The Grand Adventures of the Monkeyhippy

Topics I want to write about soon include, but are not limited to:

2011-08-11T18:04:00.002-04:00

Famine
...as in, New York Times and pretty much everyone else who is writing about Somalia, famine does not "sweep across" any country. It's not like five minutes ago I was fine and now I'm starving to death. Famine creeps. It is slow. If we are surprised, it's because we chose not to pay attention.

The Stock Market
...as in, The is up hundreds of points today! We'll be fine! Oh! That was yesterday; today the market is down a few hundred points! We're screwed! Wait! Woohoo! The market is back up a few hundred points! We're fine! aka WHY THE HELL DO WE BASE OUR UNDERSTANDING OF OUR ECONOMIC HEALTH ON THE STOCK MARKET?!? If I said I was putting all my money and staking my economic future on horse races, you'd say I was crazy. I can't see how staking our economic future on another kind of betting is a better idea. In fact, it's probably a worse idea, because compared to humans, horses are both more consistent and probably smarter

Larry Summers
...former President of Harvard, big economic adviser to Obama as well as President Clinton, gigantic jackass.

Consumerism
...as in, our thirst for stuff is killing people and the planet. This should bother us more.

Football
...as in, football preseason starts this week??? It CANNOT be time for that yet.

Actually, that's all I have to say about football.

Oddly Enough

2011-08-10T10:22:00.002-04:00

I'm thinking of re-starting this whole endeavor, this blogging thing. It keeps coming up in conversation, which is odd for something that's been asleep over two years (though I suppose if I'd been asleep for over two years, people would be talking about me too) (ba-dum-CHING). People who are more or less strangers have been stumbling on it and encouraging me to write again.

And I miss it; I miss how this space helps me process the ever-growing variety of crazy things that I see and learn and do and think about in my daily life, and I miss the process of crafting a post (yes, I would call it "crafting"... believe it or not, actual thought goes into these things).

I also have no time; far less time to process and craft than had when I used to post regularly. Life has changed tremendously in the interim, and then changed again. I am a graduate student in Boston now, in a dual-degree program that keeps me quite busy, not to mention the many grad school- and friends- and Boston-related opportunities that are usually a bit more interesting and education than schoolwork, if we're being honest. And I'm traveling a lot these days. And I just agreed to write now and then for a friend's Latin America-focused blog. And my brother is getting married this autumn, which is relevant partly because it means that all of my creative writing energy should currently be devoted to the toast I will be tearfully delivering at the wedding (that's the only thing I can confidently predict about that toast: it will be delivered tearfully). And I'm supposedly running a half-marathon in October. And I'm dating a nice guy who has already nearly given up on ever seeing me.

So, I'm not saying I'm going to restart. Just that I'm thinking about it. I'll let you know.

stranger things

2009-04-17T15:15:00.001-04:00

Cousin: "I dreamt about marriage the last two nights. Last night it was unknown royalty -- even in the dream I'd only met him once, wedding was to be Christian and I had to wear something vaguely nun-like. Now that I think about it, there was even more Christian imagery too. Very, very strange."

Monkeyhippy: "Want to marry Jesus, do you? That would be an interesting turn of events."

Cousin: "If I wanted to marry Jesus, mostly it would be an interesting turn of events for Jesus."

next time you have an hour free...

2009-03-27T20:52:00.000-04:00

...please watch this.

unintended consequences

2009-03-27T14:30:00.001-04:00

I'm trying to wrap my head around this. Sometimes I'm so incredibly grateful to have been born into the family and country I was.

multifaceted

2009-03-22T12:27:00.003-04:00

Yesterday I chopped wood for a while and then got my ears pierced (for the first time in my life! It feels WEIRD!). Maybe today I'll change my oil and get a pedicure.

A long time ago my friend Hillary made me a great t-shirt (ah the perks of working at Kinko's) with one of those '50s housewife cartoon ladies looking horrified next to a thought bubble that says "Oh my God! I think I'm becoming the man I wanted to marry!" Maybe I'm becoming both the man AND the woman I wanted to marry (except for the necessarily "wanting to get married" part). Sure would make some things simpler.

Other things, not so much.

snippets

2009-03-20T21:54:00.003-04:00

The best bumper sticker I saw in Israel was on my cousin Susan's car: "We will have no peace until we talk to each other." (p.s. it's been ripped off her car more than once by people who are apparently don't share the sentiment.)

Second best bumper sticker I saw in Israel was on a car in front of us on the highway near Tel Aviv: "The car climbed Mt. Washington"

putting words to it

2009-03-18T16:24:00.003-04:00

I feel like I got back from vacation and jumped back into work and my regular life, except instead of landing on solid ground, I landed in quicksand.

it's like joe biden writes their script

2009-03-11T17:04:00.005-04:00

Sure, it seems like years since I posted, and yeah, I went to Israel (and Jordan! for a whole day!) and got into grad school (!!!!!!) since then. But here's what I really need you to know:

I hate (HATE) (yes, in big angry red letters) FairPoint Communications.

Remember (those of you in the neighborhood) last year when FairPoint was trying to take over Verizon's residential business in New England and the regulatory people said "Hmm, we're skeptical about you actually having the capacity to manage all this" and FairPoint said "No no! We can TOTALLY manage all this! We are awesome and powerful! We are telecommunications superheroes!" and eventually the regulators said "Oh, well then, it must be true" and approved the takeover?

You're totally not expecting what I'm about to say. Nope, not painfully absurdly obvious at all...

Turns out they don't have the capacity to manage all this.

I, for one, am shocked, just shocked. They lied? To us?? Didn't they realize the consequences? Didn't they see that when they took over the system, totally f-cked up the process of switching the old Verizon customers over to their system, put everyone on hold for two years just to be transfered to the wrong person, refused to answer their phones, and had their computer system offline for TWO WEEKS (I'm not kidding), that we'd all pick up and run straight to...

Oh right. There's no other phone/internet company here.

Monopoly (like dictatorship, as it turns out) can be a great thing; all depends where you're sitting.

In the meantime, I clearly don't have to be spending all this time on hold (or under the illusion that I'm on hold, when really they've just cut off the phone call with no plans to ever answer it, as I realized today). I just need to follow the friendly advice at the beginning of the FairPoint automated customer service message:

"If you are having trouble with your internet access, please visit www.fairpoint.com for assistance."

I hope these guys were never lifeguards. "I'm drowning, I'm drowning!" "It's OK, just hold your head underwater for a while!"

and so it goes

2009-02-18T14:56:00.004-05:00

Sooo much is happening right now! So I'm not going to tell you about any of it, HA. I actually just can't get into it at the moment because I don't have nearly enough time to do any of it justice. I'll explain at least some of it sometime. Promise.

Instead, I'm going to tell you that I recently saw a book for sale in a shop downtown called "How to Cook Without a Book."

And I really needed someone there to point at it and laugh with. Where were you?

gee, whaddya know

2009-02-05T09:56:00.001-05:00

"The best kind of government is dictatorship!" Says the dictator.

there but for the grace

2009-02-03T16:24:00.008-05:00

A lot of my job involves dealing with the crap that happens when 20-year-old U.S. Americans go to foreign (in every way) places. It happens; it just does. There's no way around some of it (and plenty of ways around some of it). They get sick, they get hurt, they get into trouble of their own or others' making. They get drunk, leading to all of the above. Sometimes it's sad, sometimes it's infuriating (see: drunk), sometimes it's just time-consuming. Shit happens.

I'm actually a janitor, cleaning up messes that happen to require a fairly unique skill set.

But occasionally it hits me, as it did at 4:30 this morning, that some of my job is to be a bit player in the drama of someone's life falling apart. There's run-of-the-mill and then there is Life Altering. There is sexual assault. There is diagnosis with a serious illness, sometimes of the student abroad and sometimes of a loved one at home. There is - today - the sudden and shocking death of a student's parent. And another parent on the phone in the middle of the night trying to figure out how to reach her child literally halfway across the world, break the news, and bring her home.

I hope in these instances that I am providing calm and respectful support. I hope they leave those conversations thinking, OK, that person is going to do her best to help me right now. I hope they don't hear my voice shake as I think to myself, "my God, what would I feel like in those shoes?" Which is probably why it's hard to detach myself emotionally from the process of offering my support, especially when that process involves telling someone in pain that thing they really want is not actually possible, or is possible only if gigantic hurdles are cleared. Logic Brain says: you are doing what you can, and the important goals will be met. Empathy Brain says: this is the worst moment of someone's life, and of course they want X thing to happen right now, and you have not made that happen. Mom wants daughter home this instant, and you have failed to invent teleportation. WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU.

I am good at my job. I am even good, I think, at responding to urgent situations in the middle of the night. (I am not so good at keeping the lack of sleep from affecting my entire next day, or therefore going to bed early rather than staying up to write long introspective blog posts. Bummer.) And I'm really good at holding myself to impossibly high standards (if you invent teleportation, please let me know ASAP?) and getting upset with myself over my imagined failings on behalf of the stranger on the other end of the telephone call who probably isn't actually giving me a second thought because they have MUCH bigger fish to fry.

I guess that when you are awoken at 4:00am to play a small part in someone else's difficult story, it's hard not to get a little too wrapped up in it and think that your role is bigger than it really is. After all, for most of us isn't the whole point of being awake at 4am that things seem bigger than they really are?

Well, I'm going to propose another point for me and all those who play these odd little roles in other people's dramas - which is all of us really. And then I'm going to hang onto this one for all I'm worth, because it makes life worthwhile AND might just keep me from losing my mind to the fear of the phone ringing all night when I'm on call: Maybe it's the universe's continuing attempts to smack us wide awake into the recognition that it could all change *POOF* in an instant. Our lives. Our connections with loved ones. The amazing things each of us does every day with our brains and bodies without giving it the least thought or gratitude.

The illusion of control over these things that we work so hard to maintain is powerful, but micro-thin. Maybe we need to maintain it somewhat, just to provide some direction to the day. I guess what I am pondering here is how to poke holes in the illusion and still be OK. How to stay on the path while admitting that there's absolutely no map.

No, organized religion is not the answer, at least not for me. I think maybe it's much smaller and much larger than that. Like getting regular check-ups and buckling your seat belt. Giving some money away to good causes and volunteering in your community. And saying "thank you" and "I love you" as often as humanly possible.

such high expectations

2009-01-28T16:40:00.003-05:00

I guess I'm blogging a lot today (see: flu and sleet)...

Just wanted to share my favorite headline of the day:

US Urges Stronger Gaza Ceasefire

What, you mean one in which both sides stop shooting at each other?

C'mon, guys, don't you think that's asking a little much?

p.s.

2009-01-28T15:02:00.003-05:00

This is entirely unrelated to the last post in every way, except that it's another excellent example of fun time-wasting on the internet:

Yes. There is a whole website dedicated to Men Who Look Like Kenny Rogers.

It's not a bad look, really. They could do a whole lot worse.

I wonder if that one guy who contra dances occasionally in Greenfield has his picture on here. I'm going to have to tell him about it.

for the three people who read this blog who are not on facebook (hi mom!)

2009-01-28T14:48:00.005-05:00

There's this thing going around Facebook, as many of you probably know, wherein someone writes a list of 25 random things about him/herself and then "tags" 25 people (meaning those people get alerted that someone tagged them and they're supposed to read the note) (that explanation was for my mother), who are then supposed to do the same and tag 25 more people, including the person who tagged them.

Yes, it's a glorified chain letter, but slightly less annoying because it doesn't clog your inbox, and nobody actually has to read (or open/skim/delete) it if they don't want. You can learn some interesting things about your friends this way, and it seemed like an interesting exercise to engage in for myself. We're each a collection of thousands or millions of random things, really, so what are the 25 to choose to put out there at this moment? Why those? Ahh, so much to ponder. Anyway, since I'm at home fighting something flu-like and listening to sleet bouncing off the windows, I wrote my list this morning and I'm posting it here too. Here you go...

1. I am fairly introverted.

2. My middle name is Harriet. It took me years to stop disliking and hiding it.

3. I played the flute for a year. I tended to hyperextend my pinky finger (still do, actually), which hurt a lot when I played, so I quit.

4. I could - and often do - eat kale every day.

5. I never understood why my mom had a huge collection of cookbooks that she enjoyed just reading, until suddenly I found myself doing the same thing.

6. When I was a kid I watched hours and hours of TV every day. Crappy TV. I could probably have so many more brain cells than I do.

7. I hope to someday own a rottweiler or pit bull/boxer. I love big dogs.

8. I have spent a fair amount of time looking for my third grade teacher, Mrs. Fillinger. I really want to tell her what a big influence she had on my life. Haven't found her yet.

9. When I was young I was fairly certain that I would become a veterinarian and live in Caribou, Maine. The latter because it was the location furthest north on the Weather Channel map, which held some mysterious appeal. This is funny because I also wanted nothing more than to live in a city bigger than the one in which I grew up (which Caribou is certainly not). I do not want that now.

10. I have visited 43 U.S. states (the exceptions are Alaska, Hawaii, Nebraska, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Alabama, and Louisiana) and 19 countries. I have lived in 5 states and 3 countries.

11. I am completely and madly in love with where I live right now.

12. I carry a small notebook absolutely everywhere. It would be bad if I lost it, though whoever found it would learn a lot (of mundane, boring stuff) about me.

13. I don't like writing on lined paper.

14. One of my kidneys doesn't work all that well, due to scar tissue from a number of infections when I was younger.

15. I am very much looking forward to being a crotchety, pithy, hilarious old lady.

16. I am aware that I may not live that long. A lot of people die before they're old. Such is life. I think that's why I want to do everything that interests me RIGHT NOW. Who knows if this is my only chance?

17. I know I lived a full and happy life before I found contra dancing; I just can't quite remember what I was doing with all my time back then.

18. The adjectives I most want to live up to are: kind, dependable, and low-maintenance.

19. I'll do almost anything once, just to see what it's like. This has led to some amazing and some amazingly difficult experiences.

20. I have never had any part of my body pierced, though I do have one tattoo.

21. I'm arachniphobic. It's pretty well under control now.

22. Part of me really wants to live in Nicaragua someday.

23. I have never smoked marijuana, not once. Very few people believe this.

24. I think good homegrown tomatoes are the tastiest food imaginable.

25. My eyes turn green when I cry.

26. I have always been totally fascinated by the idea of being a long-haul truck driver.

27. I don't follow rules (like "write 25 things") very well.

poetry monday

2009-01-26T14:22:00.001-05:00

Tell me a story.

In this century, and moment, of mania,
Tell me a story.

Make it a story of great distances, and starlight.

The name of the story will be Time,
But you must not pronounce its name.

Tell me a story of deep delight.

--From Tell Me a Story by Robert Penn Warren

on being two (or more?) people

2009-01-23T09:51:00.011-05:00

I've come to the conclusion recently that I'm generally destined to live at least two lives simultaneously. It's not just that the things and people that feed my brain and my feelings of vocation are completely different than those that feed my soul. They also tend to be in totally different geographical locations.

Examples, there are many:

- Every significant romantic relationship I've had in my life has included an extended periods of living at long distances from the other person. I'm not kidding; many of those distances can be counted in thousand-mile increments. Not to mention that... OK, I'm officially saying this to the internet... and I don't know why that makes me slightly nervous... I just met Someone who I'm hoping to get to know quite a bit better, who lives, of course, several hours away.

- While living in New York City for a job I loved, I spent over a year driving one or two weekends a month up to western New England to contra dance and fall in love with a community in which I instantly felt more at home than I ever did in the city. Perhaps not so coincidentally, I began in earnest to divide my life between NYC and New England almost immediately after the end of one of those 1,000-miles-apart relationships.

- I have a whole community of friends and familiarity in and around Asheville, North Carolina. I pretty much know my way around, know my favorite restaurants and hangouts, and would most likely run into people I know walking down the street. I was there five times in 2008 alone. I have never lived in Asheville, and don't plan to live there in the forseeable future. Except I live there for a few days every couple of months, apparently.

- I madly love living in a small town in southern Vermont. So I'm planning to leave. And scheming ways to live in Boston during the grad-school-week and in Brattleboro on the weekends. Interesting side note: I say this to non-dance-community friends and they tell me I'm nuts (side side note: I'm not denying that). I say it to dance community folks and they say "oh yeah, lots of people do that, you can totally do that." (Side note II: you might be wondering whether Someone lives in Boston; the answer is: of course not. He lives several hours in the exact opposite direction. But I know you are not thinking of the implications of all this put together, no no, because that would be thinking WAY too far ahead. And you would not be that ridiculous.)

- 2 years and 2 months is the longest I've lived in one place doing one thing since my freshman year of high school. High school. 1996. I was in Minneapolis-St. Paul for closer to 2.5 years, but it doesn't count because it involved senior year of college and then the first year and a half of being graduated and employed (i.e. having free time and money), which is a whole other life than being in school. And those 2+ years were when I was "living in" New York City - see above. And it's not like I was a military brat. My parents still live in the town I was born in. I just felt the need to leave the country for long stretches every few years in high school and college.

And just for added fun, sometimes I wonder if I'm living multiple simultaneous lives not just in location but in personality. I recently discovered the blog of my friend, um, Stephen (his blogging, but not actual, name), who mentions this fabulous article to help explain being an introvert. That's me.

Except it's not. I am a total introvert in many ways. Needs hours alone? Check. Good social skills, not necessarily shy but also often uncomfortable in social situations and big groups? Check.

But wait, extroverts are those energized by others? They tend to be enthusiastic and talkative? Um, check. So what the heck am I? I talk this over from time to time with Froggoddess... are we introverts or extroverts? Introspective extroverts? Overly caffeinated hermits? All of those things at the same time?

I think it's just time to stop fighting it. I have never been happier than during the year and a half or so that I have fully lived here, that I managed to find really good work and a really good life all in one place, with enough time and opportunities to be very social sometimes and to stay at home alone sometimes. But then the landscape changed, and in order to deal with that, I'm resigning myself to the idea that I'm just not supposed to have all those things in one place. My sights either need to be much lower, or much broader. I don't know how to choose anything but the latter.

Conclusion: by the time I'm out of grad school, there had better be a lot more options for telecommuting.

fair enough

2009-01-22T12:10:00.004-05:00

As you may know, I have started feeling much more kindly toward Thomas Friedman in the last couple of years.

More kindly would not necessarily be a ringing endorsement, since it marked the difference between "The Lexus and the Olive Tree makes me want to throw up and throw things" and "I no longer find his writing nauseating." But much more kindly is a whole other thing entirely. I don't heartily recommend things to people to read all that often (What's that? I do? OK, yeah, I do, but just imagine how many times I've restrained myself! Really!) but I've recommended Friedman's column, um, this many times. And that's just on my blog.

However. It remains fairly clear that no one thinks more highly of Thomas Friedman than Thomas Friedman, and there are some incongruities in what he says and how he lives his life that are all the more significant because of his seemingly well-meaning diatribes, rather than in spite of them. Not to mention how swiftly he seems to change his mind and position on many a crucial issue. It's good to have other perspectives.

Especially when those perspectives are pretty hilarious.

"Like George W. Bush with his Bushisms, Friedman came up with lines so hilarious you couldn't make them up even if you were trying -- and when you tried to actually picture the "illustrative" figures of speech he offered to explain himself, what you often ended up with was pure physical comedy of the Buster Keaton/Three Stooges school, with whole nations and peoples slipping and falling on the misplaced banana peels of his literary endeavors."

And it just gets better from there (unless you're Thomas Friedman); take a look. I bet you didn't know about the convincing correlation between American pork belly prices and midgets' opinions of Australia.

dawn

2009-01-21T10:48:00.007-05:00

Where am I? What day is today?

Oh right. It's the first day of a whole new world.

Yes, it's also the exact same world. Yes, President (President!!!) Obama faces some of the biggest challenges ever confronting a leader of this or any other country.

But did you notice? He's actually facing them. Naming them. Saying they won't be easily surmounted. That they certainly won't be surmounted by him alone. We must participate. We must work. We must make hard choices.

Never has "Hey folks, let's be clear: this will, in some ways, totally suck" been more hopeful and reassuring.

I thought his speech was tremendous, both the first time I watched it in the Montpelier City Hall (photos from the Barre-Montpelier Times Argus newspaper)...

(that's a life-size cardboard cutout of

Obama to the left of the screen,

looking out at the crowd)

...and the second time I watched it, back at home around 1:00 in the morning after driving home to Brattleboro, making a rosemary goat cheese cheesecake for the evening parties, driving down to Northampton for the first party, back up to Greenfield for the second party where I very nearly fell asleep in front of the woodstove, and back up to Brattleboro where suddenly I wanted much more to watch the speech again on YouTube than to actually go to bed. (Did I mention I started the day in Burlington, about 2.5 hours north of here? But that's a whole other story.)

And then to watch Obama's Election Night speech yet again. And to read all the inauguration coverage online that I hadn't had a chance to look at yet, and look at my brother's photos from actually being on the National Mall yesterday and attending festivities in DC all weekend before that. And look up the text of the poem, Praise Song for the Day, which I think was actually pretty gorgeous, though unfortunately not really well delivered.

I marveled again at the fact that we elected a president who speaks in complete sentences, much less knows how to turn a phrase to make my breath catch. Who has repeatedly used the word "humility" in his biggest and most important speeches. Who respects the Americans who did not vote for him as much as those who did, and respects those outside our borders as human beings of equal worth. It should not be revolutionary. But.

"And to those nations like ours that enjoy relative plenty, we say we can no longer afford indifference to the suffering outside our borders, nor can we consume the world's resources without regard to effect. For the world has changed, and we must change with it."

(I know it's cliche at this point, but...) Yes, we must. Yes we can.

the shorter, lighter-hearted alternative

2009-01-15T20:24:00.002-05:00

Forget everything I said (if you actually managed to read all the way through it to begin with) and just listen to my friend Pesach.

finally

2009-01-15T12:22:00.017-05:00

I haven't read all of these yet, and I certainly do not agree with all of the authors' arguments, but this is some very useful reading. It's helped me find the people who seem like voices in the (Western media) wilderness on the story of what is happening in Israel and Gaza now.

Let me repeat (lest some of my relatives and friends never speak to me again): I do not agree with all of the points made in these pieces. But I must admit that I agree with most of them, at least thus far.

For one, I disagree with Chris Hedges that this is genocide. But I think he's absolutely right that Israel could not possibly do more damage than it is doing, not just to Gazans but to itself and the rest of us. He is totally right that Gaza has descended into complete chaos and that "out of that power vacuum will rise a new generation of angry jihadists, many of whom may spurn Hamas for more radical organizations" [emphasis added]. It seems inevitable that this slaughter will do more to popularize Hamas and to internally destabilize Israel's neighbors than any other Israeli action I can imagine.

I am stunned and nauseated by the willingness of most Jewish Israelis to support this horror. Yes, Hamas has been firing rockets. And I do not pretend to know what it's like to live under threat of rocket fire, or to have to comfort my children when they wake up screaming because they think a rocket is about to fall on their house, as my cousins in Jerusalem have to do these days.

But what seems to me a stark truth is that a rocket is not actually going to fall on my cousins' house in Jerusalem. Or at least, wasn't about to before Israel got a whole lot more people a whole lot more pissed off at it. That is, right now, an imagined threat. For Palestinians in Gaza, the threat is 100% real. That is the critical difference.

And there is no denying that Israel spent weeks leading up to this assault blockading Gaza so completely that gas, food, medicine, electricity, and almost anything else you might think of as necessary for basic survival were completely unavailable.

What would you do? I am entirely serious when I say that I would probably fire rockets too.

And we're supposed to believe that Israel is trying to avoid civilian Palestinian casualties? And that they are so smart and well-equipped as to be able to do so in one of the most packed urban slums in the world? The latter doesn't really matter when the former is such an obvious lie, I suppose, but if it did then one would wonder exactly how Israel today bombed the Gaza City United Nations headquarters. Way to expose your own lousy - yet shockingly effective - propaganda.

I'm not a believer in "an eye for an eye," but 1,100 Palestinian deaths (including ~300 children) vs. 13 Israeli deaths should give us pause, no matter how you slice it. Lots and lots and lots of pause. Especially when we consider the hell those 1,100 people and hundreds of thousands of their neighbors were being forced to live in even before Israel dropped bombs on them (see above: complete lack of basic necessities). It is not surprising to me that martyrdom, aka glorified suicide, has a strong attraction in such a situation.

Yet Israel and the United States have spun this incredible fairy tale in which submission to one's worst enemy leads to happyeverafter. Are we really supposed to believe - more importantly, are Palestinians really supposed to believe - that the answer to all their problems is to spontaneously rise up and overthrow their own government and then surrender to the people that are now attempting to obliterate the very foundations of their existence (I mean schools, hospitals and the UN at least as much as Hamas)? If that makes sense to you, I know this guy Bernard Madoff who has some great investments for you.

When I titled this post "finally" I was referring to finally finding some alternative voices on this subject, some writing that could help me think through and begin to articulate my own very muddled and anguished feelings about what is happening. I didn't realize it would also mean finally expressing those feelings in a long and angry blog post, but I'm glad it's turned out that way.

Not because I get satisfaction from any of this. I've been largely avoiding the topic here and elsewhere because my main reaction to it is, uncharacteristically, to want to cry. Sometimes it doesn't seem like there is any other logical reaction. So writing this out on my little blog that may a dozen people read regularly is somewhat cathartic, yes. But not satisfying.

I certainly don't feel like I am necessarily "right" or anyone else is necessarily "wrong." To think that would be to deny the massive complexities of a very, very old conflict and to shut out the possibility of hearing and understanding other perspectives. Which is, arguably, much of the reason we are in this mess.

I also don't feel really comfortable or confident about how the views I express here will be heard and understood by those dear to me who, I know, approach this topic very differently. Just how many of them read this blog, I don't really know. I hope this will help me find out, because I hope they/you will be in touch to talk about all this.

ASAP, in fact, because did I mention that I have a plane ticket to visit Israel in a month? Purchased a long time ago before it meant having to consider the political statement of a tourist trip under these circumstances, having to maybe change plans so as to avoid southern Israel where rockets are falling, having to figure out how or whether to talk about all this without offending and infuriating people I love. Which I sincerely hope I'm not doing right now. While some other people I love who feel similarly about all this may be offended that it's taken me this long to say something. Did I mention this is confusing?

"If you can't love those who don't love love, then you don't love. If you don't tolerate those who don't tolerate, then you don't tolerate."
-Shimon Green/Yitchok Meir

home sweet shoebox

2009-01-14T15:15:00.002-05:00

I guess I can see the appeal of a small, cheap, renewable house that could replace the hell-holes many people call home in the slums of the world. I also can't help but find it deeply offensive.

Tell me if I'm wrong here. I think I see where they're coming from, and I'm all for improving living conditions. Many, many people in the world live in true squalor. Especially in urban slums. A better home structure could make significant, meaningful improvements in health and wellbeing for millions of people.
But. $5,000? For 387 (.5!) square feet? I know it's probably average size for shantytown houses in many places. I'm sure many people are living in much less space. But that doesn't mean that 387.5 sq. ft. is a lot of space. It's nothing. And $5,000 is a lot of money for a shoebox.

And solidifying slums by giving them a shiny coat of whitewash and eco-friendliness seems like it would serve only to reinforce all the structural violence inherent in systems that have created and drawn people to live in them to begin with.

Even more dangerously, this would allow people at the top of these systems (those people look a lot like you and me, by the way) to convince ourselves that those problems have been mitigated by these nice clean purty new houses. It makes it seem like it's OK to live in a tiny paper (paper!) house packed in like sardines in sprawling slums, like it's just inevitable, just some people's lot in life.

It's pretty clear who loses in that scenario.

So, what is really the point of these things?

That's not a rhetorical question. What do you know that I don't know? What am I not understanding here?

going to the birds

2009-01-11T17:19:00.002-05:00

I don't get it: neither the San Diego nor Pittsburgh football team is named after a bird. Clearly neither of them can win today's playoff game. Who will play the Ravens while the Cardinals play the Eagles?

random ice storm thoughts

2009-01-07T11:11:00.003-05:00

The fact that the CIA is advertising jobs in a huge ad on the NY Times homepage is a bad sign about the future of U.S. (so-called) intelligence services, don't you think?

If Norm Coleman had won in Minnesota by a couple hundred votes, he'd be encouraging his opponent to accept the results and move on gracefully rather than pushing for a costly and time-consuming recount. He might even say repeatedly that if he were in his opponent's position, he'd do just that honorable thing, and allow Minnesotans and the U.S. Senate to move on and get down to business. Oh wait, that actually happened. Bummer for him that he's now down by a couple hundred votes, and pushing for a recount of the recount. Can't have it both ways, Norm. (OK, fine, I suppose you can, but do you realize just how much of a jackass you look?)

Whenever, in the coming months, I need to be cheered up, I will look back on yesterday evening. Froggoddess owed dinner to Mr. Schoolbus for picking her up at the airport, so she decided to take him to the coziest, happiest restaurant around, and emailed a few others to see if we'd like to join. And we did, and then Froggoddess' pseudo-big-brother stopped by to have a drink at the bar, not even knowing we were there. So we pulled up an extra chair. And then the Pickle Man happened in, so we pulled up another chair. And we ate marvelous food, and toasted to everything we could, until eventually the nearby tables started toasting with us, because clearly there was so much to celebrate. Just your ordinary, extraordinary Tuesday evening.

And thank God for my warm and wonderful community, because the world is so f*cked up. The fact that Israel will now hold a brief daily pause in bombing and shooting in order to allow a tiny bit of humanitarian aid through to Gazans before it resumes bombing and shooting at them is the ultimate illustration of the insanity of this conflict. I have been wanting to write something, something much longer than this and more thoughtful and descriptive of the absolute anguish I feel about what Israel (and the U.S., by proxy) is doing to Gaza and to itself and to the world through this assault. I still want to. And I still don't know where to start or what to say. Maybe soon.

my future anthem

2009-01-06T12:17:00.002-05:00

Jitterbug

I will not dance the jitterbug:
those trumpet sounds
and clarinets that once
could hold us in their grasp,
with syncopated blast,
are much too slow for me.
Too calm for my old aging feet,
that nineteen-forties beat –
its rhythms seem predictable,
bygone swinging sounds
inside a calloused ear.

Don’t spin me out and then
pretend to let me go,
or whirl me like a top
while keeping me in tow.
For now I am too fast
and wild with age –
the thinning hair in flight
while brittle arches trap new tones
within old dancing bones.
Burning air is underfoot;
I rise above the floor and fly.

You watch me from afar;
shake your head in disbelief,
lift a labored foot or two,
attempt a lindy hop,
in slow motion. But I keep on –

too filled with speeding time to stop –
too full of sound to act my age.
“Come, be old and really fast
like me,” I beg. I grab you
with a flying hand. “Come!
catch me if you can.”

– Joyce Holmes McAllister

some new year's excitement

2008-12-31T12:42:00.006-05:00

I just received a letter from the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance saying I owe $5,873.63 in back taxes. Apparently I failed to pay taxes in 2004.

Shit.

Oh wait. I DIDN'T LIVE IN NEW YORK IN 2004.

Way to go, NY. I'm so glad that this is where your energy and resources are going. New Yorkers, be proud.

This is almost better than the time North Dakota suspended my driving privileges due to my (allegedly) not having had insurance at the time of the accident in which I totalled my then-boyfriend's car (sorry 'bout that, again...). (Incidentally, that accident happened exactly three years and five days ago. Also, it was not my fault. Really.)

They waited almost a year to decide that I hadn't had insurance and that I was no longer allowed to drive in their fair state. Now, I know you're thinking "So?" but really, who knows when you might need to drive across the northern plains, and it would be just my luck to find myself driving through North Dakota twenty years from now and get pulled over and oops! did you know your driving privileges were suspended? And then I rot in jail in North Dakota. No thank you.

Naturally, I responded to the State of North Dakota and reminded them that actually yes, I did have insurance, and if I hadn't, don't you think I would have been cited at the time by your friendly state trooper? To which they basically said "oh, right" and we agreed to forget the whole thing.

I will now fight the NY Dept of Taxation with the same brilliant argument, which I like to call "logic." You're darn right I didn't pay taxes there in 2004, and no, I'm not about to pay you that $6,000 now. But thanks for the momentary heart attack. Happy New Year to you too.

stickler (i.e. dork) (i.e. bored)

2008-12-19T12:07:00.005-05:00

On the list of minor quotidian annoyances, most of us would probably include "being put on hold to wait for customer service." And being forced to listen to some hideous music designed to make you regret attempting your phone call in the first place. (Though, trust me, whatever you are hearing is better than the hold music of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service, to whose hold music I lost at least three months of my life in 2003-04. I can still hum it from memory.)

But honestly the thing that annoys me more than awful hold music - and I know this will make a few of you nod in agreement and many more of you start to reconsider our friendship - is the recorded message that my "call will be answered in the order it was received."

I do not claim to be the Grammar God (I'm pretty sure the title is already taken by at least three of my close relatives), but please? "In which"? "Your call will be answered in the order in which it was received"... It wouldn't take that much more breath or time to say, and it would just make that sentence so much more... complete-sentence-like.

Oh, wait, I just discovered something yet more annoying [what, you didn't realize I have been on hold waiting for customer service this whole time?]: being on hold long enough to write most of a blog post, just to have another computer voice tell me that all customer service representatives are at a meeting all day today and there is actually no one there to answer my call. Why it took the computer 15 minutes to realize and share that information, I'm not sure.

But I'm not to worry. I am to leave my name and phone number, and someone will get back to me in the order it was received. Oh good.

poster boy

2008-12-15T10:47:00.005-05:00

As if we needed the world to be more ticked off at the effects of American greed and corruption on the world economy, we now have Bernard Madoff bringing down European investment banks single-handedly. Thanks, Bernie.

Apparently a lot of people invested in Madoff's scheme through their financial advisors. The NY Times reports that "investors are now questioning whether these paid advisers were diligent enough in investigating Mr. Madoff to ensure that their money was safe."

Right. I'm gonna go with "no" on that one. I think maybe the "diligent enough" part is automatically negated by the "$50 billion Ponzi scheme" part. Call me picky.

(And by that I mean: For Christ's sake, people, is that actually a question? May I suggest that you think of your lost money as a tax on being dumb.)

Let's be honest here. Madoff isn't that much of an outlier. You don't have to run a Ponzi scheme (or try to sell a U.S. Senate seat) to be corrupt. A bunch of people are skimming millions (billions?) from Wall Street, it's just that they've managed to get it codified as salaries and bonuses and convince the public that anyone deserves to earn that amount of money. And it's not enough that they get paid while Rome burns, they actually want to get paid for setting it on fire. All this while they sell out their companies, cut jobs, and pay no mind to their laid-off employees who have to survive now on unemployment... except oops! we've run out of that money too.

Madoff cooked his books and sold people fairy dust in order to bilk them of billions of dollars, sure, but I really don't see that much of a difference between that and what the rest of the Wall Street big men have done. Except that he'll go to jail, while they just have to settle for a few million less in their bonus check this year. *Sniff*

If the government were to get serious about cleaning up this mess, which I'm not optimistic about, I think they should cap CEO salaries, make most bonuses illegal, and require that all that newfound money go to shore up unemployment benefits, food pantries and homeless shelters. Merry Christmas.

contemplation

2008-12-12T21:31:00.004-05:00

First, let me say that I do have light and heat in spite of last night's ice storm, and apparently I'm very lucky on both those counts.

I'm also apparently lucky in that I have not recently been threatened by rabid semi-aquatic fish-eating mammals.

Moving on...

Here I am, sitting at home at 9:30pm on a Friday night. Now, I'd like to think I wouldn't be sitting at home if it weren't for the fact that I'm on call for work. And it really is quite possible, since there were several enticing options for evening activities today... though, OK, I admit that as usual when I can't quite decide what to do, the idea of staying home was already gaining momentum when the work phone rang and made the decision easy.

Truth is, I think that (knock on wood) I'm fairly close to finished with grad school essays and being able to pull together the whole darn thing and send it off. Today I got the third and final (and longest) essay to a point at which I was actually ready to send it to a few people for comments. It's not quite "there" yet but it's finally close. As I said to one of my essay readers, I feel like I've dragged the thing kicking and screaming this far, if in fact an essay can kick and scream (and it sure feels like it).

And I am totally at loose ends. I've been living and breathing grad school applications for the better part of three months now. What did I do before that? Sure, there are a few things I want to and should be doing - practicing my bass, reading some good books, catching up on emails and phone calls and volunteer projects, getting back into yoga... and anything else that does not allow for massive time-frittering on the internet (she said to the internet), which is quite the hazard of sitting with a laptop on my lap all the time. And I know I will get back to those much more important things, slowly but surely.

I will admit, too, that I have occasionally enjoyed having a good excuse to stay home over the past few months. There has long been a tension in my life of being simultaneously an introvert and an extrovert, and introversion tends to win out particularly at this darkening time of year, and when I'm tired and stressed. I do love people; I just don't necessarily want to be around them.

Yet, I suck at sitting at home and being truly sequestered. Or I don't suck at it; I'm just massively out of practice.

I recall being quite the busy woman before this grad school project took over my life and free time. What was I doing? Where did it go? And why am I so bad at being unscheduled? Why am I totally freaked out by the idea of soon having a lot more free time?

I know, I know: that's dumb. I will look back someday and desperately wish for this problem. I'm not actually complaining, just being introspective (in writing. on the internet.) and rather frustrated with myself. It could certainly be worse. I could be defending my unlit, unheated home from rabid otters with a lacrosse stick.

ny times op-ed quote of the day

2008-12-11T20:52:00.002-05:00

"We face an obesity crisis and a budget crisis, and we subsidize bacon?"

office quote of the day

2008-12-11T14:33:00.002-05:00

"Everyone loves cans of unidentified meat."

shock and awe

2008-12-09T23:32:00.003-05:00

The NY Times would have you believe that even Illinoisans were shocked at just how corrupt the governor turned out to be. As a semi-Illinoisan, I don't buy it.

They're shocked in that way that makes you laugh out loud in amazement when someone shows you that the extremely low expectations you had for them turn out to be still too high. Shocked like when six of the teenage girl's friends already died because they went into the basement in the horror movie, and then she goes downstairs too, because she really is just that dumb, even when there was all that screaming and blood and creepy music that might make a rational person think twice.

Yes, Rod Blagojevich is the ditzy teenage girl getting hacked to death. This was totally coming.

disturbing

2008-12-09T12:14:00.004-05:00

I hadn't realized until now that the phrase "the best and the brightest" was coined to be ironic.

And now history might be repeating itself.

Speaking of disturbing, it is really disturbing that Lawrence Summers is heading up Obama's economic team. Not just because he seems to think women are less capable in math and science than men (though Kim Gandy, President of NOW, poses the very interesting question whether "if [Summers'] comments about women's lack of aptitude for math and science had instead been a comment or an opinion about African Americans having less capacity for math and science, would he be on anybody's short-list?"). And not just because he's generally considered to be a total prick. But mostly because he played a significant part in creating the mess we're in now.

As Naomi Klein points out, there is quite a bit of "intellectual dishonesty" in parts of the Left about when the groundwork was laid for the current economic crisis. Calling it the Bush administration's fault sounds good in an election campaign, and certainly the last eight years have been completely disastrous for this country.

But c'mon guys. Deregulation really started rolling under Clinton. And who ran the Treasury under Clinton? Robert Rubin (who is now eating crow over at Citigroup) and... Larry Summers.

It's not that he failed to forsee the complete implosion of the economy. HE HELPED CAUSE IT.

And this is the guy Obama is going to be turning to for advice? Pardon me if I'm not overwhelmed with optimism.

in case you skipped the ny times this weekend

2008-12-07T18:55:00.003-05:00

Several times as I read this weekend's NY Times I have found myself saying "Wow! Really?" So, I'm suggesting you read about:

1) Socially sanctioned transgender folks in rural southern Mexico.

2) The need for extremely careful, yet bold, decisions about the spending of all this fiscal stimulus money (yes, another I-can't-believe-how-much-I-now-like-Thomas Friedman column).

3) Bill Ayer's first major public statement about himself and the attempts to demonize him during the presidential campaign.

And, as long as we're on the subject of major breaking news, our local high school marching band is going to march in the inauguration parade, and I think that's pretty cool. They're a damn good band, actually.

Other breaking news: I think my new favorite thing is the chai shortbread cookies I made for a potluck today, the leftovers of which I'm hiding from myself until I go to work tomorrow and get my coworkers to eat them so that I won't.

And speaking of coworkers, I work with rock stars! I went to a local production of Puccini's short opera, "Suor Angelica," today - yes! We had a local opera production! - in which two of my coworkers had significant parts, and they blew me away. So I guess by "rock stars" I mean "amazing opera singers" which is pretty much the same thing, I'm sure you agree.

And that was my Sunday. The perfect day, if only it weren't succeeded by Monday.

and a youtube clip shall lead them

2008-12-05T20:56:00.002-05:00

Something called the Churches Advertising Network (leave it to the Brits) apparently ran a competition for the best retelling of the Christmas story in under 30 seconds. I highly recommend that you peruse the winning entries, especially the special commendation, which is actually my favorite.

p.s. Did you know that "peruse" actually means "to examine carefully or closely"? I was ready for it, but it didn't come up on the GRE. I did OK anyway, wheeee! I also learned that "hell" can be defined as "a place in which you have to do the GRE math test for all eternity." And if Jews believed in hell, I would now be very, very good for the rest of my days on this earth.

Odetta, R.I.P.

2008-12-03T12:32:00.001-05:00

"And you reach a fork in the road and you can either lie down and die, or insist upon your life.”

Ohh, she will be missed.

t-4 days

2008-11-30T20:05:00.000-05:00

Until the GRE.

ACK.

a lot of gratitude a little early

2008-11-25T22:50:00.007-05:00

I did, indeed, survive the Logan Airport experience. Thank you for your concern.

However, boo to the Massachusetts highway dept for the 45-minute detour that led me through the scenic downtowns of Athol and Gardner and made me nearly miss my flight. And whose idea was it to screw the subway in favor of an underground bus to the airport from South Station? Not so bad, but totally bizarre.

Also boo to the highway signage that suggests that a gas station is just here, right off this exit, don't worry! It's not like we would put that sign there to maliciously tease you into thinking there's a gas station nearby when really there's just a maze of darkened office parks in which you will probably get lost and needlessly run down what's left in your tank, just so you'll have to get back on the highway and pray until the next exit. Where there won't actually be a gas station either.

But yay for gas prices being down, so that when I finally limped into an open gas station in Leominster and put more gas in my tank than has ever gone in at one time before, it cost less than $25 (I have a small tank).

And now for the part of the story that most of you are probably not actually all that interested in: the wedding and associated weekend activities in Minnesota were WONDERFUL. I realized just how fun the wedding would be when the usher, a college friend, semi-jokingly asked "bride's side or groom's side?" and I was at a total loss as to how to answer (until, of course, he laughed and told me where the rest of our friends were sitting). Our friend The Reverend led a beautiful ceremony, complete with Thais' Meditation played on cello (which is, literally, my favorite piece of music in the world... or at least tied with Kol Nidre played on cello) and a surprise musical tribute from the bride's sister that couldn't have been more emotional had we been in a Meg Ryan movie.

And then, as we were being escorted across campus from the chapel to the reception hall by a bagpiper (both the groom and the college we went to are Scottish, OK?), the women stepping gingerly in our high heels through the remnants of the morning's snow, I realized that we had become Those People. The people who we used to gawk at as they walked across campus in fancy clothes for no apparent reason on random Saturday nights. I also realized a dream that I never even knew I had, which was to be escorted across campus by a bagpiper. I'd put that on the wish list in case I ever have a wedding, except I think that would mean my mother wouldn't come.

We outlasted all the other guests and the reception itself and headed out to the neighborhood bar - with, and at the specific request of, the bride and groom, because they are awesome. But before that came the real moment of glory, which involved weaseling our way into our old freshman dorm and trooping up to the top floor where we all met, and having a Group Nostalgia Moment (aka a 'Were The Rooms Always So Small And The Hallway Always This Narrow?' Moment). And only slightly scared the surprisingly gracious first-years as we peered creepily into their rooms and reminisced.

Except that my freshman year dorm room is now a bathroom. They renovated the dorm a few years ago and added a wing, and turned my room into a bathroom. Some other people's old rooms are just gone now, so I can't really complain. And I'm not really complaining anyway, because a dorm room is a dorm room and it's not like I miss living there.

But I do miss that group of people, crazy as we all were and are. Thank God they happened to me and that we stuck together in our random ways. So much so that now I'm not only still close with most of them, but with their parents too (as evidenced by the Saturday brunch where I spent more time talking to the parents than the friends)... and now, in a few cases, with their gorgeous children.

The Piano Man, the friend that The Reverend and I stayed with in St. Paul for the weekend and who came to the wedding as sort of date to both of us, asked me during the reception if the bride and I had been close. It was strangely hard to answer. I finally said "well, we didn't spend much time one-on-one, but you know, I'd throw myself in front of a bus [not the one that goes to Logan Airport, though] for her, and all that."

Which might not sound like the highest compliment of friendship, but really, when you haven't seen someone in years but you know they'd lay it on the line for you, that if you were desperate tomorrow you could call them and they'd get on a plane, that's about all that really matters in life, don't you think?

All this and it's not even Thanksgiving yet. This weekend in Washington DC promises to be great too, though it can't possibly quite match up. I'm flying out of Hartford.

or die trying

2008-11-20T10:29:00.003-05:00

I wish I'd been carrying a camera around to capture the looks on people's faces this week when I've asked them if they've ever flown out of Boston's Logan Airport. Even the people who said no got a sort of horrified look on their faces, as if I'd just asked them if they ever bit the head off a chicken.

This makes me so very excited to fly out of Boston this afternoon, thanks guys!

Especially since everyone who did have advice to offer about the best way to get to the airport offered me completely different advice. Apparently Logan and the Boston public transit system completely change approximately every 12 minutes.

But assuming I make it through the Logan Airport experience alive and on time, it will all be worth it, because I'm going to Minnesota today for the wedding of college friends, i.e. a massive college friend reunion that is going to be soooooo wonderful.

This is that group of friends from college. Most people seem to have them. They're the people you met on Day One, the people who were with you and stuck with you as you figured out who you are, the people who have seen you on the best days and the worst, and everything in between, because you lived down the hall from each other and no one was about to step outside the dorm in February in Minnesota to visit other friends. Save those friends for the balmy months. These are the people that matter when the chips are down.

And now two of them are marrying each other and most of us will be there to help celebrate. I have trouble imagining a better way to spend a weekend.

Assuming I don't get swallowed by the Boston subway en route.

save tonight

2008-11-16T23:18:00.004-05:00

Several things are happening tomorrow that I'm not at all excited about, not least of which is having to go to work, where certain recent events have managed to disgust me more than most of the pretty nauseating things of the past six months put together (not an easy feat). Most people don't look forward to Mondays, but tomorrow may be one for the record books.

So I'm going to spend a lot of tomorrow thinking about today. How I started the day with a couple hours of work at my food coop, and then went to Greenfield to meet the lovely Ms. Blue Eyes for brunch and lots of talk about Nicaragua, which I absolutely love and where she is about to embark on ten months of Fulbright grant research.

How I came back home and managed to squeeze in a bit of grad school application brainstorming - I wish I could call it "writing" but I don't think it counts if you end up with a blank page at the end, regardless of how many sentences you type and then erase in disgust in the meantime - before the Eight Foot Tall Man (I think he had another nickname at some point in this blog but I can't remember or find it) showed up, announcing that he'd just locked his keys in his car.

We spent a good amount of time laughing hysterically in my driveway while trying to maneuver a mangled wire coat hanger through his window frame to hook around the inside door handle. Which is not a bad way to spend half an hour, especially because it eventually WORKED! Making this the second successful car break-in in which I have participated in the past four months (though admittedly this one wasn't at the top of a remote mountain in North Carolina - you know who you are! - so there was less pressure).

And then we had a fabulous conversation about many things while I got a pot of chili bubbling on the stove, and then friends and more friends showed up for Potluck and Games Night, which has officially become my favorite night of the month because it involves my home, which I love, being filled with my friends, who I love. Which makes me feel, um... loved. Give and you shall receive, they say... I hope that's as true for everyone as it seems to be for me.

Because that is what will keep me going tomorrow. Because it makes everything else livable. Thank you, friends.

take that

2008-11-12T22:52:00.003-05:00

To quote my brother, because I doubt he'll have time to blog about it himself, "Alaska says 'Oh yeah, Minnesota? Try three votes!'" (with Begich in the lead, woohoo!)

(For the record, the margin in the MN Senate race is now 206.)

with no offense to the healing arts

2008-11-12T22:33:00.004-05:00

Can someone please explain to me the logistics of "placebo acupuncture"?

Do they stick you with fake needles? Hypnotize you and make your subconscious believe it happened?

(OK, OK, I do get it now, because I read enough of the article to get the explanation. Now I just want to know, who sits around and thinks "I wonder if you'd be more likely to get pregnant if we just convince you that you've had acupuncture instead of actually sticking you with needles"???) (Answer: someone who gets paid a lot more than I do, I'm sure.)

Next thing you know, you'll be able to get placebo massage therapy where they just pretend to touch you. But I'm sure someone's already trying to market that, anyway (or is that reiki?).

ouch

2008-11-10T11:47:00.001-05:00

You want to know just how broken our healthcare and immigration systems are? Here's your answer. It ain't pretty.

unreal in mn

2008-11-06T21:40:00.003-05:00

236 votes. Out of 2,422,848. (How that is "nearly 3 million," as the Star Tribune suggests, is a little bit of a mystery to me, but whatever.)

236. And anyone doubts that their vote matters?

UPDATE: Aha, I know how that's "nearly 3 million" - it doesn't include the 15% of the vote that went to the Independent candidate, Dean Barkley. And anyone doubts that runoff voting is a good idea?

distraction while we hold our breath

2008-11-04T17:18:00.003-05:00

I can't say much about Election Day right now except that the photo in the NY Times of people lining up to vote outside PS 375 (aka Jackie Robinson School) in Brooklyn made me cry just now.

And I'm really excited that NPR's commentator thinks one of the four towns to watch for indications of how things will go nationally is Claremont, NH, since I canvassed there and I'm really optimistic about it. I'd love to think that it really is a good bellweather (assuming my optimism turns out to be well-founded, of course).

And I would love for things to be called early, but I won't believe anything until McCain concedes. 2004 hurt too much.

And now that I'm done not saying anything about Election Day, I wanted to post this video of some very life-affirming slam poetry. I was talking to someone about this recently and intended to send this to them (you?), but I can't remember who that was (no offense) and everyone should watch it anyway. This is a good moment for life-affirming art.

toward restoration

2008-11-01T23:39:00.003-04:00

When you were a kid, did you wish upon stars?

I don't remember doing it much then, but the concept has somehow had more appeal as I've gotten older.

And just now, coming home from a Sweet Honey in the Rock concert, getting into a good meaty discussion in the car on the way back, getting ready to set my clock back for an extra hour of sleep before canvassing in New Hampshire all day tomorrow, I looked up for a long time at the blanket of stars with the Milky Way streaking across it.

And I'm not gonna lie, I made more than my fair share of wishes. But hey, there are a hell of a lot of stars out there tonight, and there are just so darn many things I'm hopeful for.

when life gives you lemons, make lists of all the things you could do with them.

2008-10-30T11:06:00.006-04:00

WHAT I want to do

Learn how to plan and create sustainable communities that enhance human security after conflict and natural disasters and enable future crisis-resilience

Live in my wonderful apartment in my wonderful community

Sing in my vocal trio

Make some sort of money that allows me to survive in grad school

Get the most I can out of grad school without losing my mind

Play upright bass

Not go into horrific debt

Keep a pretty close eye on what life is actually about (read: NOT academia and stress and isolation)

WHERE I need to be to do these things

Boston

and

Southern Vermont

DISCUSS.

brilliant

2008-10-27T16:25:00.002-04:00

Apparently the way out of the global food crisis is cultivation of potatoes. Yeah, didn't they try that in Ireland a while back? Worked great.

classic

2008-10-25T13:14:00.003-04:00

Friend: "Monkeyhippy, why do you have a meat mallet on the floor of your car?"

Me: "Because it was rattling around too much in the glove compartment."

hopeful

2008-10-24T11:09:00.003-04:00

Have you read the Chicago Tribune's endorsement of Barack Obama? Please do. It's rather awesome. And while it might seem obvious that they'd endorse him, it's actually pretty surprising. The Tribune has never, repeat never, endorsed the Democratic Party's nominee for President.

Also, just for fun: http://taxcut.barackobama.com/. (Thanks, Dan.)

half-seceded already

2008-10-23T11:14:00.003-04:00

I listened with interest last night to the opening of the debate on Vermont Public Radio between the candidates for Vermont's one seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. "Huh," I thought, "I really don't know anything about that race; I should pay attention to this."

I did know that our current Democratic (it might seem like it goes without saying, but hey, our governor is Republican. We can be weird just like everyone else) Representative, Peter Welch, seems to have been doing a pretty good job, and that he's running for re-election. OK, so who's running against him? Just because he's a Democrat and pretty good doesn't mean another candidate isn't better.

See, I decided after the last Presidential election that I have to start voting for the candidate I truly prefer, not just the lesser-of-evils-and-maybe-actually-has-a-chance candidate (though I struggle a lot with this still - and the race for VT governor will put it to the test). I believe the only way multi-party options will become a reality in this country is if those of us who are not impressed with the main party candidates stop voting like lemmings jumping off a cliff and start supporting the people we really want in office (crazy talk, I know). And hey, who knows, maybe even a GOP candidate will be the more impressive. It hasn't happened yet, but I try to be open-minded, really I do.

As it turns out in this case, Peter Welch won not only the Democratic primary for U.S. House but received so many write-in votes in the GOP primary that he's also the Republican candidate.

Have I mentioned I love Vermont. "Wacky as the day is long" should totally be our state motto, except it probably wouldn't fit on license plates.

Now you may have the same logical question my mom asked when I describe this situation to her last night: "Does that mean he debated himself?" Actually, it doesn't, because we have this crazy thing in Vermont called "other parties." He was debating candidates from the Indepent, Progressive, and (widely-known and ever-popular) Liberty Union parties.

But I admit that I didn't listen. I'm all for considering the options, but I'm also all for writing personal statements that will hopefully get me into grad school, and the fact that Rep. Welch was nominated by both major parties is enough for me this time around.

P.S. There is all manner of sketchiness around straight-ticket voting, have you heard? If you live in one of the states where it's an option, DON'T DO IT. Vote for each candidate individually. Thank you.

still here

2008-10-22T15:33:00.002-04:00

Between Wednesday and Monday I spent a total of approx. 36 hours in the car.

The rest of those days I was learning about domestic and sexual violence and child abuse (woohoo), dancing, (re)connecting with some great people, listening to live music, having wonderful conversations with trusted friends who are being excellently helpful on the question of what the heck I'm doing with my life, being freezing cold and totally sick, starting to collaboratively write my first contra dance, and laughing a whole lot. And having almost no internet or phone access. It was, as usual, life-affirming in many, many ways.

Now I'm back in the real world and drowning in my inbox at work and needing to be much more intensely focused on Rachel-getting-into-grad-school activities, and wishing for more time to focus on a few other things (and folks), not to mention wishing I needed much less sleep.

The good news is that I'm not planning to spend more than an hour in the car any day between now and November 5. Well... an hour at a time, anyway...

observations - bonus track

2008-10-12T11:24:00.003-04:00

The world is oh so small! Two of my very favorite people in the world found themselves at the same wedding in Atlanta last night, which wouldn't be so weird except that one of them is a dance community friend from western Mass. and the other is a former work friend from my time in New York, though he lives in Washington D.C. What are the odds that they'd have a mutual friend whose far-away wedding they'd both travel to, much less that they'd find themselves chatting enough to discover that not only do they both know me, but they'd actually met briefly once before, when Jacob (for whom I can't think of a nickname right now, darn it) came to visit me and we went contra dancing in Greenfield. I guess the odds are pretty good, actually. Because it keeps happening. I love it.

observations of the past few days

2008-10-11T21:57:00.010-04:00

Human communication is stunningly confusing sometimes. My belief is ever reaffirmed that a) it's healthy to maintain a certain skepticism about the idea that you understand a person or a situation, and b) it's really a marvel that human beings communicate successfully at all. And c) if you forget to second-guess yourself now and then, the universe will find ways to remind you.
Global capitalist systems have us so twisted that I wonder if we really have to have a total meltdown to wake ourselves up (except I'm not optimistic about even that working, and of course it's easy for me to sit in my cozy apartment and suggest such things as if they're permissible). The Market rules us as if The Market is not made up of PEOPLE, damn it. People. You. Me. Millions of our friends. Does this disconnect not bother anyone else?
My cousin and her partner, who have one adopted and three foster kids, one old arthritic and one young crazy yappy dog, 120 chickens and 18 goats on their farm that will soon house a commercial goat dairy, a full time synagogue rabbinical position, and a long list of community commitments and causes, are my total heroes. My life is so flippin' easy.
Graduate school applications involve many, many steps and pieces and dominoes falling in the right order. My brain feels a little scrambled, and I've barely begun.
We've had enough random tragedies here now. Basta.
Vermont in autumn is actually better, somehow, than it appears in photographs.
Corollary to that: few things are too stressful when you happen upon stunning beauty on a regular basis. Chalk it up to my ADD, maybe, but no matter the rut my brain is stuck in, "ohmygod look at that incredible tree/mountain/sunset" snaps me right out of it.
Flying trapeze is somehow harder and easier the second time. I can't wait to see how it is the third time.
I need more than five or six hours of sleep a night.
My community is full of the most absurdly wonderful people imaginable. I know I've said this before; I just want to make sure the universe knows that I'm still grateful.

roads that don't exist on the map

2008-10-05T22:46:00.002-04:00

I spent all day today canvassing in rural west-central New Hampshire. This is a very different experience from my previous canvassing stints in south Minneapolis four years ago, where we walked house to house in neighborhoods where the houses were quite a bit less than, say, a mile apart. Rural New Hampshire is a different story.

When we returned to the Obama office in downtown Claremont, NH and did our tally sheet, we discovered we'd actually knocked on 17 doors. (By "we" I mean myself and Zoning Man, a new friend from recent debate-watching festivities, whom I hereby introduce to you.)

Seventeen. In four and a half hours. And that might have been counting the house with the majorly mean-looking, snarly, barking, spike-collared, not-tied-up German Shepherd, on whose door we actually got nowhere near knocking. It definitely included the "house" that appeared to actually be a chicken coop with a lamp in the window - there were cedar shavings on the floor and everything!

So really we spent the afternoon driving around on back roads in rural New England looking at the beautiful fall leaves and gorgeous mountain views. And occasionally parking the car and walking up a driveway to knock on doors and chat about politics. And occasionally driving down a road until the asphalt turned to dirt, which gave way to dirt wheel tracks with grass growing in between, which then, at least once, just sort of petered out into the woods. Oops. Turn around (I think I did more three-point turns today than in the rest of my life up to this point).

I don't want to jinx anything, but I am feeling good about the direction New Hampshire's voters seem to be swinging. We were in an area with a demographic that you'd think would be unlikely Obama supporters. Yet, of the maybe ten people who actually answered their doors, we did not talk to a single person who was even leaning toward voting for McCain, much less anyone who was solidly in his camp. Granted, we drove past McCain yard signs (as well as Obama signs) and we were focusing on reaching out to voters who were registered as undecided.

But of those ten "undecided" voters, at least a few were so firmly for Obama that we didn't even stay to chat, because contrary to seemingly popular belief, preaching to your choir isn't a great use of time. Others were really leaning toward Obama. Only a couple were really undecided, and the hope there is that come Election Day they'll remember those pleasant young people who drove all the way out (and we're talking "out there") to their house to discuss the issues and their vote.

Apparently New Hampshire isn't the only swing state where people are feeling optimistic about Democratic progress. There's a good story today on my new favorite poll-watch website (thanks Tim!) about optimism in Indiana, a state Republicans have long counted on, and how perhaps the most heartening thing there is the great mix of people who are coming out to volunteer for Obama. It's not just college students, as is often the case, but all ages and backgrounds. The same appears true in New Hampshire. Zoning Man and I were probably the only 20-somethings in the Claremont office today. The rest of the room was quite mixed, some families with teenage kids, a great elderly couple who were rather dressed up for the occasion, and many people in between.

We care. That feels good. And we care in apparently large numbers in states that some had given up on. We can do this!

if you can't handle cryptic blog posts, turn away right now

2008-10-03T02:18:00.005-04:00

It's 3:00a.m.

You know how last week the debate was on Friday night? Yeah, well this week it wasn't, oops, and that sucks ass for my rapidly-upcoming morning at work.

Granted, the debate ended, um, many many hours ago. But then, see, I needed to sit on my friend's couch and catch up on things and deconstruct structural injustice and try to find our places in the dismantling of White patriarchy, all while watching the Cubs utterly blow it.

And then I clearly needed to wash some dishes, because a) I helped dirty them, and b) another reason I'm not going to talk about. And then I even more clearly needed to stay and have another conversation for an hour and a half. It's part of a game I like to call Diving Head-first Into the Shallow End, or, I Suck At Emotional Self-Preservation, which is related to reason "b" above, and no, I'm not going to explain it now, either. I have faith in you. You're smart enough to guess.

And then I just had no interest in sleep, which quickly degenerates into helloooooo internet! I could do the dishes in my own sink, but those don't have quite the appeal, plus I think my dish-washing karma for the night is more than covered.

...

SIGH.

I'm so screwed.

that was me, being wrong

2008-09-28T00:44:00.002-04:00

There is no toss-up.

Sleep does NOT win out over flying trapeze. I think maybe nothing wins out over flying trapeze. OHMYGOD that was fun. Beyond fun. My hands are rubbed raw and I will be too sore to move a muscle in the morning, and it's worth all that AND too little sleep, and then some.

Anyone want to go to trapeze class with me next week?

way past my bedtime

2008-09-27T01:50:00.004-04:00

And I thought last night was late, after getting home at 12:30 from a long-overdue friend visit that turned into me crouching by his computer "watching" the exciting end of the Twins game (Go Twinks!). But this is Friday night, after all. And there's nothing like a good old debate-watching party to lift the spirits (the liberal ingestion of, um, spirits helps too). Now it's 2:00am, which is really an absurdly late hour to be awake, what with having flying trapeze class in the morning.

I think it's going to be canceled because of rain, though. And given that I would need to get up for it in six hours, give or take, I actually almost hope it's canceled, especially if they reschedule for next week. Hm, flying through the air vs. getting more sleep. It's a toss-up.

Even before trapeze class, I can say with sincerity - but don't just take my word on this; go find out for yourself - there is nothing like flying through the air to remind you that you love life.

By the way, since it's now the job of the internet to tell us who won the debate, here's my take... I think Obama was great, I think McCain looks kind of pathetic when he tries to have that smirky grin on his face, and I think we'll know on Nov. 5 who won the debate.

you heard it here first

2008-09-24T21:16:00.004-04:00

Because I have officially lost faith that good intentions can prevail over ego and incompetence and bureaucracy in the work world (yup, and I've been in the work world only five years. Impressive, no?)...

Because I miss the world of ideas, and haggling over theory and dissecting structural violence and privilege and writing papers instead of sleeping enough (I'm not sure about that last one, but it seems to go with the others, so I may as well embrace it)...

Because reading for pleasure is just too much fun...

Because maybe, maybe, if I play my cards right and things fall into place, I'll come out on the other side more employable...

Because I'm totally in love with where I live, so clearly I need to move...

Because massive debt is fun...

... I think I'm going to try to go to grad school next fall.

And because if two years worth of massive debt is fun, three years must be even more fun...

... I think I want to get a dual Master's degree in International Affairs and Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning.

And if we're really dreaming big here, then maybe I want to go from there and get a Ph.D. and teach college students how to be critical thinkers and social activists.

There, I said it.

That's the hard part, right? Saying it out loud, declaring it to the world? Taking the GRE, applying to school, going to school, and somehow paying for school are the easy parts, yes? I'm sure I read that somewhere once.

best idea ever

2008-09-23T09:56:00.003-04:00

The following message was forwarded to me this morning. I acted on it and I hope you will too. Why? Because protest is good, and hilarious protest that supports great organizations is even better.

Subject: FW: Best Idea Ever!

Dear Friends, We may have thought we wanted a woman on a national political ticket, but the joke may have been on us. Are you frightened as I am by Palin's position on women's issues? May I pass along the following fiendishly brilliant idea?

Make a donation to Planned Parenthood. Of any amount, in Sarah Palin's name. Here's the best part: when you make a donation to PP in her name, they'll send her a card telling her that the donation has been made in her honor. It won't change the election but it will support an important organization and it will make women's voices heard. Here's the link to the Planned Parenthood website:

http://www.plannedparenthood.org/

You'll need to check 'make honorary or memorial gift,' and fill in the name of the person you want to 'honor,' i.e. Palin. Fill in the address to let PP know where to send the 'in Sarah Palin's honor' card. If you use the address for the McCain campaign headquarters, they'll get the message.

McCain's headquarters address:

McCain for President
John McCain 2008
P.O. Box 16118
Arlington, VA 22215

Please free to send this along to all your women -- and men friends and urge them to do the same.

what this is

2008-09-21T19:27:00.002-04:00

This is a grieving process. I realized it this past weekend, while I mercifully escaped into the Cheese Queen's gorgeously nutty house in Ashfield, MA for a harmony singing workshop with the lovely Val Mindel and Emily Miller. Mostly I kept my mind off work, as there was enough to occupy my brain. But several times I did suddenly realize that my mind had wandered back into the minefield and I had to go retrieve it before anything bad happened.

During one of those wanderings, I guess, it came to me that part of the reason I feel like I'm on a constant emotional roller coaster is that I'm grieving for what could have been, for the possibilities of my job that will now never be realized.

Except until certain things happen, it's more like grieving for someone that has a terminal illness but hasn't yet died. Or being in a relationship that has a predetermined end date. Just waiting for the other shoe to drop, so to speak. I'm not saying that this is as bad as dealing with a loved one's terminal illness; thank God I don't know from experience. But in a way it's not terribly different. When you have a vision of your life that's pretty great, and pretty much on-track, and suddenly it's thrown out the window and there's apparently nothing you can do about it, that feels pretty major.

I will be fine, one way or another. As Billy Jonas sings (six or seven times a day on my iPod these days), "any way you go you're gonna get there." Obviously there are oodles of privilege running around my life, and no matter what happens I will find a way to land on my feet, and even (though I don't want to jinx anything there) stay in my wonderful new apartment and keep dancing and singing.

I just have to grieve a while first.

better today

2008-09-10T21:33:00.002-04:00

The FCC has declared my self-exposure yesterday as slightly less appropriate and far less culturally significant than Janet Jackson's nipple at the Super Bowl. I am therefore dutifully bleeping it out of existence.

Apparently last night I needed to have a tantrum to the internet. Today I need to keep my shirt on and apologize for outburst.

Yesterday was, indeed, a really bad day. I am still struggling with all of that, and in some ways probably will forever, as it re-emphasizes questions I've had for a while now about personal and professional priorities, the purpose (if there is one) of ambition as it's traditionally defined, and what's really important in life. I continue to be pretty disappointed in our culture's mainstream answers to these questions, and to be unsure of whether the most sane response is to fight the system or go live off the grid in the woods somewhere.

And then I got a good night's sleep and woke up this morning deciding that my current situation is what it is, and I will fight it and stand up for myself and make whatever decisions I need to make, but I will not wallow in depression over stupidity I have no control over, and I will not let it take over my life.

You're probably as relieved as I am. As is the FCC. Just trust me on that.

and...?

2008-09-09T22:59:00.006-04:00

This post has been removed.

and in other news

2008-09-05T22:20:00.002-04:00

What if, in order to maintain my dignity and integrity, I have to quit my job next week?

Wouldn't that be interesting?

feeling less alone

2008-09-04T15:44:00.003-04:00

I don't think anyone is more surprised than me that my very favorite thing to read on the internet, besides the webpage of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (yes, really) is a blog by an ex-Mormon married mother in suburban Utah. Then again, she somehow appeals to a whole lot of us, apparently. And today I love her more than pretty much ever before.

And here's my favorite comment on the post (though I did not read all 452 of them), from someone named Adrienne:

"I keep looking at Palin like, really? that's...the best they could come up with? And I'm not a little bit offended that the Republican party seems to think I'll look at her and say "OMG, *you* have ovaries? *I* have ovaries! I should TOTALLY vote for you and that guy who was lobotomized by the Republican party two years ago in return for the CHANCE of being president!" As though, perhaps, the presence of my ovaries renders me retarded..."

time bomb

2008-09-04T09:52:00.006-04:00

I may not really blog at all over the next ten weeks, but rather just pass along the excellent points of others. Like this one, the full title of which I'm going to share because it's just so good (as is the article):

Ask Not What Bristol Palin Can Do For You, Ask What Sarah Palin Can Do For Your Pregnant Daughter.

Is anyone else terrified at the thought of Sarah Palin being one (old, jowly) heartbeat away from the Presidency? Why isn't EVERYONE terrified at that thought? I'm not saying that as a proud liberal, feminist and Obama supporter; I'm saying it as someone who feels really lucky in life in this country and on this planet, who is scared and saddened more than enough at the current state of things and the dire need for us to begin repairing some of the damage of not just the past eight years but really the past 50 or 100.

How in the world does anyone think she could do a good job as President? From what I've seen so far, her greatest strength is that she's good at biting retorts and degrading comments, not to mention glossing over hypocrisy on personal vs social issues (see link above). Good for campaigns, useless and dangerous in leadership.

But then, it's starkly obvious that John McCain's campaign is only about getting to the Presidency, not being a good President. It's insulting to me, particularly as a woman, and, frankly, it's pathetic. Or would be if it weren't so scary.

Oops, I guess I just blogged after all.

in case you missed this

2008-09-03T12:35:00.005-04:00

If you didn't read my most recent post, and haven't been watching the news OH WAIT THEY HAVEN'T REALLY MENTIONED ANYTHING ABOUT THIS, here are some links to more info about the raids, arrests and general intimidation of protesters and journalists by St. Paul police and National Guard troops at the RNC. As a former St. Paul resident, I am ashamed of the city I once proudly called home.

those were the days

2008-09-02T11:40:00.001-04:00

I miss the days (oh wait, maybe they never existed) when the right to freedom of speech and assembly meant something, don't you?

believe it or not

2008-08-28T12:39:00.005-04:00

I am ever-fascinated by the mystique that seems to surround New York City, and the obnoxious obsession with its own greatness that pervades feelings and writings about the place. Of course, a local paper should probably be something of a cheerleader for its hometown, even if that local paper is the New York Times. So I can't be too annoyed by this article. That said, I really have to take issue with a few specific examples of that obsession.

For one, the way that many, include this article's authors, totally exaggerate the "rude New Yorker" reputation. Actually, I've always been pleasantly surprised by the willingness of New Yorkers to stop and help someone find their way. I visited New York twice before I lived there, and both times, as I found myself on a street corner trying to plot my course on a subway map, had people stop and ask me if I needed help finding my way.

I made a point of doing it while I lived there, because I was so happy to have that myth dispelled for me when I was a tourist. Funny thing is, I got asked for directions all the time - literally, every day - at the beginning, when I was fairly clueless myself. As time went on and I got pretty good at it, fewer people asked me. Perhaps New York doesn't harden your soul so much as your face.

And sure, I've had rude cab drivers, but more often I've experienced the (sometimes annoyingly insistent) friendliness of cabbies who actually want to know about me and to talk about their day. Maybe that's because I started the small talk. Maybe New York just isn't actually exempt from the Golden Rule.

So many times I've wanted to shout "YES it's OK to love living in New York! I just don't, AND THAT'S OK TOO."

I can't figure out if New Yorkers have to tell themselves and the world that they're unique and rude and tough in order to gird themselves to put up with the craziness, or if they really want to believe it. Or if they hear "I don't like living here" as "I am weaker than you and/or less able to appreciate the wonders of this city" because the culture of the city mandates it or because a lot of them would otherwise have to admit that they don't actually like living there either.

It's not just "the sinking realization of what an alienating place the city can be, especially for those who are not wealthy or who do not have a pre-existing network of friends." It's not that "the subway maze seems indecipherable." It's the obsession with money, and the need to spend lots and lots of it to live in a non-shitty apartment in a relatively safe and interesting neighborhood within an hour's subway trip of anything worthwhile (like, um, your job).

It's that it's much easier to eat out and go shopping than to get away from traffic and see the stars at night, and I've realized that my priorities are the other way around. It's that that realization doesn't make me weak, but that the New York Times wants you to think it does.

An interesting thing happened when I decided to move to Vermont from New York: a lot of people I talked to got a faraway look in their eyes and spoke wistfully about how great that sounded. Some of them have families and friends and lives settled enough that staying is just easier than leaving. Many have great jobs that are only in NYC. And I totally respect that; I miss the organization I worked for in the city, and one of my major hesitations about going to grad school is that many of the jobs that would be appealing and available afterward are there and nowhere else. We all have to set our own priorities and find ways balance them, despite it often being logistically and emotionally difficult.

And, yes, before anyone gets too pissed off at me, I know perfectly well that many people - good, friendly, interesting people - completely love it there and have wonderful lives and friends and really sincerely can't imagine wanting to live anywhere else. And I'm happy for them.

I just get tired of insisting that I didn't get chewed up and spit out. I just didn't like it. You might hate living in Brattleboro, VT. That's fine. That's why both places exist and are populated (the latter with many transplants from the former, actually).

While this whole thing probably sounds like a defensive tantrum, it's really intended only to offer another perspective that you won't get from that article. My perspective is that, nope, the city didn't fit me; it was always an XXL t-shirt on a small frame, and a grimy-yet-incredibly-overpriced one at that. But actually it wasn't as mean and intimidating as they apparently would have you believe.

It's a great place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there.

i strongly suggest protective head gear

2008-08-19T21:28:00.011-04:00

Soon I shall post rapturous odes to the glory of living alone in my wonderful new apartment... but not yet (I can actually hear your sigh of relief).

(I would like to take this moment, however, to speak rapturously of Ben & Jerry's Phish Food ice cream, which I happen to be dripping onto the keyboard right now. O! How it dost steal my heart and enlarge my ass.)

Today I just want to say that on the way to meet The Linguist for a lovely dinner in Greenfield tonight, I pulled up short before turning a corner in order to give a cyclist the right of way. As he looked back, I realized it was one of my favorite folk singers, who happens to live locally. I didn't really come close to hitting him, and the silly man wasn't wearing a helmet, but that didn't stop me from feeling just slightly more startled than I otherwise might in such a situation.

It's like the time I worked up the courage to take my violin to a local session, planning to hide in the back, and ended up stuck in the middle next to a) one of the most attractive men in my community, on whom I have the kind of crush that makes you feel completely stupid every time you're in the presence of the other person, which is both fun and really annoying now that I'm not in 6th grade anymore, and b) one of the best composers and performers of traditional music, um, anywhere. And my violin bridge spontaneously snapped in half while I was trying to adjust the tuning and the pieces went shooting through the air just past Mr. Incredible Musician's head, and I thought to myself, gee, wouldn't it be fun to be forever known as the person who BLINDED Keith Murphy by (very accidentally, but still) stabbing him in the eyeball with a piece of my instrument?

I think I'd much rather stab myself in the eyeball with a piece of my instrument.

It's not that I have it in for musicians or that I'm particularly prone to almost causing bodily harm to musicians I admire. It's just that there are more musicians around here than you can shake a stick at, whatever that phrase actually means, so you're bound to nearly run one over sooner or later. You didn't know that music could be a contact sport, did you?

this blog is going to the dogs. don't worry, it will come back.

2008-08-17T07:19:00.004-04:00

The best part of yesterday was having so many people show up to help me move that it took only a couple of hours, which is really far less than I deserve. I love my community. The contra dancing community (+ Ben) moving company really should give it a go. We're damn good at this. I had the whole afternoon and evening to unpack and move things around and start to get the place settled.

The worst part of yesterday was realizing that I actually had to say goodbye to The Dog, who is going to Maine today with his actual owner. It's a very good thing, since I'm not living there anymore, the house is pretty empty without my furniture, and he'll love being in Maine with his (human) mama and lots of space to run around. But to give you an idea, I'm almost crying right now at the memory of saying goodbye to him.

Conclusion: I really love my new apartment. And I really, really miss The Dog.

big talk

2008-08-14T12:30:00.002-04:00

Thomas Friedman does it again.

(Here's where I pointed out his doing it before.)

sweet and cuddly except sometimes not (not an autobiography)

2008-08-10T21:17:00.012-04:00

My housemate went to Maine to work on a farm this summer, allowing me to wallow just a little bit more in the fantasy that The Dog actually belongs to me. And perhaps letting me gain a little bit of perspective just in time to soften the blow of the upcoming massive separation anxiety I am sure to feel starting next weekend, when I no longer live here and can't live in that fantasy world anymore (nor, because of the rules of my new apartment, can I turn the fantasy into reality by getting a dog of my own, darn it).

While he doesn't hesitate to wake me up in the middle of the night to remind me that I'm a lousy human who continuously fails to do things like stop the thunderstorms or pet him 24 hours a day, we've generally been getting along very well. We go for walks once or twice a day, aka "who will attack us this time?" excursions that are getting a little old, in my opinion, though they do keep us on our toes.

See, The Dog is one of those Very Large breeds, or mix of breeds more accurately, that look scary to people and intimidating to other animals. Little do they know that all he really wants in life is people to pet him and walk him and generally love him ALL THE TIME. That almost any time you hear him growl or bark in our house, it's his way of saying "Hey! Remember how you were going to pay attention to me now?" He is a young adult male pit bull/boxer mix, and those are breeds that love their people (sometimes more than we can handle). And like to dominate other dogs, particularly male dogs.

And we live in a town where there are a LOT of other dogs, including a lot of other large dogs. For reasons that confound me - maybe they watched Lassie too much as kids - a lot of my neighbors seem to dislike keeping their dog on a leash, even when walking down the sidewalk on my street, one of the busiest in town. This is very sweet and happy-go-lucky and all, until my pit bull decides to eat your chihuahua because he thought it was a one of those organic fair trade dog treats they sell at the Co-op.

I admit that this is somewhat hypocritical of me, because The Dog can somewhat regularly be found wandering innocently around the front of our house with no leash, though he knows perfectly well he's not supposed to (oh, don't give me that anthropomorphizing stuff; look into his eyes - he knows). See, we let him out back to pee, and since we live on a hill that's at approximately a 90-degree angle from the road, there's no possibility of building a fence to keep him out there. He knows he's supposed to bark from the back door, but sometimes he wanders around and waits at the front door instead. My biggest fear is that he'll run into the street, followed closely by the fear that someone will get nervous about seeing a pit bull wandering around and call the cops.

Which is what I feel a bit like doing every time we're out walking and we go by a house with a dog running free, and I have to hold my breath and pray that they don't take an interest each other (after all, the other dog might try to defend its rightful territory while The Dog would counter with the old "But I peed on your lawn just this morning" argument, and then the gloves are off). The same applies when we're walking the paths through the woods nearby and pass by people walking their dogs off-leash. I'm guilty of it too, especially on the mountain trails where keeping him on the leash is a recipe for me to get pulled down a mountain much more quickly than I'd like to go (though I am clearly capable of falling on my ass without his help, too). But in the last four days we've gone on five walks, and on each of those walks we have had nerve-wracking encounters with other dogs.

I don't want to give you the wrong impression here. Most of the time he's fine. Most smaller dogs are afraid of him, and he usually just sort of looks over their heads with a facial expression that says "I would almost notice you, if only you weren't such a tiny, insignificant speck." I have to wonder about the little dogs (like the one we met tonight) that jump right at him; either they have a very over-inflated sense of self-importance, or they're actually just flinging themselves toward his mouth on the assumption that that's where they're about to end up anyway, so might as well make it quick.

Many larger dogs aren't a problem either. He likes a friendly butt-sniff as much as the next guy, and likes the ladies enough to make me wonder sometimes if his neuterer did a complete job. But then there's the shepherd trotting along after its owner's bicycle on the opposite side of the street yesterday who merrily jogged out into traffic to come meet us (I think it was going to be a friendly meeting, actually, but I'd rather you not get hit by a car for it, thank you). And the collie we met in the woods the other day, where I could tell things were not looking good just from the way their tails sprung higher and higher up into the air the closer we got. Luckily I had him on a leash and the collie's owner grabbed his dog around the neck and pulled him away as they lunged at each other's faces.

Of course, ten seconds later you'd have never known that he'd just tried to bite another dog's head off. Lunge-chomp-done. Maybe that's better than current human methods of conflict resolution. Our species does things much more slowly, and with far more expensive and complicated weaponry. And we hold grudges much longer. But I don't have the option of putting Dick Cheney on a leash (believe me, I'd take it), so I have to do what I can to help keep order in the little corner of the world that I have some say in. All I ask is that others do the same.

purposefully cryptic*

2008-08-07T14:42:00.006-04:00

Highlights of the whirlwind Miami trip earlier this week:

the beach
speaking Spanish
delicious handmade pasta (at Spiga, for those of you heading to South Beach for a meal anytime soon)
watching storm clouds go the other direction, for once
the beach, early in the morning, empty except for me
starting the day with real espresso, made by a real Italian guy, in a tiny little Italian cafe, where all the other customers were (really!) Italian.
eating lunch and reading the newspaper cover to cover at News Cafe (from which Gianni Versace was walking home when he got shot, says my friend Ben) and watching the fancy people go by
coming home

Lowlights:

the task I was actually sent there to do, which luckily went OK
coming back to the hotel, turning on the news, and having the shit scared out of me after the fact
the Miami Beach version of a good time, which appears to involve lots of money, tiny bikinis, fake tans, nightclubs, and clothing boutiques... none of which interests me, in case you wondered
the sunburn on my upper lip. Not the lower one, just the upper. How do I do these things? Clearly I carefully covered my lower lip and then stared up into the sun.
the airport shuttle driver, who said he supported Hillary Clinton and is dismayed that "now they want to paint the White House black." To which I said "yup, and I think it would be one of the best things to ever happen to this country." He changed the subject and started telling me about his Shih Tzu puppies.

I'm tempted to start speculating in print here about why I volunteer for things that might suck. OK, more accurately, I've been speculating for the last five or 10 minutes, then hit the "delete" button. It doesn't it really matter. I do it, I'll keep doing it, and I don't believe in harboring regrets.

But sometimes the things that might suck really do.

*I really can't get more specific, sorry.

the universe having fun

2008-08-02T09:26:00.009-04:00

On Tuesday morning I looked at my boss and said "wow, it's been quite a week... Oh crap, it's only Tuesday."

Part of the problem is that the craziness started on Sunday, when the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival suddenly found itself in the path of a severe thunderstorm that I can only assume was of right-wing conservative suburban origins, given it's apparently strong desire to blow away all us New England folk music hippies. The festival folks are calling it (erroneously, I'm fairly sure) a tornado; my lay-meteorologist brother thinks it was a derecho; I just thought it was a great thunderstorm, except I was worried about the safety of festival-goers (rightly, from what I've since seen on YouTube - people holding up tents by bracing themselves against the tall metal tent poles. Um... tall metal poles? Lightning? Guys?).

Of course, it was easier for me to stay calm - not only did I grow up with (and now actually really miss) that weather, but I was in the dance tent, which stayed upright and dry - if not quiet - under the golf-ball-sized hail. At least, until the over-saturated ground stopped accepting the water pouring down on it - a nearby town reported .93 inches of rain in ten minutes. Ten minutes! - and the whole place flash-flooded, sending water up over the edge of the 3-inch platform dance floor. And the power got knocked out. Of course, what do contra dancers do under such circumstances? A few people grab brooms to fight the water out, the band goes to the middle of the hall, and everybody waltzes (as opposed to contra dancing, which requires a caller with a microphone).

That worked until they advised everyone to get out because two of the big tents had already blown down, and oh by the way DON'T TOUCH THE METAL POLES. Um, yeah, time to go. And, due to trees down on the road to the interstate, it only took me 3.5 hours to make the usually-two-hour trip home. The back roads through the Berkshires are lovely this time of year. Trust me. I've now seen most of them.

Sunday should have warned me about the rest of the week; I may have just stayed home in bed had I properly read the signs. Monday brought some crazy stories from the previous Friday (when I wasn't in the office), trying to find a way to get some very important items couriered from Vermont to Florida ($4000!!) and a surprise last-minute trip to Springfield, MA to pick up the surprise last-minute candidate for Dean of Students (who I loved, yay!). Tuesday brought the request from high-ups in my organization that I be the courier to Florida (no, they're not paying me $4000; that's sort of the point of sending me)... on Thursday.

It's surprisingly easy to make arrangements to fly to and stay in Miami on less than 48 hours notice. And surprisingly easy to cancel them and make them all over again, when it turns out a day later that I actually needed to go this coming Monday, instead of Thursday. I'd actually alread checked into my flight, and assumed that the airline would take this opportunity (since they don't seem to miss one these days) to financially eviscerate me for my "mistake," but no. I called, they canceled it, I called Expedia, and they actually offered me a way to cancel and rebook with no change fee, which they totally did not have to do. The universe is smiling.

The last couple days of the week didn't really match up to the first few (thank God). Now it's Saturday morning and I'm sorting through stacks of CDs that I am going to get rid of (did you hear that, world? I'm getting rid of things. Not a lot of things. But still. I'm actually doing a pre-move purge, aren't you proud? Sarah, this means you).

I'm really just trying to stay awake - it's 10am and I just returned from spending the night on top of a mountain. Adventure Man, in one of his many wonderful outing schemes, loves to go stargazing, and keeps an eye on the moon cycles and cloud cover forecasts. So, we headed up Putney Mountain last evening, hiking the mile or so to the top right at sunset, spread out our sleeping bags, and urged the clouds (and the distant lightning occasionally reflecting off of them) to go back from whence they were coming. We didn't have much success at first, but after dozing off for a couple hours I woke up looking at a blanket of stars over my head. When Adventure Man woke up he exponentially increased my knowledge of constellations, and we just marveled at the view of the Milky Way and the nearly constant shooting stars seemingly just above our faces.

Oh, and I nearly forgot the guy playing the saxophone. After we'd been on the mountain maybe 45 minutes, I saw light flashing off the trees near us. Being fairly sure that I hadn't done any hits of acid before our outing, I looked around and around for signs of other humans, and sure enough after a few minutes a young man came out of the woods on the trail we'd climbed, and as he passed us to find another flat sleeping spot he called back over his shoulder "will it bother you guys if I play some saxophone?" Resisting the urge to ask him how good a saxophonist he is, we said "sure" and proceeded to be serenaded to sleep by what I can only call New Age saxophone. Of all things.

It's not the most rested way to start a weekend, but it's pretty spiritually refreshing. Which I needed, to keep packing through the weekend and be ready fly to Miami bright and early on Monday. Once I'm back I'll just be holding my breath until Move Day, happily just a week and a half away. I just hope that these are really the only things that happen in the next two weeks. Since the last week seemed to last about a month.

laughing til i cried... or crying til i laughed?

2008-07-28T09:46:00.004-04:00

My office-mate was recently laid off because his full-time position was eliminated due to budget cuts. He was then immediately hired to fill the half-time temp position that they created to cover for the loss of his position. At this moment he is on the phone at his desk. Trying to sign up to receive his unemployment check.

curious

2008-07-27T20:28:00.001-04:00

Ye who checked my blog from Libya: who are you?

as it turns out

2008-07-24T20:52:00.003-04:00

No cookies were necessary.

WOOHOO!!!!

August 15 is The Day - the day I get to take on the privilege of paying rent for two different apartments simultaneously, since my current lease runs until September 1. But it will be worth it to get to move over the course of a couple weeks instead of one horrid day as usually happens. Volunteers will be welcome :) I will help you move in return. Many people can attest.

And thank goodness this got worked out today, because the rest of my workday was a bit of a three-ring circus. I can't say more than that without saying too much about my workplace on the internet. Let's just say, my approach of keeping my expectations low so as not to be disappointed is serving me well. Sadly, I think this is probably good advice for just about any workplace. For your sake I hope you disagree.

In entirely different news, because you totally needed to know this: I just made some kick-ass zucchini bread. And if you are going to be at the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival this weekend, come find me; I made it to share.

impatience

2008-07-23T19:31:00.006-04:00

I found the (seemingly) perfect apartment yesterday. Looked at it over lunch hour and faxed in my rental application - complete with cover letter - about 15 minutes after returning to the office. They want someone for August 1, which really isn't that far away, though I hope they let me move in at the end of August without having to pay rent for the whole month, since I'll still be paying rent at my current house. But I would pay both if I had to. It's that great.

I hereby apologize for the fact that no matter what I'm doing or what we're talking about in the next few days (they can't take longer than a few days, can they? CAN THEY???), I will be somewhat distracted by the part of my brain simply repeating over and over "I really want that apartment, I can't wait to hear about that apartment." Really. I'm sorry. If you think you're annoyed by it...

Anyway, I'm considering taking the rental company fresh-baked cookies. Overkill?

excuses, excuses

2008-07-21T22:22:00.012-04:00

First I went on vacation, and then I spent a week wallowing in self-pity about having to actually work for a living. And in the in-between times I was walking the dog and playing the bass and hiking and going to a fabulous local music festival and seeing an actual movie... in a theater and everything!

So, that's where I've been. Worry no more. I'm still here. Just distracted.

There's no way to adequately describe the wonderfulness of my vacation, so here are just some snippets from the past couple weeks.

There was the night of the staff concert that lasted forever and ever, after which most people stumbled out toward their dorm beds (or, just as likely, their very-late-night jam session of choice), and Jean Ritchie, living legend of traditional Appalachian ballad singing, no spring chicken herself, came into the theater lobby where I was working in the CD booth and sat down to sing shape note hymns with a very lucky few bystanders. That's my dear friend Meredith on the right, and my new friend Matt (also my neighbor - we live in the same town in southeastern Vermont so of course we had to go to western North Carolina to meet) on the left. Milt, the lovely music prof who taught my only-slightly-torturous-in-a-vacation-sort-of-way 9am music theory class, is the guy just over her left shoulder. And that's Jean's son peering down from above. There's a photo on someone else's camera of me sitting next to Matt, singing with Jean. Talk about once-in-a-lifetime magical moments.

There was also the utter hilarity of the entire week. I haven't laughed that hard, that often in a long time. Working in the CD booth was so fun that, I kid you not, I spent a lot of my free time there when I didn't have to be working. That's messed up. Not only did I get a whole lot of musical knowledge and some fabulous new friends out of it, but it also gave birth to - you heard it here first - a new band. We found ourselves singing a couple songs in harmony, and the good acoustics of the theater lobby can't take all the credit for how great we sounded together. Here are my two lovely new bandmates, and, of course, the leftover bourbon:

Of course, forming a new band with three people who live in North Carolina, Ohio and Vermont presents some logistical challenges, but we have strong faith in the power of technology, road trips to magical music festivals that A Certain Someone is going to be given absolutely no choice about going to, and the rest of that bourbon to make us utterly ready to take the show on the road. When we're all done with college and grad school and day jobs, that is. (I have a hunch I'll be ready to give up the day job before they're through with those other things.)

And speaking of music festivals, unassuming little Greenfield, Massachusetts has a very impressive thing going on, as I found out this past weekend. Apparently the Green River Festival has been happening for 22 years now, and growing every year. It's a great, chill, community-oriented festival that just happens to have people like Lucinda Williams and Mavis Staples and Los Straightjackets playing. I baked in the heat and humidity on Saturday and had a nasty dehydration headache by the time Lucinda Williams came on in the evening (and that's after 2 liters of water! that I totally just sweated out). But they did a good job on both musical entertainment (did I mention Cajun music? GOOD Cajun music!) and meteorological effects, especially since we only had to suffer a few minutes of rain to get this very intense rainbow.

Another thing I did on Saturday was see an apartment that I can but shouldn't decide to afford, where I could live alone and have space for all my stuff and all the guests and potlucks and houseplants (light! the apartment actually gets daylight! I'm not sure I remember what that's like) I could hope for. I was supposed to live this coming year with a sweet housemate in a sweet house while the house's owner moved temporarily to Mexico, but the latter fell through and I may give up on the former and just take the plunge into the living-alone scenario I've wanted to try since... well, since I first started living in apartments at all. Is this the time? I know I want it, but I've still needed to spend the last couple days asking everyone to convince me I'm not crazy.

Feel free to add your two cents on that question in the comments. Housing-related or not.

i [heart] big colorful explosions in the sky

2008-07-04T23:18:00.005-04:00

I should not be blogging right now, no no. I should be finishing up packing for my Glorious Week Of Vacation and getting to bed. I need to be out the door around 6am to catch my flight to North Carolina. Sweet, sweet vacation. Sweet week of singing and fiddling and harmonizing and geeking out about music with lovely people in a really beautiful place. Have I mentioned how totally absurdly excited I am? It is past time for a week away.

But I just wanted to say one thing tonight: Despite all the things my country does that make me so angry and horrified and sad, and despite what it says about us that we celebrate our country by shooting off big explosions (fitting, no?), OHMYGOD fireworks are so cool. Fireworks in Wilmington, VT, no less. Wow.

So, I wanted to say that. And then I realized that I said pretty much the same thing last year. At least I'm consistent on a few things in life.

Now, to music camp! See you on the flip side~

striking terror

2008-07-03T10:44:00.007-04:00

I started today with my boss making me want to cry.

But it's totally not what you might think (actually, I have the best boss in the world, hands down). See, she spent the last few days camping in Maine, and when she came back today she talked about listening to New Hampshire Public Radio on most of the car ride up before losing reception and switching over to AM talk radio, which is about all you can get in rural Maine.

She said NHPR had an interview with Seymour Hersch, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who's been writing lately about Bush's quiet-but-very-real preparations for attacking Iran. He talked about feeling that six months ago he never would have dreamed that we'd be where we are now, that preparations would have proceeded this far, that we'd be so ready. He never would have thought it would be so likely. But it is, he says, and there's going to continue to be a gradual, pseudo-reluctant buildup to it so that when it happens it seems like we had to do it. We'll start hearing that Israel is threatened, that they need to strike against Iran before they get attacked, but that they can't do it successfully without our support [because we have such a track record of success in these things, riiiiiight...]. Terri Gross was, apparently, in disbelief.

And then my boss switched over to AM talk radio and immediately heard the ABC news break reporting that - GUESS WHAT! - Israel needs to attack Iran, but they may not be successful without U.S. support! If we don't join them, Israeli and U.S. targets could be threatened!

[Insert vaguely threatening, slowly crescendo-ing music here.]

In a recent interview on Democracy Now, Hersch said: "I mean, this has been an issue for this president for three years. As you know, I've been writing in the New Yorker, you know, constantly about this stuff. And it doesn't go away. After three years, our submarines are there, they have the targets, our cruise missiles, our destroyers are there. The cruise missiles are loaded on 'em and all targeted. Our Air Force, the Navy in particular is going to have a big role -- not so much Navy, but Marines. Air Force and Navy, they have their target selection, they've gone through the practice. We have ground troops. One of the problems with hitting Iran, if you hit 'em big, is a lot of their anti-aircraft and anti-missile batteries are dug in underground so Marines or other units have to go in and basically blast them out. Before you bomb Iran, you have to take out their radar and their defensive systems. So you can't do it in any other way than a big package unless you want a lot of your planes shot down. And so, this has all been practice, it's been exercise. They've done it, they're ready to go. I can tell you that, no matter what Gates thinks, and no matter what Mullen thinks, if the president says "go" on January the 13th, 2009, a week before the inauguration, they will go. Because that's just the way the system is."

Here's his New Yorker article on the subject.

This isn't a joke. Apparently it doesn't matter how many of the military's top guys say we shouldn't do this. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the Secretary of Defense are both publicly saying it's a bad idea. Yet the Democrat-controlled Congress is letting it happen. Who approved that $400 million? Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi. Way to lead the "opposition." Idiots.

We can't sit back and think we wouldn't be this stupid. WE ARE THIS STUPID. And I'm terrified. So I'm talking about it. Please talk about it. This is not just me being a tree-hugging liberal. We all know at least a little bit about the awful shape our military is in as a result of the war in Iraq. How in the world could we fight Iran - a country with far more organized and loyal armed forces than Iraq had - at the same time? More than half of our national budget is already going to "defense" spending. We're already in a recession that few people are really acknowledging. How could attacking Iran be anything but disastrous for the U.S.? And see, it seems like most people agree. Yet, we're sliding right toward it.

I'd like to say we can stop this, but the amazing thing is that this administration has really effectively obtained the power to do a whole lot of things in secret and pretty much do whatever it wants without oversight. As Hersch says, they've basically managed a total corruption of the democracy in which we like to think we live. So, um, I'm not actually sure we can stop it. But if we don't try, then we might as well stand on the street corner with "Bomb Iran" signs.

And gosh darn it, I was in such a good mood when I came into the office this morning.

for real this time

2008-06-30T21:32:00.008-04:00

According to some, I officially became an adult in June 1993 by reciting Torah in front of a bunch of my friends and family. Others might say it happened the day I left for college, or perhaps the day just before the beginning of senior year when I signed the lease on my first apartment and wrote my first rent check.

I don't know if any of those milestones really made me an adult. I'm not sure I know what being "an adult" really means, since I've often seen so-called adults acting pretty childish or childlike (with negative and positive connotations, respectively). In fact, I'm increasingly less sure that this whole adulthood thing is really all its cracked up to be.

Regardless, I think maybe my real passage to adulthood happened during the past few days. My first serious boyfriend got married. Two of my dearest friends in the world announced that they are (well, technically she is) pregnant with their first child. And, for the first time in my (very lucky) life, I am dealing with the very sudden and shocking death of a friend.

It's funny how things hit you sometimes in a particular way, at a certain time, and take up nearly the whole world. Other friends and people I've dated have gotten married. It's not like he left me for her; in fact he got together with his now-wife a few months after I had a fairly immature romantic crisis and ended our relationship (um, you're welcome?). Other friends, including some very close friends, already have or are about to have (yay for the Lady of the Lakes and Cool Cat!) babies. And people I love - people to whom I was, frankly, much closer than I was to the friend I just lost - have died.

So why is this so hard?

Is it because I feel very far away from the joy and very close to the sadness?

I see wedding photos that someone posted on Facebook, full of many of my closest friends, and it hurts a little that I wasn't there to help celebrate. I know that sounds nuts, but I'm actually on good terms with just about everyone I've ever dated, and I was friends with Boyfriend Numero Uno long before we were in a relationship. I miss him like I miss other people who were a very major and positive part of my life at one time or another, and I still care about him. All that I-use-to-love-you-but-now-you're-pond-scum stuff has never made sense to me, unless the other person cheated on you or kicked your dog. I'm so happy for him, and just wish I had a way to convey it without feeling slightly awkward.

I read and write emails to my close circle of friends about due dates and growing bellies, and know that nothing I could say in an email or in our rare phone calls will ever convey how much I love and am excited for these women with whom I have and will continue to grow into "adulthood," even as I wonder when or if I will (want to?) experience those supposed "joys" of pregnancy. I want to be there, darn it! Watching their bellies grow and hearing the daily updates and feeling the same infectious excitement that enveloped me when they got married, that made it actually fun to be around celebration-planning even though hunkering down over the minute details of a big formal white wedding has never really been on my to-do list.

But I'm not there. I'm here, remembering the moment last Friday night when I noticed out of the corner of my eye Mel Long walking out of the contra dance to head home. And I remember looking for her Saturday morning at her booth at the farmers market where she's been doing massage therapy for years, and seeing only a sign announcing that she'd be "back in 10 minutes" - a few minutes more than my friends and I were planning to stick around. And I think about this weekend and next, and all the dances and markets I will go to from now on where I won't see her huge smile or feel the squeeze of her hand as she said hello.

Mel was the only person who gave me a birthday present this year. She came to my potluck and quietly handed me a small white cardboard box, which I opened to find a perfect little bird's nest. She kept finding them in the woods around her house, she said, and loved them, but had collected too many and thought it was time to share.

Thank you, all who have shared your love with me. I will keep trying to not take it for granted.

from poetry to...

2008-06-27T12:59:00.005-04:00

While it's true that, like most Vermonters, I mostly eat granola and hug trees, as you know I do like a few aspects of "pop" culture. The one that really makes me seem freakish to most of my community here is that I love sports, and the one that doesn't make me a freak but does force me to drive a ways to find a friend who actually owns a TV is my annual addiction to the best darn TV show in primetime: So You Think You Can Dance (otherwise known to its supremely creative loyal fans at SYTYCD).

I'm not going to say much about the latter except that this week was AMAZING and I highly recommend checking out some YouTube videos* of Wednesday's performances. See, Thursday night is TV Night, in which I and several of my hippie friends gather at RaRo's (aka Friend With Television) house and watch Wednesday's episode on tape before watching the live results show. It's a beautiful tradition that I firmly believe should last forever and ever.

But back to the sports thing, for the few of you far-away friends (and strangers who read my blog? I love finding out that strangers are reading my blog. I hope you enjoy it. Hi, Patti in Seattle!) who actually share this interest. Or maybe I'm just talking to my brother here. Anyway, we are in the thick of sports fun these days, between the Celtics and baseball season and one of the best Euro Cup tournemants in years. Also, the NBA draft just happened, and while I don't actually have the time or interest to follow it in minute detail, the ESPN.com commentary is hilarious.

Today is meandering along, and I'm just counting down until I can skip away from the computer and go on a swimming and picnic outing with the Adventure Man and then head down to what promises to be a ridiculously good dance. TGIF, I'm telling ya.

*Update: the copyright people for the network are trolling YouTube and the links might have been taken down. If you're really motivated you can search YouTube for "Kerrington & Twitch hip-hop", "Chelsea and Mark hip-hop" and "Katee and Joshua samba."

poetry week, day 6: the end (for now)

2008-06-25T15:56:00.002-04:00

I can feel Poetry Week winding itself down, so here's one more to close it out. Of course, that doesn't mean I won't continue to post poems now and then. It just means that posts will have a different title, I guess.

A number of people commented on both the NY Times site and here that "If" is the poem they try to live by. I would not argue at all with the sentiment, but... well, ironic as it may be, I need my mantra poem to be a little less wordy. Luckily there's a perfect one. Thanks go to the Magic Lady in Atlanta for introducing me to this one a while ago. As far as I know it's untitled.

I will not die an unlived life.
I will not live in fear
of falling or catching fire.
I choose to inhabit my days,
to allow my living to open me,
to make me less afraid,
more accessible,
to loosen my heart
until it becomes a wing,
a torch, a promise.
I choose to risk my significance;
to live so that which came to me as seed
goes to the next as blossom
and that which came to me as blossom
goes on as fruit.
~Dawna Markova

poetry week, day 5, plus an explanation of the global economic meltdown, and my feelings about golf

2008-06-24T12:14:00.007-04:00

Want to understand the current economic crisis? Here's some major help. I've listened to the podcast twice now and I intend to keep it as long as possible and listen at least once more, just to make sure I actually understand it. Not because it's complicated, but because it's so obscenely simple that I can't wrap my head around how things went so wrong.

Want to know how I feel about golf? Yeah, I'm sure you don't really, but read this anyway. It's funny.

Want to know the best thing that happened yesterday, or maybe in weeks? Someone else did my laundry, not for the first time ever. This poem is for her, with oh-so-much gratitude and love.

Do you know a laundry poem? Post it in the comments. It wasn't so easy to find one.

Sock Eater
by Betsy Rosenthal

On laundry days
my mother says
the dryer is a crook.

It’s all because
a sock is gone—
the one the dryer took.

I tell my mom
she shouldn’t let
the dryer see us eat.

It’s sure to munch
a sock or two
because it craves a treat.

poetry week, day 4

2008-06-22T23:21:00.003-04:00

I can say this, because the only credit I can take for the success is that I correctly followed a recipe: the maple bourbon sweet potato I made for today's pie potluck kicked total ass. Especially the version with chopped hazelnuts sprinkled under and over the filling (I ended up making two pies - I had too much filling and an extra crust, why the heck not?). And also because maybe I put in a little more bourbon than the recipe called for. And I had Grade C maple syrup from the Adventure Man's sugar bush (forget Grade A Fancy, man... and really forget Mrs. Butterworth; the "cheap" real maple syrup is where it's at). All I can say is, whoever came up with the idea for that pie was having a damn good day.

It's a non sequitur, really, but I do think that the author of today's poem would enjoy a good maple bourbon sweet potato pie. Here's to him~

The Peace of Wild things

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the last sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

-Wendell Berry

poetry week, day 3

2008-06-21T08:44:00.002-04:00

I'm bursting with happiness for some dear friends today. It's a good way to start the weekend.

The agenda is pretty full, as usual - picking strawberries at the farm, Indian food at the farmers market, making a maple bourbon sweet potato pie for the pie potluck at the happy/sad going-away dance tomorrow (for the wonderful people who got married a little while ago), hanging out with A Boy (yes, and that's all I'm going to say for now), going to said Boy's friend's going-away party... and all of that is today! Tomorrow: hiking, going to the happy/sad dance, going to a potluck, and perhaps going to the Brattleboro dance in the evening.

And, um, laundry? I'm hoping it will magically do itself while I'm busy with all these other things.

Oh, how I love summer in Vermont(/western Massachusetts)!

Anyway, Poetry Week continues, so here is another of my very favorites: "Ask For Nothing" by Philip Levine. When I was studying abroad in Ecuador in college, a friend on my program loaned me a slim volume of Philip Levine poetry. It pretty much changed my life. I had read and enjoyed poems before, but never had I devoured poetry, been struck dumb by it, felt wrapped in its warm blanket. When I got back to the U.S., I walked into the Hungry Mind (sigh... R.I.P.), our lovely local bookstore that later went the way of so many locally-owned bookstores (have I mentioned that Brattleboro has at least four that seem to be thriving?), and ordered the book, The Simple Truth. I even stuck with the order when they told me that those 68 pages would cost me $16, a fortune for a college student to devote to a "frivolous" purchase. But I've never regretted it.

Ask For Nothing

Instead walk alone in the evening
heading out of town toward the fields
asleep under a darkening sky;
the dust risen from your steps transforms
itself into a golden rain fallen
earthward as a gift from no known god.
The plane trees along the canal bank,
the few valley poplars, hold their breath
as you cross the wooden bridge that leads
nowhere you haven't been, for this walk
repeats itself once or more a day.
That is why in the distance you see
beyond the first ridge of low hills
where nothing ever grows, men and women
astride mules, on horseback, some even
on foot, all the lost family you
never prayed to see, praying to see you,
chanting and singing to bring the moon
down in to the last of the sunlight.
Behind you the windows of the town
blink on and off, the houses close down;
ahead the voices fade like music
over deep water, and then are gone;
even the sudden, tumbling finches
have fled into smoke, and the one road
whitened in moonlight, leads everywhere.

poetry week, day 2

2008-06-18T21:25:00.003-04:00

I was going to post something else, but I was reading the NY Times poetry comments again and found a new favorite. This is by Rudyard Kipling, who (factoid!) lived for a while in none other than... Brattleboro, Vermont. His house is just down the road from where I work. He wrote Jungle Book here, and also built the first tennis court in Vermont and supposedly introduced skiing to the state. You can rent out the house for a few nights (it's expensive but sleeps something like 17 people). I'm not kidding.

"If"

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!

happy poetry morning!

2008-06-17T09:38:00.005-04:00

I'm generally nothing but annoyed by the endless opportunities for readers/listeners/viewers to express our opinions of whatever the sound bite of the day may be - I don't watch the news to get Mike from Omaha's opinion on things, and I don't really think everything from NBA Finals (go Celtics!) MVP to President of the Unites States should be treated like an American Idol-esque popularity contest in which the people with the twitchiest text-messaging thumbs get the illusion of majority rule.

But occassionally what I might (on a good day) call collaborative or open-source journalism is actually delightful. Such is today's call in the NY Times for readers' favorite poems, pursuant to a wonderful story about a team of young poets from the Santa Fe Indian School competing at the International Youth Poetry Slam Festival in Washington D.C.

Have you ever gone to a poetry slam? Yeah, they vary in quality and you might hear a poem that is laughably lousy (or squirmingly inappropriate). But a good slam poet will make you laugh, cry, shiver and gasp for breath, all in a few stanzas. I was lucky enough to be able to attend the semifinals (not even the finals!) of the National Poetry Slam Championships in Minneapolis a few years ago, and honest to God I walked out of that building with my faith in the magical possibilities of humanity restored.

And that's not a bad way to spend a few hours.

(For an excellent introduction to slam poetry, watch this.)

So I started my workday today by reading some favorite poems of people all over the world, and commenting on a few of my own. In case you're curious, below are a couple of my favorites. And now that I'm on this kick I just want to keep sharing poems. I think I'm declaring the first official Poetry Week on Monkeyhippy's Adventures (OK, so some of my adventures are fairly low-key). Watch for more poems. This particular week might not end up being exactly seven days long, we'll see... And if you have a favorite, post it or at least the title in the comments, please!

Como Tu (Like You) by Roque Dalton [click for translation and more info about Dalton]
Yo, como tu,
amo el amor, la vida,
el dulce encanto de las cosas,
el paisaje celeste de los dias de enero.

Tambien mi sangre bulle
y rio por los ojos
que han conocido el brote de las lagrimas.

Creo que el mundo es bello,
que la poesia es como el pan,
de todos.

Y que mis venas no terminan en mi
sino en la sangre unanime de las que luchan por la vida,
el amor, las cosas, el paisaje y el pan,
la poesia de todos

To Be Of Use by Marge Piercy [and, truly, anything by Marge Piercy]*
The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half submerged balls.

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.

I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who stand in the line and haul in their places,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.

*Particularly "Report of the Fourteenth Subcommittee on Convening a Discussion Group"

it's about time

2008-06-13T14:02:00.003-04:00

I was just wondering aloud yesterday with some friends/future housemates why no one is talking about the coming disaster that is the ever-climbing price of heating oil. Turns out a few people are talking about it, notably my governor. Go Vermont!

It may not be an issue for people in other parts of the country, but most New Englanders still heat their houses with oil. The title of this story is: We Are Completely Screwed.

Me? I have a good job, so while I'm not thrilled at the thought of how much of my money is going to go toward heating my (new and otherwise exciting!) house next winter, I will be able to pay for it without real hardship.

But a lot of people around here? The ones who have no savings, no health insurance, and are spending all their earnings just to keep the gas tank full enough to get to work and back? They simply won't be able to turn on their heat when it gets cold. And if it's anything like last winter, the nastiest and snowiest in decades, it is going to get really cold.

I'm serious: disaster in the making. It may be slow and quiet, but that doesn't make it any less scary.

why i love risk management in study abroad

2008-06-09T12:22:00.003-04:00

Hazard: Bureaucracy
Management Strategies: Keeping papers up to date, making sure students have passports with them at all times.

Hazard: Street Cattle: cows, water buffalo
Management Strategies: Educate students not to get chummy with sacred cows

growing up

2008-06-05T22:13:00.003-04:00

As I write this in sweltering (believe it or not) southern Vermont, almost everyone I went to college with (or so it feels) is partying in Minnesota at our five-year college reunion. I didn't know that people actually go to college reunions, at least not until there are several decades between you and the graduation dais, and hadn't imagined going to mine until suddenly it seemed that everyone and their uncle was going to descend upon St. Paul, MN this weekend to relive our glory days.

I'm not there for several reasons, (lack of) money and vacation time being at the top of the list. Also up there is the feeling I got when I envisioned myself there trying to catch up with about 100 people while spending actual quality time with at least 10 people. In two days, three if I stretched the fantasy. That sounded half fun and half awful, so I stayed home.

But the half fun part would have been really fun. I'm not going to say wistfully that college was the best four years of my life. But those were four damn good years. I laugh to think how much I've changed and how much I haven't. And to look around at my friends and where we've been and ended up in the last five years, some more mildly predictable than others (with me probably on the rather unpredicted end, I'm guessing, especially when you consider that I searched out my current job because I wanted to live here, not the other way around). And it would probably be great fun to drink beer and listen to all the stories from the people I haven't kept up with, or only know through Facebook these days.

So, y'all at reunion, I hope you've had a blast, and I hope you are taking notes, because I'm going to ask. Except I really don't want to know who is reliving college by hooking up with who. Thank you.

a blog within a blog within a blog

2008-05-30T14:09:00.002-04:00

Again, someone - or a couple someones, more accurately - says exactly what I'm thinking far better than I could say it myself. Bonus: political analysis through sports metaphors!

in the meantime

2008-05-22T10:27:00.003-04:00

Many people have heard by now of Senator Edward Kennedy's malignant brain tumor (if you want to know more about the actual science of it, check out this article from the Dana Foundation, where my brother is managing editor) and imminent retirement.

Coverage of this story has inadvertently illustrated a couple of things about our current cultural moment that make me sad for reasons that have nothing to do with my sympathy for those who must deal with their own or a loved one's terminal illness.

First, I've seen grave predictions from medical professionals and others that, basically, Senator Kennedy's time on Earth is now limited. NEWS FLASH: He's going to die.

But you and I? Clearly we are going to live forever.

Many cultures have reached an equilibrium on this point that continues to elude mainstream U.S. culture - they understand death as a natural and inevitable part of life. Of course it's never easy for anyone to lose a loved one, much less watch them endure the pain and suffering prolonged illness may bring. But they don't add to that misery the shock and disbelief that seem to be a part of our culture's usual reactions to news of illness and death. Not everyone in the world approaches life with the assumption that we've all been granted the inalienable right to a particular idea of physical and mental normalcy for an infinite number of years.

(Of course, not every single U.S. American makes that assumption either. Please understand that I'm generalizing here).

How might you live your life differently if you really believed you and the people you love will die, maybe soon? And if everyone who is relatively healthy thought of themselves as, to quote someone who came to my organization last year to discuss working with students with disabilities, "temporarily abled" instead of "normal"?

...

I'm tempted to leave it at that, instead of jumping topics to the other thing in the media coverage of Kennedy's illness that's bugging me... but I found it kind of depressingly fascinating, and this is my blog after all, so I get to write about what I'm thinking about. Which as you may have inferred is pretty much all over the map most of the time. So...

This line in the Washington Post story today caught my eye: "The Senate opened debate on paying for another year of the Iraq war without the Massachusetts Democrat's customary roar of outrage."

I read that sentence as: We are so bored with and uninterested in the political process and especially with the war in Iraq that we may as well add debates about it to Robert's Rules of Order. "As the subject is opened to debate it shall be necessary, first, that the Senator from Massachusetts shall offer a roar of outrage.

"Second, that the issue be meagerly debated before members proceed to their respective offices to offer meaningless 10-second sound bites to assorted media; and third, that funding be approved lest members of the assembly be forced to actually face and put a stop to the unending violence and meaningless destruction. Members of the assembly shall repeat the above steps as needed one or multiple times per year/decade/century."

(Hey look, these two topics are actually quite connected. I actually wasn't thinking of it that way when I started to write this. Which is why I like writing a blog.)

We will all die someday. That doesn't mean we should ever let ourselves be comfortable with the taking of lives, no matter how far away or impoverished or militantly Islamic they are. Wendell Berry said that "to treat life as anything less than precious is to give up on it." I'm pretty sure that he wasn't talking about just his or yours or mine.

(luckily not) death by chocolate

2008-05-19T11:53:00.000-04:00

http://pantagraph.com/articles/2008/05/19/news/doc48318431a7de6591214008.txt

friday link day

2008-05-16T12:18:00.005-04:00

Cool story in the NYT today about an Olympic hopeful turning the meanings of "disabled" and "able-bodied" just a little bit upside-down.

I just wish I could get excited about the Olympics at all, given the many controversies we seem to so easily forget in the face of a natural disaster. I'm not minimizing the earthquake; I just think the quake doesn't warrant total forgiveness or forgetfulness of everything else.

On the bright side, I'm looking forward to the Olympics being on the other side of the world again, such that I will be able to know results before watching (um, on my hypothetical TV) the competitions themselves. I get very nervous for the competitors, regardless of any attachment I may (but probably don't) have to their winning or losing. The whole results-in-advance thing proved very comforting in 2004 with the Athens Olympics. Yes, that is ridiculous. Welcome to my world.

At least my brother - the brain research editor - has given me some cool suggestions for insight as to why.

happily ever after, except for government discrimination

2008-05-15T09:47:00.003-04:00

There is no end to the discrimination and misery inflicted on immigrants, both documented and undocumented, in this country today, a few of which I have written about previously. There is even no end to the information available about it, if we keep our eyes just a little bit open.

For example, the Washington Post just ran a great series about (the lack of) health care for detained immigrants, including the revelation that we* regularly inject people against their will with mind-altering drugs so that they won't fight back during deportation.

As an excellent editorial in today's NY Times comments, "this practice violates every imaginable standard of decency, not to mention a few international laws and treaties."

On a more mundane but no less significant note, as the NYT editorial focuses on, anyone without a Social Security Number or anyone married to (and filing jointly with) someone without a SSN will not receive an economic stimulus check from the IRS. What?

Contrary to popular belief, it's not true that if you don't have an SSN you don't pay taxes. Most immigrants, and certainly all documented immigrants, pay just as much income tax as lifelong citizens of this country. If they don't have an SSN, they have an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number or - in the case of some undocumented workers - they may be using a fake SSN, in which case taxes are still taken out of their paycheck just as they would be for anyone else.

Moreover, I'm sorry, but we're now discriminating against anyone who makes the grave mistake of being married to a non-citizen??? Besides being a totally absurd government-mandated disadvantage for hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of average U.S. American citizens, this policy means that any U.S. citizen - such as U.S. military personnel on active duty - living in a foreign country who is married to a foreigner won't get a tax rebate. Thanks so much for your service to your country.

As the Times editorial states, this policy is bad in any number of ways, not least because "the checks are not rewards for good behavior; they are taxes returned as a means to an end." Restricting eligibility for receiving tax rebates just depresses the economic stimulation that the checks are designed to spur. It seems only to accomplish the racist goals of anti-immigrant hardliners... not to mention realize the perhaps unintended consequences of those goals such as labor shortages and the destruction of our international academic and scientific reputation.

Of course, just to turn everything on its head, the truth may well be that the fewer stimulus checks get cashed, the better. I guess we should all go thank someone who doesn't have a Social Security Number, and think twice about cashing our own checks.

*yes, WE. Do you pay taxes? Do you have the right to vote? Then don't pretend you have nothing to do with it.

p.s. On a COMPLETELY different note, there's a heartwrenching story in the NY Times today about the combined effects of China's recent earthquake and its one child policy. I hadn't thought about that. :(

another one. well, two.

2008-05-05T09:52:00.003-04:00

Elizabeth Edwards has a great op-ed in the NY Times today. I remain convinced that John Edwards was maybe our best option this time around. Did you hear anyone else actually talking about poverty? Certainly you don't anymore. Mrs. Edwards is right; shame on the media and - she doesn't say this but I will - shame on all of us. Does demand or supply come first when it comes to the "news" we consume? I'm not sure there's a real correct answer to that question; either way it's depressing.

Also, Thomas Friedman did it again. Twice in a week! I might have to think about forgiving the guy for The Lexus and the Olive Crap.

this i believe

2008-05-02T12:37:00.005-04:00

Maybe this is the cheater's way to blog, just posting links to other things that I find provocative and interesting. And maybe I think there's too much good stuff out there to sift through, and I hope that by posting these links I'm helping you just a teeny bit to muddle through the internet's constant threat of information overload and actually find and read some informative stuff. Maybe both. Anyway, I like it when far better writers than I are able to articulate exactly how I'm feeling. For example, I wish I could have written this, because boy do I believe it:

"For many of us, feminism is not separate from the struggle against violence, war, racism and economic injustice. Gender hierarchy and race hierarchy are not separate and parallel dynamics. The empowerment of women is contingent upon all these things. Despite the fact that we know that identity does not equal politics--especially an antiwar, social equity and global justice politics--we are led to believe that having a woman in power is the penultimate accomplishment. And even when the "either/or" [as in, either you're with us... and believe a woman - any woman - should be President or you're against us] feminists back off this claim in general, we are told, it is true in the case of the particular, Hillary Clinton. Experience and judgment go hand in hand, we are told, but one has to wonder how is it that so many ordinary citizens who were outside the beltway instinctively sensed what would come with the war, but the female candidate running for President did not?"

For us, the choice at hand is actually quite simple. It is not about the woman candidate vs. the Black male candidate. It is about the candidate who works to dismantle the bomb, rather than drop it; the candidate who works to abolish the old paradigm of power, rather than covet and rise to its highest point; the candidate who seeks solutions and dialogue rather than retaliation and punishment."