Since I can’t blow it yet, I’ll blog it. I’m feeling a little better, although breathing is still a challenge, and my right eye feels like it has a toothache — a situation not unusual given the work done on the sinuses around it. So, I’m continuing to doze off watching watching tv movies and beginning to work on Marek’s t-shirt. (My eye doesn’t seem to hurt if I keep looking in one direction.) Yawn. Time for another nap. (Jeneane‘s been expending enough creative energies for both of us. She’d better save some up for George’s return tomorrow.)
I get the splints out of my nose on Thursday. I’m not looking foward to that! Luckily, I recently made the acquaintance of another woman who lives here with her mother. She’s ten years older than I (and her mother is ten years older than mine), and we have little in common except our caregiving, but that’s sure plenty at this point. She’s offered to take me to the doctor’s, and I’m going to take her up on it. It’s kind of nice to have someone nearby I might be able to count on — and vice versa. Yawn, again — both because I’m tired and because my blogging about this is getting tiresome.

Taken from here via this.
ABOUT 600 women who took over a giant ChevronTexaco oil terminal in south-east Nigeria and trapped hundreds of workers inside did not budge in their demands for jobs for their sons and electricity for their homes.
The peaceful protest by unarmed women is different for Nigeria, where such disputes are often settled with violence.
The women, from the Ugborodo and Arutan communities, want water, electricity, schools and clinics for their villages.
They complained that previous company promises had been broken.
I can’t help but wonder what would happen if all American women banded together and took control of the economic and political power bases (using a variety of strategies, such as those in Nigeria and in Lysistrata, as well as consumer boycotts etc.). Of course, it won’t happen because we are too comfortable. We have electricity and food and the bombs are not dropping on our chidren. Not yet.

I’m having one of those synchronicities again. A column by a local writer in my local paper today refers to Ray Oldenburg’s old idea of a ‘third place,’ an idea that I first remember reading about sometime in the 70s in, I think, an article in Psychology Today. Then I check in on b!X and find this reference to a new site, blogs.salon.com, which might or might not turn out to be something worthwhile.

Twenty years ago, when I really got excited about the idea of a third place as a public salon, an activist lawyer friend of mine and I went and looked at an historic building that was for sale in Albany. (As a matter of fact, it’s the building where they shot the nightclub scenes in the movie Ironweed, written, btw, by a another friend with whom I’ve lost contact — Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Bill Kennedy. He did a great jitterbug in the old days.) Anyway, there was federal money available for renovation, and we had this dream of buying the building and turning it into a social justice center/cafe-salon/dance hall. I know that sounds weird but we both were ballroom dancers and were always looking for non-bar places to dance. As it turned out, our own personal and professional lives were just too complicated and too busy to take on the project.

So, instead, I tried inviting people over for salon-type evenings, but that didn’t work out either because there was no spontaneity. It was just like throwing a regular party and inviting your favorite people. Fun, but no salon.

In the 80s, I hung around a bar that had a big dance floor where many of the dancers I knew would stop in several nights a week for some socializing and exercise. So, I had spontaneity and connections, but no chance for any kind of interesting discussions.

And now here we all are on the Blog. Almost the perfect third place. Poets, activitists, philosophers, passing acquaintances, good friends — they’re all here whenever I stop by. And I don’t have to worry that my hair looks like a fright wig and I’m sitting here in my nightshirt with a cold pack over the right side of my face where my eye feels like a toothache. Third Place. Salon. Without the physical constraints of time, place, and putting on clean clothes. Although I still wish there were a place to dance when I wanted to.

Can’t breathe. Can’t sleep. Head’s going to explode. Meds. Ice packs. Groan. Groan.
Sorry, Marek, you shirt’s going to arrive later than I hoped. But it will look something like this, only sage green and hand painted. Hope you’re feeling better than I am. Uuuuuhhhhhh. Groan.

Marek and I are both Polish. He’s the same age as my son and very similar in heart and spirit, if not style. We’ve talked on the phone a couple of times. In a real way, I feel that we are family.
Marek and I were both in the hospital yesterday. They knew what my problem was and fixed it. I’m home now. That’s not the case with Marek, and his friend Ann has posted about it all with great love and concern.
Marek is one of those idealistic, creative, energetic young men who feel deeply and speak with passion and honesty. He has always had my deepest respect. Now he has my deepest concern. Especially since they haven’t figure out what’s wrong yet.
I sent Ann an email, offering to do a healing ritual for Marek and conjure up a metaphorical object to make him feel better. Jeneane is posting requests for ideas on how to keep in touch with Marek and keep a stream of good wishes flowing. They’re starting to flow.
Doc Searls has reminded us about Marek’s love-filled yet tumultuous life. Euan has added his feelings. Join in. Blog for Marek.
We love you Marek. Our hearts are with you.

Home. Still groggy. Splint up nose but no packing. Hardly any pain. You all must have been sending good thoughts like crazy!! Going to sleep now. Thank you, thank you!

If you’ve been following all of the conversations about anger (I’ve lost track of where they all are taking place), be sure to check in and read what’s been going on at Blog Sisters over the past few days. Great insights from some of your younger Sistahbloggers about why that anger is there for them. And don’t miss Deborah Gussman’s rant on her own blog that relates to all of that. Guys, you can’t post, but you can read and link. And you really should.

Tomorrow I will be given a general anesthetic for my sinus surgery. I am remembering the first time I had a general anesthetic. It was when I was in labor with my daughter. I was young and totally clueless and in excruciating pain. She was born ass-first, but the idiots in the hospital never figured out that my yelling and complaining were really warranted until more than a dozen hours into it. Somewhere along the line they finally knocked me out, during which time my little girl finally managed to emerge.
The next thing I remember was hearing a loud buzzing sound and seeing a white light at the end of a long tunnel. Having majored in English in college, of course the first thing I thought of was Emily Dickenson’s poem that begins, I heard a bly buzz when I died. I was convinced that I was dead. My only thought was that I would never see my baby; I’d never even know if it was a boy or girl. I didn’t feel afraid or concerned — only a sense of terrible loss. Of course, as I slowly came out of the anesthetic, I realized that the buzz was the sound of the hospital staff’s voices and the the white light was the light on the ceiling. Nevertheless, ever since then I haven’t been afraid of dying. What I am afraid of, though, is unalleviated PAIN!
They tell me that I will have to live on ice pops, jello, and ginger ale for several days after the surgery. (Only cold stuff; no dairy.) And my nose will be sore and swollen and filled with packing and a splint, and I’ll have to breathe through my mouth. So, today I’m eating all the stuff I won’t be able to eat for a week — fresh strawberries and cream, a salami sandwich with basil and tomato on a hard roll, cheese cake…. And I’m going to sit outside in the sun and read while I still look presentable to the world. I’m stocked up on movies I taped off the tv, books, Fimo to work on a jewelry design I have in my head, and every kind of cold stuff I can imagine, including lots of watermelon.
So, remember to send me your good thoughts tomorrow.
And while I take tomorrow off from blogging, make sure you go and read Frank Paynter’s interview with Dorothea Salo. She’s half my age and twice as smart. I wonder if I had been born thirty years later than I was, if I might have been at least a little like she is. I like to think so.

The One True b!X – 09 July 2002 – The Return
Now, where are all the other Phil Donahues of this world? He’s the only reason I envy Marlo Thomas these days. I can’t wait for his new program to begin on July 15 at 8 p.m. on MSNBC.

The One True b!X – 08 July 2002 – Doing The “Smirk And Shuffle”
Two purposes to this post: to see if I finally remembered how to do the Trackback and to point you to another great post by b!X, which ends with:
I wonder just how many people in America are aware of how much of the rest of the world laughs at us, shakes its head at us, because this is who we have running the country. Have we no sense of shame at all? Are we really more satisfied with an idiot than we were with a philanderer? Are we really more satisfied with someone whose “malfeance” has to do with his performance in office, rather than his performance in the sack?
Are we really, after all, exactly that stupid?