journeys
Half way through the Berkshire Mountains on the Mass Pike, I noticed a band of crows circling over my car. Five minutes later, one of my back tires went flat. A minute or so later, I was pulling off the road in front of a trooper, who just happened to be parked there waiting for speeders. Another five minutes and the emergency truck arrived; another two, and I was on my way again. "Somebody up there must be watching out for you," the trooper smiled, winking.
We had put in my daughter's meditation garden -- turning what had been a huge circle of white stones that occupied the space where the former owners once had an above ground pool into a tear-drop patio that curves into the edges of a garden (that will soon be covered with the herbs, ground covers, and grasses that we planted. Except where there's a path leading from the patio to a bench. And except where there are rocks, a fat maternal garden hare, a watchful hedgehog [which I call a hedgehag], and a guardian gargoyle.)
My grandson and I had our own journeys to take, as we spent a long afternoon together while his folks went out to lunch and shopping for more garden plantings. We improvised little scenarios, in which he always remembered both his lines and mine. And then there were the trucks. Lots of trucks. Diggers. Excavators. Front loaders. And a truck video on which, he explained to me, there were an auger drill and an impact hammer. We were on a learning journey, and he was the teacher.
...........................................................
someone was in my apartment, she says. they moved things around in my dresser. were you in here taking my gloves, she asks. she's back. you're back. so much for rejuvenating journeys.
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off to see the Wizard
I'm leaving early tomorrow to visit the Wizard Who Can Make Me Laugh.
Or rather the goofy Munchkin.
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Rain
Of course it's raining and it's going to rain all week. Tomorrow I'm taking my mother to my brother's and then I'm heading out on Thursday for some R&R at my daughter's in Massachusetts.
Perhaps we should do what the people in Fairhaven, in the rainy Pacific Northwest do: have an annual Rain Festival. Unfortunately, their last such event was spoiled by a plague of sunshine. What rotten luck.
The willows near the pond are heavy with rain. I had planned to sneak out tonight and cut/steal some willow branches to weave a "protection shield" for my daughter's house. I will be going out there on Thursday, so I still have time when I get back from my brother's tomorrow. Unless it's raining then as hard as it is now.
it's raining, it's raining
I can't help my complaining
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Heckle, Jeckle, and Hyde
from myrln
We need more atheists, agnostics, and Buddhists:
NY Jews Heckle Sharon
Israeli Jews and Muslims heckle Laura Bush.
Bush heckled at Christian College.
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ok, what's next
I'm pissed that CBS has concelled Joan of Arcadia. Now, you might not think I watched a program like that, what with Joan talking to God and he/she talking back. But I understand the difference between fanatasy and reality, and that was one of the most creatively written shows on network tv.
But CBS says that the demographics they're after don't watch creatively written and well-acted quirky dramas that explore the human struggle to develop personal and moral values.
And the same network also cancelled Judging Amy, and so there goes the great imperfect older woman role model played by Tyne Daly.
CBS thinks that the demographics they're after are not interested in watching well-written and acted shows that feature strong imperfect women struggling to make their way in the world while still remaining the center of strong imperfect families.
And on top of all of that, according to the Observer:
Nestling deep in the Ozark mountains of Arkansas, in the heart of America's Bible Belt, this is the first dinosaur museum to take a creationist perspective. Already thousands of people have flocked to its top-quality exhibits which mix high science with fundamentalist theology that few serious scientists accept.
Well, there you go. CBS's demographics:
Even as America's scientists make advances in palaeontology, astronomy and physics that appear to disprove creationism, Gallup surveys have shown that about 45 per cent of Americans believe the Earth was created by God within the past 10,000 years. It is not just creationism either. Last week NBC's Dateline current affairs programme, equivalent to the BBC's Newsnight, investigated miracles. It concluded some could be real.
Oh yeah. Feed the frenzy of fundamentalism!
And don't forget the Silver Ring Thing.
Don't bother those Right/eous with facts. They know what they believe.
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she says
what's this, she says, holding up a jar of mayonnaise that you've been wondering what happened to. that's my mayonnaise, you say, picking it up to see if it's cold. it's not.
where was it, you ask.
I found it in there, she says, pointing to the buffet against her dining room wall.
why did you put it in there, you ask.
I didn't put it there, she insists.
it's just about midnight. she is looking through all the boxes in her bedroom that she has begun to pack in anticipation of the big move you both will soon be making. she says someone keeps moving things around from box to box.
you ask what she's looking for, but she doesn't seem to know.
why is everyone taking my things, she sobs. why can't I have the things that are important to me.
no one is taking your things, you say. it's all here, somewhere. you forgot where you put them. no one wants your stuff, you say. we have our own stuff.
I love you, she says. you came out of my body. why do you want to do this to me. why do you want to make me think I'm crazy, she says.
go to sleep, you say. tomorrow you'll be rested and you'll be able to find what you're looking for.
you go back across the hall. turn on the computer. it's almost twelve-thirty.
the phone rings. did you take the photo I have of you, she says.
no, I didn't, you say. it's there somewhere.
you'll fix it for me tomorrow, she says. good night, she says.
Categories:
yesterday
Teenage Blogging
[subtitle added after posting for search purposes]
I'm sitting at my computer in the HOBY t-shirt that I got yesterday as one of the gifts to the panelists at the seminar.
I can't remember when I've been so wound up and tired at the same time that I can't get to sleep. So, yesterday evening, I played cards with my mom, watched the tape I made of Smallville's finale (Yup. I watch Smallville. Everwood, too. Something about never letting go of my inner teenager.) I remember having private drool over Tom Welling (Smallville's Clark Kent) when he appeared on Judging Amy as a yoga instructor that Amy had a fling with.
Is this starting to sound like a teenage girl's blog? (I'm so easily influenced!)
After the blogging panel part of yesterday's program, each of us three panelists (SUNY Journalism Professor William Rainbolt, an HR person whose name and company I didn't write down so I can't remember and her name isn't in the program, and me) sat down with a randomly selected group of the kids to chat.
I thought it was interesting that only a handful of the fifty or so kids in my group had a blog, and they were mostly girls. Before yesterday, I did a little Googling and found out that, a couple of years ago,
The average blogger is a teenage girl who posts every two weeks to update her friends on her life. Two years in blogtime makes a big difference, though, and I'm sure that the average has shifted. If anyone has stats on that, I'd love to know.
As you might expect, this was an energetic and lively bunch of kids -- for the most part. I couldn't help notice a few, though, who looked familiar -- that holding-back and mildly defiant stare -- the bright rim-walkers who sit in the back, watch, ingest, process, and somehow find their own way around the hypocrisy of systems. They weren't the bloggers. At least not yet.
The questions the kids asked were not terribly insightful -- but hey, future leaders or not, they're still tenth graders. They asked me to elaborate about b!X's current brouhaha (which I had mentioned earlier), about why I blog, how long etc. They seemed to be most interested in how personal they should get on their blogs. I shared with them many of the quotes from the comments I got about the guidelines various bloggers I know use for themselves. I also cautioned them about blogging information that predators can use to track them down. And I reminded them never to assume that they can hide behind anonymity. Everything on the Internet is public and can be tracked down by the persistent. I also recommended the various weblog handbooks in which Shelley Powers, Rebecca Blood, and Meg Hourihan contributed. I should have also told them to ask their school librarians to stock them if they haven't already.
One young woman asked if I use music in my weblog. Admitting to being an absolute non-techie, I responded that I'm a "word" person, a writer, and I never bothered to learn how to import music because I don't want to distract from my writing. I also told them all that I know about "audio blogging," which is that it exists.
They asked me how "public" I am about who I am. I replied, as you might expect, that I didn't worry about anyone out there wanting to harass a "little old retired grandma raising hell at the keyboard" -- and that I am a performer at heart, and these days my blog is my one-woman-show. But they need to be a lot more careful because they are in a much more vulnerable position.
Finally, I stressed that blogging is an extension of one's life -- they should blog the way, I would hope, they live -- with compassion for others, with respect for the privacy of others. What I wish I had thought to say is that rather than attack individuals and their behaviors (except, of course, if they're public figures) phrase what you want to say in the form of questions. Question the validity of behaviors, comment on the effects of certain behaviors. The point will get through without naming names or crucifying with specifics.
When they ran out of questions, I just shared my blogging experiences -- how my blog gives me an identity, a place to be creative, a way to meet kindred spirits (I tend to interact mostly with bloggers who identify themselves as real people with names, locations, and histories). I told them that I usually write a draft of what I'm going to post before I post it so that I can make sure it's what I really want to say and check for typos, etc. Usually, but not always. And when I don't, I'm usually sorry I didn't.
Finally, I urged them -- if they want to make a difference in their communities, change their little pieces of the world, become a voice for the causes they espouse -- to try blogging. And I told them to check out theonetruebix.
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Whew!
I haven't been this tired since my days of teaching. I think it was nerves, since I haven't spoken before any kind of group in five years. Tomorrow, I'll blog about the Hugh O'Brien Youth Leadership Seminar at which I was on a panel about blogging.
Before we called it a day, I got a t-shirt, a cool little notebook w/pen, hugs, and this:
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it's the goose thing
The goslings have hatched. They tumble around the grassy slope near the pond, each group of them carefully monitored by their pairs of haughtily protective parents. Each dad stands stock still, never letting his eyes leave mine as I stroll by. Each mom keeps one eye on me and the other on her charges as she herds them out of my range. It's not just a goose thing.
I keep checking in on my son's weblog, where he's in the center of a storm raging around issues that are central to blogging: How deep does the process of verification/authentication/investigation have to go every time a blogger points to a political fact of interest to her/him? Isn't the point of having a weblog with comments to give everyone -- especially those whose motives are questioned -- a primary, direct, and immediate chance to respond, correct and amplify? Just where do blogging and journalism coincide and where do they diverge?
Weblogs like the Portland Communique are personal explorations of public issues with links used, like footnotes, to support the blogger's take on the matter. Comments exist to give readers the chance to refute or add to what seems like the truth.
Corante's Michael O'Connor offers a snapshot (scroll down; the code's screwed up)of the escalating argument. The whole deal is still going on here, with 62 comments at this point and still counting.
This mama goose finds it hard to sit on the sidelines, even though the offspring flew away a long time ago. But I do. Sort of.
The irony of this whole thing is that tomorrow is the day that I address 170 tenth graders (participating in a youth leadership seminar) as part of a panel on Should there be guidelines for blogging or should "anything go." I'm walking into that room tomorrow with a case study right at my fingertips.
Also at my fingertips is a printout of all of the comments I got from some of my blogger buddies about that issue. So, thanks, all.
This Mother Goose has some stories to tell tomorrow.
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Today I Moved Mountains
Yes. I moved mountains. And not metaphorically either.
I took my mom down to visit where we will me living a couple of months from now -- in the foothills of the Catskill Mountains. And I gathered up pieces of the mountains that are on that property -- rocks. Pretty big rocks. I loaded a hundred pounds or so of them into my trunk to take to my daughter's next week for her rock garden. They don't have any rocks in her back yard. There are plenty in the woods behind their house, but there's also plenty of poison ivy. My poor son-in-law is still recovering from a massive reaction to it.
It's amazing how much better my mother can see now with one cataract removed. All the way down the NY State Thruway, she rorschached the masses of clouds that moved along with us. She commented on all of the various shades of green that lined our long ride. As much as I hate having to arrange my life around giving her the required eye drops several times a day for a month after cataract surgery, I'm going to take her to get the other eye done. Apparently, she will have 20/20 vision in that eye when she has the cataract removed and the little lense implanted. Also, apparently, she had been legally blind in the eye that she just had done. I didn't know it was that bad.
She always insisted that she could see just fine.
Now if only I could get her to submit to hearing aids. Heh. It would be easier to move the actual mountains.
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Goodenough for Fundamentalists
That's the name of the author of a book I'm reading -- Ursula Goodenough.
I usually don't read non-fiction, but this book was recommended in an article by one of my favorite atheists, Natalie Angiers.
In the Introduction to The Sacred Depths of Nature, Goodenough writes:
My agenda for this book is to outline the foundations for...a plantetary...ethic that would make no claim to supplant existing traditions but would seek to coexist with them, informing our global concerns while we continue to orient our daily lives in our cultural and religious contexts....
.....It is therefore the goal of this book to present an accessible account of our scientific understanding of Nature and then suggest ways that this account can call forth appealing and abiding religious responses -- an approach that can be called religious naturalism. If religious emotions can be elicited by natural reaity -- and I believe that they can -- then the story of Nature has the potential to serve as the cosmos for the global ethos that we need to articulate.
Religious Naturalism. I like the sound of that because Nature does inspire me in ways that others are inspired by the notion of "god."
The drawings of nature in Goodenough's book, done by Ippy Patterson of North Carolina, are inspiring in themselves. This is my favorite:
punica granatum.
Every religious fundamentalist should read this book -- as well as evey atheist who yearns for a sense of the sacred.
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b!X is cartoonized
Yup, that's him as depicted by George Pfromm II, who did the illustration to accompany an article in the Portland Mercury that gave a rundown on the cyber-attack on b!X by a Portland PR flak.
b!X posts about being memorialized suchly here.
I have to admit, that when I saw the cartoon in the Mercury, I wondered if it could be him because of the hat. Then I figured, naw, he's not important enough yet to be cartoonized. And then I thought, heh, why not! And, sure enough.
Cool, huh?
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this guy is even more dangerous than his god
The pope also blessed the sick, then waved to the crowd as he took a spin through the square in an opened-topped vehicle, after delivering a homily that offered "fear of God" as an antidote to the world's ills.
Benedict also warned against a secular view of history in his homily based on biblical texts.
"History is not in the hands of dark powers, of chance or mere human choices," Benedict said.
Rather, he said, "the Lord is the supreme arbitrator of history."
In an off-the-cuff remark, Benedict recommended "fear of God" as a way to deal with the difficulties of the world.
"It is through the fear of God that we are not afraid of the world and its problems, we are not afraid of men because God is stronger," Benedict said.
Read it all here.
Oh man. Why would anyone want to be Catholic under those dark-age paternalistic circumstances?
Turning my back on Catholicism years ago was one of the smartest things I ever did.
My nemesis (Rage Boy who blogs more frequently as Chief Blogging Officer) adds fuel to my fiery attitude about the subject.
I've been meaning to post about RB/Chris Locke's latest transformation, in which he walks the talk in showing how you can use your blog to sustain your writing life. Underwrittn by High Beam research, Chris uses that research capacity to continue drafting his "book-in-progress," while also following strands of related topics as he picks them up through his research. And then he blogs it all and links to the High Beam articles that inform his writing. Everybody wins. He should be getting more visibility for what he's doing and what he's writing.
While I'm not a big fan of RB/Chris Locke, it seems to me he deserves lots of credit for this one.
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a really bleeping day
long day
short night
no play
just fight
can't care
can't sleep
not fair
bleep
bleep
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Virtue is not its own reward.
This caregiving thing is really wearing me down, tiring me out -- especially now that she's recovering from cataract surgery and it means putting three different eye drops in her eyes every four hours or so. It takes a half-hour to go through the series. Then I have to put out her breakfast and lunch or she forgets to eat. Then I have to make dinner -- well, I have to eat dinner anyway. And then there's making sure she takes her medication three times a day. In between, I do food shopping, mend her clothes (which are getting too big for her), and still spend hours helping her look for items she "lost" somewhere in her apartment. Somewhere in there I sneak in time to blog.
I've decided to "pay" myself out of the money that's set aside for her care -- nothing like an actual home health care aid would make (which is $20 an hour during the week and $23 an hour on weekends), but just enough every once in a while to help me not feel like a victim of circumstance.
My mom, like so many other very elderly, doesn't want to go into nursing homes, even though, financially, it's cheaper than full-time home health care. According the the article linked to above,
Choosing to stay at home is the easy decision. Paying for it is another question altogether. Home health care costs an absolute fortune, especially if you need an aide 24-hours a day. According to the MetLife Market Survey on Nursing Home and Home Care Costs, the average nursing home costs $66,153 a year (for a private room). Fees are considerably higher in metropolitan areas or for premium care, but either way, your loved one is getting full-time attention from a staff that includes nurses, social workers and other professionals.
Full-time home health care can cost more than twice as much and most agencies don't even recommend it. That means you're on the hook for the hours when your parents have no aide. Phyllis Mensh Brostoff, a social worker and president of Stowell Associates and SelectStaff Services in Milwaukee, says her agency charges clients $20 an hour during the week and $23 an hour during the weekend. Brostoff admits her fees are a bit high. She justifies it by offering "an enriched service" that includes a care manager who keeps track of your loved one with unannounced visits. SelectStaff will also ensure there is someone always on call.
The fee, however, is just the beginning. Don't forget that if your parents live in their own home, you've still got to pay to take care of it. And tipping is considered part of the compensation. "This is just expected within the industry," Ramsey says. For example, she tips her aide every time her incontinent parent has an accident. In addition to money, she also provides gifts and lets her parents' caregiver go home a little early whenever she can
I'm a relatively good person, but I have to say that being rewarded, financially, for some of what I do feels a lot better than just feeling very virtuous.
I recognize a time might come when I just can't handle the stress any more. If/when that time comes, I know a good nursing home where I'm sure she can get in. That's where the rest of her money will go, but by that time, getting back my life will be worth every penny that I will no longer be able to pay myself.
Whoever tries to tell you that virtue is its own reward has never been a caregiver for an increasingly befuddled elderly parent.
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low on energy
American energy policy - written by Beavis and Butthead.
Good Golly. Miss Molly has it right, again:
The energy bill just passed by the House is a classic example of frittering away precious time and resources by doing exactly nothing that needs to be done about energy. The bill gives $8.1 billion in new tax breaks to the oil companies, which are already swimming in cash.
ExxonMobil's profits are up 44 percent, Royal Dutch/Shell up 42 percent, etc. According to the business pages, the biggest problem oil executives face is what to do with all their cash. So why give more tax breaks to the oil companies? Makes as much sense as anything else in this energy bill. Nothing about conservation, higher fuel efficiency standards or putting money into renewable energy sources. It's so stupid, it's painful.
I'm too tired to think today, so I'm leaving the thinking to Molly Ivins.
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Motherhood's legacy -- the bad and the good.
I wonder what the founding mothers of Mother's Day would make of it all. Those 19th-century women who organized "Mothers' Work Days" to improve sanitation. Those post-Civil War mothers who tried to bridge the gap between North and South. And that pacifist, Julia Ward Howe, who organized the first Mothers' Day for Peace.
What would they make of a holiday that began with feminism and pacifism and ended up with perfume and flowers? What would they make of a day to change the world that became a day to get breakfast in bed?
So begins Ellen Goodman's Mothers Day rant, in which she also reports:
Today the scariest part of Social Security privatization is the effect it could have on survivors' benefits for mothers and children. But it's much easier to argue about whether a 13-year-old in Florida should be forced into motherhood. There's no law requiring paid sick leave for private employees in Texas, but the state House of Representatives just passed a law that "empowers parents" by prohibiting suggestive cheerleading.
Our country is one of only five in the world without paid maternity leave, but we are focused on runaway brides. We are in a national state of overwork, but the welfare debate now hinges on getting the poorest mothers of young children to work longer hours.
I'm one of the lucky ones, who, as a single mother, had the education necessary to get a good job to help support my kids. I'm one of the lucky ones who has a pension and could manage to pay my bills even without Social Security.
My mom is one of the lucky ones, who married a man who supported her in the style to which she enjoyed becoming accustomed.
Sometimes my mother asks me if I'm her mother. Sometimes she talks to me as though I'm one of her siblings and remember those years before WWII when they lived in Poland with their mother.
Today is Mothers Day. I put on the Polish music that airs locally every Sunday morning and I let her lead me around her living room. We have bagels and cream cheese for breakfast.
My daughter sends me two encouraging Mothers Day e-cards and calls. She tells me sweet stories about my grandson.
[This added in after I posted because Oregon's morning begins three hours after New York's: my one-true-son, the One True b!X also made his Mother's Day call. Of course, we talked about the extensive conversation going on over at his Communique about the elements of journalism and weblog ethics as pertain to what he writes on his weblog.]
Motherhood. I got it coming and going. The bad and the good.
Meanwhile, my mom unearths this old photo of my two kids that I think their dad made when he used to fool around with photography.
Ah, these are the good in motherhood.
AND, in case you'd like to read one of my better Mothers Day rants, check out this post of two years ago.
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Monsters and Muppets
I'm a fan of mythological metaphors. Hence, Kali-lily.
In a piece that begins, "I love chimeras," today Maureen Dowd ends her rant about GOP chimeras opening Pandora's Box with:
The Republican Party is now a chimera, too, a mutant of old guard Republicans, who want government kept out of our lives, and evangelical Christians, who want government to legislate religion into our lives.
But exploiting God for political ends has set off powerful, scary forces in America: a retreat on teaching evolution, most recently in Kansas; fights over sex education, even in the blue states and blue suburbs of Maryland; a demonizing of gays; and a fear of stem cell research, which could lead to more of a "culture of life" than keeping one vegetative woman hooked up to a feeding tube.
Even as scientists issue rules on chimeras in labs, a spine-tingling he-monster with the power to drag us back into the pre-Darwinian dark ages is slouching around Washington. It's a fire-breathing creature with the head of W., the body of Bill Frist and the serpent tail of Tom DeLay.
And then there are the wonder-full American anarchist Muppets, who have been sucked into Disney's insatiably blanding maw.
Of course, the possibility of a culture clash between Disney and the Muppets always seemed quite obvious. Until recently, let us not forget, Disney would not employ anyone with a beard at its theme-parks. One look at any picture of Jim Henson and the 1970s creative nebulous of The Muppet Show, on the other hand, reveals a group of hairy hippies, most of whom look like Robinson Crusoe at Day 405 on Treasure Island. The Muppets are essentially joyous and irreverent — their currency is pigs loving frogs, caterpillars smoking hookahs, Dr Teeth and His Electric Mayhem having “bummers”, and a disgruntled Statler and Waldorf trying to assassinate the whole cast. It’s hippies parodying reactionaries, bread-heads, divas and bores. It’s hard to see how they will fit, intact, into Disney’s cleaner-than-clean, carefuller-than-careful corporate world.
We're surrounded by 'em --the moneyed right-eous. It's the Crusades all over again, but this time on an even more spiritually destructive and global scale.
(Heh. Were you beginning to think that I was so wrapped up in my Little Picture that I wasn't interested in the Big One anymore??)
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Who's that man behind the curtain?
I haven't posted about b!X lately, but I'm getting a kick out of the current flap over his curtain peeking. (For those of you new to this weblog, b!X is my erstwhile son who stirs up Portland, Oregon politics to force the truth rise to the top.)
The "man behind the curtain" never likes to have the spotlight focus on his handiwork. Meanwhile, b!X makes no effort to hide who he is or what his weblog is for.
I know that there are lots of webloggers who hide behind anonymity. Personally, I tend to see as more credible those who put themselves out there the way traditional newspaper columnists do -- a little photo and a little bio. That makes them real to me and makes what they write more believable.
No curtain here. Just a little ol' grandma raising hell at the keyboard. Well, maybe not so little. And not so old, either. Heh.
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Why me, God?
That's what she's asking as she sits in her recliner the morning after her cataract surgery. Her teeth are chattering; her hands and feet are ice cold. Her whole body hurts, she says.
Why me, she mutters. What did I do to deserve this? Am I such a bad person? Give me something to make me die.
I figure it's a reaction to whatever anesthesia they had to give her to keep her calm for the eye surgery. We have to be at the eye doctor's in two hours to get her bandage off and have her eye checked.
But she wants to die. She doesn't want to get up and dressed.
I put a heating pad between her back and the chair. I cover her with a fleece throw. Make her hot coffee.
Why me, God? Was I such a bad person? She keeps asking.
And so I say, it doesn't work like that, mom. Were the women and children that Americans killed in Iraq bad people? God has nothing to do with making bad things happen.
This all happened yesterday. We did make it to the doctor's.
Last night I got onto Tamarika's blog and found this richly long and wonerfully linked post on "The Atheist."
One of the links was to a NY Times piece by Natalie Angiers, whom I researched and wrote an introduction to when I did some free-lance writing for a conference on Women and Science that was held at the Emma Willard School some fifteen years ago or so. (I also wrote a speech for Jane Fonda for that event -- which, I have to say -- she ignored in favor of touting her latest exercise video.)
Back to Natalie Angiers, who says in her essay:
So, I'll out myself. I'm an Atheist. I don't believe in God, Gods, Godlets or any sort of higher power beyond the universe itself, which seems quite high and powerful enough to me. I don't believe in life after death, channeled chat rooms with the dead, reincarnation, telekinesis or any miracles but the miracle of life and consciousness, which again strike me as miracles in nearly obscene abundance. I believe that the universe abides by the laws of physics, some of which are known, others of which will surely be discovered, but even if they aren't, that will simply be a result, as my colleague George Johnson put it, of our brains having evolved for life on this one little planet and thus being inevitably limited. I'm convinced that the world as we see it was shaped by the again genuinely miraculous, let's even say transcendent, hand of evolution through natural selection.
And later in the piece --
From my godless perspective, the devout remind me that it is human nature to thirst after meaning and to desire an expansion of purpose beyond the cramped Manhattan studio of self and its immediate relations. In her brief and beautiful book, "The Sacred Depths of Nature," Ursula Goodenough, a cell biologist, articulates a sensibility that she calls "religious naturalism," a profound appreciation of the genuine workings of nature, conjoined with a commitment to preserving that natural world in all its staggering, interdependent splendor. Or call it transcendent atheism: I may not believe in life after death, but what a gift it is to be alive now.
I wish my mom could read those books, but she isn't a reader. Never has been. As a result, she's not much of a thinker either.
But she does think a lot about God. She needs someone to take responsibility for what happens to her. It's never anything she does. She also worries that I'm damned. Begs me to pray.
As I've often said, if there is a "god" who actually allows all this awful stuff to happen to people, then I wouldn't want to go to his heaven anyway.
I'd rather hang out with people like Natalie Angiers and Tamarika.
OK. So, how do my atheistic tendences jibe with doing ritual house cleansings and other such pagan-based ceremonies. Well, they're psychologically empowering; they're performances.
And we have not yet discovered all the laws of physics. Perhaps generating energy through communal ritual does somehow affect the cosmic flow and science hasn't yet figured out how it happens.
If nothing else, I get a kick out of playing the conjuring Crone.
Headology and all that.
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Me - Ow!
Over at Ronni's, her cat Oliver, offers his side of the story.
I kinda like using the convention of anthropamorphizing animals or inanimate objects to offer a unique perspective on a situation. Maybe I'll try it using my cat. Or maybe some object in my surroundings.
I'm thinking about it. Except I can't think too much because I've had a major headache all afternoon.
Me: OW!!
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just a thought...
... to end an exhausting day, although caring for a medicatedly docile mom is a lot easier than caring for a discombobulated one. But one cataract is out and she's sleeping. I've had a week of having to remember to put one eye drop in the selected eye four times a day, and yesterday and today it was three different eye drops at various times. She had the easy part.
And this is the thought, by May Sarton -- from today's Writer's Almanac:
"My cat likes to go out at one in the morning, so I have to let him out. And at two he meows to come in. [During that time] I make notes for poems. And then in the morning, when I'm all there, as much as I ever am, I work at them. I would not still be a poet without the cat."
She also wrote, in her novel Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing, (1965), "There were moments ... when it seemed that all one could be asked was just to keep the ashtrays clean, the bed made, the wastebaskets emptied, as if one never got to the real things because of the constant exhausting battle to keep ordinary life from falling apart."
For me, there seems to be no getting to the real things, cat or not. At least not yet.
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Two in One
I took a break today. Got a massage. My sciatica's acting up.
Tomorrow I'm taking mom in to have her left eye cataract removed. It's going to be a busy day, I'm sure.
Today, I finally realized that between 3:30 and 5:30 p.m. is when my mother "sundowns." Remaining calm through that is a challenge for me, since my instinctive response is to confront her about it.
I'm learning to take deep breaths, speak very slowly, and try to distract her. She seems to calm down if she can get on a roll telling me the old family stories that I've heard a hundred times already.
Deep breaths. Uh huh. Uh huh. Mmmm. I keep saying. She just keeps talking. Talking is better than ranting.
We'll see what tomorrow brings.
It well might not bring any posts from here.
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Appropriate Anagrams.
dormitory..............dirty room
presbyterian...........best in prayer
desperation............a rope ends it
george bush............he bugs gore
the morse code.........here come dots
slot machines..........cash lost in me
animosity..............is no amity
mother in law..........woman hitler
snooze alarms..........alas! no more z's
a decimal point........I'm a dot in place
the earthquakes........that queer shake
eleven plus two........twelve plus one
and, for the grande finale:
PRESIDENT CLINTON OF THE USA.......TO COPULATE HE FINDS INTERNS
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May Day! May Day!
It's May Day. You know, Beltane, fertility rites -- at least some harmless dancing around a Maypole.
Unless you're Catholic, and then it's not nearly as much fun. Ancient pagan May Day festivities, which celebrated sexuality, were watered down by Christians (especially Catholics) into long lines of children carrying and/or strewing flowers in procession toward a statue of the Queen of Heaven -- a virgin, of all things.
It's really ironic that I, who, if I celebrated May Day at all, would prefer the Beltane way rather than the watered-down version, was, for several years running, the pre-teen girl who carried the wreath of flowers that crowned the statue of Queen of the May at the end of the procession.
I hated being the crown-bearer. I'd break out in hives on April 30, and my mom would have to make me soak in a tub full of baking soda solution. But my folks were prominent in the parish. I was expected -- forced -- to play my role as well.
That's why I love the movie The Polish Wedding. The movie climaxes on a Catholic May Day event much different from any I experienced. It ends the way I wish mine did.
My mom hated the movie.
And this is what I remember singing the last time I walked down that aisle carring the crown and itching like crazy under my long, pale green taffeta dress:
O Mary! we crown thee with blossoms today,
Queen of the Angels, Queen of the May,
O Mary! we crown thee with blossoms today,
Queen of the Angels, Queen of the May.
Of Mothers the dearest,
Oh, wilt thou be nearest,
When life with temptation
Is darkly replete?
Forsake us, O never!
Our hearts be they ever
As Pure as the lilies
We lay at thy feet.
Oh my. May Day! May Day!
And lest we forget,
.....May Day is not just about the arrival of spring. It is also 1880s workers demanding humane treatment; it is men and women around the world marching in solidarity against the factory owners who would have them work all day, every day but Sunday; it is anarchists, socialists, and leftists of every kind working together within the labor movement. This association of May Day with radicalism is ultimately what led to it being downplayed in contemporary accounts, while Labor Day remains as a state-sanctioned holiday.
The first May Day, in 1886, was a call for eight-hour workdays by the workers in many American cities; it is now mostly associated with the Haymarket Martyrs. A bomb thrown by an unknown person at a labor rally in Chicago's Haymarket Square killed one policeman; authorities rounded up whom they considered to be the leaders of the local labor movement and put them on trial. Mother Jones said of the incident: "The workers asked only for bread and a shortening of the long hours of toil. The agitators gave them visions. The police gave them clubs." .....
Mother Jones. Now's she's a real May Day Queen.
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