant processes of living. To re-member such a thing seems to me one of the greatest lessons of this most recent corporeal trial I have experienced. One I hope to hold onto as my desire to transcend becomes stronger each day that I do.

I am Nothing, I am Everything

2008-12-01T12:39:00.001-08:00

My head is sagging with the exhaustion of it all. My belly aches with soreness from a laughter that seems to have accompanied the removal of my appendix. Suddenly the simple seems so funny, for so many moments since, I have been filled with smiles, the air brings whispers of constant thanks. Thank you for my children, my husband, my family, my home, my life. Thank you. You, spirit, light, earth, mother, all that is and was and never was but somehow is. I hear you. There were nights (really only one) of excruciating pain, like my body was being twisted and pulled and not enough air was reaching my lungs. Each time my head would raise, I would reel shattered, broken. For a day, after that night, I staired listlessly out the window, the pain and nausea too much, the tubes too many, the beeps and bandages and pokes and prods, too much. I felt too vulnerable. I was scared. I thought I would die. I did think that, and now I believe parts of me did die, thoughts and sections. For moments only, then I would try to find a distraction, mostly in memories, but the memories would contradict and clash argue with each other for primacy and leave me confused and feeling trapped. Morphine dreams were the most relieving part, swimming through seas of cool reflection a body freed from all immanence, yet immanently feeling not the pain bu the tingling of embodiedness. They would end to wake up a request for surveillance, a need to be measured and recorded, and I would wish for my eyelids to help me return to that daze, that daze of sweat and rest. There is something to be said for the cultural aspects of what it means to be perceived as marginal in regards to nutrition. No meat was the banter of the docs, holding me to the bed like protein laden chains. The army needs to build up to fight this war, and since when did I need to see my corporeality as a battle ground? Do you not know that I studied the ways in which your medicine used colonialism as a metaphor for the medical notion of immunity? I see through this, but you see me as small and female and unable to grasp the largess of your gift to grant life. I am. You saved my life sir. Thank you. You are so skilled sir, thank you. Without that skill and those medicines it is true I would be gone, just barely short of the next passing of my birth, leaving my earthbound children motherless, leaving my own mother grieving. And so it is clear in so many ways what I am receiving. A chance to find balance and a new accord with the ways my job and ambitions has gulped me up from the simple joys of watching two children grow and holding my partner close, smelling his skin, feeling his chest, where other organs that I took for granted now seem so precious. I would too fight for them like he held to me, fingers clasped in a grasp I have held for nearly half my life, holding on and saying there is more. Trust. Home, please, let me go home, enough of these nights of endless aching and longing, enough of the voices that hide in my head waiting to bite, threatening to take my life away, telling me it is short, nearly gone. Transform this, other sounds tell me. It is not about living long and hard, it is about living well and now. I am nothing, I am everything, and as the light shone on me in my exit and the air rushed in and about, my mouth opened in a painful, joyous laughter.

Oh Honey Remember

2008-11-24T09:14:00.000-08:00

Remember when all we used the internet for after he was born was sending pictures via email to all our friends and family? Remember how in that upward moving house, three stores stacked tightly on top of eachother, we would lay in bed with that bundle between us and watch Bollywood flick after Bollywood flick and eat cartons of Kosher Chinese? Sometimes replies to our internet birth announcement would come: "Congratulations! He is perfect" "Oh...you two look great! What a cute baby!" "What a perfect new family...Congrats!" When you went back to work I sat with the baby next to me on the bed sipping strawberry milkshakes (too many it turned out) and surfing the net for baby clothes and toys we couldn't afford. Remember how after we moved to that little farmhouse on Livingston Ave. we would all cuddle down on the rug and take more pictures of him beginning to roll and sit up and crawl. We would send them out via email to friends and family. They would write back: "He's getting so big!" He looks just like his mama!" "Can't wait to see you all at Christmas!" Remember how I would lock myself in that little sun room and you would play with him all day. I would write, and write, and write, and finally use the internet to send a draft to a colleague, and come out to fresh cornbread and beans and we would bundle up in the van and go on long brisk walks along the canal. We would take his first pictures in his snowsuit and pretend we were in Colorado. Then, we would send them out to our friends and family via the internet, and they would write back... Oh honey, remember? So how is it that now I hear you raise from bed too early in the morning. I find you on the couch with the glow of the computer outlining the back of your head like a halo. Facebook again, or maybe a blog, or perhaps a quick glance at twitter, or one of 3 email accounts. How is it that you were faced with a steely gaze all winter when all my warmth went into a computer screen, where the intimate space of the home echoed hollowly in a cold cybereffect detachment. I scan your page for pictures of me--looking for some material presence of our familialness in this other reality that you occupy. I find myself waking early, earlier than you, and getting there first...my face glued to my own alternate realities. The children, both of them, are there too...only when people comment on them they comment to you or to me...not to us. Oh honey remember those few years, too few, we didn't even know how few they were before all of that overwhlemed all of this? When our lives were defined more by our home than our computers?

Pandora's Box

2008-11-20T08:05:00.000-08:00

You have heard the saying "Pandora's Box" before? The archetypal origin of that story i.e.: where the phrasing developed--what Pandora is--where the image of the box came from is something I do not know. But the essence of the saying is that within the box there are a series of forces that if unleashed would disrupt the order of things irreparably. Am I right? When I was a debater , within a disadvantage (a position ran on the negative to prove that by affirming the resolution in the way the opponent does you enable severe consequences--usually culminating in nuclear annihilation) one used the phrase Pandora's Box to describe the opening into the impact--the act that led to the consequence. I have heard it used in other settings of course--it has an element of descriptiveness that keeps it useful. It is especially interesting when it is used unexpectedly--when the use of it indicates a depth of focus that seems dramatic and mysterious. What exactly is in that Pandora's Box that we can't open? Lately--instead of wishing I could see inside this package, Thinking of it as contained in this box of consequence, I try to think of it more like Pangea. The origins of this earth in general. Separations and faults pulling connectedness apart, stretching it out and transforming the ties. Pangea is already outside the box, it was the material origin of our inhabited space that has been reordered it is also the box--the line comes from a limited view of the circle. I think of water splashing over shores, I think of mountains rising high, blue sky and white clouds and cities faraway, I think of all the things that could be in that box.

2008-11-10T22:12:00.000-08:00

I have this dream I have been following--like a castle in the mist it sits above me and around me. There are cliff tops and forests lining the rocks and I can see the water from here. I think maybe I should go--drive through that Canyon and up the River to where I really am at home. So marked it is now by adult existences, breakfast and layers, sunscreen and repellent. So little do I sit solitary in the woods at the base of a majestic Ponderosa Pine. I want to watch the Tamaracks turn and how is it that I let another season of yellowed needles go by without even paying witness. In the dream there is concrete too and faraway cities like Portland and others up North. I am afoot of something great but veiled and I am searching for meaning. Sometimes I realize in wonderment that I am likely too broke to fix, I travel down trailways that lead nowhere--like that time in the jungle in Costa Rica where I kneeled to the ground and spread my tears among the ants. There is the part wit the train and then dust and the ring and marching--the part of holograms and wild beasts al lrevolving--somehow in dreamland in the same space--interacting. It is then that i feel the loneliness--the utter ceaselessness of my own echo knowing, somehow the hollowness of my own heart.

Consciousness Raised--Draft 1

2008-11-06T04:51:00.000-08:00

Someone told me that it takes at least 1 hour for the body to come down from the "charge" it gets either watching t.v. or writing on the computer. I wonder at the effect of writing on this machine so much. I rely on it as my primary medium, but the consequences of the electrical interaction are certainly real for my embodied self.

Still, here I am sleepless, writing. I think it is simply synthesizing. Sinking in , or some other such way for saying--my consciousness is catching up with reality.

We have our President Obama, after a long exploration of democratic manifestations we chose.

Anticipation

2008-10-28T20:56:00.000-07:00

Maybe when I took the political out of this blog it lost its path. I know the central thing that preoccupies me right now, at my core anyways, is the election. I care deeply about my work, both personal and professional, but the most devastating occurrence for me would be to lose the upcoming election. Tonight I thought of that and imagined myself going outside and wailing, just wailing endlessly. That will not happen, I am confident of as much. I am afraid of my confidence, but I have it nonetheless, otherwise I would start wailing now. Tomorrow is a very big day. I will speak and attempt to persuade, and for whatever reason I have 3 minutes and I still feel a huge weight of responsibility. I am certain it is imagined. I am confident they have already completed the task without me. Nevertheless I am nervous. That's good I suppose. I can't imagine what it is like to be a candidate as election day nears. I have felt a surreal acceleration of time since the beginning of October, as if everything is cruising to one excruciating climax. Will we ever get there? I want that now, and I also never want it to come. The uncertainty is both plaguing and pleasurable, the synthesis of experience's dichotomy.

To Do Today:

2008-10-26T07:22:00.000-07:00

Earth Healing Ceremony at the Idaho Botanical Garden When: Sunday, October 26th, 2008 Time: 2-5 pm Where: Idaho Botanical Garden, 2355 E. Old Penitentiary Rd Cost: Free and Open to the Public This Sunday, October 26th the Idaho Botanical Garden will host Native American Peace Keeper, Blue Thunder for a unique Earth Healing ceremony. Blue Thunder travels nation-wide, holding ceremonies that heal the environment and create a space for people to connect to the earth. Sunday’s event will include drumming, dancing and a talk by Blue Thunder. The Idaho Botanical Garden is one of Boise’s most treasured outdoor spaces. Nestled in the Boise Foothills, the garden used to be a Native American settlement and more recently was part of the Idaho State Penitentiary. This site was chosen because of that history. Blue Thunders acute awareness of our world’s current environmental condition offers participants a unique opportunity to take their fears and worries about the health of the planet and come together with their community to heal the earth and themselves. Participants will enjoy three hours of drumming, chanting , dancing and contemplating in the Botanical Gardens.

I would rather live in the Sectch again

2008-10-19T05:41:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, it occurs to me that I am using this blog inappropriately. I found the most amazing blog via a friends blog by a girl who just totally rocks and she has this cartoon about how one should be contemplative before publishing a blog. I totally agree. But I refuse to do it...why? Maybe it is just where I am at right now. For whatever part is my doing or not, I have not had the most mellow last 5 years. I got to gradschool and found out I was pregnant and it has all just gotten a little crazy since then. A year ago I scoffed at blogs. Now I have 2--well 3 but I only write on 2. I am now scoffing at social networking, although I started a facebook page and am slightly addicted...and hating it at the same time. Really, hating it. I feel like voyeurism is so appealing and I feel like until you reach a certain level voyeurism is what is enabled by social networking and I feel like after you reach a certain level what is achieved is relation via electronic medium....and I feel like that is dangerous...because for me anyways, boundaries are not always clear via electronics. impressions are created in nanoseconds hearts are won or lost....folks who look good are superfaced, and well....I like hanging out with real people. A long time ago we lived in what we called THE SECTCH. There were 8 of us, plus Danica. We shared rooms and beds and many tears and lots of laughter and too many dirty dishes and a lot of we-- well, you know and also Carlo Rossi and the Dead and Merl and Phish and of course Bob and Toots and homework and we loved each other. Then. We left. And Japhy died and...those are still my favorite people in the world. If I could "facebook" with just them, or follow them on twitter...I would. I haven't been able to find Japhy there though. (I did find T and C and D and J). I don't mean to say that people who do get into that stuff are shallow, or stupid, or out of touch with the world or anything. Actually, they are likely none of those things (one could argue they are more "in touch")...I do mean to say that I find it a perversion...a perversion based on an attempt at a solution to a problem that cannot be solved electronically. Alienation. From intimacy and warmth and trust and commitment and depth. What i want right now is a cabin in the woods. There is a crick running through and tall pines. It is just me, and a journal and good books and a fire. That would make me feel human again...the rest of this bullsh-t makes me feel like a cyborg. I didn't have a cell phone until River was born and C and I decided that we needed it for emergencies. Before that I kept asking..."If you didn't have that thing imagine how spontaneous your interactions could be. What does it do to "fate" "chance" "destiny" to be iming and twittering and calling and texting...all-the-time? Who do you miss passing you by because you are networking with your head in your phone as you walk? What other phenomena in your environment do you miss cause you want to twitter about the one you just saw. Really. We will never know, it is too late and destiny has likely been changed for good.

Train Hopping

2008-10-16T12:50:00.000-07:00

I figured it out. I have been scratching my head trying to figure out how to describe the feeling I have right now, because it is the first time I have felt this way in this way. I think I may have felt this way many times before, but not been in touch enough with my feelings to know that I had them. And to be quite honest, I think I preferred not knowing the feelings to knowing them and feeling them so much. I have not train hopped--my friends have--but I haven't. But I have read Dharma Bums a hundred times, so I think I know what it must be like to train hop. I feel like I switched trains in an invigorating in motion leap. I feel like I headed a new direction, towards a different destiny. And now I feel like I jumped off the train at full-speed and hit the ground hard. I am bruised, disoriented, scared and lost. And I also feel like I keep trying to jump back on the first train and as I leap, I keep losing my grip and falling under the tracks. And I feel like I like being under the tracks better than riding on either train for now. And somehow I know I will probably end up walking, the long way, and maybe never reaching any destination. In grad school, Mary Hawkesworth talked about Heigel's interpretation of Geist--the notion that spirit moves you forward to your next evolution through a sense of dissatisfaction with your present context. She explained that is why we had applied to grad school--something told us to "be more." I feel that now. I just am afraid of what I will, or maybe more so, what I won't become.

Comforter

2008-10-12T20:13:00.000-07:00

The truth is that I dig moments like this. Laying down under a comforter, in the middle of the bed, typing away. I like the silence and the solitude. It is cold but not too terribly so. Today, we ran in the Harrison Classic. Canyon slept in the Chariot and River cramped, but it was nostalgic and season orienting and so on. Tomorrow I will take the day off, but am not sure what to do with it. I know I need the break so that will be good. I can become so easy to please when I just lower my threshold to the place where any sense of affection matters. Too much looking for being seen.Sometimes, even if I feel sad, when I look in the mirror and see myself, I am grateful I am here. It is enough to look into my own eyes and be seen.

Walls Will Fall

2008-10-10T05:00:00.000-07:00

Its like reaching forward into endlessness. Before there were walls around me. I could feel their materiality when I reached my finger tips forward. Walls, stabilizing me as I move and don't move, orient my practice for all they block the light and weaken my inner-strength by the excess of their own. Their is a moment of disequillibrium, as I stand here unsurrounded. I am crying inside, "give them back, for the wind blows too hard and too cold. It chills me. And I am scared." Dreams are like holes that you can crawl into, deep in the dark taking a ladder down, grasping to the handholds as you descend. For all I would like to, I cannot seem to find the hole right now, for all I would like to play there, I am kept hear by a merciless panic, tempered only by the remembrance of my own ability to inhale and exhale. Sometimes I laugh at it all. Really, This life is just one and there are others and perhaps next lifetime I will ... And then that too seems absurd--to project dissatisfaction into an unknown abstractness of another chance. For what? Not losing the reins of a family put together of young love,entwining passion, solace, healing and pain. No, that is too specific, the loss is more general than that. I suppose I will rebuild these walls, of a new material and different architecture only essential in the coldest of winds.

Shoot, swoosh, ahhhhhhh....

2008-10-06T05:55:00.000-07:00

"Got to face the day, no matter the consequence" Days like today are ones I should hide in long-hand, deep inside a spiral notebook. But that is sitting next to the bed with the sleeping child and so here I am. It all started with a trip to the dump. I mean, it all started the night before when I found myself overwrought and sleepless. I did sleep for a bit of hard pressed rest and when I woke I drove across town, desperately searching for... but I had to come home, my sleeplesseness could not disrupt theirs. What I found was that pile of things to delay or discard. I piled them high into the van and also rolled out the old mattress--the one I slept on and then River and now it is wet and soggy in the van. I cleared out a lot of the driveway. I moved the trash cans, organized the wood, put other things into the garage. Suddenly. I looked up, and there was the hoop. The basketball hoop I think I had not played on before, or if I had it was right when we moved in. I grab the old, flat ball and shoot, miss, shoot, miss, shoot, miss, aim, shoot, swoosh. Ahhhh.... Then, a trip to the dump. Way out there, up, up, up, I didn't realize this was the dump--another thing I had not done, usually sending the gendered prescription of dump goer in my mind. I liked the dump. Quickly all things to discard are empty and I placed them and pulled them myself. The drive is clear the stuff is here. I return home, but not before stopping to buy three sizes of basketballs. Home, I rip into the package and pull out the adult size ball. Shoot, miss, shoot, miss, dribble-dribble shoot, miss. Stop, dribble, aim, shoot, swoosh. Ahhhhhhhh..... The walk is invigorating, I hit the hills unexpectedly, breathing, pushing up, and above. I love this little spot with rosehips, willow, pine, yarrow, sunflower. I love these plants. Lightning begins to crack. I keep thinking I want to go home and shoot baskets. I let myself run, which I haven't done for a while. It feels good. and now I am almost home. To the ball shoot, miss, shoot, swoosh, dribble-dribble, shoot, miss, dribble right-left-right-left, shoot, swoosh.Ahhhhhhhhhh....

And you know

2008-09-30T21:07:00.000-07:00

you're in trouble when your five year old asks you if the polar bears are going to live and you tell him, "no, they are going to die and no one is doing much about it, but that is an existential crisis for you. What you really need to worry about is how it is going to be too hot to go outside." And you know you're lucky when the next day he says "I figured it out Mommy--they will all swim to Antartica" and he then informs you that is a real theory. You know you're in trouble when after soccer you wrestle him to the ground to pull a Capris Sun out of his hands as all the parents stare in horror at your over the top attitude to sugar. And you know you are lucky when he looks you in the eye and says "why?" and you say "High-fructose corn-syrup" and he says "o.k." quite easily. You know you're in trouble when you are driving so fast to the teach-in you are teaching that starts in 3 minutes and your are on your cell phone and the car in front of you pulls into your lane and you swerve to miss it and hit a pole. And you know you're lucky when they say sorry and no one is hurt and you say "well, as long as your fine and we're fine gotta go" and head off to your teach-in --just 3 minutes late. You know your in trouble when you can't get the top groups to get it and you know your lucky when the Idaho Astronomical Society "got it" without being asked. You know you're in trouble when you wake up sad too early in the morning and can't sleep because of it and you know you're lucky when you find an email in your inbox from your sister asking you to lunch, just in time to help you not feel sad, and help you start to make a good day. You know you're in trouble when dinner is soba noodles, potatoes and ketchup, and you know you're lucky when strawberries and peaches are snacked on while the pasta and potatoes cook. You know you're in trouble when you are so mad that the bathwater is thrown purposely out of the tub that you shout "there will be no stories tonight!" And you know you're lucky when you actually do read a story in Spanish and English. You know you're in trouble when you are counting to 120 and thinking fall asleep...now...fall asleep...now. You know you are lucky when you bury your face into their sleeping bodies and hear the sound of restful breath. You know you're in trouble when you can't quit thinking about the weight of the world and you know you are lucky when you remember who it is you are worried about the world for.

Clearing Up

2008-09-25T20:00:00.000-07:00

Just to be clear--I had to blow my nose on the sleeve of my sweater because there was not anything remotely like a tissue in the car and I was super congested to the point of not being able to respond to my big sister on the phone, and, well it was practically a spontaneous blow. Also to be clear--the quote I posted from a few days ago regarding the Pellinor series is a song that was song during the time of Annar, as that time was passing--the light moving to dark, turmoil taking over the land. Sometimes I feel like we are going through that kind of a time right now.

You know you're in trouble when...

2008-09-24T21:41:00.000-07:00

You know you're in trouble when your driving down the freeway and have to blow your nose on your sweater and then, forget about it when you get to your destination and continue to wear your sweater with snot obviously on your sleeve. You know you're in trouble when you are super tired, but up on the internet anyways while a t.v. you didn't turn on is blasting and then out of nowhere, without realizing you were even listening, you find yourself laughing at a joke you didn't even hear by a late night talk show host. You know you're in trouble when the toilet paper is out in one bathroom and so you use the other bathroom and then you realize eventually that you are out of toilet paper in both bathrooms and that is what it takes to get you to walk to the cleaning closet and get fresh rolls of toilet paper. You know you're in trouble when the nice guy who helps you load your stuff says, "Hey, did you know your gas cap is missing" and you did, and it has been missing for likely a year. And he says, "That effects the fuel quality, it loses its volatility" and you didn't even think of that. And then he tells you, once you've started the car that you need to get something else done because of how your engine sounds and you didn't really even try to remember what he said. And you still haven't gotten a new gas cap. You know you're in trouble when you cry at basically anything remotely emotional, including commercials for t.v. dramas. Mommy brain, overwork, stress. Life.

The Song of Theokas

2008-09-21T07:53:00.000-07:00

"I kiss the peaks of Lamedon with my eyes And the white arms of the passionate sea Which loves this beautiful island that I love For I am dying..." -From Alison Croggon's The Books of Pellinor

Emails Unanswered

2008-09-17T21:13:00.000-07:00

There are two emails I have sent in the last week, which will likely never garner a response. Not that I don't send emails all the time that are not responded to, but in these instances a response of some sort was implied. Actually,three. 1) An email to a federal regulatory body requesting information about technological issues surrounding a controversial technology. What is the regulatory body for, if not to let the public know about the issue they are regulating? That is a naive questions huh, that is the point of most regulation, to keep things hidden. 2) A short email to my old mentor in grad school, who I had so much in common with and with whom the fallout of our relationship was rather irreperable. It was about Plain and seeing what academia may have planned. Feminist academia. Oh well, no response. I am not the student anymore, who do Ithink I am asking questions of the teacher? 3) A letter to a major group asking for assistance. No reply. So, maybe there is something wrong with the way I communicate. Perhaps it is out of balance. That is not effective, to be out of balance in the work. But the work has been polarized. Sometimes I can only start over here. The distance across the gap is large. I have not built the bridge yet. I see myself as a hermit with a hoody on. My hair is greying and I am alone, the children grown, the house empty. I am a mute, I have stopped talking entirely, the us of my voice has been proven unheard. E-mails unanswered.

Sleeping and Breathing

2008-09-13T21:49:00.000-07:00

"I miss them." "Oh, you just miss them sleeping and breathing in the house?" "Yeah." Alone now, I lay down on the couch. Sometimes I just like to pass out, even in my clothes. I like to sleep on the couch that way. A sharp alarm sounds from an insect. I think at first it is mechanical. It wakes me and then I fall asleep in spite of it. My boots are still on and at one point, not very far into rest, I take off the boots and get in bed. I fall asleep. The phone rings. Urgency. I think they are hurt, something has happened. "He's sick, like that time. He wants you." I really can barely piece it together. As bad as the time in OR? Is the ambulance coming? Is he turning blue? I get in the car and the drive across town feels like it takes forever. I lived over here as a girl and now my boys are sleeping on the same street. With the same periodic traffic. Finally, I arrive. He is bundled outside. He smiles "Hi Mama" No, not like last time, but he wanted me, so I came. Tonight, the little one is asleep and the bigger is up with me. I hear the alarm again and find the insect with an antennae trapped in a bit of web. We help it detach and the alarm ends. It eagerly moves on, finally free. But he is still singing in the house. Is he thirsty? Maybe he just wants out now. Ever since I lived with the insects, I feel connected to them, when I let myself think that much about them. The boys enjoy them. Tonight they are sleeping and breathing here. That feels better.

here i am

2008-09-10T21:07:00.000-07:00

thought i couldn't even blog tonight...but i can always blog here...its really some strange thing to use a public space as a private space and remain committed to the idea that it is private. someone did a google search on my dad the other day and found my father's day blog entry, and then wrote him a note to tell him my tribute gave them goosebumps. after liking that someone confirmed their suspicion that my dad rocks via my blog, i then thought, "Well, i hope they didn't read much further to see how whacked his daughter really is." Maybe everyone's whacked, maybe I am just a little extra for being comfortable to make it available for anyone to read...if they find it. If a blog is written but never read does it have meaning? is it only feminists who are willing to say no to nukes? i think maybe. hilary did. maybe i am wrong. why do i feel so right? could there really be two sides to this (or more)? what is...? so processing here is public and private. there are things i will not write about, like the way, really, i wish i could just drop to the ground, into the grass lining the path and make the moment pause or extend. make the bi-directionality settle and those passing by take a look through. a real one. you know that thing when someone looks at you like they get it? What if there were more of those moments? i think i would really splay on my back looking up at the sky and open my mouth into a deep grin. pause. here i am.

Anthem with written thoughts

2008-09-09T20:23:00.000-07:00

What would he see if he saw the unseen? What would he say if he knew I liked green? Yeah. Jagged edges and small wounds. Crying over frogs lost in an airconditioner, that thankfully wasn't on and so the frog jumped out. Little whimpers and cries, a big sigh and big boy stuff like undies and school and not sharing. Playdough and sign language, science. Today I chose hanging file folders in rainbow. I guiltily chose them over the plain green recycled ones. There are so many different topics, I figured the colors would help me organize. They look good in the drawer. Its fine to call myself "80%" in so many things. Not 100% in very many. Like...the quality of my sleep at night in between dreams where I work out longings like I am wringing out the laundry. I have tried ringing out laundry and I have watched it done right. Its hard, like the hard kicks of two boys most of the night in my abdomen. Fleeting and painful, while it also soothes in its intimacy. In any case. Written communication is a dream. I am excited for my oldest to grasp it and flow, he will love it. What an adventure, to string these letters together, themselves arbitrary, in a succession of representations and meanings. Great fun. All right, I like green. Yah. Alright I say what I mean! Yah.

My Right Foot

2008-09-06T20:12:00.000-07:00

I was simply stepping. And as it turns out it is a good thing the step was simple, and not robust or firm. It was a light step, around the rear of a big truck and the road biker heading the wrong way up the busy street that struck my right foot flew over the handlebars in slow motion. The papers I had fervently printed and neatly stacked flew across the roadway as well, the light catching their angles, a tire mark left on my sign-in sheet. The board, a key organizing tool, was upended as was I as I flew to the ground on my right side, but bounced back up in shock by the time he had hit the ground. I am gathering the papers along with my driving companion and the biker. He is apologizing I am trying to piece the impact together. Just a bit stiff in the right ankle, but for most of the afternoon numb. You'll have to excuse me, I explain to the crowd gathered, I was just hit by a bike, and I don't quite feel myself, but within instances the adrenaline took care of that, then just a dull pulsing ache for a day and now, not much but a tweak. We have seen each other twice. Yesterday in the produce section, I was holding some vegetable and chatting and he walked up and just stood. "Oh you are the guy who hit me on the bike" I say laughing. His earnest apologies are so genuine. I am also relieved he was not more hurt, we share the moment of what could have happened had there been traffic, had my step been grander. He is worried a bit about my body, I am worried about his. Again today, we see each other. "How are you feeling?" he asks. "Really,I'm fine. Its nothing." I say smiling as broadly as I can to assure him. Funny a step with the right foot, and an unusual choice of direction, a coincidence of timing, forever mapped in memory, partially put on the body, and a shared marker of experience by sheer accident.

Breaking

2008-08-31T19:14:00.000-07:00

Just after I turned 30 my life completely fell to pieces, and in its falling it stuck like glue to new positions and angles, completely unexpected designs and sharp edges. Leaning through the new pathways created by this restructuring I found myself being sliced deeply, bleeding from my center, thick pools of life force flowing live a river out of me. The shell left behind stares blankly at me now. I flick at her face. "Wake Up!" I want to scream, and a horse dryness holds the words on the other side of my disembodied self. The force of the scream reverberates through the alien structure I now inhabit. I try, without success, to peal away the layers. I scrape at the eyelids that give this version of vision. Cranking my head side to side, I try to make it rotate in all directions, it is encumbered by a few singular views. Pointless. It could be said it happened cause of a baby, or a boy, and then maybe a baby. Again. None of the answers are complete. They are all just part of this tumbling of artifice, this making of nothing out of all the things that I could have made, why this? I inhale now deeply. I feel the holes in my face working as they are meant to and color seems to seep back in. But even as it fills me I bleed. Draining out empty. I am a sandcastle. No sooner do I build up, then an inevitable wave crashes me down. Around me I try desperately to create a barricade. Still I have started too close to the shore. Too close to the waves. I think of a new lover. Her hair is a mixture of toffee and cocoa. She smiles wryly at all times and she moves into me. "Be the River, not the Rock." she says. The river is so hard to break, made of water, not glass.

I Didn't Mean for it to be this Way

2008-08-30T13:25:00.000-07:00

The blog I mean. Not at all. I had high aspirations for a themed blog about always looking for the progressive path (s). Not from a frame of mutual exclusivity, but from a place of inclusivity of multiple paths. Instead, for the most part, times like now included I come here to wallow through writing, to process some angst, to describe a confusion that is the worst malaise of action. I feel paralyzed. All this learning and connecting and knowing where to move towards, but always the feeling I have gotten nowhere, have not been quite understood, will not be able to even make a dent in this issue. I told a mentor I admire the other day, when he inquired as to how I was doing, that I was breaking under the weight of the issue, that I felt the whole cause on my back, and I was not doing it justice. Later, I was shocked I had admitted this to this person, on whose impression of me rests much potential for my career. More shocked though by his empathetic and understanding response, "You can't do that to yourself, you have to just do your best and know it is everything you are able to do and accept that as enough." This is why I have identified him as a true mentor I suppose, because he gets me and relates to how work. But I cannot accept his advice. Even as I sit here paralyzed, knowing that today I am not doing my best, not doing enough. Knowing that today I have retreated and am trying to go deeper into hiding. "Illusions of Grandeur." That phrase keeps coming to my head when I get this way about the work. Who do I think I am in anyways? In what world is this burden really mine? Why have I constructed my work as so important? People I love are living perfectly happy lives by doing normal work and leaving it at work and spending time with their families keeping the house and building gardens and offering community service. I am running around like a manic doomsdayer trying to get people to wake up to a crisis that I myself have not fully acknowledged. Every time I run the water scalding hot so I can feel the ache subside from my joints as it burns my hands while I scrub dishes I feel the guilt of the energy being used to heat the water. I see the flame light and its connection to the natural gas peaking plant, the hydrodams, the coal emitting plants. But I still run the water hot, thinking this may be the last year I have the privilege to do so. And I know my greatest handicap is my attitude towards the work, the guilt, the panic, even the passion. I know that if I could center and believe and operate not from a place of shame but steadfast optimism that I would not be so afraid, and then the work would be more effective. But I am just so afraid still. Instead of choosing a path, I am running up and down all the paths I can think of. When I am sick, or hurt, or tired I hide, disoriented. Which WAY??!! All I know is that it cannot be this way.

“I would rather die than live in fear” -MLK

2008-08-28T22:12:00.000-07:00

-Quoted from Alice Walker’s The Way Forward is With a Broken Heart

I came to understand this quote most completely when I watched "White Light, Black Rain" in commemoration of Nuclear Free Future Month through a documentary about the horrors of the the Hiroshima and Nagasaki Atomic Bombs. I watched the film twice, once at home late sick with the flu, close to my computer screen. The second time I was projecting the image for a group, pulling out themes and facilitating discussion. People's mothers were vaporized, babies lost heads, homes were incinerated. 220,00. They woke up and were living there lives and then they were literally radiated, deeply. A pillar of fire, describes one witness. Not a mushroom cloud. And one of the hibakusha (survivors of the atomic bomb) lost her whole family except here sister and then her sister killed herself and the only surviving one says, "there are two kinds of courage, the courage to live and the courage to die." I would never have aligned with that claim in the past, not ever seeing a justification for taking your life, or accepting death. And now I see what was meant, what is meant. The bomb makes me so, so, so , sad.

Why are all the girls in New York City Oh, Oh, Oh So Pretty?

2008-08-24T22:34:00.000-07:00

I really asked myself that several times on my latest journey into the city. I had the good fortune to experience a night in the cities, through the city, in the village. All because I had the foresight, when a flight got canceled to realize that with the same connection it was better to start early in New York then to arrive late in Chicago. I traveled on the subway from Queens and a free stay at a hotel near La Guardia, traveled into the Village and to my favorite restaurant "The Caravan of Dreams." Ahhhh, a dream come true it was. But really, the girls in New York City are sooooo pretty. From blondes with golden almond skin and smiles full of sunshine, to remarkably sophisticated beauties of all hues and styles of all scents and mental kinds. It's nice they are are all so pretty, all them girls in New York City.

Marrying the Movement

2008-08-16T22:12:00.000-07:00

Today I considered the notion that really, to do my work I would have to marry the movement. It seems that is the only relation, besides my children, that I have time for and that I can experience without distrust, doubt and all the other anxieties there are in human to human relations. It certainly is my passion, it certainly feeds my soul and invigorates my senses, pushes me to be better and keeps me going when I'm down. It gives me a sense of commitment and purpose and I trust it to be there, since the cause is lasting the relation too is sure to be prolonged. It can't put its arms around me though. It does not wipe tears from my eyes, or touch me gently to show its affection. It doesn't listen, really to my fears and offer advice and it won't playfully explore with me in material ways. That's o.k. maybe. The movement hurts though. It makes me tired and scared and overwhelmed and sometimes I feel like I want to run and hide from it. Bury myself in a green thicket of vegetation, just breathe in moss and feel the wetness of the ground. But that is not the movement, that is me seeking alone time with the reason for the movement the protections of the earth and its growings. Today, when I heard activists of the 70's talking about their actions I was so overwhelmed with that sense that I was now in a relation and it was so intense and wonderful, but besides those with me in this movement, for now at least. I have to wrap my own arms around myself. Pat myself gently on the back, and talk myself to sleep into sweet dreams. For now, that seems like it is the challenge I face in coming into the power to not relate to the movement but to be it.

Cutting Deeper

2008-08-11T19:15:00.000-07:00

One time, I was cutting a loaf of Rye bread. I think it was late November and the rye taste satisfied a need for warmth and comfort. The loaf was not particularly hard, but maybe a little tough. Somehow my left hand, the hand securing the bread in place, came too close to the blade. I cut deeply into my left pointer finger. We wrapped the pointer in paper towel, and as is typical in a metropolitan area, we simply walked to the nearest hospital. We waited for a long time and I eventually waited alone, as the baby needed to go home. When the doctor did come we had a lovely exchange, where I shared my fascination with bodily wounds and he shared medical school experiences. He got a kick of the way I watched intently as he stitched up my now bloated finger (from the pain injection). "That is so cool" I kept saying "Its like I'm made of wax." I couldn't get over the way my flesh was open and he was threading through it and I couldn't feel a thing. I remember riding my bike to the store for beer later. Talking on my cell-phone with my good hand, steering with my poor hand. Three Monkeys, a great beer with an over-the-top alcohol content that accompanied my grad school days perfectly. It was the first night of River "crying it out." This was a technique that never did work for him. But I sat and drank beer and read Foucault, with earphones on and a bandaged left hand. Tonight, River cut his hand while reaching up on an outdoor shelf. He screamed for what seemed like forever. The cut was superficial and I wanted him to just breathe. But he continued to scream, and scream. I couldn't help but wonder if he was really screaming about the cut or some other, more internal wound. "I almost cut my finger off once" I told him. "Want to see the scar?" "It healed just fine." "When was that mommy, where was I?" "In Philly, and you were a baby, and I was cutting a loaf of rye bread..."

Me Moving Through

2008-08-07T16:18:00.000-07:00

I have been away for a bit. Not even having written a post in August is weird for me, considering it is the 7th already. I traveled to Portland for some progressive inspirations (I swear, they are like a different species in Portland, everyone is so hip and healthy and there are 2 raw food restaurants!) I also had a chance to catch up with my fellow dear "L" ladies Laura (who I call Lar Lar) and Leila (my sweet Lippy Lippy Leila Lu...we say "Hi Lippy!" "Oh, Hi Lippy!!" when we talk. Being with soul sister gals who I trust and know love me no matter what cause they have seen me at my best and worst and still stuck around was exactly what I needed--a total blessing. I missed the boys terribly, I have been away far too much, but I tried to savor the solaness and let myself grow. It was good. Last night we commemorated the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Through photos of the bomb and its effects we made the space for recognition of the atrocities. Through Japanese music on the Kyoto, a presentation of a plaque from the Mayor of Hiroshima, and a survivor story we honored the culture and the human bodies impacted by this past violent act. Then, a dear and lovely woman helped us move past the past to a place of peace and transformation as we meditated together about peace spreading to the world. I actually felt something radical in me shift in that moment and the feeling has been lasting. It all came full circle through the dances of peace we participated in at the end. Weaving our bodies between each other, looking each other in the eyes and singing lovely words the entire process moved from a cerebral remembrance to an embodied acknowledgment and wholistic transformation. This weekend I have my boys in the mountains again. I leave for a period next week. I remembered last night that even when I am away we are connected.

The Fool

2008-07-29T22:22:00.000-07:00

She told me I was being fooled. She even said something to the effect that I had fallen into a societal trap. Before I had even failed the exam she suggested I was failing at the way I practiced feminism. Or rather, I was falling for a female blunder. I cried a bit I think. It was a rainy cold day in Philadelphia. I had just spent over an hour with the baby in the car seat, trying to find a Staples to buy a printer cartridge, so I could print the outline of some work in progress. Let's see, I did get it printed, but my stress level had reached an all time high. I think I got a ticket for where I parked and the heavy rain reminded me of how Easterners are so good at having umbrellas and how at that moment with River in my arms in the cold wet, I wished I had that instinct. I think I was late meeting her. She suggested a tea shop on the other side of Broad and, of course, north of the south side where I lived. In any case, I did not bring my baby, as I often had to meetings with her. I remember delaying for his naptime. I remember the way the seams were falling apart in the grey Jersey sky and also how the concrete and asphalt of highway one were cracking like an egg. I had him with me that time, but not now. She heard how I had structured my theory curriculum and she critiqued me severely. We talked about other things. She ended up noticing my exhaustion and stress. She did not want me to move, she did not want me to leave the program, and there I was asking to, because my family was failing to thrive. She told me I had been duped, she insisted I prioritize the work. She warned me that is how things operate in mysogyny. She told me the story of her engagement and subsequent breakup during her PhD exams. He thought she studied too much. She didn't understand the unintentional quality of it though. She did not see the flame go out in his eyes, eyes used to mountain tops. The earth is not vital there, he withered beyond his will. Neverthelesss, I let it go. And it is fine really. Sometimes I think I should have come straight back here and gone back to KBSU. Then I remember my mid-wives. I remember all I learned and the travel the work brought. I remember the beauty of Philly, and the awesome pre-school. I remember diversity. SO it was worth it? That is intense for sure. Did I really fail at feminism? I know when I went back to take my orals, after a gruelling re-take of maybe 40? pages in 24 hours, they snickered at my pregnancy. They think I failed. Canyon is beautiful. I treated him poorly tonight, bickered with him over not falling asleep, when he only wanted comfort. But I have none to give tonight, it was lost outside of me, it had been removed, so I could not give in the way he needed. But he was worth it, and failing feminism there is not vital to succeeding here, NOW. Maybe I am a trap, made of wires, or rods, perhaps even barbs. Maybe I was constructed this way and thats a fact. Or maybe I can find the key to unlock or dismantle the machine I have become, to reprogram the parts of me that cause constriction and corrosion. I am looking, looking... Or MAYBE...

A Post I Must Write In Order to Sleep

2008-07-28T23:03:00.001-07:00

I have lost it. Completely and totally gone crazy. I can't figure out how to solve the problem, I keep trying all sort of futile solutions. The poor creatures certainly are confused at my approach. It's the ants. Tonight I took out the bleach and zapped the ones on the countertop. Before, I had been hitting them with essential oils of lavender and bergamot, which they actually seemed to enjoy and which I pretended was a warning. Nevermind that my countertop compost serves as their colony and I have done nothing to disrupt that. But a few nights ago I found a load of them in the overstacked part of my sink. It was like the rag was crawling with ants. I, of course, happily washed them down the drain...but cannot bring myself to crush their bodies...so I sprayed them tonight and watched them burn...imagining their minute screams, seeing them flail to get above the bubbles of acid eating them to bits. Then I got a paper towel, closed my eyes and wiped their bodies up. I still could not crush them. Really, something must be done, I am the schizophrenic ruler of an in home ant colony. When sweeping after my bleach massacre, I even let a few live as they skirted by my poky blade of disposal, humoring myself with the notion that I am a merciful goddess. A solution, I must find....not sure if it is with the ants or me.

(RE) MADE

2008-07-24T19:08:00.001-07:00

My mother tells me I am in grave danger. She sees me running for a cliff, but she cannot catch me in time. There is fire I am running towards. "Maybe it has something to do with those nuclear people" she tells me. That makes sense huh? Or the climate crisis, or, my own transfiguration. I ask her whether my vision is facing up or down. She tells me I am just looking forward. I wonder if in any of these 4 dreams I have flown upon leaping. I write it down like that because, quite honestly, it was intense when she told me this. She told me there is a rock in her stomach, or something. She had dreams of fire out of windows when in London once, the night before boarding a plane. She thought the plane would catch on fire. But really, when they landed, they learned of my sister's apartment in Oakland burning down in the great Oakland fires. My sister lost everything, but she was safe. "Its like that time" she tells me. And I am sure my life is ending. But then I realize that is not the case. Something may be dying and transfiguring into a new form. Rebirth? Oh, how dramatic! It is painful like birth, but not nearly as so. The materiality of productive birthing is like nothing else created. The cliff is always sommewhere on a path. It is the moment of faith in intuition. The one who loves you most will encourage you to not jump, or at least exercise caution, that serves a purpose. If the impetus of sense is great enough, one still will leap, and that leap will lead to transformation. So in any case, I am laying here now. Still alive. Traveled to a cliff today and stood in a stack of fire ants. Yes, the vision is complete Mom, no worries. She felt better today after talking to me, hearing about my life. But I now have it written and enacted in this realm. This is the process by which life is (re)made.

Into View

2008-07-22T20:25:00.000-07:00

Its the most obvious password in the world really. Either the way it is or reversed. Someone would discover it eventually. Which bag do I pack for this journey? How is it that each represents something--a style of travel to me which is crucial? One is soiled, black at the bottom, almost eating the complex angles and swirls of black and white radiating out, even as it hangs sun dried over the line. The other is heavy-duty, but forms well with walking a distance. Funny how one can take over the other and determine which tools I pack and I suppose how I pack them. Sometimes I find that it is nice to throw the curtains open. Mine are cranberry and embroidered, delicate and a reminder of a past, when elsewhere, and a present of these windows, this view. So I like to throw them open. This is the question: how is it that we lost Japhy? I mean I know how, I know because he would be the one to blindly cross the road, but also always watching, yelling "CLEAR!" for the rest of us. Always just on the edge. He was usually paying attention though wasn't he? His mode was no self-doubt in physical exchanges with gravitational space. The equation was wrong though that time. The timing was perfect for that accident. A second here, a second there. A moment somewhere and it wouldn't have happened! So I have been wondering what it meant that we lost Japhy? That's it on that. There is a rope. I see it and I climb up it, around it, its twisting. I think of the sounds. I think the intensity of that loss is still vibrating, its more even now, more melodic, we have healed a great deal, and we have found ways to walk meaningful paths. We have stayed interconnected. Thank goodness. Thank you. Ahhh yes, I remember now. When I was in Nepal, 8 years ago now, I got frostbite. Bad. I mean, not amputating my parts kind of thing. But, it hurt. And there were blisters. I believe this was part of a transformation for me, a suffering to open some kind of somethin'. But anyways. One night I was hurting badly from my hands burning and itching. It was extra cold and I think I was very tired from a long day of trekking. I got up to go to the bathroom, and I tripped hard on the rope holding up the potty tent. Somehow, I did not catch myself. I fell hard to the ground, belly flop. I lay there for a minute on the cold Himalayan earth, and there was not a cry in me. I knew I was the only one there to hear it and so I did not make a sound. Instead, I rolled over and looked at the immensity of the sky, I basked in a solitude, a sense of all "external" relations falling away. I feel that "aloneness" now. It scares me and I move to relate. A bit I do, but it is interesting, the relationship I am practicing on developing with the ants. Sometimess I flood them...sorry, storm, hold on boys! Sometimes, I let them live in the compost and scare them if they come out. Sometimes, I pick up dead ones by accident eeeeeewwwwwwwww! They are my relations for the most part. Let all else fade-away.

Big Lesson Learned

2008-07-19T23:22:00.000-07:00

"I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams." -W.B. Keats I failed in my attempt at activism yesterday. I went in protected as I knew I should. I went with a stone in my pocket which wards off attack, an anklet of grounding and protection to make sure I rooted down, I even had a copper pendant shielding my heart from the attempts to deflate it I knew would come. Not to mention I have been trained now, I am ready for near anything on this issue, my confidence in the cause is embedded to the core of my being. It was the Elmore County Fair afterall, and I expected some hostility. Since I had with me the daughter of a farmer from Elmore County that opposed the plant, I somehow felt local. This is the mistake I made. After about 15 minutes working together, I looked at the size of the people we needed to talk to and the time I had left, and I suggested we split up. I have now learned the number one rule of this kind of activism, DON'T EVER SPLIT UP. She said she wanted to, was ready, felt safe and comfortable. She said she knew what to say and how to articulate it. She came back 30 minutes later in tears, tears that would not quit flowing. "I don't know why I am crying," she said, "I just can't stop." Only one person was really mean to her. Telling her that what she was saying was lies, that she was wrong, implying that we, the group she was supporting, was illegitimate. It was enough to deflate her confidence, enough to shake her to the core. Immediately, I realized my mistake. What was I thinking? I was thinking she was protected like me. I was thinking she was ready, that was too wrong, not at all the case. I had not trained her, not even close. She had watched me, we had talked about the key points, but I had been greedy, and as a result she was devastated. After comforting her I went up to the guy who had inflicted the damage. "I hear you have some questions about the credibility of the organization I work for and I would like to answer those" He stammered through with me. I nailed each one of his points, grounded in nothing other than the stereotype in his head that I was an environmentalist. I unveiled the lack of self-interest at play in our work, I had him suggesting strategy by the end. I reminded him that he had just brought a college girl, a local girl, to tears with his hostility. I asked him to be more careful, and he asked me to be more careful too, I shouldn't have sent her out alone, he said. We were both right. There were successes too. A woman who is a published fiction writer and expert enviro activist that lives in the community signed on. She had been waiting for us to come. A gentleman from Utah, who spoke only Spanish, engaged me as I spoke to him in his native tongue "Una plant nuclear...". He encouraged me to reamp my attempts at proficient Spanish conversation, told me "Escuchas muy bien, tu puedes hablar, necesitas practicar, es todo" You listen well, you can speak, you only need to practice more. And I felt like I had been given the key, the language I have been hiding could be my greatest tool. The reason I have always worked on learning Spanish suddenly became clear: I need it for this work. I will start studying again today. I will never forget that first lesson though. Watching that sweet girl melt as a result of my lack of foresight. I should have known better, and the only way to do that is to mess up. But on that particular point I will not mess up again. Ever.

Present(ing) Progression

2008-07-11T16:56:00.000-07:00

I come to you today at a critical intersection of space, time, and place. It is critical in terms of my own professional trajectory (AND YOURS), and it is critical in terms of the trajectory of energy policy in this country and the world. We are here, together, doing this work at a series of moments where time has accelerated, space is transforming and place, yours, mine, ours, the global commons, as well as that of the tiny rural community in Idaho along the stunning Snake River that is being threatened from so many directions that it is to easy, as activists, to literally be swept off our feet in a terrifying storm of chaos driven by money, greed, and fear. We must ground ourselves and in that grounding we must also continue to reach upwards, to a place where our vision exceeds the limits of the threats. I want to tell you a fable, a story, a myth. I want to take you to the place where I stand. Give a geneology, engage in a constructed history. Artifice. ART-i-fice. In so doing, I want to encourage ALL OF US to tell our own myths because it is through knowing your perspective and why you are here, why you do this work of brutal soul searching and endless, sometimes unrewarding battles, that you will be able to move forward. We need to ask ourselves why we are here, because if we don't we will get lost on the way forward and the work we do will not be as effective. It will have an effect, but the more we know from where our passion may come, or what we see in this work, or how we ended up in this place, the more intentionally effectual our work will be. I come to this place from studying globalized hierarchies of inequality propagated by a development matrix that tells us we are the "first world". I come next, to this work ,from Feminism. The locale from which I operated for many years, and still use today since I find that environmental work is deeply intertwined with the questioning of a dominant frame that has been driven by capitalist patriarchal, racist and class based hierarchies of exclusion and marginalization. In environmentalism I have found a way to finally address these issues in the most comprehensive form and at quite an urgent moment.I believe environmentalism is the encompassing movement of our time. I believe we are all here and we will all go back and continue this work because we know that. Donna Haraway is a postmodern feminist scientist working at the University of Santa Cruz. In her work "A Manifesto for Cyborgs" she describes the period we are in as a period of leaky distinctions and hybridity where we must find new combinations to talk about our realtionship to nature. She speaks of a post-apocalyptic threshold on which we precariously sit. She asks us to recognize ourselves as both animal and machine and she calls upon us to let go of a goddess myth of origins, where we view ourselves as pure and whole organic beings inevitably of the mother earth. She says, "I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess." Picture Quote. "The cyborg would not recognize the Garden of Eden; it is not made of mud and cannot dream of returning to dust. Perhaps that is why I want to see if cyborgs can subvert the apocalypse of returning to nuclear dust in the manic compulsion to name the Enemy. Cyborgs are not reverent; they do not re-member the cosmos. They are wary of holism, but needy for connection- they seem to have a natural feel for united front politics, but without the vanguard party. The main trouble with cyborgs, of course, is that they are the illegitimate offspring of militarism and patriarchal capitalism, not to mention state socialism. But illegitimate offspring are often exceedingly unfaithful to their origins. Their fathers, after all, are inessential." It is with this theoretical apparatus in mind that I will frame the picture of the fable I tell. This is the picture of a place I love. I am a third generation Idahoan, which means nothing to folks of 10 generations, not to mention indigenous origins. But it is deep for me. My state is beautiful. We have wild places to boggle the mind, we hold wild animals in huge numbers, our rivers our the lifeblood of the West. Thousands year old forest reach high into an endless sky where birds of prey some near endangerment, fly. ***Idaho is facing 3 immanent nuclear development and 1 possible. These 4 encompass a near (im)perfect representation of the fuel cycle. 1 uranium enrichment plant, 1 reprocessing facility, and 1 nuclear power plant being proposed by an exceptionally insane and ruthless nuclear developer. The final threat is a uranium mine proposed at the headwaters of the world class wild Salmon River. These nuclear dominoes are starting to fall and if one goes I fear they will all go. The state I love will become a radioactive wasteland. A place where people speak of the wildness in the past tense. Here is the map: We have a mostly rural population spread across widely dispersed geographical locations. Their is a tradition of jobs in mining, logging and agriculture. For this reason there is open hostility to any environmental movement, even when it protects these interest. One of the nations premier nuclear labs (INL) is located in Eastern Idaho (This is the main reason AREVA sited for coming to Idaho, that and the huge tax breaks) Our legislature is 80% R and 20% D. Our Governor will not admit that climate change is human caused nor will the majority of our legislators. All but one other large environmental group in the state either will not take a postition on nuclear and/or tacitly endorses nuclear power. 9% of our current energy comes from biomass. By 2015 1/3 of our energy could come from geothermal. We are 13th in the nation for wind potential. This is my first question: How do we bridge the gap between the perception and the potential? I offer this map to you as a way of encouraging you to remember your own. I know you have done it a thousand, maybe a million times, I know you have places you love as dearly as I love mine. I know you face challenges as great as great as me and unique challenges I have not yet imagined. But we can only find our actions by determining our praxis. This is the second theoretical apparatus at play in my fable. Marx talks about praxis as the melding of theory and action (I am a Marxist too, but I am not a communist, the distinction lies in the the implemenation of the theory) . I believe it is essential to recognize the way both of these are informed by experience. These three parts make up your praxis. They make up the place from which you act with intention. Arjun's "Roadmap" is a perfect example, an emblematic example, that we all must, as members of this Alliance create in our locales. He has done the global frame. Let us create the local piece. In putting them together we will come to decipher a fantastical and critical puzzle that is Carbon-Free and Nuclear-Free by 2050. Vernice's impassioned speaking is another example of praxis in action. She articulated beautifully the way her experience of racism, marginalization, death and disease has sparked her action informed by strategic theorizing. My first action from these two theoretical places-- the cyborg and the enviroteriat--leads to the second question. How do we create a clothesline consciousness? I want to see wooden clothespins hanging from the recycled cables of computers, telephone lines, and power cords among cityscapes where we are cleaning up the pollution, which, lets acknowledge again please, the communities most affected are racially and socioeconomically specified (this is a form of genocide). I want to see these lines made from the same rope used to steer cattle by the cowboy who currently will not give me the time of day, cause I am from that crazy radical group SRA. I want to see them among the rural areas, like those along the snake river plane where 750,000 barrels of radioactive waste is leaking into our aquifer from unlined pits that were built to store the waste from the weapons testing that my 2nd generation Idaho mother watched from a high-point in Boise. They went to watch the magnificent light from Nevada. They were told it was completely safe. Those clotheslines are there already. They are in my backyard, and your backyard and our garages right now. They need to be everywhere. Why? Here is a puzzle: The average clothes dryer uses 6,000 watt hours of electricity to dry a load on low heat. Go to the Energy Information Association website. Find your state's CO2 emissions, or if your state imports most of their power (like Idaho) find a state that has a high CO2 emission. Now, multiply that # by 6. That will give you the number of kilograms of CO2 emitted/kwh when you dry a load on low heat in a clothes dryer. Each time you dry your clothes it is the pollution equivalent of driving at least six miles. That is the place for consciousness shift--its the first impact, then we tell people the implication. I have conducted an unscientific survey of the ease with which you can find clothespins in the area we are staying. 4 stores (1 co-op, 2 CVS's, 1 Safeway). No clothespins. They need to be accessible. This is one action, one place I want to embrace. But there are more small acts we can encourage people to take. It is more than the act, it is the education and empowerment involved in the action. ***I would like to propose that we share small regional snapshots with each other. We each submit a map of our work and possible action. By doing that we can assess our similarities and differences and collaborate accordingly. This may help us breakthrough the difficulties of launching such a unified but large campaign. That is my fable, my story, my first conclusion. I am so excited to see yours as we tread, roots down, vision up towards a FUTURE FREE OF CARBON and FREE OF NUCLEAR by 2050. It is in 2051, that we will may live in the land of freed energy.

Reckless Blog 2

2008-07-11T15:29:00.000-07:00

Its dangerous to have an on-line diary--even if you have two. Maybe its dangerous to have an on-line diary, but I do. I come here because I can't write on the other one about the day I had, or the night, or the evening. I will, parts of each, but not right now. not here at the end of this day when i am tired, overdone, torn apart and quite frankly terrified. I can't write there in this way about a crowd of progressives eating Barack Obama alive. I can't write there in this way about a group of activists pulling rank and bickering, eating their young. I can't explain how it feels to see the ground move out from under me, realize that what I thought was stable, affirming, a perfect fit is maybe just as bad as the worst of what I could have done. When did I accept the notion that righteous work would be done in a righteous way? maybe a more righteous way but not righteous enough. I can't write about how I am so tired from lack of sleep that I want to give in, sleep forever, not push myself into a frenzy of work that is sure to leave me depleted. Not near as depleted as the work that so many people do. Work that is not rewarding, work that they travel to from great distances and leave their families daily. Work that exploits them in the worst ways. But my threshold, pitiful as it may be, is low. This work is eating me up, it is spitting me out, it is dismembering my being. This happens sometimes. It is an "in"version that result in complete questioning. An inversion that makes me reach "out" and when bitten, bleed. I am learning to staunch this bleeding from a place with"in" my---self. I am learning to believe that even when a darkness beyond measure seems to descend it is the first indication that we are moving to a lightness. I am moving to a lightness. I despise individuation. I am disapointed by the frame that insists I operate as an internal soul with external behaviors. That is bull-sh-t! But it is. It is the way we are framed. Never mind the webs and the connections, and the places where meetings occur in psychic spaces. They are not part of the reality scape that is normalized and operative. Period. Period. Period. And still, I will insist that the internal external dichotomy is, if not a relic of the Cartesian frame then the Cartesian frame is a symptom of that misinterpretation of our animalness that is the scourge of society. It is the archetype for the multiple dualisms that create the contradictions, that lead to wars of revolution and the violences they in---flict. Dark and light is one of those frames. Read, here I go embracing a descriptive dualism that mirrors the internal/external dualism which creates the tension that leads to the conflict. But here I go: And it will be dark again sometimes, and I like the dark too. I like to imagine what may be there but isn't. I like to sense with my touch or my hands or my "inner"eye (Because I have an inner-self ...will someone please tell me what boundary distinction is present to demarcate where the inner-f-in self ends?!. The dark scares me, I need to be scared. And I know that when it gets dark again learning to orient myself through the work I did in the darkness before is the most critical tool I have. "I" INDIVIDUATED. It is dangerous to have an on-line diary--It jeopardizes ME and this post is why.

A Shower to Remember

2008-07-09T20:03:00.000-07:00

Tonight, I had a shower in the rain. A shower of Atlantic Ocean rain with drops so thick and wet that I raised my head to the sky in a smile and soaked them deep within. I was walking, looking for a clothesline, when it started. Looking for a clothesline and pins to raise a clothesline consciousness, although they would also be useful, I though, for drying the dripping clothes I am wearing. I had forgotten about the East Coast rain. Forgotten, sitting in Philly staring out the window as the streets filled with that special wetness only cities magnify in the contrast they create with cement and cars and buses and lots of people, all running from the rain. Tonight, I ran, walked, skipped through the thickest of the downpour. Talked with others hiding under awnings, before darting back out and across, leaping over small river like drains. Then it stopped, the rain, but still, no clothespins, even after store number two, and so I got to walk, much further, through neighborhoods with yards with flowers I know like queen anne's lace, and black eyed susan's, and hyacinths, and echinacea, and plants I used to know, but could only recognize by sight and no longer name since they do not inhabit the West. And since the rain had stopped, I had the rare treat of seeing fireflies. Magical fairy bugs which I wish I could catch in jars with my children, but have yet to see even one in Idaho. And then, even though I have not yet peered up at the monument, stared into the reflecting pool, or paid tribute to Lincoln, right in this neighborhood there was a civil war cemetery with pillars, and wooden planks and cannons. And I thought, wow, wouldn't it be cool to have so much history right in your neighborhood. And then I remembered that their is a Native American burial ground two blocks from my own home, at the base of castlerock, and that was a neat epiphany, the way we do have a hidden history in our neighborhood too. But two more stores, and no clotheslines or pins...which is my point I guess. They should be available at all grocery and pharmacy stores. They should not be hard to find, and so it was a good unscientific survey, which will help me make my point. My clothes were dry by the time I walked back to my room anyways, and I can still smell the rain. I love being in the rain when it is so warm that the water leaves no chill.

More than 1 Kind of Religion

2008-07-08T12:11:00.000-07:00

I am in D.C. and I forgot my power cord. A complete disaster, to be sure. It is funny how attached I am to the workability of this big clunky piece of material. It gives me access to my blog (s), other blogs, my e-mail. I feel like I need it, am willing to spend a hundred dollars on a cord to have it, and maybe I do, or it needs me, or I think I would cease to be without it. There was a house in the trees, on the ocean in Mexico that I stayed in once. Built tuna sandwiches on hard rolls with avocado and tomato. Lived on tuna sandwiches on hard rolls with avocado and tomato. And fruit, I suppose. I wonder what it would be like to sit there now. Without anything like I did then. No cell phone, no computer, no i-pod (which I still don't have, but want) no palm/blackberry duder thinga majig (which I still don't have, but want). Just me and the world I see and am interacting with. Instead, I am blogging, about my experience, which has really been limited to finding a power cord, so that I can blog . But I have also journeyed metro wide to this lovely theological union where I am staying. Sometimes I feel like I am living in some sort of weird novel about a girl being led to God. I keep picking up books, and reading t-shirts, and hearing references to religion, and now I am staying in a church. And I just want to say, the Christians have tapped into something, but I think they named it wrong and lost site of its quality, or something like that. Because when my life crossroads, it is eerie how religion seems to present itself, like a magnet to my need for answers. And sometimes I want to drop to my knees and declare "Ah yes I have been saved, lead me my father" And then, I just have to laugh, because that will never happen, not with the walls as they are now built historically around a patriarchal, oppressive, colonialist past that I deplore. Not with this language and ideal, not this form of idolatry for me. Give me a crystal, some rocks, let me hug a tree and watch the clouds, that is the place I know what others see here. But I suppose, at the moment, even that "religion" has been replaced with an utter devotion to the technical gadgets that distribute information through an interwoven global web. I certainly pray to this tech god, I certainly am what I do and so a cyborg have I become. Time for some blasphemy, I suppose, I am going into d.c. to explore, and I am not taking my laptop with me! (But first, I need to check my e-mail).

McCall This July

2008-07-05T08:36:00.000-07:00

There is a veil, or one that was and sometimes is and the trees, reaching tall for the sky, are on the other side of it. This morning there is tea and toast with honey and the realization we are three, that means one of me, and so. It is an iron veil. I pull out the scissors, begin to snip away at these distinctions, begin to take large portions of this fabric and cut them into strips by categories, dip them in the lake, wash off the past, hang them to dry, hope their character changes. Last night I made it to the other side. I could hear the forest talk to me over the sound of the enactment of my caretaking. How is it that I let my motherhood get in the way of nature? Why is it that I am unable to coalesce the two into one experience? They are one experience. I made it to the other side in spite of the events, the popping, and the loudness, the dangers of water and fire. I made it there with them, by watching the lights above the Ponderosa Pines, filling the skyline I have seen since I was a girl, experienced as a blacklight poster in college, recognize still as the place from which my remains will flow, spin threw the air from above when I am gone, finally make their way to the bottom of this lake, and back again. We are mesmerized by the spectacular of colors, the celebration of it all, the archetypal remembrance of battle transformed into an extended frolic, and excuse to not work. A reason to play. Still, the brightest light in the sky for me remains the sliver of silver moon, like a half-wedding ring, shining, touching the tips of the forest. As the fireworks rise, it sets, sliding out of view, on the other side it goes, and I want to climb an invisible ladder, then descend with it, sleep in its rounded half arm. Sleep is fleeting, a chasing of dreams for answers, a chasing of dreams to remember when, in spite of my imagined dramas, life was more carefree, at least the weaving of it seemed to allow for more fabrics, more choices, fewer inhibitions of age, and change and responsibility. Today, I think, if I can pull back the veil enough that the material motorizations become simply illusions, I will chase that moon, down to the bottom of this lake, I will float there in the middle, breathing water through new found gills. I will hold to that moons curve and rise with it--like a trapeze that pulls me above the trees I love and then, with the wind, I will sway in the hundreds year old dance of these majestic beings, rooted deeply down, yet always reaching up.

Freaky Will

2008-07-03T12:20:00.000-07:00

I have mentioned before that Rob Brezny's Free Will Astrology in the BW sometimes is eerily on point. Well, this reading of my sign this week almost takes the cake: "Beginning in 1951, the US Government regularly set off nuclear bombs in the desert 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Most of the 1,021 explosions occurred underground, though for 11 years some were also done in the open air. Tourists used to flock to Las Vegas to watch the mushroom clouds, which were visible from that distance. As far as we know, the unusual lifestyles of Las Vegas inhabitants are not the result of mutations in their DNA caused by radioactive contamination. Let's use this scenario as a departure point for your own personal inventory sagittarius. What dangerous or tempestuous events from your life are now safely confined to the past? Are there any lingering consequences from them? If so, what might you do to heal?" I rest my case. Now if only I knew just exactly how to interpret this. Free-will gives me lots of options.

(Intra)Connection

2008-07-01T22:44:00.000-07:00

Tonight, "D" showed me a girl with the same MA as me from the same school. I couldn't remember her and I didn't know why. We figured out that she graduated in the Spring before the Fall I entered the first ever PhD class. It is strange, I didn't know though, because my job was largely to work with alumni as the Department GA. In any case, she rocks it. I feel like I have now accessed a feminist academic rebel friend, whose still ridin' a new wave. Here She Is

Breakthrough Technology

2008-06-26T22:05:00.000-07:00

I just had a breakthrough moment. Last night, I noticed a gentleman I had seen around, mostly at the Coop, bright eyed and energetically--different than most people. Good vibe. But he entered the event last night and seemed nervous, checked it out and left. Then came back. Then, when we were packing up, I noticed him ride slowly by, "Thanks for coming tonight Sir" I said, even though he had already passed me and his back was what I ended up addressing. The bike stopped quickly and he pivoted to face me, eyes shining. I cannot detail his words, I cannot reiterate what he said word for word. But this was his point--Carbon-Free is propaganda as a method of social control. The new way to manage bodies. The mode through which the corporeal (my favorite term for body) is controlled by power. It's weird, because that claim can be read as very Foucauldian. Foucault would, perhaps, do a genealogy--or a tracing of the ways in which power was exercised within the discourse of carbon reduction to manage behavior--although Foucault would not use the word manage--he might say exercise power upon bodies, or something like that. I'm not sure I agree with the core of his claim, but I think it is a fascinating one.

So this guy continues that George H. Bush was actually part of some other family (he has an article from , I think, The "Idaho Observer" which he keeps showing me and pointing to Bush Senior when he had a different name) and changed his name and the other family was--gosh the competitor with Tesla? No, can't remember, because the fact he mentioned Tesla distracted me. So, he starts talkin' about wireless tech and that all this energy stuff is a farce, or at least an intended effect. And then he pauses, as if it is likely too much, as if at this point most people act like he's crazy and that is the fire in his eye, the light that comes from the spark of not being heard but having something desperately needing to be said. I'm still listening. "I know about Tesla" I say, and something like relief washes over his face, "I actually have wondered about what you're saying. I have wondered about what happened to the technology he discovered? The idea that electricity can be free just from the air." "Yeah" he says, "It can." There may have been a further exchange on the Bush thing and then he finishes by saying "They didn't kill the electric car, I sold my electric car." His back turns to me and he is off.

It hit me tonight. Wireless technology is what I am using right now, my cell phone operates on wireless. Well duh, right--I put that together before, that the technology was enabled by energy moving through the air. I type words here and they are connected immediately to any computer that can access this page. I can call a friend and we hear each others voices. I can type a message on my phone and it will almost instantly be available for reading by the recipient of the words. Of course, this is all managed by satellite and other mechanisms, but does it have to be? (I know, they wouldn't like that far reaching of a question in grad school either). I pay for the use of the device. I pay for the use of my phone. It is the instrument by which profit is made from what Tesla envisioned as a free enterprise. Did the technology come for the economy or is the technology possible without the device? Perhaps the technology does not have to be managed in quite the way it is now with the interest invested in the way it is now. What would it mean to free technology?

End Note: I can hear it. Really, I didn't used to be able to, but more recently I have noticed my ears are often ringing with the sound of electric current. Mostly when I am not working or out and about, but at night it is near constant and sometimes it overwhelms me if I am stressed. I wonder how to change it, and I often want it to go away. But what if I could "move" it?

Canyon Becoming More

2008-06-26T06:26:00.000-07:00

This morning I watched Canyon sleeping. He woke up early crying. I was already up, posting blogs before the real day begins. I hold him close and his body relaxes, I take him into my room and let him lay on my chest. He slides off onto the bed--breathing evenly. Arms stretched overhead. I watch his dream face break a small smile, listen to the acceleration and deceleration of his breathing as he journeys in his mind's eye. I remember when he was born, how the same head and face were just smaller then, features not yet defined. I think of how he is moving away from his babyness. I touch my forehead to his, take in the scent of his sweet little body.I want to keep him this way forever, want to bottle the feeling of holding him tight when he runs for me and then melts into my arms. Want him to keep forever the awrnry attitude he gets when strangers look at him and he frowns in his cutest way back. There is so much going on inside that little two year old soul. So much ready to become more.

In (TOO) The Jungle

2008-06-23T21:07:00.000-07:00

Tonight I tried to take the book with me, out of the room, after the boys drifted off to sleep. I sometimes tell myself I will take the book so I can quote it directly. But, tonight, I forgot, again. It was The Jungle Book. Not the Disneyfied version of the original story (and not the original either). But the CostCo pop-out version with the intricate pictures, all derived in telling, from the original.

What I notice that I want to share is that in the Disney version Mowgli is drawn out of the Jungle by a lovely young lady from the village, "fetching water" he is drawn into the sway of her hips and the batt of her lashes as she does her chore.

In the original, it is not a young woman that pulls Mowgli with desire from the depths of the wild. No, it is the mother figure--old, and gray, but nevertheless, a mother and "the light" which Mowgli seeks.

We sometimes too easily buy into the notion of a species driven to reproduce and, so then, invested in reproductive sex. Of course, this particular evolution of the species mediates reproduction in diverse ways. Reproduction's prevention frees sex to become sex for pleasure.

O.k. , didn't know I would go there, must be cause I talked to my great gay grad buddy Chris today.

My point is this: We buy into the love affair, when maybe it is just a searching for a reminiscent reminder of motherly love and adoration of the womb that is at the core of our most human instinct. Maybe, in that way, Mowgli was not drawn away from the wild by a domesticated spirit, but rather a basic animal desire to seek the comfort of the origin. If, as was not the case in this story, the mother had still been wild, so too, would the boy have stayed so.

Hang Your Pants

2008-06-17T21:57:00.000-07:00

I learned recently that one of the largest consumers of energy in homes is the laundry dryer. Sorry, no figures, just a rather rational assertion there. In the summer time especially this figure made me realize there is really no excuse for using my clothes dryer. Even in the winter, I know many people who use their garages with a space heater, or their high-ceiling homes to dry clothing. I have been admittedly lazy in this regard. Laundry has, at different moments in my life been the bane of my existence. First, in college, when I was consumed by my studies and...wait, I honestly don't remember where I washed my clothes my senior year...huh...weird. But my junior year I did have a little laundry room in this sweet little house I rented for$450, huge backyard, rounded walls. There was a gigantic pile of laundry, and come to think of it, I did have a clothesline then. But since having kids, laundry has been a challenge always. At the height of my organized mothering efforts I have kept on top of the pile with serious disciplined diligence. At other times I have sorrowfully apologized to my children, when they have nothing to wear (Full disclosure: Since starting to work full-time my mother, and her declared love of laundry has resulted in the maintenance of my children's wardrobe as an effect of her pity and skill at rapidly processing clothing as she watches my children. She is a domestic super hero truly). More recently, with the revisiting of the clothesline revelation, exacerbated by my desire to reduce my energy use, I have finally hung a clothesline in the carport (which has never been a place to park a car). I still intend to hang one across the deck for guaranteed sunny days and as a demo example to the neighborhood. It is my little resistant act in the face of claims that clotheslines are a nuisance and unsightly. It is awesome! Of course, I have had to scold the boys when they have made a game of pulling the clothes down, had to tell River, "No I am sorry you cannot wear that again tomorrow because we are not using the dryer anymore--it uses too much energy.: Thankfully, as is often the case with Riv, he seems to buy the rationality of that argument "Okaaaaaaayyyyyy" He groans.

The clothes dry in a snap in the desert heat. They smell better, they feel better on my body and when I put them on the boys. And I feel like I am making a worthwhile effort, that has so many wonderful results. One of the biggest consequences being the meditative experience of hanging the clothes, feeling the fabric, breathing in the scent of the clean detergent. Then taking them down, and creating a new piece of domestic artistry with the next batch of clothes, waiting without fail to be hung. If you haven't done it yet, I recommend it. Stop those plants (nuke plants that is), hang your pants.

HAPPY DADDY'S DAY!

2008-06-15T12:39:00.000-07:00

I love that way of saying happy father's day. My niece, Zeia, coined the phrase in the Woodruff family when she was only 1 1/2. Love it!

My father is a tremendous man. Without fail, if I tell someone who knows him that I am his daughter, they spend a good number of minutes telling me what a wonderful person and exceptional physician he is. This happened at least 4 times at the convention alone, and happens at least every other week generally. I always smile while they compliment him and nod my head, usually finishing the conversation by saying, "I know, I am very lucky and proud to be his daughter."

My father worked for I think, about 40 years, if not more, as a healer (Uh, I mean an MD in Urology). He attended the University of Montana in his hometown of Missoula, got his Medical Degree from Stanford, and did his residency at the University of Michigan. His patients from his private practice are his biggest fans. He saved many lives, and improved greatly many others. I still remember being a little girl and him coming home from work broke up from his day. He was very sad, and when I asked him why he told me there was a young patient of his who because she was sick would not be able to have children and it just made him so sad. My father cared deeply for his patients and they still stay in touch with him to remind him of their gratitude.

He has basically flunked retirement and between traveling to Mexico to learn Spanish, writing a book, and staying fit (way more fit than anyone else in the family) he has also found time to devote to seeing patients at the VA Hospitals in new Hampshire and Georgia. Come Home Dad! We Miss You!

He is also my biggest fan in terms of my professional pursuits, and was my rock when things went sour at grad school. He stayed on my side, and supported me through my worst bouts of self-doubt and depression--never once making me feel like I had disappointed him.

He was my running partner for years, before I decided my body couldn't take it anymore. He is my favorite person to go biking with, and I love it when we get to work-out at the "Y" together. He makes a mean chili, grills a great piece of fish, and is a true surgeon in the kitchen in general. Plus, he loves my mother faithfully--has shown me over and over what it means to respect women, and is one of my feminist inspirations. I could go on and on about my Dad, Dr. Manley Briggs, but I also want to pay tribute to the other Daddy in my life.

Charlie Woodruff is an exceptional young father. During my pregnancy with River he was so deeply engaged in every aspect of the process. Always caring and supportive, feeding me food, touch, and love. We did yoga together (a lot) throughout my pregnancy. He was unflinching in our decision to have a homebirth and never once increased the doubt that other people would create about the decision. If I started to waver he would remind me that I was strong and healthy and that we were prepared and had great care. He made me feel confident in my ability to give birth. When the birth did come he was amazing. Held my head above water, played Hall and Metheney over and over for 13 hours, helped me to the bathroom, and cleaned up some pretty gross stuff without complaint! River flew out into his arms and he could not stop crying. I of course was just happy and laughing but his sweet tears meant so much to me. One week after the birth (which was Mother's Day in 'o3) I woke to an apartment full of flowers he had taken River (in the sling) to pick from our local park in the middle of the night. (That is totally Charlie's style--harvest what is available). When I say full I mean full by the way...it was spectacular)! When I was in grad school he stayed at home for a large part of the time and focused tirelessly on the baby. I will not go into the details of Canyon's birth, but--I think I hit him pretty hard a few times--and I know I swore at him a lot. He took it all in stride--another successful homebirth.

Oh, and this is one thing Charlie is really good at--making herb tea combinations after birth that help with afterpains and milk production--I mean he is really good at it.

In terms of raising our boys he is incredible. Their love of the outdoors is to his credit. He devotes himself to experiencing nature with them, teaching them to hike and ski--lucky for him both boys seem to have a knack for skiing. I mean River skis the trees better than me and I am not kidding. I know he looks forward to many "me and the boys" backcountry adventures with them--and that contribution to their lives is totally priceless.

Charlie is playful beyond measure, will build sandcastles and kick the soccer ball for hours, if I didn't nag him to do other things--and that spirit of fun is another aspect of his fathering that has made our children the playful characters they are.

I know Charlie doubts his fathering skills, I know he struggles to believe he is a great father. He has reasons for self-doubt that are hard to overcome. But, I can say here, on father's day that without a doubt he is a fabulous Dad. HAPPY FATHER'S DAY CHARLIE WOODRUFF!!!!

And so those are the father's in my life I wanted to share words about today. I know many other great dads whose fathering is emblematic of the other side of the great mothering coin. Some have children already grown, some are rocking there new baby to sleep right now, and some are guiding teenagers, or teaching young children. Happy Daddy's Day to all, thanks for what you do, and please enjoy this day.

BLOG-O-MANIAC

2008-06-15T12:17:00.001-07:00

That is what I have become, especially since the family is gone and I have been processing the Convention. I have decided to maintain my delegate's blog, and am doing a bit of networking to see if I can keep it in the Democrat's mainstream. I will continue to write here on most issues, and in my general no rules of writing style...but will post my presidential stuff and local race observations that are more standardly written on the other blog (athough, I think my writing is still a little--well-- more "abnormal" there than I am willing to admit . Funny--River asked the other day what "multi-dimensional" means and the only way I could find to describe it was by talking about the difference between a still photograph, a radio broadcast, and a television show. But so many things are multi-dimensional--and this dual blog thing is a good example.

I love this particular blog though--love to write only for the blog. I have gone maniac in the sense that I am adding links and categories to the other blog....it is fun, but also not what I want my blogging to always incorporate. I like having a place for just the words, the thoughts, the feelings, the day, my life, what I see, this world. etc. ...no mediation (or as little as possible). Natalie Goldberg wrote a great book called "Writing Down The Bones" (Actually, one of my favorite fiction books "Banana Rose" was also written by her). In the Bones book she advocates for stream of consciousness writing as the main nutrient in the writer's world. The venue she suggests is a spiral notebook. I actually have found this casual blog to be a better equivalent for me, since I flow better typing due to the excessive amount of writing at the computer I did in school. So that is the intent of this particular blog...to feed my writers soul and be about the process, and not give a damn if anyone reads these words or even understands them (NO OFFENSE MEANT IF THERE HAPPENS TO BE SOMEONE READING THIS RIGHT NOW! I implicitly strive for communicative writing and am thrilled by any entity willing to partake in my expressions).

OMG

2008-06-14T20:45:00.001-07:00

I am so tired...but the messed up part is that it is Saturday night and I am at work, cause I missed Friday for the meeting and my family ditched since I couldn't play and headed to the hills till Monday. I know, I know I shouldn't use my blog to process, but there isn't anyone else to "talk" to so here I go. I am not a delegate, but I did get a lot of votes I think and made two significant contributions to the party platform on energy and wild places, and we elected a completely diverse delegation from CD2: 2 African American Women, 1 African American Man, 1 man from India, and 1 Latino Man (2 of these folks were my picks from the first day of the Convention). The at large female delegate was a young Native American Woman. That Ba'Rocks it for sure. I was totally frustrated by DNC rules on gender balance and the implementation of those rules by the State party...A coin toss limited the # of women in both the CD2 delegation and the at-large...I am writing a letter to the DNC about it. Too tired for more. Need to eat...and oh yeah, go to the bathroom?

My Family En Forme

2008-06-11T21:00:00.000-07:00

Not the one I made, but the one I was made into. My "family of origin" is a little different than most. I am the only child of my parents but they have children from previous marriages that I grew up with. My exposure to my mother's children was greater than my exposure to my father's children since I lived with them. My father was married once before and had Ben (8 years older) and Becky (11 years older). My mother was married twice before. In the first marriage (at age 20--my favorite line from my mom is "when I was dating you married whoever you slept with, you all sleep with whoever you date") she had Doug (16 years older) and in the second marriage had my sisters Kelly (12 years older) and Holly (10 years older). I was the baby, the only, and the first child. It explains a lot about my personality I think too.

I have a tremendous amount of respect for my sisters in particular, not that my brothers aren't good folks...but...anyways. My sister Kelly is one of the neatest persons you will ever know.

-DISCLAIMER- I am not saying that Holly isn't also one of the neatest persons you will ever know too. One time I described Holly as stable and Kelly as nice, and I have never lived that down since they have both interpreted it to mean that Kelly is unstable and Holly is mean.

Tonight , I want to highlight my sister Holly because: 1) She saved my ass yesterday when I needed her to watch my kids after childcare fell through. 2) She just started a new business as a personal trainer. The name of her company is en forme check it out, and send clients her way (but maybe wait till the fall since she is slowly weening off stay at homing). She will get anyone in great form.

The Trip

2008-06-09T21:20:00.000-07:00

Tonight Canyon's face is swollen like a bee stinged balloon. But, it was just a mosquito bite, put there on a recent trip to Lowman. This time, not like other times in past summers with Canyon this time he reacted like River did that summer after turning one in Colorado. That summer around now, after returning from abroad, no home, just the van, and then the heat, and the westward boundedness--straighshooting cross country. Flippin' the passenger seat round, facing the baby in the car seat--wailing from Pennsylvania through Illinois while we sung our hearts out to Old McDonald. The halt in Indianapolis. A complete van repair in middle-america. A tornado. Also the fever in Ohio. Ohio? Somewhere. And the cat in the van and a big fight during the fever, the first since the birth.

Then Colorado, and Boulder with the baby where a hippie boy at auto-repair works hard on the van, and Steamboat. The columbines, mad creek, elk river, and River got the bites. He swelled up. Now, that's what Canyon looks like tonight.

I told a friend once that I felt like life was existing in multidimensions, so that the spheres of influence we want and are obligated to are not flat lines, that we can step out of. Nor are they static. They are shimmering hoola-hoops of spiraling energy radiating electric charges. My boys, my work, my love, my words, this home, this garden, that nuke plant, my body, those shoes, that hair, these things, and that food, car, bike. Spinning. That's how I feel when one of my children is hurt, like I want the loops to stop spinning and just heal. But, I also fear the halt. Would I gain the momentum again?

After Steamboat, and another van meltdown, we continued on to Boise. The van broke-down at a nothin' place in Utah. The people who finally repaired it said we were lucky to be alive after traveling cross-country in that van. Some heat emitting part was hitting the gas line. We should have exploded into flames. During the rest of the journey I wrote a story in my journal called "charred Family" about our narrowly avoided demise.

Can't end there. Canyon's legs extend beyond the scope of my expectations. He flattens me as I rock him, he mutters and twitches, trying to get comfortable with one-side of his face hot and puffy. He soon breathes evenly, buried in my skin, I am tempted to not even peal him off, just to sit here with him and watch the colors beyond my eyelids as I hold him close, nose buried in his air, taking in his scent, filling him with light. Healing.

My New Delegate's Blog

2008-06-08T09:48:00.000-07:00

Is up and running and has some new features. Check it out! I am pretty expended from the effort and my bottom hurts from laying in bed for 3 hours putting it together, but I think it works and I have lots of other cool ideas of things to add. I will likely only hand out my card that my cousin is awesomely creating for me at the convention--mostly do to the cost of postage, but I am looking into e-mailing at least CD2 the link tomorrow or Tuesday. Wish me luck...oh and I changed my look...a cool surprise for the convention that you will have to check my delegates blog periodically (it is not revealed yet, but will be in the next day or so) to find out what it is. Hint: I am trying to become unified just like we need blue and red states to in my actual corporeal style.

Thanks EL Teachers at FHS

2008-06-07T20:41:00.000-07:00

My son has learned how to make mountains. I had seen his Himalayas, white paper surrounding foam blocks, secured with tape and River's hand-written sign "HIMOLAYAZ". But tonight I saw the pictures of their formation. A carefully laid lower ring topped by crossing larger blocks, a laptop is next to him, with a picture of this mountain range, and it is remarkable how well his design represents the image on the screen.

I only say this because I have been nit-picky and doubtful and plain worried about River's education. It has been so hard for me to send my child into the world, to let him be exposed to the strangeness of human communities, without my protection. I have pestered and questioned his teachers and the school at times. I recognize this as a mis-projection of my worry. The work these people do is outstanding. They are entirely child centered. They listen, and support, engage, and allow flexibility. River has realized tremendous satisfaction in the Early Learners Program at Foothills School of Arts and Sciences. And in my best moments, the experience has been so rich for me as well. I have a community that I know closely, even if they do not all over-lap into other central areas of my life. The teachers have helped me be a better more attentive parent by showing me how to guide and be guided by my child. I have made close friends and experienced great intellectual stimulation.

I am not sure why it is that I am so analytical about attaining perfection in my child's education. I want an idyllic experience for him, want to shelter him, and if not shelter than simply watch him smoothly move through. I can't imagine wanting him to have serious struggle, even though I realize its inevitablity, even though I see its worth. In finally seeing him graduate from the ELs last week, in tact, invigorated and very inquisitive, maybe I finally exhaled, and in looking at the tremendous documentation of his teachers along with a beautiful pictorial history of his 2 years, I simply must say THANK YOU BEKAH, JULIE, CARRIE, AND MARGARET and the rest of FHS!

"The sun reflects light from the moon and also the moon reflects light from the sun. The moon has craters too. They're big holes that meteors made over time." -River Hollis Woodruff, 5

Present Pathways

2008-06-07T18:33:00.000-07:00

I am shaking. That is all. There is this energy inside me ready to burst and I can feel it reaching from my finger tips, radiating from my right foot--the one that talks. For so long I struggled to manifest who I believe/desire myself to be. Somedays I feel like the pathway I walk leads to the goals I have set. Sometimes I find myself disoriented, turned-around, cold, scared, certain an animal lurks in the dark ready to attack and put an end to my journey. I want to drop to the ground, bury my face in the dirt, lick the earth and become it. Sometimes I feel wings, and they lead me to the edge. I wonder if they will work. Is it possible I will soar if I leap, or will such an act result in a terrifying, imperiled, endless descent? I look for clarity and only find more avenues of fog. I believe I am almost there and soon realize I have so much further to go. And then, and now, and maybe, I think: "If I just enjoy the view from here, maybe the journey is already complete".

Whew! That was Crazy!

2008-06-06T11:01:00.000-07:00

This is just a quick post to let anyone who reads this know (if there is anyone left from my small pattering of readers) that I was locked out of my blog! It was horrible! Luckily, in the middle of my panic, blogger informed me that I should "take a deep breath, this is not the end of the world." I thought that was funny, because in the moment that I read that from their help pages it really felt like the sky was falling. I didn't realize how attached I was to this little writing space. Turns out my new family gmail calendar associated that account with my blog and substituted my log-ins from my calendar. So, I'm back. BUT I do have a new blog (actually two cuz I am so afraid to cancel the first mess-up since it seems from the wordpress warnings (very descriptive, intimidating and thorough) that I will cancel the one I want to keep also. In the middle of getting this blog up last night I got real frustrated becaue I am having difficulty creating a section for old post from this blog having to do with presidential politics that will be accessible in the way I want them to be. I am now familiar with all the possible elements available for blogging, but none of them are what I want....in the time I want them. Point is, I got so frustrated that in the middle of it all I went to this account to just write a post, and was locked out. It was then that I realized that I blog because I love to write, I need to write, I live to write. Nothing matters about what surrounds these words to me, I just need this space. This allowed me to realize that this new blog will be a bit different of an experience. It is a tool where my communication will serve a particular purpose--to assist in my election as a national delegate to the democratic convention. For the first time since starting blogging I will be writing for something beyond the blog. It will be interesting to see how this changes my words, my expression, my point. I will not be linking those readers to this blog--since the content herein might hurt my chances of being viewed as a rational, functioning citizen--but all of you can link there and be little subversive knowers of who I really am. I will be posting all my presidential blogs from here to there, so since those are some of my weirdest posts, people will actually figure out who I am pretty quick. Speaking of quick--I said a quick post didn't I? Gotta go. Check out the blog and let me know what you think. Posts won't start rollin' in until later this weekend.

Opportunity to Write Your Voice

2008-06-02T10:22:00.000-07:00

Here is an opportunity to share your perspective on energy with a cool solar group. Exploratory dialogue is critical to affecting change. To me, the most disturbing aspect of the approach of the nuclear industry is the way they seem bent on being the “whole pie” of energy production, rather than collaboratively advocating for a diverse energy portfolio that emphasizes renewable energy. Additionally, I feel like the nuclear industry’s solution is working within the frame of current consumptive practices, and not encouraging people to reduce consumption on a personal basis. Of course, being from a state where a lot of nuclear waste has been, and continues to be “dumped,” I cannot see nuclear power as a reasonable option, not even a piece of the pie. Cost is a major concern, but also the history of the industry, coupled with the environmental impacts of uranium mining and the rather inefficient and ineffective bureaucracy that necessarily surrounds nuclear power due to safety issues. I would like to see more emphasis put on renewable possibilities in terms of technological advances to make them more cost effective, easier to develop, and distributable over a wide range of geographical locations. Currently, the subsidies for nuclear power far outweigh the subsidies for renewable energy and if this could change we could have a different, and more promising energy future.

When I was a little girl...

2008-06-01T21:04:00.000-07:00

When I was little Anne and I were taking a bath in my parent's upstairs bathtub. I don't know what the game we were playing was, but we splashed--a lot. So much that we were soon removed from the tub to the fitful bursts of our mothers yelling first from below that the ceiling was leaking. I remember thinking, Well, maybe now we will have a swimming pool. I have been told (many times throughout my life when this tale is retold) that upon looking at the water dripping from above, once I was wrapped in a towel and brought downstairs, that I commented, "Look at the way the light shines in the water when it falls." No regret, no sense of sorriness for the repair the water would require--enmeshed in what I had created and unaware of the consequences. When Anne was then scolded by her mother (Jackie) and told "What do you say to Sally!?" she famously replied, "Thank you for the nice time."

We finished Winnie the Pooh tonight. It was a long book, the longest we have read together and I was sorry when it became clear that Christopher Robin was going to the place where they wouldn't let him do nothing. But, Pooh and he play on in our hearts forever--at least that is sentiment expressed on the final page.

River finishes pre-school on Thursday.

Putting Canyon down is like cooking rice, if you watch it too closely, or take the lid of too early, you get rather unsatisfactory results.

Dissecting Irises

2008-05-29T21:37:00.000-07:00

Real pleasure can be found in smelling an iris. I had forgotten, until walking today and seeing a bunch of multi-colored irises, that these flower's smells are differentiated by their colors. I would ask the kids in the garden to smell each color and then report how it smelled. Rootbear was big for the white, chocolate for the purple. I always said vanilla for white, and grape for purple. Funny how different noses smell different things. The bearded iris is really a magnificent entity especially in terms of the internal reproductive flower structure. A pollinator lands on a teeple (the downward pointing "petal" like parts that have the hairy caterpillar seeming "beard" on them--I have been taught that these are called sepals if they are green and upward facing) and walks its way into the flower. Any pollen on the legs of this flower's friend is caught by the beard, possibly helping with reproduction via additional pollen collection. Imagine, if you will, the furry back of a pollinator like a bee. This insect has been feasting on other flower's pollen and so it has this magical ingredient for a seed recipe on its body. When it approaches one of the three stamen with pollen at its top hidden under one of the tiny inner petals it starts to munch. Just above the stamen there is a sticky little lip (the sticky stigma). That lip catches pollen off the body of the pollinator as it eats. From there, the pollen travels down the body of the pistol-like (I say "like" because most plants have one central pistol--the iris has these three lip like parts) spine of the inner-petal. At the base of these "spines" is the ovary of the plant. If you break open the rounded green base at the bottom of the flower you will find the eggs of the iris. From here the pollen combines with an egg and we get the baby plant and the seed coat from this combination. It is important to note that a plant will not be pollinated from its own pollen--the process (in general) requires that the pollen travel to a plant from a different flower. We need pollinators to have seeds! We need seeds to live. Save our pollinators! Seriously, plant reproduction is so interesting and fun to explore and the bearded iris presents lots of easy exploration given its size, and flashy features. Go play with irises...but don't get to carried away...we want those flowers to produce seeds. Oh, and stop and smell flowers too. It is worth it--It's a great breathing exercise, it will lift you mood, and it will hone your nature-sight.

Ungardening

2008-05-29T09:00:00.001-07:00

Do you ever blog in your head? I do. A lot. I find myself thinking through and actually composing blog posts in my casual times of the day--walking to lunch, doing the dishes, waiting for my boys to drift off to sleep.They never come out as I plan them. Its like I only see the tip and when I start the rest, things I didn't know were there get revealed. Yesterday, I found my head empty of blog posts. It sent me into a bit of a panic. How could I not have anything to blog about? Then, I sat back and enjoyed watching Canyon motor himself around the carport in his toy car. The blog entry came quickly. I am guilty of ungardening. The beds of my potential garden are full of life, but I have not cultivated them yet this year. My gardening has not been the same since I moved to Jersey nearly 6 years ago. The last real garden was the one on Jefferson that we created in the community garden space of our neighborhood. I came up with the design, inspired by a recent trip to Mexico that had left me fascinated by Mayan culture. Five squares, one as the center piece, the others angular shaped radiating from the middle. C built them. Our best collaborations were always oriented towards soil. We both worked them. Of course, the chard was my baby, lots of chard all the time. And we had way too much zuchinni, as usual, something I can rarely get enough of. Tomatoes delicious, carrots that were sweet baby Tane's first food when D & J visited. Midnight watering. I love night watering, the plants sound different, maybe because they whisper. I don't think that plot is a community garden anymore. I don't know what it is. So I am looking closer now. I have an instinct, we all do, towards knowing plants. I see it, there are flowers here. My wild primrose is in full bloom. And the fruit of the rose is delightful. Fall in the Botanical Garden, teaching kids about rosehips led to an addictive phase of consumption. Sucking out the vitamin c relishing in the minerals. I have these fruits right here. And Iris, not the wild kind, but some planted years ago. Lots of Iris. The herb garden is a staple. The chives are green and beautiful, new fresh culinary sage, and a basil plant, I think my mother put in a few weeks ago. Strawberries around front in my perrenial bed. At least I had the foresight this fall to spread yarrow and lavender seeds, and River and I transplanted a pattern of lavender and yarrow at the bottom of the drive. I have a vision of these protective plants growing tall, holding the foundations of my home together for years. They are tiny still. They will grow. Standing now, I realize I need only begin and it will be better than it is now. I start to rake away the pine needles covering my terraced raised beds. Uncovering brown earth, the possibility of planting soon pulls the rake for me. The compost pile continues to decompose next to me. I have all the parts, I just need the fortitude to manifest. Our best collaborations were soil oriented, our best collaborations were soil oriented. Our best collaborations were soil oriented. I am gardening alone now. The kids call to me to come play. River has discovered an inborn knack for tennis. Its the first time he's realized it is easy for him and he wants me to throw the ball and pine cones so he can swing full through, perfect form. Amazing. I have stopped gardening now. It is time for dinner and bed. I am too tired to go back outside. My eyelids are shutting, my body is still aching. The soil feels barren. I am scared of the dark. D & J have built a lovely garden this year. J is not on the river and all his energy has gone to cultivation. D is happy. She has learned about how the plants talk, especially in transplanting, you can see it is enlivening her. She breathlessly talks about watering, about the sunflower stalks raising high to the sky that will be coming. I am guilty of ungardening,I am here, in the dark. Watering the soil with tears, pouring, I am empty. Perhaps I am a wild woman who can only have a wild garden. Maybe, not watering will lead to only native plants and not weeds. Maybe, the rosehips are enough to sustain me. This ground has been too heavily raked. I can' get it to move. The soil feels poisoned. A bulldozer has knocked out the future, a leeching has robbed it of life. Here, let me plant some sweet clover. Can I please put in these tomatoes? Let a little water drizzle from the hose? Let the guilt wash away. Fingering these delicate roots, digging a tiny hole. Tucking this plant in for the season. "Inch by inch, row by row, gonna let this garden grow, all it takes is a rake and a hoe and piece of fertile ground. Someone bless these seeds I sow, someone warm them from below, till the rain comes tumblin' down."

I'M JUST AN ANIMAL AFTER ALL

2008-05-27T20:16:00.000-07:00

That is what it comes down to. I eat and sleep, piss and shit, I've lactated, ovulated, menstruated, procreated and birthed. I am driven by desire for food, sex, space, work. Just an animal. I could move to all fours right now if I wanted. At times, even, I have found myself curled up under sagebrush, coiled together like a suffering coyote. Just an animal. Sometimes I feel like howling, sometimes like tumbling playfully, grooming, nuzzling,feeding, creating. So it is no wonder what happens when we are transcribed into institutions. Health care, school, neighborhoods. Professional contribution, marriage, excel spreadsheets. Seriously. Those things make me not feel like an animal. They make me feel like a mis-matched union. A misunion of instinct and cultural requirement. A mis-conglomeration of gendered interests in the interest of an instinctual drive rooted deeply in my animalness. But I also have such human dreams. Filled with a deepness of emotion and puzzles to be inquisited after. My base level feelings are accentuated by complex emotions. The culture anchors me through these. I am lost in the technique of it all, the technology of it all. i'm just an animal after all

(Un) Finalized Quotations.

2008-05-26T14:08:00.000-07:00

"My dynamite will sooner lead to peace than a thousand world conventions. As soon as men will find that in one instant, whole armies can be utterly destroyed, they surely will abide by golden peace" -Alfred Noble That quote, spoken at the end of the 19th century (by the founder of the Noble Prize which will be officially awarded and dispensed with in its myriad categories tomorrow I believe) seems to accurately exemplify the unemperical character and ought to often practiced theory of containment now doesn't it? I have finished. McCall has a way of doing that to someone with a lingering book. It allows the space for steadfast reading. Among other things of course. Forest adventures and lakeside sittings. I did not dig deep in the sand this time. Instead, the wait of my body sunk into its softness. The children ensured it was dug and sometimes placed heavily on my resting form. Peppering my like a roast. A mama too ripe with grown-up experience to completely hold the promise of its malleability. I have been busily bending pages. Moving through a tale of loves, and loss, and death, and time-travel,or the failure of it. So, I feel like sharing these quotes again. Some of them so striking, some moments uncapturable--like when suddenly it became clear that the character "sam" was Sam Clemens --or Mark Twain. I was compelled to comb back through--How could I not have caught that earlier, or is Samantha Hunt using a literary trick, dumping the unexpected at the end with the intent of delighting , and risking near disappointment. But she bundled it right, she twists it again and again until the un-reality of it all leaves you wondering not if it was legitimate, but where a notion of the legitimate as a literary standard came from anyways. So I will not cite these in a linear way. I may even start at the end. The final pieces that I am savoring still now. To the middle parts that perhaps I have forgotten already, and need this little reminder as a way of finalizing their etchings. Never mind, there is not time. Too many things to do besides satisfy my own desire to order these written impressions, to pocket them in my own little immaterial purse of ponderings. You will have to read the book yourself to cite the middle. "The birds dove together, each loop inseperable from the other, known, unknown, welcome. They rose and fell. They turned and disappeared like a flash of something that's hard to hold on to: hope, the past, lightning against the New York City sky" "And he wondered: Why is she asking me to say this? Can't she tell, and doesn't she know? It is in the air, in my eyes, in the words I say that have nothing to do with what must remain unsaid. She does know this, or else why would she keep coming back?" "My birth and their wedding sat on the kitchen table. In a few days, I imagined, a new certificate would arrive, and I would file it there with the rest of his life. I wondered what they would write as the cause of death. Curiosity. Courage. Love. Love, I heard Mr. Tesla say, is impossible. Yes, I agreed. This morning it seems you are right about that." "I'll just tell you what I remember because memory is as close as I've ever gotten to building my own time machine." "Mr. Tesla miscalculated. Death rays don't stop death. Killing only kills more. Perhaps he'd been thinking about another version of our future. The one he'd intended for us. The path we didn't take. The future where war and death were absurd propositions. The future where human beings have wings and electricity is miraculous and free"

Embodied Memorials

2008-05-25T22:31:00.000-07:00

What I find fascinating about John McCain is both his full corporeal experience and also the excavation of his body--the segmented cutting and removal of his flesh. He had both shoulders broken when he was a prisoner of war, he is thus unable to lift his arms above his shoulders. He used to smoke so much that he has had many tumors removed from his colon and prostate. The press is citing his heart rate and blood pressure, giving taxonomical evaluations of his embodied inflictions and status. I want to ask: What does it mean about us as a culture if we elect this state of health as president? What does it mean if we elect the apparent vigor of Barack Obama?--The female oriented body of Hilary Clinton, with all its reproductive history and reminder of that difference? McCain is a former prisoner of war. In lingo with a friend over work to be done I unreflectively and coldly referred to the upcoming, Memorial Day holiday as that "damn" holiday. It was only upon reflection after a co-worker sent around a memorial acknowledging that which is memorialized on this day that I realized it was a damn holiday only in terms of what it meant for the sacrifices that are embedded in all nations--in the name of this idea of nation--in the name of this idea of nation there are those that hold a national identity. They are bodies of flesh and blood and spirited remembrances of those who came before--of the ancestors. We hold that past in our genes, even as the selves that are born today encompass a different enfleshed matrix. Bodies for a new millennium. And on Memorial Day we acknowledge the suffering of those bodies (past and present) affected in war through death and suffering and permanent scars like those embedded in and on John McCain. Post-traumatic stress disorder, drug abuse, traumatic brain injury, amputation. A listing of how war segments sovereignty of the self and the nation. The body is a stress processing machine. A body like that of John McCain reveals the stress of our culture without subtlety. His stiff movements and slightly distorted profile are a reminder in the visual realm of his history, and that gnarlednesss is, in a strange way, appealing. Look what this body has survived, look how it has sustained. But to me, it is also a reminder of the dis-ease of this nation. Of a body with a belief system centered on defense and "prosperity" of a vision of invested interests as a commanding force, with little said about the realities of Katrina, the Iraq war, the state of the economy. Honestly, it seems to me that John McCain is a genuine man, but the genuine place he holds scares me. There is something toxified in this being, there is something that repels me. I got to be really close to Barack Obama. I stood in the front row when he rallied in Boise, the appearance of one of his security guards that stood by me will be forever etched in my brain--his clear-sightedness, his singular mission. Obama was slightly powdered. Really--maybe because of the lighting they powdered him. But other than that he was slim and strong. He was straight and rooted and so comfortable in his skin. He came down to the crowd and shook the hand of the boy in front of me. His hand, long fingers, defined musculature dangled in front of me for a fraction of a second--I seized the opportunity and shook that hand--electrifying. And the children. Today I saw a news piece with a video of a baby being asked who the next president would be. John McCain? No. Hilary Clinton? --"Go Barack Obama!" Squeels the baby. That's how Canyon sounds too. Both boys whisper and sometimes shout his name. I find them mesmerized when he flashes across the screen. I am not sure. I am persuaded by the body of hybridity. I am compelled by the transcontinentalness of this potentially presidential body. That is as far as I can go analyzing that corporeality for now. McCain is more blatant. He is more endemic of something. Something I am compelled to watch as the election progresses as his embodiedness experiences the rigors of electability. On the news right now they are talking about the medical care always accompanying the president. To assure us there is a specialized maintenance team to stabilize this body. Because when it is threatened, we lose our-selves?

Obsessive Compulsive That's Me

2008-05-25T12:32:00.001-07:00

Uh, the Damien Marley on Austin City Limits link is working now. Did I mention that both the interview and video are worth watching? I just get this way, when I really like something.

Ode to the Cabin and A Random Musical Recommend

2008-05-24T20:47:00.000-07:00

I have made it. Finally, after too many months I am in McCall. The tall Ponderosa Pines greeted me on 55 when I stopped by the river on the drive up. The lake now melted, I am reminded that my last adventures here involved skis and mittens. In college I would come here as a respite. We would travel from Walla Walla for Thanksgiving and sleep all day, then come out of our dark cavern and eat, maybe go on a walk and then sleep again. When I was writing my senior thesis I spent the time in between Christmas and New Year's here alone. Just me and Jah anyways. I would ski with Jah round the little lake, make food and write and read, endless notes developing a web of a fantastical outline around a theory of political resistance built on the foundations of a global movement of sustainable agriculture, lots of Terri Gross--it was her tribute to jazz greats that week and I loved every minute. When in Jersey coming to the cabin Summer or Winter was such a savior. Yes, a world like this does still exist. I knew it was time to leave Rutgers when I told my advisor and a fellow student I just needed to go to a little cabin in the woods with no one around for a bit to get some perspective, and they said "no where like that exists anymore." Well, yes it does, but don't tell them. I came here alone to finalize my studies for my re-take of my qualifying exams. Dreams of feminists past and present filling the hollow space in the middle of the cabin surrounding me as I slept in the loft. And then a period of intense family bonding between sisters and their children, a mother anchoring and angering us, our children splashing in the water and sand, sledding down icy slopes just outside the front door. I am here now. The spring and fall are my favorite seasons here. Contrary to the bustle of winter and summer there is no direct pull out the door. I can sit in and look out the window and then spend the afternoon exploring the wood, ending up at the sand, digging deep down, piling up and then lazily move to the cabin again. In summer, the lake nearly shouts for all kinds of play and the mountains beg for hiking on the trails, plus the bike riding. In winter we are torn between sledding, alpine skiing, backcountry telemarking, and my ultimate favorite of skate skiing. Oh, what tribulations of choice! I am so lucky to have this place, this place that absorbs the rest of the world in the form of a buffer that allows for so much fun and joy and connectedness. I am thankful to the vision of my parents over thirty years ago to build this space that would allow for the combination of their two (and with me three) families in to one, even though that attempt has had varied success. My grandfather layered these logs based on my parents design--and with typical Irish stubborness then refused to spend another night here again. But I still feel him in these layered walls. They implicitly remind me of him. This is random, but before I left for the cabin on Friday night I flipped to PBS at about 10:00. (The first link is now functioning and the second link is intense and not as delightful, but still important.) "Austin City Limits" was on, and I was hopeful the music for the night would appeal to me, since it usually does. It was Damien Marley. Oh my. I don't know how I hadn't heard him before. I am a long time and kind of cheezy Bob Marley fan. You know, started at least 5 college papers with a quote from one of his songs, named my dog Jah. I never have been a serious student of Rastafarianism or anything but watching Damien and hearing him speak peaked my interest again. This music is amazing. I recommend listening to both the single and the interview from the first link. I liked his individual songs better than the collaborative one that is available here, but it is still real good.

An exercise that may be useful to me...sorry about you.

2008-05-23T19:08:00.000-07:00

So, on the subject of Tesla. I have been meaning for a while to enter quotes from the fiction book I am (still) reading about Tesla. The Invention of Everything Else. When this book and I first met it was love at first sight (on my part, although it did feel like the book jumped off the shelf at me with open hard-covers). Well, lets see...that was...gosh...seems like...it must have been...two months ago now?! It usually does not take me that long to read a book. If I roll with it, I roll hard and get lost and float to the other world and it is a thrilling ride. Not so with this book. I have found the substance of the story delightful and terribly hard to chew. I can only take a tiny nibble at a time and then I digest. I am nevertheless loyal to the pursuit of this work of fiction. While I often will read fiction and non-fiction at the same time, I rarely will read two fiction books simultaneously, and I have remained committed to this little affair without straying. It may be that I don't want it to end so much that I have implemented the procrastinating that usually happens for me with the last 30 pages of a good book in a more rationed fashion. But, I don't think so. While the method of the book reminds me a great deal of the Incantation of Frida K. I am not nearly as drawn in. I can help myself from reading this book, with other great works I am helplessly compelled. So I must conclude that this is not a great book. But it is compelling in a different sort of way. As a tribute to this book, and a possible impetus for me to finish it, I am going to "quote" the pages that I have thus far doggy eared while reading. Well, not the pages, but the small quotes that persuaded me to doggy ear a specific page in the first place. Only problem is that this is a technique (bad, bad habit) left over from grad school, where I would actually mark the quotes I liked with a pen. In this instance, I am having to search the page for the quote that originally led to my blasphemous fold...So this could take awhile. It will be interesting to see (for me anyways and if not for you then thank goodness this is just a blog and you can move on) what the conglomeration of quotes will be in the end. A trend in what appeals to me? A compelling argument? A hypothesis? By the Way, I understand that context, origin, etc is key in quotations. I am not going to say which character the quotes came from, unless it is one of the historical quotes that Samantha Hunt starts her chapters with. I am also omitting page numbers. I know, blogging is making me lazy. Oh well. "Time and space are not linear. They are curved. When we look at the universe we see atoms, cells, lakes, jellyfish, planets, galaxies. We see circles and curves everywhere. It is the original form, meaning that all life springs from the circle. Think of the pregnant belly. It is my belief that we, as inventors, and scientists, can use this idea, use the curvature of time to cut across it, slicing straight from there to there without following the curve." "The happy swell of your company has left me stranded beside a nest of an angry mother tern who pokes and prods with a sharp beak thirsting for a drop of your glad tidings. I stop. That is idiotic. Words are idiotic." "The struggle of the human female toward sex equality will end in a new sex order, with the female as the superior" -Nikola Tesla "Its Robert who in the end brings that opening to a close, separating out the emotions like a handful of coins. Here is a nickel. Here is Katherine. A quarter. Jealousy. A dime. Her love. A penny. My work. And then here, separate from all that, our love for each other, a very different thing all together." "Yes I am certain of it. I freeze. There it is. A distinct pain centered in my torso, in my shoulders. It would seem to be my heart. Perhaps I caught something. I shouldn't have touched the girl...Oh, dear, yes. There it is again, a fluttering behind my rib cage and a terrific pain. A fluttering? Is she there beating her wings behind my sternum?" "Love is not as necessary as humans seem to imagine. It is a distraction to thought, and I've always found thought to be far more rewarding than love. Love destroys. Thought creates." "When I tried once to explain to her what it meant to worry, she said, 'I don't think birds do this,' after listening to my description. And of course they don't. Birds are unspoiled by worry, that grave imperfection that keeps humans, heavy, keeps us from flight." "Love does destroy, over and over again. So it is always the greatest surprise to find how stubborn hope can be." "...Louisa's first thoughts are for how, if he were to hold her in his arms, she'd have a very sound place to bury her head...a part of her, a tiny room inside, wonders whether there might be a way to recognize someone you will love before you love him. Maybe time does unfurl in curves rather than straight lines. Maybe it doesn't move from here to there but instead expands in circles." "Stopping here for one moment: Arthur and Louisa are flying, suspended in the ether, nothing but air surrounding them. And perhaps time does move in circles rather than lines. For a fraction of a second they are progress soaring above the world, brief and beautiful, a fraction of a second before progress crashes back down to earth." That is it so far. I think this is a book about love. Or the impossibility of it. So maybe it is a book about loneliness and the ways we humans try to overcome its inevitability. A plight I am certainly familiar with. Books have a way of doing that to us, or us to them. Of becoming a place where we accumulate ideas that are most pertinent in a moment of passing. That resonate based on our own experiences. Maybe I cannot finish because I am still not sure what my experience lends me to look for in this end.

STARTING A NEW LIGHT

2008-05-22T13:34:00.000-07:00

Last week my horoscope in the Boise Weekly was particularly thought provoking. I am an addict of BW horoscopes. Basically, on Wednesday I hit the first dispenser I can, flip to the back page and read the Sagitarius segment immediately. Truly, I find very little else readable in the Weekly, besides of course, Nathaniel Hoffman's free-lance stuff. My distaste for the Weekly has continually been accentuated by Ted Rall, whose veiled racist comments about Barack Obama send me over the edge at least once a month. Last week the title of his piece was "Obama: The Other White Meat" and while the title itself was profoundly offensive, I found his lack of origin for the title within the piece describing how he thought Obama should've thrown himself in front of the train running over Reverend Wright to lack substance and insight. His repeated attacks on Obama are so suspect that I am close to writing yet another LTE to the Weekly begging them, again, to remove Rall's writing. But they never publish my letters, and they haven't removed Rall yet, so back to my horoscope. The reason I love Rob Brezsny's horoscopes so much is cause they are usually grounded in some metaphor or analogy and there was a period of about three months last year when he used words that directly linked to my experience...like when I was going Raw and the first sentence of my horoscope was: "Keep it Raw" That was cool. So now I use them as a weekly check in with unreality (I do in fact believe in astrology, although I see astrological predications as deeply intertwined with will and choice). Anyways, last week he used a metaphor of a gold miner singing a song about all the dreams of gold he had had for so many years and now he'd realized it was time to move on. That those dreams were not a reality. Rob said that there was a similar quest in my life, a place I had been mining for something precious for awhile, but that it was not gonna pan out. The good news: within a month of relinquishing my fruitless search I would easily come upon my treasure. Very enticing. Of course, because I am who I am, there are quite a few things that I have been involved in for varied periods of time in search of success, money, love etc. Which one is fruitless? I had my suspicions, but wasn't quite sure. And a week later, when my new horoscope has encouraged me to add humor in the midst of crisis (also very timely) I think I have a way of interpreting what the mining may be. I think its all of it. I think its a way of looking at the world, and an expectation added to it. I think it is the process of looking outside of myself for the things I crave most earnestly. I think it is time to flip upside down and appreciate the new vision that brings. Not change the mine, but rather the mind. Today, since my co-workers were out of office, I cleaned my little space. I moved old documents to storage, dusted, vacuumed, and most importantly hooked up an air purifier and added lamp lighting with daylight and compact fluorescent rather than the buzzing lights that have been above me for a month. I feel different, the space feels different and I sense the beginning of a new light. My favorite part of going to Bed, Beth and Beyond today for the purifier was when the guy helping me pick out bulbs said "You know, Tesla came up with compact fluorescents a century ago". YES! I know! Another fan of Tesla just out in the ether, another example of the threads that weave us together, of the potentiality within all of us for moving beyond the mine. Changing our minds and our lives.

"Stress"

2008-05-20T22:11:00.000-07:00

The body is a stress processing machine. If it does not have a way to expend this stress it will manifest as disease. I have found this to be true of my own embodied experience. At various times in my life my body has essentially broken down when I needed it to be working most effectively. The culminated example of this being my qualifying exams. I had studied for months, struggled to prepare adequately, but desperately tried to memorize a significant thread of feminist syllabi. More like the whole quilt, the multi-layers. I remember sitting on the train the night before my exam. Talking to another grad. Clutching to my bike as I exited the station in Philly, it was dark and cold, and then I started shaking and aching and coughing, then hacking and a fever. But I still had to take my exam, and I can't believe I was able to write even as much as I did. But they failed me. That first time, they and my bod and thus my mind failed me. I had reached my capacity for processing stress. My body collapsed. It is happening again, I believe. But it is nothing to be alarmed about. I understand the origin of the stress. I fear that it is permanent, that I will never get over this feeling. That the stress is insurmountable. But that isn't true. I have been moving through in shock, and the dancing, and chatting, and advocating, all of that was in super-fly mode. Now my body is registering the impact,showing the blow. But if I can manage to write, to read, to take a bath, and drink some almond milk, and maybe exercise, and even drinking a cup of tea or playing with a puzzle, those are ways for the body to process stress--by relaxing, enjoying. , even exerting. "Stress" is such a loaded term, but it is the most descriptive I have found for communicating the nexus of emotions, pressure, survival, and labor. It is life and its effects. It causes pain and pushes us to exultation. But often it is destructive, it eats away because we hold it in, we appease it through multiple forms of self-medication,, we indulge it with food beyond nutrition or pleasure. It is hungry and tired. And slowly eats away at the self. BREATHE a rather good idea. The best way to move the stress through. Sometimes in the morning I remind myself to take several deep breaths. It feels good and I need to do it more often. There are lots of explanations for where my body is at right now. Maybe my stomach is in knots because of the dressing on my salad at lunch today. Maybe my cheek is splotchy from the face paint I wore in the performance. Maybe my backaches only from sitting at a desk. But I know the origin and it is actually a mixture of these with another layer and another. It is the whole experience not a sectioned compartment of my life. It is circumstance, and choice and anatomy and physiological functioning and social construction, and spiritual interaction. We call it "stress" but it is really just life, and finding ways to establish balance is crucial and often difficult. When systems are disrupted significantly recreating simultaneity and sustainability is seemingly impossible. But when processed through active participation in the recognition of challenges real growth can occur and stress becomes peace.

From My Sister Holly

2008-05-19T16:17:00.001-07:00

This is too good not to post here. John Stewart makes me laugh about things that really aren't that funny, but I still need to be able to process. Plus, I share his taste for whiskey...and use it nearly as liberally. You can thread this post to my KISS JOHN EDWARDS post if you are someone who likes context.

Experience

2008-05-17T23:21:00.000-07:00

I am not sure why, how, or if I am still awake. Tonight there were no lights (again). Except the moon (again) and the fire (again). But dancing in the dark is full of disorientation. We still moved. And there was the moment of light, of dancing my bit. And it hit hard. To the core of this loss. Of this path. Push, push, push. Out. Hiding from what has been expelled. I am in a head space and my body has taken over. Rejoice and be o.k. Move in out and above. Fill it all with love. I understand very clearly what I would have to do to move out of this cycle. I see the karmic swirl of my place here. I want so badly to jump to the other side. I know the elements for a manifestation of my spirit. I see the the compliments, almost in reach. I sense them fading away, I sense a colossal door closing and the windows becoming foggy. A sinking. I fear a lasting regret. There is an intersection here. I can sit comfortably in a place where I at least know the source of the stench. I am comfortable with the dirt. I need not push myself to self-reliance. I need not risk a loss or a loneliness. Even though lonely is one of my favorite ways to be. Love the lonely. I already am lonely--I like the independence implicit in my predicament. Writing in excessive abstractions is a dangerous lens into a segment of my cranial lobes. Not sure which. But there is delight and deftness, and desire and decision and diplomacy, and despair, and disgrace and distance and depression and dddd. Dare I say a lot under the surface for all of us I believe. A complexity of composition. Tonight it felt like loosely controlled chaos, with moments of sheer brilliance. And right now,I am carrying a chaos. Trying to figure the order. And thus be more composed. Some have it deciphered to a further degree. I am here. And my wheels are spinning. For some reason time seems like silly puddy, but only I am trapped in it. The rest of the world is moving too fast (away) please wait till I catch-up. Light from within is what makes us spin. I am following a dim path that will brighten at the end.

Dreams are Good Relief For Temporary Desires

2008-05-15T22:54:00.000-07:00

Very recently I had the opportunity to experience the complete reversal of reality. I wanted to say that I was washed clean by this experience. But that doesn't capture it. It was more like a flash of photosynthetic wash-out. A pause button, a camera flash. And the reverberation was a falling away of protections. A period of seeing the world for what it is. Perhaps absent interpretation? A clarity, an ease of connection and communication. But slowly the effect has worn off. I feel the (pre) (sent)conceptions creeping back in. I don't feel blank, or light, or even numb. I simply ache. It is also what I imagine riding a tide would be like, rolling through the middle of a cresting wave the rise of sheer being, and then the falling from a height, encircled now and sliding down below, no longer having air to breathe. Coming up again for another ride, a different aspect of a constant motion. The tides never stop. A pulsing, a tumbling, throbbing and empty. I wondered, really. Like with Beth. It took me 13 years before I could write of her death. And Japhy too. I mean I wrote about Japhy, but never like I did here. So I thought, maybe, this flash too would ruminate. But it really doesn't compare to that, it is just much more directly embodied. A root place. A raining place. Reversing.

Two things to Do this Weekend

2008-05-15T15:01:00.000-07:00

The Idaho Green Expo is THIS WEEKEND, May 17th-18th at the Boise Centre on the Grove. On Saturday the Expo runs from 9am-8pm. On Sunday booths will be open from 10am-6pm. PLEASE COME...I WILL BE SITTING AT THE SRA BOOTH FOR HOURS! SRA is thrilled to have an opportunity to participate in this effort. There will be over 150 booths and 80 different seminars on sustainability. We expect over 50,000 people to attend. Our booth will have a strong focus on renewable energy resources and lifestyle change as effective ways to address our energy needs. We will also seize this opportunity to increase awareness about the costs and dangers of nuclear power, and showcase current and proposed renewable energy developments taking place around the state. Also, I highly-encourage you to attend the Keynote Address by GUY DAUNCEY at the Expo on Sunday, May 18th at 5pm. Mr. Dauncey is an author, environmental consultant, and the President of the British Columbia Sustainable Energy Association. His talk is titled: Global Warming and Peak Oil: The Challenge of Our Generation. This is an opportunity to hear an experienced expert talk about the real possibility for a truly sustainable energy future. And also, Eagle Island Experience is real fun. I will be dancing with my fellow drum, dance, amazing musicians, stilters, and FIRE DANCERS starting at 8:45 pm on Saturday. Everyone else has worked much harder than me, but we have all put together a great show. Last year we worked for 2 months and there was no lighting so you couldn't see us...but this year we worked for 1 month and have been guaranteed lighting! The singing and fire will really be a highlight and a great way to spend Saturday Eve. I am pasting more info on the event below from a drum central e-mail. ************************************ EXPERIENCE THIS!!! Go to the EAGLE ISLAND EXPERIENCE, this weekend, May 16th, 17th, and 18th! It's at the beautiful Eagle Island State Park! There's magnificent musicians, artists, crafters, food & bev vendors, fire dancers, and belly dancers,.. and ALL of the valley's most environmentally conscious, FREE SPIRITED, FUN LOVIN, and absoFUNkinloutly BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE will be there!!! There's FUN for children of ALL AGES! Bring FAMILY! Bring FRIENDS!

I COULD JUST KISS JOHN EDWARDS

2008-05-14T22:07:00.000-07:00

And it is not because he has good (and expensive) hair. When my co-worker said, "Edwards endorsed...guess who?" it took a second to register. Then, it hit, "Did you just say Edwards endorsed?! Who?!" "I said, guess!" "Obama!?" Then ensued whooping and hollering while giggling that would be impossible to convey in written form accurately here. Which is a bit unfortunate, cause I have thus far held my overexuberance in check rather well...and well, that pushed me over the edge. FINALLY!I remember watching Edwards step out of the race months ago in my old office. Sunny winter day. And I wanted him to endorse, and I wished he would. And then I gave up. I really had forgotten how adamant the feeling was for me that if he endorsed Obama would be securely positioned. So today, I remembered all at once while finding out and then whooped. The real issue?--Besides my definately distracting behavior?--The office generally leans towards Clinton, I think anyways, because of her energy policy. This is legitimate given the organization but I believe Obama will democratize energy. When he does, people will not choose nuclear. I haven't even seen the video of Obama and Edwards, but will find it on you tube next. Also, in the office, then West Virginia results came up in conversation and I called them "racists" and was deservedly scolded for my simplicity by a co-worker. The only one to tell me I was wrong about West Virginians. And I respect this man a lot. He has promised to share more details later. But then I talked to my sister who watched John Stewart interview W. Virginians (Real ones) and guess what...they didn't want any more Hussein, and we shouldn't have a muslim president. No one said racism is simple. It is complex and hidden, that is why it is so insidious in the form it most currently manifests. A toxic mix of ignorance, misinformation, and need to protect what is known, leads to results like that one. Maybe that is the imperfection of democracy--the biases that are the imperfections of humanity. In any case...I could really kiss that guy... This is my soundtrack at the moment in the chance you have not yet heard her, even one, this link is worth it.

Random Enactment and the answer to a previous possible question.

2008-05-13T22:05:00.000-07:00

I know where the bruise came from. I realized it tonight after badly bruising the other knee while dancing. But tonight was different and more severe. Both times at the end of the same song. Only tonight we finish in a plank style/push-up drop flat to the ground. Ben and Rachel's floor is hard-wood, we will perform on grass. But the point is that I got a little excited in practicing the move and basically belly-flopped to the floor. I don't know if I jumped or if I slipped, but something caused a large impact. Ouch, my right knee hurts. And then it came back to me. On Friday, I also hit the deck down to one knee at the end of the same song. Thus the moon shaped bruise. All stuff you were dying to know. But since there is no you or me but just the blog it doesn't really matter anyways. I'll just write it right out cause it is what I think, and I can't find the energy to nuance it although, that may be irresponsible: So, West Virginia is full of racists. Wow, a fact I had never had the opportunity to find such substantiation for before. When I say that people act like it should have been obvious. Like, oh of course everyone knows West Virginia is full of racists whites. Or, people act like it is something different. Again, a disguise for less socially tolerated biases, more insidious base level exclusions. W. Viginians care about the economy that voted for Clinton. Economy is code for racial allegiance. Same thing with the sand. Waste is code for race and dirty , other, and foreign. Anyways, I find her celebration of a clearly racially biased decision to be a bit repugnant, although I have been known to use that word liberally. There is another thing I learned. There is this Mommy Blogger who is like a superstar blogger and makes big bucks bloggin'. Her husband quit his job to assist her. It gets better, she lives in SLC...bastian of proper parenting and she is a rebel. I love that. Only read a bit, but saw a bunch on Nightline. I can't believe there are careers in mommy blogging. I should quit my day job! What have ? been doing all these years? I could have been mommy blogging and building my profile instead of talking to myself and NPR while stay at homing. Har Har... and when Canyon fell asleep on me tonight I loved listening to his tiny little baby suckling nursing dreams. Dreams can be such a relief for temporarily fulfilling what we desire.

On W. Virginia Primary Day

2008-05-13T16:01:00.000-07:00

This is an e-mail that C received from a friend he works with in The Next Generation Project. This is a group of young environmentalists (25-35) asked by none other than Terry Tempest Williams to work for one year collaboratively to chart a path for a new generation of environmentalism. These twelve get together in beautiful locations, and share anecdotes from their work, write profusely, and support each other in manifesting solutions to the problems they confront in their work. Needless to say I have remained totally jealous that its not me who gets to go on these retreats, but the benefit has been I am networked in to some great young thinkers. Point being: There is a primary today, there is no way to link you to this and the author prefers anonymity. But it is an interesting read. ************************************ Remembering Robert Kennedy "The cover story for the June 2008 edition of Vanity Fair is called "The Last Good Campaign," an excerpt from Thurston Clarke's new book The Last Campaign: Robert F Kennedy and 82 Days That Inspired America. What struck me about this excerpt was that in reading it I found myself drawn to what Bobby had to say. I found that he excited a deep feeling in my heart, a connection, the way so many people are able to touch me, but so few politicians these days. On this journey to the core, to tell the core story, I have been peeling away layers of polling, attempting to breathe between buzzes on the Blackberry, trying to find pause in a world where the internet has replaced the fax machine, cell phones have usurped land lines, and ego deems anything short of an immediate response too little, too late; to believe again in change. How did Bobby Kennedy break through -- then, and now? Bobby decided to run for President of the United States of America because he wanted to end the war in Vietnam. He knew that ending the war in Vietnam was the right thing to do and he knew that he would have to be President to do it. He bucked his party, his own brother's successor, and party insiders, but he knew it was the right thing to do. “I’m sleeping well for the first time in months. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but at least I’m at peace with myself.” Bobby's first campaign speech happened to be in the conservative State of Kansas. He was very worried because if the speech went badly, his campaign would likely not get off the ground. If it went well, he could ride the momentum to some primary wins and have a serious shot at securing the nomination. “Do you think they’ll boo him?” Ethel asked. “Will they hate him?” She never posed the next question, the one that was probably running through the minds of others accompanying Robert Kennedy to Kansas that afternoon: “Will they kill him?” Yet on that stage, not knowing how the audience would react, with his campaign on the line, Bobby stood in front of the audience and he told his story. He spoke from his heart. He said, “I am also glad to come to the home state of another great Kansan, who wrote, ‘If our colleges and universities do not breed men who riot, who rebel, who attack life with all their youthful vision and vigor then there is something wrong with our colleges. The more riots that come on college campuses, the better the world for tomorrow.’ ” Kennedy continued, saying, “[White] is an honored man today; but when he lived and when he wrote, he was often reviled as an extremist—or worse—on your campus and across this nation. For he spoke as he believed. He did not conceal his concern in comforting words; he did not delude his readers or himself with false hope or with illusion. It is in this spirit that I wish to talk to you today.” This is what people love about Senator Obama; it's what I love about Senator Obama (most of the time). Listen to his speeches. One can hear when he is listening to polling, political insiders, advisers and high donors, and when he is saying what he believes is right. I can imagine these moments of authenticity are scary for all those people spending all that time and money working to get him elected. But it is this authenticity alone that resonates with people, that respects what people want in a politician, that has inspired so many people to switch party registration, that has launched a movement, that transcends. One need only see the video put together by Will I Am to feel it, the power of those words, "Yes, we can." Perhaps in the words of the heart we find connection. In the moments of connection we find faith; a faith that so many people feel void of these days. My only advice to Barack Obama? (I thought you'd never ask.) Throw your Blackberry out the window and go with it. You already know what to do."

Begin to Bounce

2008-05-12T21:04:00.000-07:00

I don't mean to only shout from the other side of the glass. I find it troubling,myself, that currently I am pointing to the difficulty of the road rather than the best way ahead. In policy making, even as a subsidiary, the actions felt worthy of immediate impact. Since moving to a marginalized environmental group I feel suddenly isolated. A friend from the legislature came to check out the office. He specializes in greening spaces and gave me some suggestions for our space (including replacing the lights to a frequency that renders true color, increasing circulation, an air purifier). When he left he asked if we wanted to be on his committee of the Governor's environmental task force. I said please. He said, you're on. But when he told the Governor's liason, she said no--to us specifically. That is what I mean by a sense of powerlessness. While I want to propose solutions I genuinely feel faced with a propaganda machine far ahead on the path of marketing nuclear power than we first anticipated. It is like shouting into the looking glass, down the rabbit hole, around the bend. That's why its hard to see the pathways, and discern the route of footworthiness. Tonight Riv and I read of Tigger. He really cannot help but pounce when he sees something of excitement. I have to find my intrigue, begin to bounce.

More Areva Misconstruings

2008-05-12T10:56:00.000-07:00

The world is spinning too fast for me to completely get my barrings. I will share that my organization has been faced with the tedious and impossible task of explaining to folks that if they are upset about the low level radioactive sand coming from Kuwait, they should take a hard look at the plans for waste disposal provided by Areva when their uranium enrichment plant takes off. Our beloved local paper found the difference in these two projects compelling enough to publish an editorial on Sunday arguing, again, against the sand and for Areva. This editorial appears without contrast to a Letter to the Editor submitted by one of our members pointing to the severely flawed poll the Statesman ran on this issue last week. The Statesman is yet to run this LTE, and I doubt they will. Instead, they have chosen to re-enforce their bias by continuing their uninvestigative look into the consequences of nuclear development. I do not mean to wear this point to the ground, but this is my only locale for glass-banging. Tap, tap, tap...hello! How do we break this divide?

Mama gets a cocoon

2008-05-12T08:08:00.000-07:00

My family gave me a cocoon for mother's day. The perfect gift for me. I immediately went deep inside. Just the tip of my head protruding from the top as I stared down into my new home. It was hard to extract me. But the gleeful calls to play and be close and enjoy each other coaxed me out. We all have cocoons now. We like to lay in them together on the floor. Our individual discreet zones of comfort. We share the relationality of the experience. We all go inside for different reasons. I am transforming. We all are I guess. But I can feel the blockages as I get closer. I can feel the resistance. I have this sense that I may never emerge from my cocoon complete. Come out into this world with my skin not quite in tact. Seep all over everything. Lack the ability to contain for effectiveness. Lack the foresight to understand the changes that I invoke. Lack the will to concentrate on the essence of my power. The faith in what I have brought myself to be. When a caterpillar enters a cocoon it becomes itself. That is, the cocoon is formed from its body. It sheds layers of its previous internality as the newly forming entity grows too large to remain contained. I'm not sure that I can meet the expectations of this cocoon. The layers shed are antithetical to my intent. The layers are inevitable. The only way to see is to completely immerse I suppose. Inside I go.

2008-05-11T06:16:00.000-07:00

Directly under the point of my right hip bone there is the image of a star and moon. It sits above my ovary on that side, placed there in a shift of self my first year of college. Opposite this image, when moving down and diagonally across is a moon shaped bruise on my left knee. I have no memory of how it got there. I just noticed the congruency of the shapes. The ordering of the constellations of my body. Please excuse the recent shift in my writing away from the readable and into the enactment of a character consciousness. An expression of self that I normally hold in the back. It shouldn't last too long. And there is likely to be the occasional political observation as well. Why is it so hard for us to see the use of nuclear technology as an example of the ultimate overly efficient machine? And in overefficiency in one aspect, the scale must tip the opposite way in an other. That is to say: While incredibly "efficient" at producing energy interms of actual power generated within a specific frame of time and some of the resources expended, there remains, nevertheless, a tremendous amount of waste that is not simply banana peels. Not just some worm rich stinky piles of compost. We are talking cancer causing, life destroying, never deteriorating radioactive waste. O.K. the waste issue is number one to answer. I have also picked up one of C's books: Blessed unrest is Paul Hawken's book about the environmental, social justice, peace centered "movement" taking place. He calls it "How the largest movement in the world came into being, and why no one saw it coming." It makes me feel very, very, well...interconnected to be working for an environmental organization that is committed to peace and justice and works in a human rights framework. It is cool. More on that book as i tunnel through. Can is awake. Gotta go.

Welcome my brothers, welcome my sisters

2008-05-09T21:48:00.000-07:00

The truth is I am afraid of her. I hold her on the other side of the glass. I believe she is resting. Metamorphosizing. I cut my claws down to the skin. They are so tender at the moment all dexterity is lost. Just how I moved through the day. Automatic, sore, dazed. Tonight. I wrapped the Lappa round carelessly at first. No, that isn't right. It's uneven at the end. I had chosen purple by instinct. It felt closest to a darkness I wanted, a warm spring darkness. Like the wind always biting while inviting in the sunshine. Suddenly, I unwrap it again. This time I stretch the material wide, and carefully apply one half a portion to the front of my body. The other half hugs tightly in. I combine th edges in a clean knot at the tip of my hip-bone. Now, that is how to put on a Lappa. Headband follows. A purple frame. Tired eyes stair through the frame. Breathe, I get to dance. Face on. Color through. Now, we are here. And I find myself backstage with the ballerinas in pink tutus. But first I cut behind the curtain. I remember growing up doing this. Changing sides in groups of hushed dancers. Preparing for antoher entrance. Tonight though we warm up lightly. Laughing and chatting we stretch and twist, breathe and prepare to spring high. We run through, and I know the control for a solo I want to display. The kick is what I need. And we begin. "Welcome my brothers" Ashay Ashay "Welcome my sisters" Ashay Ashay... This is what I move and where I move through. This is the feeling. Here. There are not two parts of me, there are many, myriad, moving. And in any moment when I feel a slight disorientation, there is the drum holding beats, Here you are, that way, that way, and round. It pulls and pushes me, I direct it with my body. And these ladies of colors spinning. Soft control effortlesss shimmy, serious concentration, playfull celebration. Yet there is something more stirring here. My wings are harnessed. And this motion wants to drill down, into a different plane. Away from these lights, then darkness, the faces I don't know, the claps that I can't recognize. My kicks come too fast. Unable to contain my energy. I now move out of the peace. It is strange to be challenged in that way. To lose control in the moment for full self-expression. Are the stories just still ordered like convulsions. When will they articulate in a meaningful telling? So I leave her there for now. She is not coming out yet. Not needed too soon. Will see her without a doubt. The Lappa was complimented by cowri shells. My favorite. Around my belly's base. And this circle holds her in. When we are done dancing I have had enough protection. I am ready to purge.

Becoming Kali

2008-05-08T08:45:00.000-07:00

This is the image. I see wings. Sprouting out from the back. And there is a dichotomy. The wings could be white, and the dress drapes over, reveals light skin, hair falls down, a blue transluscent illumination. Then there is the other. The wings are large and black, the dress ripped and shining. Hair is in a frenzy, blood drips from the mouth, a sparkle in the eyes, a beaming smile reveals sharp teeth. Is this Kali? Maybe. She seems to represent what I mean. You see I have been hiding her. She is the one I try to negate, the one I run from, try to transcend. We know this goddess in white right? It is the one we are supposed to be. The woman, mother, giver of life and protector from death. I am to be pure and good, and never conflicted and angry. Certainly not destructive. Coy, and deceitful are things I try to suppress. Desire, manifestation, eroticism. They do not meet the expectation of my constructed self. I should smile, love, open my arms and be protected via my virtue. I am done with this now. This "dark side" is ready to come. I have had enough with purity and pleasing. I am embracing Kali. I hold the dagger in my hand. The wings now are developing. We are nearly ready to take flight.

Please Vote

2008-05-07T12:09:00.000-07:00

I don't really have a sense that anyone reads this but a few dear souls...but if i'm wrong it is worth posting a link to a poll on the Idaho Statesman regarding whether people favor Areva (See post on Sisyphus) because of job creation, or are against the plant cause it's bad for the environment. Scroll down to the bottom of the homepage and find the poll on the right side. Please vote "bad for the environment" the waste production makes this a no brainer. Please pass on to anyone who might be interested. We are losing this vote right now (So ironic because the sand was a landslide opposed). No time to play more. Bye

Sisyphus Falling

2008-05-06T08:58:00.000-07:00

Areva, the French company that convinced the legislature to pass tax incentives to build a uranium enrichment plant near the INL in Idaho Falls, announced today that they are indeed coming to our state. They were evaluating four sites including Idaho and decided that our history of nuclear development and the tax incentives created a perfect match. How did I find out? As I walked in the office a reporter called to talk to the ED, "And what is this regarding?" I ask..."Areva's announcement that they will build their plant here in Idaho Falls." I feel like Sisyphus falling, or failing as the case may be. In an article on the plant Areva talks about how we need more uranium enrichment to provide fuel for nuclear reactors so that we can have more "clean energy" and continue our "economic growth." Hello! People! Why is economic growth on the level of increased consumptive practices the priority right now? For a culture bent on linear understandings of times progression can we please acknowledge the varying global context that makes the kind of "development" practices of the 50's 60's and 70's not applicable in this millenium? Remember, the military industrial complex, the prison industrial complex, the Green Revolution? These efforts have led to imbalances in our global socio-economic political demographics that make increasing resource depletion via progressive consumptive practices by facilitating dirty and dangerous energy production certainly low on the list of viable priorities to create a sustainable future. But the rock keeps rolling and we keep chasing it and there has got to be another way over this mountain. And how is it that so many folks are up in arms over low level radioactive sand from Kuwait coming into this state for disposal but no one gives a darn about the production of a facility that will create perpetual highly radioactive waste? I haven't been able to write about this because I am so appauled by my suspicion that the opposition to the sand is based less on waste and more on a xenophobic racist attitude towards the sand being from Kuwait. There must be a way to connect these dots on a level that supersedes this possibility. But maybe this obstacle is exactly the point. Maybe people don't care about anything other than otherizing and safeguarding their consumption. If I leave this bolder here and just walk to the top of the mountain will I get a better view?

Thank You Gas Tax!

2008-05-05T20:25:00.000-07:00

Finally, the presidential race hinges on an ISSUE! What a novelty. Really, I mean I was so used to evaluating the candidates friends and neighbors as well an analyzing and spinning their descriptions of society, that I had basically given up hope that we would have a real look at policy. I have not been paying attention lately. I am swamped in lots of things, and I could devote way too much energy that I don't have to spare to this and so I haven't. It was such a sweet sound to hear the NPR report tonight about Hillary and John, getting reamed by economists for proposing a summer cut of the gas tax. Hillary dismissed their thoughtful, detailed and collaborative condemnation of her proposal as "elitist". Never mind that part of their analysis pointed out that it is the gas companies that would benefit from the cut. Could somebody please help me, or rather her with the definition of "elitist." The misuse of descriptive terms really bothers me here. But the rest of it makes me so happy, because we needed a blatant unveiling of the poor politics being deployed by some of the candidates. I can almost see the policy meeting: "Well, lets offer em' something they'll like. What are people freakin' about? Oh, yeah fuel! Hey lets offer a cut in the fuel tax so people can feel like their consumption doesn't have to go down. Lets use their fear of dwindling resources to create a political advantage!" Obama doesn't roll that way. Sure he has unsavory policy positions (for instance he is pro-nuclear) but his approach to coming to these positions is not based on fear, it is based on --well--HOPE and in instances like this that distinction is palpable. Tonight I also listened to "On Point" on NPR. The topic was the "Global Food Crisis". Did you know that their is a food shortage in Haiti and Peru? In the former their have been food riots. The "On Point" commentator called the audio of the riots the "sound of hunger." It is shocking and not at all surprising. The way our global food system is ordered does not favor the democratic distribution of food. Large conglomerations in places like Ecuador mean that food does not stay close to its source. Resources are used for the production of mass quantities of food for export. Large quantities of grain feed cattle in the "first-world" (or rather, the hegemonically positioned exertion of economic and territorial sovereignty that has led to a hierarchy of nation-states with unequal distribution of purchasing power which we call the "first world"). Fuel prices are a contributing factor of course, in terms of food transportation. There are global food riots! Stretching to Malaysia. How did we (maybe you did, so how did I) not know this. When will it be undeniable based on a localized experience of shortages? Could it really be that far away? Again, this is why I support Obama. We are entering into a period of severe challenges to the lives we have known. Our government has lost credibility (did you hear about how Bush insulted India?) and normalized systems of distribution are beginning to show symptomatic signs of immanent failure. Who do I want to lead us through this? A person with vision and the ability to create collaboration. A person willing to open to the people and listen to their voices and ask them to matter and make a difference. Because that is what we will need to do.

Havin' A Margarita

2008-05-05T16:40:00.001-07:00

An acquaintance just said "Happy Cinco de Mayo" to me as we hung up the phone. "Gracias" I said, "De nada" said he. Then I paused. I often say that at some point in my life I left my heart (corazon) in Mexico. Although not a fluent speaker I have learned a lot of the language, tasted the food, lived for periods of time as a volunteer and student, and traveled to a great deal of the country. So, why am I not having a margarita? Cinco de Mayo is an American Holiday promoted by the alcohol industry. This date commemorates the victory against French forces in the city of Puebla 1862. In Mexico this day is not memorialized as a huge event. Mexican Independence is really September 16th--I've heard that is a real party, although I have never been in country on that date. I know that in the U.S. this day is often celebrated by Mexican communities, and I also know that many see this an an American holiday. I just think it is interesting to note that the way we honor Mexico is not the way the Pais honors itself. The hierarchy established through historical subjugation remains in spite of the attempt to give recognition. This is what capitalism does to stuff. Markets it, for monetary gain, and robs it of its soul. Now I am sure there are lots of Americans who love Mexico and love Cinco de Mayo, and are listening to great music, pulling out the salsa moves and slamming a tequila shot--which I suppose is a pretty o.k. version of multiculturalism. But I just wanted to put out this little reminder, that this too is not as it appears.

STUMBLING ON THESE PATHS. A BIRTHDAY GROUNDS ME

2008-05-05T05:40:00.000-07:00

I thought, maybe, that my current pathway options would be so overwhelming that I could not write. I felt, at first, I might never write here again. Instead, I have to find a way to express here, because it has become a safe spot, a place where I, in spite of the fact that this is often an illusion, feel interconnected, but not too exposed. I need that right now. I can't write about the pathways I face at the moment--and I do not mean for that to be alluring, I really can't. Maybe I will someday and maybe I will never even speak of it again. These are pathways I am walking with sheer dismay. Whether the light shines here or not, I have my eyes closed. I am jumping at any sound. I shake at what lies ahead, and my heart races to wake me from sleep. But the point is this. I love the look of ecstasy that River had on his face the few times we sang Happy Birthday this weekend. The first time was in the dirt, on his real birthday. He had a tummy ache for a few days this week, and it continued Saturday. I let him choose gluten free brownie at the Farmer's Market and he ate the whole thing quick. Then I brought some to soccer for the team and he ate another (I know, can you believe it after my food post?--I am a real sucker for the anything you want on your birthday stuff--But he did have 4 bowls of salad the night before). By the time we were opening presents as a family, his tummy hurt again. We (mostly him, I just helped move dirt) built a dirt resevoir by piling dirt and digging a hole in the center. It was his idea, when I asked if he wanted brownies, cake, or cookies for his candles, to put the candles in the dirt. So I did (a candle # 2 and the three more required candles, one that we had to cut in half to make 5 total--sometimes we are rather delinquent parents on the details but we made it work). Then, I took the animals that had been playing in the "habitat" and circled them around the "cake". At first I thought River said he didn't want us to sing, just blow out the candles, but when I said we don't have to sing, he looked devastated. Oh, he wants us to sing. O.k. and a 1 and a 2 and a 3..."Happy Birthday to you..." His eyes glaze over, a natural half grin crosses his face, like I said, ecstasy. And I had one of those instantaneous flashes to Canyon at Birthday #1, the same look on his face, like, this is all for me? Yeah! "All the animals circled round for my birthday mama" he says when we finish. I love that. We sang it two more times right before bed...same look. And then yesterday at the party, same look. Fascinating. I figure all that waiting all year at other kids parties that when the time finally comes, it is just a total embodied delight. The ultimate recognition of self. So my words are making it out my fingers, that is good. I have this thing about the authenticity of my blog. About writing from an open heart space. I assure you, this is all artifice. I exist in one aspect of my heart here, there is so much more and so many conflicted parts, and so much struggle that there is no way what I portray represents an authentic part of it all. But, again, I am grateful I can write. It is an anchor for me right now, one that I felt like had been pulled up for a period this weekend. I looked around the room. There is nothing to reach out for here. There is nothing to help me here. It is me alone. But here I am again, it holds me down, keeps me from being a total loss on these paths. The one way I know to go. For now.

5th Birthday Party--CHECK!

2008-05-04T16:08:00.000-07:00

When River told me he wanted his birthday in the Botanical Garden, I was surprised and relieved. I miss the Garden, it is the best office I have ever had. While working in environmental education is fun and I like being in nature with kids, I have this strong professional streak that drove me away from the idea of doing another round of Bug Camp this summer. I have ended up, of course, in a basement office with no air flow or light and lately the Garden has been calling. River planned the whole party--I just implemented his ideas. And I was sure proud of what he came up with. He wanted to use the picnic table for painting rocks and eating cake, and the Tea House for presents (plus mom, the Teahouse would be a great place to go if it's raining). Then, key component, nature hike to Sacajawea and a snake hunt in the forest. The kids had a blast. The Garden is like a friend to me. I have spent enough time there that I know it intimately. Certain spots talk in low whispers and I actually feel them listen when I talk back. The plants love the children(as long as they don't pick at them) and since I shared their secrets with so many, they are open to my energy. Yesterday, when Riv and I went to check things out, I hugged a tree spontaneously for a good minute. Ahhhh...I'm back. Mornings into the Garden: HELLO GARDEN! I would declare while riding through to set up for a tour. What a special time that was. What a special place it is, and what a great birthday River had. THANK YOU GARDEN!

Perpetual Pathways

2008-05-02T21:46:00.000-07:00

That is what I sometimes think this blog should be called. An endless journey through samsara with me, and me with you. So I thought I might not write for a bit. But then, I realized I wanted to write about River's birth (You have been forwarned, if birth stuff makes you queezy, read no further). Oh so excruciating and at times sincerely deep and meditative. The desire to clean, a last-mlnute effort. Then laying with Jah, and then. Well, several parts of this will be excluded for graphic content regarding body fluids. The water, finally, and floating, drifting, tumbling, air and under, serious concentration to make it through those contractions and the hot and cold. Dark with stars, and then a soft light. I am still here, he is still coming. She comes, she tells me it is time to get out of the water. I need to be more grounded. Of course, I was having my earth child Taurus. The bed I lay in right now, is the bed I labored in then. Finally he turns, open, and I can't I didn't think I could. Her eyes are like magic cat eyes "You're almost there" "How soon is almost? Hours?" "No, minutes" "I can't" "Yes you can" "you have to" And this is one of those moments I will always look back on as an example of gettin' it done. I was only doing part of the work, along with River, gravity, and something beyond and within all of that, it was hard, and we did it. Ahhhhh. Up, between my legs, lay down. Laughing. Everyone else is crying and I am so happy its over I can only laugh and sigh. Amazing. Making and having babies is really extraordinary. Jah thought I had died I think. He smelled blood, heard me scream and was afraid to get near me for days. His life hasn't been the same since, poor guy. Birth is like dying, but ending up living and giving life.

Some Thing To Eat

2008-05-01T20:41:00.000-07:00

I feel like it is maybe a good time to provide a brief statement regarding my food philosophy. With the prefaced request that you not view this statement as a judgement. It is just a pretty big part of who I am and how I view the world. My last post was a rant. What you see is what you get at this blog--sometimes a little uncensored, and, well, rant-like. But now let me articulate a view of food. When I was in grad school my work focused on this particular point: We are made and re-made by political systems and our bodies do manifest resistance in the form of dis-ease. I used Frida Kahlo as a prime example of this type of manifestation. Her body, caught in the choque of the Mexican Revolution and the street car/bus accident (itself a result of "modernization") which led to continued illness and confinement--as the revolution failed to become institutionalized --yet, also she created brilliant, moving , and often beautiful meaningful art--as the revolution allowed for a civil society in which art was supported. Her art could not yet capture the dimensions of her resistance,turmoil and passion, it seeped from her body, it was in excess of her body's ,both the literal and that of the canvas, capacity to hold the "stress" of these systems. My committee did not like this assertion. They allowed me to explore it prior to my exams, they gave me consistently high marks. Then, they said it was not clear enough. I needed to have a way of talking about what was at play in this analysis I was proposing. The missing link? There are many. It could be, indeed, a health based analysis of stress related to social turmoil. It could be claims around a pathology of illness, or it could be food. Yes, I suppose it could also be food. We are what we eat right? We know this at a base level. Come on, it makes perfect sense. The quality of the food we consume becomes us. Some foods are packed full of extras nowadays. For me, since I was RAW for a long time, I really notice that when I eat whole foods I feel better. If I get too processed, I feel bad. And there is still this whisper reminding me how real it felt to eat everything being able to identify its original form rather quickly. It was wonderful feeling. But there are other considerations, like, the other significant reason to eat besides to live--PLEASURE. So sometimes you have to indulge and enjoy, and just savor the experience of good food. I feel like I know I make it hard, that it shouldn't be such an issue. But I really do think our society is out of balance on its consumptn of white flour, high-fructose corn syrup, butter, and meat. Its really way too much. We should be eating whole grains, lots of fresh vegtables and fruits and some dairly and cheese--I said Cheese not Cheetos. Why not just try to eat healthy generally? For me, it is a slippery slope. It is appealing to just give in, but it only gets more removed and amore removed and then So I like the thoughtfullness around source, method and mixture in consideration of the food we eat. I want to instill a sense of caretaking in my children for the health of their bodies. I also want to make sure they get what they need and are healthy. I think this is a challenge for all parents, no matter their dietary standards. Back to wrap up with Kahlo. Food could be one link into how our bodies are connected to political systems. We eat pesticides, we eat fruit harvested on different continents. We eat meat where we have no idea how the animal was treated or killed. A lot. Food is energy, and it is also ENERGY. Our food becomes us. We are made by it and the experiences of its making. It doesn't help me with the Kahlo stuff, and maybe that was my committee's point. Although writing a grant to go study the mexican food of the revolution --MOLE-- would be really quite amazing. But it does help talk about interconnectedness of relationships and it broadens the implications for how we treat our resources. Food is sacred. it is beautiful, it is to be cherished and honored and certainly enjoyed. Sometimes I fear we have lost this in our culture. That is why, on this issue, I continue to walk against the tide.

Alternative Medicine Rant

2008-05-01T09:41:00.000-07:00

Wow! I feel like my blog just got caught in a nuclear dump. It's like my brain has been sucked plain clean of most all other things. But that is not the case. I am still here, just the same old me, and I want to move to the other side of the track again by talking about the difficulties of working as a professional and working as a mother when it comes to adequately caring for my children. Yesterday I took the boys to Ryan (as you may remember from a recent post Canyon was feeling bad enough that this was his main point in every discussion we had for two days straight). A long time ago I stopped using Western medicine as an approach to healing my boys when they get ill. Of course, I went through the w. medicine stuff originally, and it took me about 1 1/2 years after returning to Boise to find an alternative care provider I trusted. Out East River had a doc that made house-calls and was only one block from our first (my second and the one before my third and their second)home in Jersey. Dr. Joe was real good, but he did talk us into a slow immunization process that the first shot of resulted in health problems for River that we are still dealing with today. When we moved to Philly I spent the whole year trying to heal River and not finding anyone I liked besides a chiropractor in Jersey. Everyone acted like I was crazy (and most still do) when I talk about the link I see between River's immunization and the consequent gland issues that persisted until the awful infection that he got in February of '05. No one would connect the dots with me, and it was so obvious the things were related that I went insane for a bit. The good news is that I am now pretty conversant on the variety of alternative healing modalities available from homeopathic remedies, to herbs, to acupuncture and energy work. Also, I found Ryan, who after about 6 months of working with River prescribed herbs that have actually reduced scar tissue and increased circulation to the infected gland. Wow, that was such a relief. Anyways, my point (well one of them) is that before Ryan, I would go through all the regular stuff when my kids got sick. Call the doc, go in immediately, get harassed about their weight and the fact they aren't immunized then go home with nothing more than a bottle of Tylenol (which, you guessed it, I refuse to give for fever because I believe fevers serve a purpose in fighting infection but I will give for pain). I have continued to refuse anti-biotics (except for when it was the only option in the gland infection situation) although I do keep a bottle in the fridge that is unopened and available for a prescribed emergency. There was the awful ambulance ride due to severe croup the first night of our vacation at the OR coast this summer, the shot of steroids in Canyon's leg, the respirator and the EMT telling me to pray (which I promptly did).Canyon fighting the mask and i.v, his eyes rolling back in his head, the doctor berating me for not immunizing (croup is not prevented by vaccination) while I am comforting my now super traumatized kid, and the welcome ibuprofen to prevent more swelling of his respiratory tube, but that is as far as we have gone in and as far as I plan on getting unless needed. I should mention here that my dad is a retired physician and I like doctors in general, but feel that w. medicine is way too narrow for the kind of health I am trying to achieve for my kids. So, we haven't been to Ryan for awhile because of my work schedule. Right after my miscarriage I took the boys in for bodywork and to get some herbs to help me release the leftovers of the pregnancy (they helped a lot and it was so nice the way Ryan talked me through the emotional stuff and offered real help for the physical trauma my body was (and still is) going through in the shift to and from pregnancy). But in any case, the boys had not gone in for awhile, and since I have been working (especially the legislative stuff) I have not been the primary food provider, so they have been getting more processed food. Let me say here how grateful I am to my mom and Trish for the loving care they provide for my kids. They do a great job, we are so lucky to have them, and they stay within the parameters of low-sugar and no gluten for the most part. But there has been a rapid increase in gluten free cookies in the boys diet and a decrease in fresh almond milk and greens. To me, I have been watching this change develop for a few months and can link Canyon's rash to foods consumed and River's stuff too. Ryan agreed. "Its a fungal infection caused by a change in their diet." "Why are my kids so sensitive?" "Because you have done such a good job of keeping them away from stuff most kids get used to early on" So there is the conundrum, should I allow my kids to become toxic so they ultimately have a higher tolerance or should I move us back to cleaner food? Well, the choice is really not that hard for me: I have prohibited daily cookies (my mom told me she wishes I had taken more science classes--they get sick from bugs, not sugar---hmmm...nutritional science points to real links between sugar and decreased immune function...but my mother and I will likely never resolve this perception that I don't know what I'm doing when it comes to my kids nutrition), and made almond milk this morning. That's our new start. River is on herbs for his recent digestive woes, and Canyon has a wash for his rash that feels really good to him. I am picking up more herbs for Canyon on Friday when I get my treatment for my back and continuing issues with my cycle. All that stuff you didn't really mean to find out huh...well, sorry for the long ride. I think women face unique struggles in caring for all their children's needs and working for critically required pay. If I drop the ball on health, play dates, birthdays, school stuff, clean-up it stays dropped. While daddy and my mom and Trish pick up a lot of the stray ends, it seems like the level of engagement I maintained as a stay at homer is really an effect of being the MOM and thus my standards are very high still. I know that sounds kind of weird, like I am being critical of my children's other caregivers, but that isn't what I mean, I just know from experience that I am usually the only one laying awake at night worrying about party favors, or stomach pain, or River's first day in the primaries. This is hard-wired in me in a way that Charlie is freed of. So I have two full-time jobs, and I feel like I may be getting back to a place where I do them both well. But I worry about this and if I am capable of it. What has to go, what do I have to give up to not miss critical components of my children's happiness? (hmmmmm maybe spending less time on long-drawn out blog posts would free up some time?)

Contaminated Sand--An Unlikely Lens

2008-04-30T10:41:00.000-07:00

A shipment of sand from Kuwait is on its way to Idaho from California. The sand has been contaminated with lead and depleted uranium. READ ABOUT IT HERE. It serves as an interesting multi-dimensional lens through which to view the globalized aspects of war, waste, and its disposal. The sand was contaminated at a U.S. base in Kuwait during the first Gulf War. It is just now making its way across the oceans, to our continent and to our state where it will remain. When we talk about nuclear issues it is important to remember the ways such a concentrated power source is dispersed into so many different aspects of our shared cultural-historical experience. War, famine, economic insecurity, water scarcity, all of these factors are at play in our energy matrix existing within a frame of severe global insecurity. Our defense industry is, of course, deeply inter-linked because the energy used for public consumption of fuel is the same energy used to defend and attack in warfare. The consequences of its use are not always readily contained (as this example demonstrates) and will continue to present us with troubling contamination in terms of environmental and health-related risks for years to come.

PROMETHEAN IMPLICATIONS

2008-04-28T20:51:00.000-07:00

Prometheus stole fire from Zeus and thus became the interlinking archetype between humans and technology. I had this professor in college who wrote about human's gendered relationship to technology in a book called CREATURES OF PROMETHEUS. His point was that we make and are re-made by technology. But further from there, we can thus read technology to tell us something about ourselves. One of his chapters focused on the Chernobyl Disaster. Pointing to what the accident said about how we are and the implications and effects, both literally gendered and designated so through discourse or normalization, or the way we treated the diseases that came from this accident, there is much to say about the the problematics of these relations. That is my interpretation of Tim anyways. So my point is this: Be wary of technology that promises Promethean strength. Let us not forget what happened to Prometheus. Our technology is within us, but it must never shape the balance to the extent that it completely becomes and consumes us. Nuclear technology should be treated with the utmost respect and consideration for its dangers. The nuclear industry is not doing this right now. They are selling a fantasy to consumers terrified of losing their quality of life. But undemocratic power leads to undemocratic relations. If push came to shove would you want to know how to use the wind, or would you like to fight for control of a nuclear reactor? It is an extreme, but it proves a point. We cannot mix these decisions into a martini built on capitalist nightmares. Remember that where we invest is our interest and will shape our futures. Our thirst must not overwhelm our practice.

Watch Out for Greenwashers

2008-04-28T10:47:00.000-07:00

Just so you know, I am in a new job situation where having a venue to process the huge amounts of information I am getting regarding the broad area of nuclear power and renewable energy is critical to not being completely overwhelmed by my designated tasks to educate my state's citizens on the problematics of nuke power. As previous posts indicate, I am struggling to find the appropriate language to articulate my intuitive sense that nuclear power is just a darn bad idea. I am not yet ready to be set loose on a public education campaign, because I have not yet assimilated the information I am getting on nuclear power's pros and cons. This is the critical first juncture of turning my intuition into verifiable argumentation that can at least poke preliminary holes in the massive greenwashing campaign of the nuclear industry. I did read an article today however, that gives me reason to keep tredging forward. This piece points to the extensive time it would take to build the kind of energy system around nuclear power being proposed by the industry and its spokespeople like Patrick Moore. The assertion being made to sell nuke power is that it is the only solution to our global warming crisis. Well, according to this article that solution is decades away. Thus, it seems appropriate to suspect that we can view this claim as nothing other than the marketing of a fantasy in the form of a reality--a coy way to appropriate the Gore movement to bolster, what has been a dying industry. Also, this article talks again about safety and provides several examples of why we should distrust the safety of plants we have now and apply that distrust to the future. This is a serious point folks. Nuclear power has had some tremendously terrible environmental impacts, and has often failed to meet regulatory standards. I will be back later with a more philosophical discussion of nukes Promethean implications.

BABY LYDIA AND MAMA GO HOME TODAY!

2008-04-28T09:20:00.000-07:00

My friend Erika, who I visited in Tucson, had her gorgeous baby girl Lydia Marie Colombi on 4/24/08! They are headed home today. Check out these pics of this lovely family! ALL THE BEST TO THE COLOMBI FAMILY AS THEY WELCOME THEIR NEW ADDITION!

Weekend with my boys.

2008-04-27T20:47:00.000-07:00

I am here, spinning, floating, spiraling downward up and around. Twisted and weighted at times. Struck by intense heats and cold at others. The children journey through this with me. I manage to provide food, play, transport, and in general lived experience. But they are subject to my mood, my energy level, my preoccupations and some thankfully mutually satisfying obligations. So often I find myself searching in both places I occupy for me. And then I realize that this individualized conception has very nearly ceased to be--occupying a space the size of the thinnest wedge. Yet also there is the overlapping rainbow. The way I incorporate my being and my passion throughout interconnectedness of family and friends. Dancing to the drum, children play, and Canyon sleeps away. Offering care and support for friends and neighbors in their endeavors, savoring the experiences of childhood lived with our children. Sunshine, dirt, water, slides, and bikes. We hiked with Annie the Goat today. Ahhhh, my back aches from Canyon in the pack. I am rather small and he is, still small but also two and I didn't do well with River in the pack much past 18 months. Plus moving the rotatiller the day before with Justin. I can barely move. Lucky to go to Ryan Friday. Canyon has a rash. I told him tonight that we had an appointment with Ryan and he couldn't stop talking about it. "Ryan will help me feel better Mama. We go to Ryan's right now." Whoa, o.k., I think he hasn't been feeling well. I have lost serious touch at times with the kids eating and health. I know I should relax, but they do get sick when we don't have fresh almond milk, and focus on greens etc. I need to balance things out. River memorizes books like crazy. He has recited complex texts the last two nights. He doesn't read the words, he memorizes them after about 3 readings. I love seeing his face light up when he says magical sounding words like "myriad" from "Westlandia". It is just so nice to acknowledge the way he has grown and changed over the last 5 years. 5 years ago, I carried this big baby boy in my belly. I was so excited and for this last week, everything slowed way down. Still in classes, writing papers to the end. Then letting go. Traveling into the city to see the Matisse and Picasso exhibit in Queens. I squatted down in the galleries, making everyone nervous--drinking in the art and history of these two talents. My am I glad I went. Waiting in Penn station to return to Jersey. My mother was scandalized by my wide-leggedness. Leila laughed. We got on the train and learned of lightning in New Brunswick from Charlie on the cell. And I knew the baby would come. So he did, about 16 hours after I got off that train. So good to see Matisse and Picasso, to walk 32 blocks in NYC and move my baby out. A man in the subway tunnel exuberantly declared to me as we passed, "Ma'am you're having a boy!" I found out that he was correct very shortly thereafter. Right, Just Write. So anyways, there was more I am sure. But this is where I am for now. Having enjoyed the trials and jubiliations of a weekend with my boys.

Found the Sign

2008-04-26T20:00:00.000-07:00

That didn't take too much travelling. The Journey was realtively (I am going to start using this word instead of "relatively" because I think it better expresses what I mean) quick I would say. There is no epiphone here. Just a return to the 2 main points. -NUCLEAR WASTE from past production has not been properly disposed of. Waste is leaking into the Snake River Aquifer and has contaminated large quantities of groundwater outside of Hanford in Eastern Washington state. There should not be new plants until a concerted effort has been made to clean-up this waste, and the integrity of the planned mechanism of waste disposal is deemed environmentally ethical. -NUCLER POWER is Linked to Nuclear Defense. This fact is undeniable. As the rate of proposals for nuclear plants has gone up, so has nuclear defense budgeting. But Please Don't Just Take My Word For It. This is the sign. Did we forget there was a reason we shut down the production of new nuclear power plants for 3 decades? This is a re-marketing campaign. Yes, nuclear power holds tremendous capacity for large scale energy production. But our capacity to deal with the consequences of that potential have not been proven to have caught up. Until then, it behooves us to look at more democratically structured power grid models like the renewables. If we do not prioritize these things they will not realize their potential and the consequences of investing here have far greater benefits than risks. No waste that is. Oh, and windmills are not also used as military weapons.

So I found the Story

2008-04-25T20:45:00.000-07:00

I found the book with the fable. Turns out it is about fuel (Irony). The person on the bus sees a sign that says "No Gas for 500 miles" when they alert the driver and the other passengers everyone laughs and ignores her. She walks for two hours until she finds the sign. Then, "I saw a barefoot man standing on the road. Smiling, he asked, "Did you get off the bus? Me too. I'm so glad to see you. I've been walking for fourteen days already. You are the first one I've seen since then." I was surprised that he didn't look tired or depressed. In fact, he looked happy and refreshed. I told him about my blisters, and how I was tired and hungry. Instead of sympathy, the man began to tell me his story. He said that he had begun to really enjoy walking. He said, everybody would have to get off the bus" -Igor Boutenko I guess I should start looking for the sign.