it was a dark and stormy night.

 ~ Snoopy


Last night was quite the storm. It pummeled, it rumbled, it alerted often on TV.
Captain Comic was in a panic.
Lucy was in a panic.
Both periodically hyperventilated. 
And whimpered, there was a lot of very high pitched whimpering.


Toots crawled under the dining room table at one point, "to be safe under heyah". I had been cataloging all safety procedures to assuage Captain Comic's blood pressure. 


Captain Comic: I can't believe we're having a tornado warning. This is so scary. You shouldn't have made me clean my room earlier, that only made the day worse.


After the tornado warning was over for our area, I had to call Mr. Cynic and ask if he was still alive as the tornado warnings continued for NC where his bus was on the road home from his Choral Competition in Myrtle Beach, SC. 


Captain Comic cried, But I don't know if he's alive or dead! He collapsed to the floor and shook raised dramatic hands to the sky. 


On the phone:
Mom: Are you alive?
Mr. Cynic: No mom, I'm calling from death.


Gee, I wonder from whence he acquired his sardonic sense of humor.


All kidding aside, I am extremely grateful that Mr. Cynic made it home safely and the bus only had to pull over once for safety's sake. My heart goes out to many others who did not come through this storm nearly as well as we did. In the next town, three people died.  


I am also very proud that his Jazz Choir is Grand Champion! The trophy is as tall as my pipsqueak nearly sixteen year old. Poor kid, doubly cursed with short genes. 


I went out quite late to retrieve Mr. Cynic. By then the storm had passed and I walked out to the driveway under a brightly deep prussian blue sky full of stars and moonlight from a full, full glorious moon. The world, rocked by the moods of spring, once again, lay forever changed, and yet unchanged as the ages.  


Life goes on and I am grateful for the ordinary. 

japan and christchurch, nz

I have not written of what happened last week and prior, and what continues to happen there.  It's not because I don't care.  I may care overly much and feel there is little I can actively do from such a distance. I have made the Red Cross donation call. I donated a bit to send rescue dogs to Japan to look for survivors, and not survivors. I've found out about everyone I personally know and others I know in the this weird new virtual realm that has shrunk the world to even smaller than it seemed before. Small world, indeed. I also spent a couple of days trying to keep abreast of the whereabouts of a local friend who was caught on a train between Yokohama and Tokyo. I called and kept his wife company even before the disaster for the week plus he was away, but spent last Friday night with her and other friends, doing what we could to distract her, and keep their young son occupied after we all found out he was safe. By Sunday he was home safe, only about 24 hours late.

My thoughts and prayers, of course, go out to everyone in Japan and in Christchurch.  I am concerned about the nuclear reactors. I am concerned people aren't getting food and water. I cried over the dog that stayed by his other dog friend who was hurt and I've cried over the four month old baby who was pulled out of the rubble. I bawled over the parents of the eighteen year old girl whose car was swept away in the wave when they discovered her. I have watched video of the water overwhelming the land, the awesome power, the utter devastation. I have contacted anyone I know who was in the potential west coast tsunami zone that, thankfully had little affect.

I get overwhelmed by things of this magnitude easily.  It's Haiti, Indonesia, New Orleans, and 9/11 going back to the San Francisco earthquake in 1989. In the meantime, there's the people of Wisconsin and it seem much of the Middle East and beyond starting revolutions and trying to be free.

I think right now, the best I've been able to do is not get so overwhelmed. I am going about the business of my life,and while I've personally piled more on to my own kind of mayhem, and gotten through the majority of it in the past few weeks, I have been extraordinarily grateful that my little corner of mayhem is mostly just full of life and family and love and a little frustration, aggravation with a lot of laundry thrown in.

Peace and goodwill to the people of Japan and Christchurch, New Zealand.

In my little corner of the world, I am taking Mr. Cynic to work in a soup kitchen today. It's what I can do.

terrible tragedy

Usually this blog is about trying to write while parenting, creativity, finding the positives when I am blocked, or parenting a child with Asperger's Syndrome and usually even then, finding the fun in it, the hope in it.

But today, I feel I have to say what my heart tells me - that my heart goes out to the families of the victims of the senseless shooting in Tuscon yesterday. 

I do not want to be in a political argument here.  But I would like to say, in short form, that I am a huge supporter of responsible free speech, and better gun control. I have my own very good personal reasons for that. There was a long and documented history of specific threat stemming from a particular posting by a particular political figure. Gabrielle Giffords's father said it all.

May those who are still hospitalized heal well and may the families of all the victims be able to cope well in time with their losses and trauma.

walk across america for pancreatic cancer

BJ Timoner is one of the first people I met when I arrived on my college campus a hundred years ago. At the time, he was very welcoming, and made me much more at ease in my new surroundings. He is going to walk from San Diego to New York starting on Christmas Day, December 25, 2010. He is doing this to raise funding for pancreatic cancer research through The Lustgarten Foundation. 

BJ lost his father at the age of five to this disease which still does not have early detection testing.  When someone is diagnosed it is generally already too late.  BJ is just reaching his father's age of passing, 41, and decided to do what he could so that future families will not have to live the life his family did, without the presence of a parent or other loving family member.

Pancreatic cancer comes in fourth in the statistics of cancer fatalities. 

Fourth, people.  That is too big to not have early detection tests available.  By now, through the success of other cancer tests, for prostrate, colon and breast cancers for instance, we know that early detection is the monumental key to treatment and therefore survival of formerly guaranteed to be fatal cancers. 

Please, friends, go to his website:

http://www.bjwalksamerica.com/

to learn a little more and to donate.  Every dollar goes to research only, none to support his endeavor or him personally.  Remember, even if you barely have enough to get by during this Holiday Season, even a little bit from each of us can go a long way together. 

Thank you.

MLK and Haiti

Cowardice asks the question, “Is it safe?” Expedience asks the question, “Is it Politic.” And Vanity comes along and asks the question, “Is it popular?” But Conscience asks, “Is it right?” The ultimate measure of a person is not where he stands in moments of convenience, but in moments of crisis and controversy.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

I have been trying really hard not to be overwhelmed by what has happened in Haiti. I was so overwhelmed by 9/11, by Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, by the Tsunami in Southeast Asia a few years back. Large disasters are incomprehensible, whether manmade like the ongoing genocide in Darfur and the Middle East issues, or this most recent crack in the bones of Earth under a major population concentration in one of the poorest areas of the world. So close to the US, the poverty of Haiti is itself incomprehensible. It is difficult not to feel helpless and hopeless in the face of such large scale destruction, lack of food, water, shelter and medical care.

It has been a long time since I have seen him, but in my early adult years, I had a friend who was from Haiti and Boston. He was big and quiet, but oh what a smile and laugh. I think of him now, wonder where he is, where his extended family is, because when I knew him, many of his family were still in Haiti. I pray that they are alright, even though I haven't seen or spoken to him since probably 1990. But having known him, however long ago, personalizes this particular disaster for me in a way different from many others. As does knowing some of the students I had back around Boston over the years. There is a strong Haitian immigrant community there, as well as Dominican, which many of my former students were at one particular school. I think of them, too, and wonder why we haven't heard much about the affects in the Dominican Republic. After all, both countries are on such a small island, together.

Of course, I want to do something, but find myself no George Clooney organizing a benefit concert to raise money for the rescue and humanitarian efforts, or Sandra Bullock pulling a million out of her pocket with an attitude of whatever she can do, she will do.
Well, I can donate when the offertory is passed in my church with funds going to the Red Cross. And I can spread the word about what others are doing to help the effort.

My friend, artist and jewelry maker Kelly Warren, is donating the sales of some photography and jewelry at her Etsy shops. please click on her name, and follow what she tells you there. Her jewelry and photography are as happy and colorful as the colors of Haitian art. I think she is doing a wonderful thing to show her support for the Haitian people. I've seen other incidences of Kelly's heart of gold, but now, she is absolutely in her generous spirit.

In other ways, I have always had a soft spot in my heart for Haiti, a country that historically seems unable to catch a break, but whose people have more resilience and faith in life and art and spirit than almost anywhere in the world. Let us all do what we can to help, however small it may feel. Any little bit from prayer to pocket to action makes a difference.

Christa Brelsford was one of the hot news items in the earliest reports. Her spirit of ethical responsibility and optimism in the face of losing a leg, are inspirational. Of course, she is one of the lucky ones, transported out and back home to America. I am proud to call her a fellow alumna of the college that informed my sense of personal responsibility toward the entirety of humanity. I would not be surprised to find her heading back to continue the work in adult literacy she was there to do as soon as she is able.

I opened this post with my favorite quote from the man we celebrate today, Martin Luther King, Jr. The active visionary inspired our nation to a greater good during a diffcult time in our history. I believe now is another time for us to listen to our conscience and do what we can.

a poem

Open

On the very edge of darkness
I looked Death square in the eye, and smile.
He points two fingers at his eyes
and then at mine,
to say like a bad comedy gangster,
I’m watching you.
Then with those same two fingers,
he thumps my sternum,
tips me off the edge of the precipice.
I fall into the nothing, into the void,
and back home to my body.

I am home, I have been there
with Death a few times,
and somehow at that crucial moment,
something in me awakes,
shines the light back out
and says, I’m not done yet.

I fall like a meteor,
come back home
To earth
To my body
growing more achy
with the years
but still whole.

The vision doesn’t end
when I open my eyes.
I now know what to do.
I find the knot that stitches
my ribcage together, pull it,
and it comes apart -
an easy bow at the wrist of a boxing glove
the arch point of a sneaker
the back of a laced up wedding gown.
My chest opens like a robe,
and from in me
all the darkness of night
all the stars held in it
come pouring out.

I remain open,
a conduit to the infinite we.

Old obsession

When I was a girl, I watched old movies with my mother, and was absolutely enthralled with certain icons of a more glamorous age. Marilyn Monroe was a particular obsession. Around age fifteen, I wanted to be her, or someone like her. I was skin and bones, she was voluptuous, sweet, enthralling. She was also dead. All through those movies where she seemed to find happiness, I always watched the sadness in her eyes. She was the ultimate incongruity of brazenness and vulnerability, Aphrodite incarnate and insecure little girl. I wanted to protect her in Some Like It Hot, in Seven Year Itch, and in How to Marry a Millionaire, Bus Stop and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. I was in love with her/wanted to be her in those and all the rest of her movies.

There is something about Marilyn that still speaks to fifteen year old girls and it's in that inherent, awkward 'Do you like me? Oh, you do? How did that happen?' questioning of almost every young woman on the verge of sexuality and how will men react to her. Around that age, we fantasize being fairytale princesses and movie stars swept into the strong embrace of a square jawed prince or co-star. It's our tale we've been fed for centuries. And then we have our families (hopefully) doing everything they can to protect us from what wasn't seen on the screen in the old movies. All we wanted was to fall in love and slake our hormonal messes of pubescence.

As I grew older and studied film - making, art of and history around film - a bit in college, and as a film lover, Marilyn's vulnerability spoke to me in many different ways. Sometimes to the injustices of her neglected childhood and a how it drove her to relationships in which she was always vulnerable, how that played out in her life and on screen.

I am on the fence about whether she died from an accidental overdose or whether as the conspiracy theorists contend, she knew too much. I don't think she was at a point in her life when she would have willfully taken her own life. We've all repeatedly seen those last scene shots of her swimming in the pool for the ironically titled, Something's Gotta Give. I love watching that scene because, for once, she seems on the verge of something big, something good, swimming away from the expression that Richard Avedon caught so off-guard in the above photograph.

She's still among the most beautiful people that the world and I are still captivated by. I guess the mystery of her death and the incompleteness of what she left behind will always make us smile then make us want to cry.

photo source: http://www.richardavedon.com/

RIP or Be Well

A surprising number of deaths and diagnoses regarding cancer are running through my family and friends, near and far recently. I don’t wish to dwell too long nor be disrespectful to those suffering through the loss of a loved one. However, I want to remind us all that living is why we are here and do so well, for those we miss as well as for ourselves.

To live fully is to live with an awareness of the rumble and terror that underlies everything. Ernest Becker


Some people are so afraid to die, that they never begin to live. Henry van Dyke


When the heart weeps for what it has lost, the soul laughs for what it has found.
Sufi aphorism


The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware. Henry Miller.


And an Irish Blessing:

May the road rise to meet you,
May the wind be always at your back,
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
May the rains fall soft upon your fields,
And, until we meet again,
May God hold you in the hollow of His hand.


Now go out and live and love well. I’ll do the same.