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:

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

long day
short night
no play
just fight
can’t care
can’t sleep
not fair
bleep
bleep

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.

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.

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.