talk about karma

I know half the world has heard about this by now (I got a Google news hit from China), but I just think it's funny. Besides, most people probably heard about it on TV, and I move in largely TV-less circles, so maybe a lot of the people who read my blog actually haven't heard about it. The logical conclusion being that our lack of TV makes us ignorant. Albeit blissfully (except for missing ESPN and the Daily Show... but I'm pretty sure that's just me).

boiling frogs*

Here is a really interesting antidote (I wouldn't say "solution" because that sounds too... optimistic) to our out-of-control energy usage and subsequent pollution problems. It's really a fascinating idea. And the article is a good discussion of why, between the highly protected energy industry and our desire to save the world only through sexy product purchases instead of real lifestyle changes, this technology may well not make it into the mainstream. But it should.

*It is said that if you put a frog into a pot of boiling water, s/he would jump right back out, but if you put a frog into a pot of cool water and slowly raise the temperature to boiling, they never quite register the danger (until it's too late). No, I have not and would not test the thruth of this anecdote, but to me it's a striking metaphor for what we humans are currently doing to ourselves.

highlights of thanksgiving in washington d.c., as noted through the tryptophan haze

- My brother's coworker (who happens, because it's a very small world sometimes, to also be the mother of a friend of mine from college) and her teenage son camped out at Best Buy the night after Thanksgiving. Why? Because they were curious to see exactly who it is that camps out at Best Buy the night after Thanksgiving. And I thought, what if that was everyone's reason for camping out at stores before Black Friday? And the stores opened at 5:00am or whatever disgustingly ungodly hour, and all the people just turned around and went home? What if some really good missionaries for the anti-consumerist cause went and infiltrated the crowds and engaged people in critical self-reflection? Or if some guerilla contra dancers went and organized the crowd into a spontaneous dance? The possibilities are beautifully endless.

- Background: My mother came up with a great children's story some years ago when she was head of the local recycling center and doing a lot of environmental education programs. We've been telling her ever since that she should really make it into a children's book for publication. Well, the back story came out this weekend, the part where she came up with the story in the first place because a local artist had agreed to go with her for some environmentally-themed storytelling at an area elementary school, only the artist apparently had a bit of a love affair with the bottle, and when she went to his house to pick him up he was sleeping off a bender. So, faced with the daunting prospect of 40 small children expecting storytime, she came up with this tale on her own as she drove to meet them. Proving yet again that my mother is the coolest person ever.

- Missouri beat Kansas. (My brother is a proud Mizzou alumnus. Go Tigers!) (Confused? Clue: it was a football game.)

- I, a closet gadget geek, got a new cell phone that I'm only slightly obsessed with. It can flip open in two different directions. I'm tellin' ya. Next thing you know they'll be putting a man on the moon. (Yes, I admit it, I went shopping the day after Thanksgiving. I really wasn't going to, but the Totally Reasonable Excuse is that there's no Verizon store within 50 miles of where I live but there's a big one near my aunt and uncle's house, and the service there was really quick, and my old cell phone was half past dead, and yes I hate talking on the phone but when it's unavoidable I do like the battery in my phone to allow more than one 3-minute phone call per day before it konks out. I'm needy like that.)

- I saw some good friends and met several fascinating new people at the excellent Friday night dance at Glen Echo Park, one of my favorite places to dance anywhere. New people include a guy who dated my good friend Froggoddess for a while and who I recognized and introduced myself to because I'd seent a photo of him on her fridge in Massachusetts, as well as a fabulous dancer whose claim to being a writer (which, let's face it, is a claim often based on having a blog and/or a stack of rejection letters from obscure poetry journals) I later found to be impressively true.

- My Crazy Uncle and I went on a great hike on Saturday morning. I'm still sore, and I love it.

- My brother gave me a funny little knick-knack frog playing a violin (I have a thing for frogs). I wrapped it inside some cloths at the bottom of my carry-on suitcase so that it wouldn't get damaged going home. This caused great consternation to the airport security personnel manning the bag x-ray machine. I heard the one TSA guy call over another TSA guy, and I heard one of them say "frog?" and knew I was in for it. They opened the bag and dug out the knick-knack to confirm that "oh, that's a violin. We guessed at the frog, but it also kinda looked like a hunter holding a knife." Yeah, people make that mistake when they see me holding my violin, too. Happens all the time.*

All in all, for these and many other reasons, a Great Turkey Weekend. I hope yours was anywhere near as good. So much to be thankful for... the thoroughly confused cab driver who (barely) took me from the airport to the lot where my car was parked notwithstanding.

*Seriously, though, hats off to Hartford and BWI airports. Couldn't have been smoother or quicker, even regardless of it being Thanksgiving weekend.

i'm so glad someone thought of this...

...so now I can blow lots of time on something other than YouTube.

I haven't even watched any of the videos yet, and I already think this is awesome.

Thanks goes to The Geologist for the heads-up.

definitely a question i've never been asked before

A couple years ago I led a group of Yeshiva University students on an AJWS Alternative Breaks trip to Honduras. I am now, amusingly, on the email list for the YU Commentator student newspaper. A couple days agod I got an email that asked:

"Are you 'rabbi' enough for Young Israel?"

I can only hope this is the lead-in to the next hit reality TV show on some Orthodox cable channel in New York.

But yeah... I'm pretty sure the answer is a resounding "no." Sorry to disappoint you, YU. I'm sure we'll both get over it.

slippery slope

There's a story in today's New York Times about the regular practice at NY Jets football games in which crowds of men gather by a certain stadium gate and create a ruckus demanding that women in the area take their shirts off and show their breasts to the crowd. Women who don't happen to comply with this "request" often get things thrown at the them, such as beer bottles. They're also sworn and spit at.

According to the story, one woman who recently did comply was taken aside by security officers and warned about indecent exposure laws.

In other words, she was threatened with arrest for flashing hundreds of jeering, threatening men who were demanding that she do precisely that.

In Saudi Arabia last week, a woman was sentenced to prison and 200 lashes for being gang-raped by seven men.

Different, yes. But actually? I'm not sure how different. I am not saying these are the same countries or the same crimes (though yes, unlike the New Jersey authorities I would consider this sexual harassment a crime). But the difference seems largely to be one of scale, not values.

Scary, huh?

looking forward

And lest there be any doubt about winter being upon us, Tomato Hands and I went hiking yesterday on Bald Mountain, in Townshend State Park about half an hour north of here,* and saw a veritable blanket of snow on the ground. I was emotionally unprepared for this.**

Off the subject of impending doom winter, though, I want to say how deeply happy I am that Tomato Hands and I finally spent some time together outside of a contra dance or potluck or other people-intensive context. She is lovely and fun and we have much in common, and I have much to learn from her. And she's moving to Brattleboro, which just further demonstrates her wisdom and good sense.

Funny how friendships happen or don't, and how some that don't can lead to others that do, making the former unexpectedly worthwhile.

*a wonderful place to hike. If you live here, go there.

**see, the thing is that I love snow, but once it really snows here, my parking situation starts to suck because we can't park overnight on the street anymore. I will have to park downtown in the garage, a 10-minute walk (which is further when it sounds when it's freezing outside), and be sure that it goes in after 6pm and comes out before 9am (if I don't want to pay, which I don't). Spiritually, I love snow. Practically, I'd be fine without it as long as I live in my current house.

and so it begins

Lest I attend any of the half dozen contra dances taking place within two hours of my home, I hitched a ride to Providence, RI last night with the Tall Bass to check out the dance at Brown University, which he was calling.

We stopped for a caffeine boost at the start of the drive and were walking out of the coffee shop, so unsuspectingly, when we stopped short and realized that those little white flakes flying around were not fuzz nor styrofoam nor stardust (falling stardust being very common around here).

It lasted barely a few minutes. But it's official: Winter is upon us.

beware: history lesson and small rant

Tonight I went to a presentation by the Brattleboro Community Justice Center (because this little town of 12,000 people has a community justice center, because a) there are issues in our, and every, community demanding attention and justice, and b) this town is awesome) of the documentary "Greensboro: Closer to the Truth" and a talk afterward by one of the survivors of the Greensboro Massacre.

"What is the Greensboro Massacre?" you say? I didn't really know either. I looked it up when I saw the flier for this event, in fact. And I found out about something horrifying and not surprising and, at the same time, very surprising in our nation's history. Here's a summary of what I learned tonight, because I think it's really important that you hear about it:

In 1979 (November 3, to be exact), a group of labor organizers and activists centered around the Communist Workers Party movement in Greensboro, NC held a rally at a local community center. Members of the Ku Klux Klan and local Nazi party caravaned by, and the two sides quickly became violent toward each other. Then the Klansmen and Nazis pulled out guns and started shooting and killed five people. The Greensboro police, who had known about the Klan and Nazi plans to disrupt the rally with violence, not only did nothing to prevent these events but also did nothing to stop it. In fact, they weren't nearby (despite having intense and antagonistic police presence at just about every other CWP events). In two separate trials, the killers were tried and acquitted. This despite the fact that the events were actually caught on tape.

(I'll say that again: there is a clear video record of people committing murder, and the murderers were acquitted of the crime. Twice.)

On Nov. 4, one day after the massacre, Islamic students stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran and began the Iran hostage crisis, and not very many people remembered to care about five unarmed activists had been killed by racist groups operating with police support.

But then a couple years ago the survivors decided to pursue the creation of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, modeled on that of South Africa after apartheid. And it worked, and a lot of information came to light. The City of Greensboro didn't just decide to ignore the commission, it actually voted (along clear racial lines) to reject its existence. And maybe some things changed, and certainly a lot of things didn't. One positive change is that many cities in the U.S. have now begun to discuss the creation of their own Truth Commissions modeled on Greensboro's (the first in the United States), including post-Katrina New Orleans. Another is that during the period in which the commission was active, the police chief of Greensboro was forced to resign because of the exposure of his methodical racial profiling of city residents and police officers, which apparently many people think wouldn't have happened without the commission's message of community justice.

And Marty Nathan, whose husband was killed that day, and who now lives near here in Northampton, MA and practices medicine in a community clinic, said some pretty amazing things. One is that she quit medicine and went into labor organizing in the North Carolina textile mills because after practicing rural medicine for a short time she'd become convinced (and remains so to this day) that most of the illnesses she was seeing were ultimately caused by poverty, and that there wasn't much she could do about that as a doctor. She also said that while truth came to light, there wasn't reconciliation. In other words, there is truth now, but no justice. And without justice, nothing changes.

I'm not sure how you find reconciliation in such situations - doesn't reconciliation imply that at some time there was harmony to begin with? But that's obviously never been the case in Greensboro or most places in this world where those with money and the right skin color/gender/religion/tribe/etc. retain far, far more than their fair share of power and resources. So justice means some radical change in lifestyle and philosophy for all of us. It means all of us having to want to find peace, not just in name but in equal access to clean water, food, shelter, fair pay, healthcare, etc. For ALL of us. And, more importantly, all of "Them" too.

Are you ready to make those changes? I'm not sure I am, but I'd like to be, and I will try. Tonight was yet another reminder that there are people who have long been trying to show us the way.

proud of my friends

You know you're doing something right when you piss off conservatives enough to get posted about on reactionary blogs. Go Jeff!

p.s.

No, that last post was actually not a veiled admission of romantic attraction. How fascinating that it seems to have been understood that way, at least by some people.

On some TV screen somewhere in the world right now Harry and Sally are arguing about whether [heterosexual] men and women can truly be friends or if sexual desire will always get in the way.* This is a fairly (in)famous and long-running debate. But the more I think about it, the more I wonder why those two things are generally posited as mutually exclusive.

Among the random things I enjoy mulling over is the concept of attraction, and the very narrow meaning we generally assign the term as opposed to what it actually describes. Am I attracted to the Space Cowboy? Absolutely. Am I attracted to other friends of mine, dancers I pass in a contra line, new people on a daily basis? Yes, indeed. I'm attracted to some people to whom I'm related (and I'm not particularly attracted to some others). I'm attracted to musicians and writers I know only through their work. Hell, I'm attracted to plenty of musicians and writers who have been dead for a while.

What is attraction? Have you ever really thought about this? Ultimately isn't it just that pull, the mysterious combination of interaction + instinct + pheromones/aura/whatever that sparks your interest in knowing someone and spending time with them? It certainly doesn't have to refer to romance and/or sex, though of course it could. Or (in my weird little dancing subculture) it could be the Dance Floor Crush, which generally involves a strong desire to interact with someone on the dance floor as much as possible, and sometimes even involves the desire to interact with them off the dance floor, or even outside the dance hall altogether. Or it could be meeting a kindred spirit who you just know you want to become friends with.

I guess the fairy tale is feeling all of those kinds of attraction at the same time toward one person, and finding it mutual. And in an extra-super-perfect world, the timing (and *ahem* geography) would be right too. (How many decades did it take Harry and Sally?)

But that's just one kind of relationship, and there are too many others that I need and want in my life for me to devote time to pining or looking for just that one. I'd rather spend time creating and exploring the other kinds. Like the kind where a favorite dance partner turns out to be someone with whom you also enjoy sitting by a woodstove and talking about life, without insinuation or innuendo.

(Apparently those only come in later, when people read about it on your blog.)

*Wow, that's the second movie reference I've made here. Recently. If you have ever made a movie reference in my presence and watched it sail far over my head, you understand how impressive this is.

a new old friend

And then I took the Space Cowboy out for a beer as promised, and we had dinner along with it, and sat by a cozy woodstove, and listened to some of New England's finest musicians, some of whom we're lucky enough to call our friends, sit at the next table and play Irish music. And we talked about life and pain and love, and glimpsing the face of the fairy tale just to watch it turn its back and walk away, and learning from that and learning from everything. And we discovered that we were, and would be, even better friends than we already thought.

And that was a lovely way to spend an evening.

live near boston?

Then here's what you should do tomorrow (Friday) night:

http://www.worldmusic.org/

(Crooked Still and the Carolina Chocolate Drops) (together) (it's going to be ridiculously good)

oh, the joy

Friends, I have made a most wonderful discovery:

Pupusas. Nearby.

Pupusas are to El Salvador what I suppose the McDonalds hamburger is to the U.S. Except that, unlike the hamburger, they're delicious, they are not notably contributing to the destruction of the planet, and I could happily eat them every day.

Unbeknownst to me, there has always been Salvadoran food available within reasonable driving distance of me. I've driven right past it, in fact, in sad sad ignorance. All that changed last weekend when I was browsing in a used bookstore in Greenfield, MA (see? browsing in bookstores is good for you) and overheard (oversmelled?) the owner and a friend of his enjoying the Salvadoran tamales they were eating for dinner.

They were discussing how good the tamales tasted, and it was obvious how good they smelled, so I immediately asked where they'd been procured, though assuming it must have been something out of the freezer or from a trip down the interstate to those towns that actually have things like ethnic diversity and yummy food.

But no! They were from just up the street. There's a pizza place in Greenfield that has Salvadoran tamales! Of course I went there for dinner (verdict: YUM) and asked if they ever have pupusas, a food that I'm not too embarrassed to admit I sometimes fantasize about. It's one of those things that you find when you're traveling that make you think really hard about trying to sneak a local grandmother home in your luggage, because no matter what you do you'll never be able to make them taste as good at home yourself. I come down very much on the liberal end of the immigration debate for many reasons entirely unrelated to the availability of authentic foreign foods, but there's no reason to ignore the fact that a peripheral added bonus to pulling our heads out of our asses might be better eating.

Of course, no matter how open our borders, it's probably too much to hope that my very very White town (which I love for so many reasons, but NOT that one) would get any less so. Which brings us back to my thrilled surprise at being told that the place in Greenfield has a sister restaurant in Montague (just across the Connecticut River from Greenfield) that has pupusas for sale just about every day.

So last night, at the earlist possible opportunity to justify the half-hour drive to Montague (because I had to go to Greenfield for the evening anyway), I had pupusas for the first time since I was in El Salvador last December. I ordered a few to eat right then (verdict: YUMMMMM) and six to take home for a Freezing Experiment in which we determine whether they'll freeze well enough that I can go back to Montague and order them by the case.

It's not going to be a very scientific experiment, partly because I can't imagine I'll let them sit in the freezer very long. So the real experiment may be: how many reasons can I invent for going to the Montague/Greenfield area around dinnertime?

neither vermont*

It's funny how days can seem longer than they are in both good ways and bad ways, depending on the day. Some days feel several days long in that oh-my-God-it's-really-only-noon?? way, while some days feel longer in a Steve-Martin's-monologue-in-The Jerk way (if you don't know what I'm talking about, all I can say is that it's a good way, it's a classic movie, and for some reason I find that monologue just about the funniest thing I've ever heard in a movie) (thank you to my friend the Tall Bass for introducing me to that movie when we were in Ireland last summer).

Today was long in a Steve Martin way. I feel so productive and happy-tired now. It reinforces what I realized one freakishly early morning in college, when for some reason I was out and about by 7:00am and noticed that, huh, all these people are acting as if it's normal to be awake at this hour. As if staying up until 4am and waking up at noon not the most efficient way to accomplish things. How... troubling.

From then on I just couldn't enjoy sleeping through the morning anymore (though I will admit to a few very necessary exceptions, most of which, to be totally honest, probably involved the consumption of alcohol the night before). I became the freak whose alarm went off at 7:00am, throughly peeving her dorm neighbors through the paper-thin walls. And while I do love weekends now for the magic of waking up whenever my body feels it needs to, rather than setting an alarm, I generally don't sleep past 8:00, no matter how late I'm up the night before.

Today I did set an alarm, partly to remind myself of the clock falling back, and partly to make sure I'd get an early start on my many tasks. I was up and at my office to do some work-work and some personal-work by 8:30, and then down in Massachusetts for a volunteer committee breakfast at 10:30. By the time that was over, I felt like I'd already done a day's worth of work. Luckily, the real work of the day was finished and I was free to enjoy the gorgeous, crisp autumn day.

I knew I wanted to hike, and there's a great "go-to" hiking area that I love right near Brattleboro, but I have also been wanting to find the other hidden gems around here. There are so many state parks, recreation areas, preserves, etc. that I could probably hike somewhere different every day for years without driving more than an hour in any direction from my house. So I drove a random direction and followed the signs that jumped out at me, and ended up in the Erving State Forest. After an hour or so of hiking there (and I think I was the only one in the whole forest, it was so empty and peaceful) up to a great view of Mt. Monadnock (speaking of hiking goals), I left and drove down the back roads until I found a road that took me into New Hampshire.

I was undecided about whether to go home at that point, because I was tired but also felt like I hadn't quite thoroughly scratched the hiking itch. So I decided to stop thinking about it and see where the road took me, which turned out to be Pisgah State Forest, a pretty big park in southeastern New Hampshire. I've been trying this lately - when I'm thinking too much about something, which happens most of the time, I try not to think about anything at all, and my subconscious or the universe or whatever you want to think it is usually pushes me in a good direction. Pisgah was definitely a good direction. I didn't know it before, but not only are there copious hiking trails there but also a number of historical markers and descriptions on the building sites of a settlement located there in the early-to-mid 1800s. I got to exercise my body and my mind: icing on the hike.

And now I'm cozy on my friend OfHouse's couch (back in Massachusetts, no less), watching the Patriots-Colts game (for better or for worse) (Update: somehow the Patriots pulled it out; it was amazing!), coming to terms with how early it got dark outside, and appreciating a great autumn weekend. This day definitely feels like three. Hopefully tomorrow, with the adventures (sigh)that work is sure to bring, will just feel like a day. Unless good things happen, and it feels like two days.

(I could go on, but if you've seen The Jerk you already get the reference, and if you haven't you won't start to think this is funny anytime soon.)

*i.e. I hiked in two states today, neither Vermont. How cool is that (if you grew up in the Midwest, hours from the nearest state line, and still haven't gotten over the novelty of living in southeastern VT)?!