It must be summer
The days have been a bit of a trudge since I've returned home from my extended stay in New Orleans. I miss Dangerblond and Georgina and our routine, and just being there. Plus, back in the A-T-L, all my real world problems (problems? who has problems?), which didn't disappear despite my "working vacation" from them, have landed squarely back in my lap (imagine that!).
Middle Son is "home", staying with The Oldest in his apartment. He is looking for temporary work and (without much enthusiasm) studying to take the LSAT, which he's postponed (again) until October. He's been charged with 1) administratively supporting his father's entrepreneurial efforts (with one more to get through college, if y'all can figure out another way, I'd love to hear about it...) and 2) helping the aforementioned one more get through two semesters at a local community college, after which he (a/k/a The Youngest) will enter (God willing and the creek don't rise) a mid-sized regional university, not surprisingly located in, yes, a hurricane zone. He needs fifteen hours and decent grades and he can start in January if we can patch it all together. This would make me three for three, sending all three sons off to college in three different cities, each prone to hurricanes. But we're not there yet, taking one step at a time, so I'm holding my breath and crossing my fingers and formulating Plan B, just in case. He's got two classes this summer term. Lots of ifs.
Sis Bel is hangin' in there. She's started back on the "experimental" chemo she had one course of earlier this year. It was a desperate move when they started it and she's been off of it for a while, but it seemed to help her. She feels better now than she did last winter, even being on her third feeding tube. She doesn't have much energy and is unimaginably thin, but she's trying to do things that make her happy. Fortunately for us, this includes baking. One morning this week, I went to work with a fresh out of the oven blueberry turnover, made from scratch, to have with my coffee. Also, her old HS buds are flying her out to Austin for a 4th of July party. Our folks lived there briefly while I was in college, and she finished high school there, and stayed through her 20s. I worry that the trip will be too much for her, but I know she will love it, so it's well worth any risk. They've ordered special assistance, and she's flying to Austin a couple of days early so she can rest between the travel and the party. Her hostess, a best friend from high school, has spent the last four years caring in her home for her mother who passed a few months ago, so she knows exactly what she's taking on. It was all her idea. I'm thankful for that and really happy for Bel.
After first thinking I'd pass on the opportunity, I have been convinced to field a team in the summer college age baseball league at our home park. It's a very competitive league and we have our first game Sunday, June 22. The Youngest & his friend G promised to do the "organizing" (things like collecting checks and making sure the other players know when and where to show up), but they've gotten off to a slow start. I can't complain. I forgot to be talking to the one player I should have contacted. After doing exceptionally well my last five seasons as a GM in the regular 18U league, we got our butts kicked last summer. This time, we've tried to put together a roster with enough pitching to not get so killed this summer. I'll keep y'all posted on that.
I've also been binging on television when I'm not working, having discovered that I can watch TV, tweet on Twitter and feel sorry for myself all at the same time. I watched the whole 3rd season of Weeds On Demand. It took a couple of weekends. We're one episode into the 4th season, and I'm reduced to watching at a rate of one episode per week. Anyway, Season 3 of Weeds introduced a character with Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease (GERD). He burped all the time, not big belches but little burps, often. As a GERD sufferer, it hurt my feelings and made me laugh at the same time (alright, please don't take this to infer in any way that I burp one bit more than the next blogger... and it didn't really hurt my feelings).Then, again On Demand, I watched two seasons of Dexter. It's very dark, but compelling and addictive. In between Weeds and Dexter, I watched HBO's elegant set pieces, John Adams and Recount, most powerful, especially when taken together. I can't help but think that HBO knew exactly what they wanted to say when they released those two pieces in the lead up to a presidential election. Then, they cast Tom Wilkinson as both Ben Franklin and republican strategist James Baker. They're going to air John Adams from start to finish on July 4th, for those of us who might wish to spend the holiday deeply immersed in a history lesson. Cap it off with Recount and it'll put everything in quick, and urgent, perspective.
I needed to spend Saturday night cleaning out the other side of my clothes closet, which is a mess. I got half of it done last weekend. Instead, just to keep up the good cheer, I decided to try again to watch We Are Marshall. I've posted about this before. I was a senior in high school, about to turn 17, living in Huntington, WV on November 14th, 1970 when that happened (It was Atlanta, then Hungtington, then Austin, then back to Atlanta, got it?). I've tried to watch it from the beginning before and had to change the channel. Then I skipped the early part and watched it from when they decide to try to field a team again, and found it comforting. Finally, this time, I was able to watch the whole thing. It made me cry, but in a good way. Moving away and going off to college, I kind of missed the healing part. One moment in the film said it all, when a funeral procession had to stop, to let another funeral procession pass. That's what it was like. That's when I figured out, it can happen to you. It was my hysterical paranoia that took it all the way to and it probably will.
There's been lots of talk this week about the tragic passing of Tim Russert. His memorial service Wednesday ended to the spirit-stirring strains of Hawai'ian Israel Kamakawiwo'ole's magical medly of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" and "What a Wonderful World". On his Wednesday night show, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann commented that as the mourners exited, they were greeted to an actual rainbow (or two) arched across the Washington sky. Then he said they were "Stopped in our tracks." Great minds (click the link or just Google, "stopped in my tracks" - read, or just scroll down).
I had a dream last week about the old blind dog. I was driving off and looked into the rear view mirror to see her running after me, a flash of white, as happened so many times in her youth and prime. I pulled over and called her to me, happy to have her company, and she jumped up into the open car door for the ride. Of course, being old and blind that sort of thing doesn't happen anymore. She mostly just lays around and likes to take frequent, short walks. I woke up sad. She's been the very best dog and means the world to me. She's somewhere around 13, found roaming the neighborhood the day after my father died. Saturday, June 21 he would have been 100. I still miss him. Happy Birthday, Daddy.
Finally, and I didn't mean to bury this at the bottom of such a long post (goodness, I do prattle on!), but for both of y'all who are still reading this, I have this juicy gem:
I need to go to the beach. Okay, I'm done. Finished whining. Finished shouting (for now - but mark your calendars). Peace, out, y'all.
As seen on television
As it turned out, the federal government's attempts to respond to the storm and flooding appeared frozen by inadequacy and ineptitude. Thousands of people were stranded in their homes, unable to make a better escape than to their rooftops to wave for help and hope emergency personnel in helicopters might rescue them. Tens of thousands of refugees were holed up downtown in the Convention Center and the Superdome, yet FEMA was unable to bring in even food, water, or ice, not to mention buses to evacuate them. Touring the Superdome on Tuesday night, [Louisiana Governor, Kathleen] Blanco was disturbed by what she witnessed: in short, no federal assistance whatsoever. All she saw was the Louisiana National Guard and the Louisiana State Police -- certainly not enough of a law enforcement presence to be able to maintain order without additional guardsmen and troops.
...Despite his expertise being politics, the administration had made Rove a central player in the handling of the disaster. "A light switch in the White House didn't get turned on without going through Rove," says Adam Sharp, an aide to [Louisiana Senator, Mary] Landrieu. "It was clear that Rove was the point person for the White House on this disaster."
...Instead of supplying relief to the city, Rove had devised a scheme whereby he could blame the failure of government to take action on someone besides Bush. "They looked around," Landrieu says, "and they found a Democratic governor and an African American Democratic mayor who had never held office before in his life before he was mayor of New Orleans -- someone they knew they could manipulate."
This is the same pattern of dysfunction that gave New Orleanians their failed levees in the first place, institutionalized in the U.S. Army, specifically its Corps of Engineers: buck-passing, ass covering, avoidance of responsibility, propensity for placing blame as shame's cover-up, and spinning reality to fit what the boss wants to hear without any regard for truth. These were the core behaviors that led to the inadequately designed and poorly constructed levees in New Orleans, "flood protection" doomed to collapse. It's a cultural flaw, a systemic pattern, and therefore national, coming soon to a government project near you.
In fact, it's precisely how we were duped into a vanity war in Iraq, our treasury drained, our military hobbled, our precious defenders maimed and lost, their families deprived of what was theirs, an entire nation that didn't belong to us virtually destroyed, our place in the world horridly besmirched, and, ultimately, our safety compromised by a fey president's delusions, dysfunction writ large on a global scale, to predictably tragic results.
It was obvious to all thoughtful people who watched, as the events in New Orleans continued to unfold into days four and five and six and August turned into September in 2005, that when a federal government as powerful as ours did not provide any kind of rescue or relief to the unprecedented suffering, it could have only been because they chose not to do so. Looking at it objectively, reading Alexander's step by step account of how that evolved, it's clear that we've been scammed, conned with a top-down structure that's dirty, diseased and desperately in need of disinfecting. We've gotten what we asked for: faux leadership weaving their script, elegantly executed, as seen on television. Go. Now. Read. Vote.
It depends on how you define safety
HART: A lot of us supporting Barack Obama have pretty long history of experience in national security matters. And I for one would yield to no one in this country in terms of my commitment to this country's national security, and new ways to achieve it. We're not living in the Cold War anymore. And to pretend that simply spending a lot more money on the Pentagon is going to make us safer was proved false by 9/11. This was an administration that was warned that terrorists were going to attack this country, and they did nothing. I am not going to listen to anybody in this administration talk about Democrats being weak on national security. They let this country down.
Finally! Shall we all say it again, and again and again? I've had quite enough of leaders who live by the old 1960s rule of let's not, and say we did, who live in a fantasy world in which what one says or calls something or someone is more important than how people and things really are, a world in which appearances trump actualities, in which spend-thrifts are called conservatives, a world in which the duped people of America buy this load of crap. It's over. It's time to call a reckless spendthrift a reckless spendthrift.
Our nation is dangerously in debt. Our defenses are worn thin and frayed from fighting a war for the benefit of Big Oil, Halliburton, KBR & Blackwater. The numbers of our enemies in the world are greatly increased. These are the threats to our security. It's time for the war-obsessed corporate plunderers to leave our looted treasury alone. It's time for some reality-based leadership to come in and clean up their mess, for the sake of national security. This time, our safety depends upon change.
Mother's Graduation Day
Middle Son has been in New Orleans studying at Loyola University for four years and today he'll don his cap & gown (and bronze Cum Laude rope) and celebrate his graduation. While I've been here for the last month on assignment for ye olde KnockingShitDownCo, we haven't seen much of each other. His end of the year schedule (both work and school), my long hours spent working, Jazzfest and friends visiting from Atlanta combined to keep us from seeing much of each other. I think that's best, not wanting to intrude upon his end of college time. Now the family is arrived: his father (The Husband...) yesterday morning and The Oldest & The Youngest, yesterday evening. Today, Sis Mer from Houston, her husband and two of their three will arrive. We'll find each other at the ceremony, deploying our cell phones as locating devices in the Louisiana Superdome.
Of course, I cried like a baby at yesterday's Baccalaureate, a beautiful mass accompanied by exceptionally beautiful music, honoring the graduates. I doubt many could know how difficult it was to get here for us, how hard how many people worked to make it happen. His first couple of years of college were a time of crisis in our family and without help from extended family and, especially, Loyola University, we wouldn't be here right now. Mostly, I need to thank Middle Son, who worked so hard to not just make it happen, but to make it happen here, even when that meant working full time or close to full time for the last two years to contribute to his living and learning expenses. I couldn't be prouder of him. He chose the perfect University, and I have to include all of the difficulties that came along with being here during this time. We were lucky in the flood and its prolonged evacuation, losing only a semester of college, but I am quite sure that he wouldn't trade anything for having lived this history. It has all only served to make him, make all of us, love this city more. This is the perfect Mother's Day present. I'll be bustin' with pride and filled to the brim with gratitude today.
Happy Mother's Day, y'all. I know mine is. Peace.
The "good" pictures are in the camera (at least I hope they're "good"). The Youngest still has it (somewhere in the French Quarter - pray for them), but sometimes speed trumps quality, so here's the one I snapped with my cell and emailed to myself. The Youngest has his face all scrunched up but I think y'all can still tell how cute he is. Middle Son was so happy. So was I. It's been such a nice day. Dinner later with extended family at the restaurant where Middle Son has worked for the last two years. The one hit by one-hit-wonder Semisonic, "Closing Time" contained one lyric that I think perfectly describes the bittersweet nature of moments like this: "every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end." 
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Another Update: I failed to mention one of the coolest things that Loyola did. Obviously, the Superdome is a huge venue and challenging for families, leaving from spread out upper level exits (maybe terrace level is the correct description?), to find their graduates. When the graduates exited on the lower level, a brass band was playing to greet them. The grads were able to call their families and tell them to follow the music, which continued to play for some time as everyone gathered. It was lovely. It was New Orleans. It was perfect.
Outside the fence
Demolition. I sit, in my "mobile office", just outside the fence between two big 460s, watching Frankie* load the dump trucks almost lovingly with the bucket and the thumb, first dropping the tangles of rebar and concrete into the big empty trailers then reaching in with the butt end of the bucket to tamp down the rebar, finally catching and containing the errant metal strands with the thumb, the ones that poke up and would pierce the driver's tarp if not subdued. It's almost maternal the way a mother bird feeds a babe or even sexual, the way one lover tends to another, if I remember such distant things correctly. That first load hitting the empty bed reminds me to watch, as it shakes the truck's trailer, the ground and the car in which I sit, just outside the fence.
Then Otter* in the other machine, the one with the grapple, rips up the concrete foundation that once held these buildings, these bricks, these homes, stopping just short of removing the steps I surreptitiously photographed just yesterday. Their turn will come to be tossed in chunks onto a pile for loading later. His mechanical extension is as violent as Frankie's is gentle. I back the car away, out of caution.
Behind it all a local welder with his mask and sparks repairs the bucket's teeth on the last of the three biggest machines. The water cannon rumbles behind the bobcat, a mobile fountain to wet the streets our work has dirtied, streets that the firehoses will wash clean at the end of the day.
Truckers stop by to pick up their checks, the independents, crippled by the cost of fuel, eagerly. Clouds are building in the sky and the day has become gray, not a bad thing from my perspective, sitting in the car, running the air conditioning on idle. The wind picks up and blows the shirts of the men tending the grounds of the tidy Asia Baptist Church just on the other side of this street as a church employee stands on the front steps sipping a soft drink and folks wave as they pass. NOPD roars by, lights on, and an airplane pulls a fucsia "Hustler Club" banner across the gray sky as people gather just down the road to celebrate the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. The only music I can hear is the roar of these machines and their payloads crashing into the trailer beds, the spew of firehoses fighting the dust high into the air and the rumble of the trucks as they carry away these homes, in smaller, more manageable pieces.
*The names have been changed to protect the operators.
Notes from the road
I so haven't had anything to say since Ashley's funeral and haven't quite managed to make it home either. I've been working very long hours starting way too early in the morning on a special project (*ahem*) out of town (a few details here) since Monday before last for ye olde KnockingShitDownCo. The fun just never stops. (Those of you who've clicked the details link, perhaps are seeing Sophmom wink.)
Anyway, so many of the NOLA bloggers wrote so eloquently about Ashley, his larger than life, his beautiful family and his amazing funeral and wake that I can't possibly do it all justice. However, the always insightful Greg Peters of Suspect Device fame has said it perfectly right here. Please. Go. Now. Read. Follow his links (okay, please follow his links). Pics are here. If that's not more than anyone can bear, Ashley's wife, Hana, has taken to keeping up his blog, and has now invited a whole mess o' bloggers to her birthday party this Sunday.
As for life going on, there was a cookout with Dangerblond and Hana and the kids. Then last weekend was dinner out Friday and Saturday, making Sunday a true day of rest. This weekend there will be Jazzfest. Next weekend there will be Jazzfest. Weekend after that, there will be graduation (and in case you're the one person on earth I forgot to tell, that graduation will be cum laude *proud mama puffs out chest* - okay, stop it with the big boob jokes in the peanut gallery, please). I guess, after that, I'll be ready to go home, if I can still call it that.
In the meantime, I'm sitting on the side of the road in a well-wired "office" (read: rented Toyota), counting trucks and keeping a small army of independent haulers honest (and one boss man who's about to lose it, hopefully, on his best behavior and out of prison). Scroll down and you'll see my silly thoughts as they come to me (a/k/a "tweets"), let loose on Twitter, in my gutter, well hidden under my profile link. So.... Capt., Paula, John, Catty, Glenda, Fool, John-Ward, Mary, Kevin, Lisa (I know I'm forgetting somebody, my sweet wonderful regular commenters); y'all keep keeping the light on for me, please. I promise I'll be back (good lord willin' and the creek don't rise 'n' all that). I may never get caught up, but I swear I'll pick up where I left off.
Peace. Out. Y'all.
What happens next
Ashley's funeral will be this Friday and there is information on his blog about the service, as well as about the memorial fund that's been set up to help his wife and three small children (5, 3 & 2 years old) defray these costs and move forward, somehow (donate buttons in this post and in my left gutter, please, if you can). Those wonderful geeks have built a whole website about him too. If you haven't a clue what I'm talking about, please see the previous post.
I'm posting Blake Haney's video, Blight Field Talks #1 / Rough Edit, Ashley and Oyster sitting in a field talking about blogging and about New Orleans.
Ashley Morris 1963-2008
A bright light went out in the NOLA blogosphere and this world yesterday when The Perfesser, Dr. Ashley Morris, died suddenly. There is nothing I can say. His wife Hana, who survives him with their three young children, announced his passing on his blog and the many voices of the NOLA blogosphere are eulogizing him. Loki called him "the man most likely to call Ray Nagin a fuckmook to his face," and in the Tweeter Tubes declared that "an Ashley Morris day of Profanity laden blogging is in order for all NOLA Bloggers in his honor." Famous for many things, perhaps most especially his legendary "Fuck You You Fucking Fucks" post, he was, in Maitri's words, "Geek, educator, blogger, musician, but more importantly husband, father and a great friend of New Orleans." Greg said it beautifully:
The NOLA bloggers, rising in response to an unimaginable tragedy, quickly found themselves steering different parts of the beast, if I can mix my metaphors. There’s the head, the brains, the analysts like Oyster & Matt McBride and Tim Ruppert; the soul — poets like Mark Folse, philosophers like Michael Homan — and the guts, the workers like Karen Gadbois and the Zombie.Ashley was fire. Ashley was the furnace where the rage was forged, where the steam pressure built, where raw anger began its conversion to power and motion.
In lieu of comments I ask that you go to his blog, read what he wrote, and visit the blogs of my dear friends in New Orleans who are mourning this terrible loss. I'm posting links to those who've written about him, many (if not most) with pictures, and I will add updates as posts appear. Please start with Greg, Ray (and with Councilperson Shelly Midura's homage before the council), Adrastos (and an audio tribute), Maitri, Schroeder, Loki, Liprap, Karen, Michael, Lisa, WetBankGuy (and more WBG), Mr. Clio, dsbnola, Bart, Dangerblond, Oyster, Blake, G-Bitch, Scout, Greg's made a video (take a hanky), Saintseester (beautiful memorial icon), Charlotte, Tim, Varg, Celcus, Animamundi, Alan, JudyB, Cliff, Cenlamar, New Package, Video of Oyster & Ashley (thanks to Blake), Barbawit, Nancy Nall with a unique and moving tribute and Ray talks about "playing it sad", Micheal Tisserand for Gambit Weekly, YatPundit's Kos Diary, Dangerblond's post about the newly established memorial fund has a great picture, Remember Ashley Morris (geek mourning activism)....
I glommed this picture from Maitri's Flickr (asking forgiveness rather than permission). Left to right: Ray, Sophmom, Loki & Ashley at Alan's apartment for the First Geek Dinner (July 14th, 2006 - the Hottest. Night. Ever.). Having only just "met" them, I felt like I'd known them forever. In honor of Loki's above referenced request: FUCK.
Or, just go to your rooms. Now.
In Full Mom Mode:
Dear Senators Clinton and Obama,
Pl
ease promise me you know what you're doing, that both of you really are present enough to be a good president and neither one of you will do anything that might deliver this election to McCain. It's not so much that I hate John McCain, because I don't. He's a patriot who served his country nobly throughout his adult life. I don't even hold his widely acknowledged anger issues against him. Sometimes a little righteous indignation is highly motivating, as long as he demonstrates better impulse control than the inmate who's been running the asylum for the last almost eight years. We just really can't afford to stay on our current path. I mean, we literally can't afford it, can't pay for it, don't have the money to wage endless, expensive wars that, more than anything else, prove the points of those who hate us, fan the flames of anti-Americanism, make the world more dangerous for us and us lame broke. Haven't we had enough of leaders who say one thing and do the opposite?
Barack, Hillary, please just promise us you have a plan, that you'll drag this out only long enough to keep yourselves and your party atop the news cycle to fill this gap 'til the conventions, but that you'll do it without drawing too much blood. Then, find a way to make a true and lasting peace for the good, not just of your party, but of your country. Walk the damn walk. There sure has been enough talk. You can prove what great presidents y'all would be, prove it, by bringing peace and harmony to the Democratic Party. At this stage I don't care which one of you is atop the ticket, or if the other is on it, just that, whatever happens, it is genuinely without animosity (or you do a grand job of making it look that way - and that you make some important place for John Edwards). First, you must make peace. Kiss and make flipping up.
Demonstrate what a great president we're going to have, 'cause we're going to need one with the mess this disastrous administration has left for you to clean up. If y'all can come out of this forging party unity I'll believe you're more than just ordinary presidential candidates, you're patriots and diplomats, totally prepared to meet the challenges of the presidency.
I've been watching John Adams on HBO and I'm deeply touched by the enormous sacrifices our founding fathers and mothers (and their families) made when they gave birth to this country Their wisdom and commitment are now so clear in the difficult choices that yielded our republic, as well as in the well-chosen words that became their Declaration of Independence and our Constitution. We need the next president to respect the foundation on which this country is built and care about individual rights. Put the good of the nation ahead of your own goals and ambitions, and please start now.
So, stop pointing out each others' weak spots, or else the boys and girls on the other side of the aisle will be laughing all the way to the White House. Show us you're ready before day one. Really be living conduits for change. Take the high road. Both of you. Work it out. Senators, I believe that you each think you'd be a great president. I don't care which one of you it is. The good news is that you have before you a great chance to show us how it's done.
Either that, or both of you go to time out.
Yours, in Momness,
Sophmom
Nit picking
I went to the pottery studio yesterday thinking I might just find my center there, but it was closed for the holiday weekend. I thought it might be, looked on the website and found nothing. I would likely have known if I hadn't been gone last weekend, to New Orleans. Since then I've found my center (or some reasonable facsimile thereof) in a short collapse into the internet with some basketball on the side.
I can't help but have a sense of wondering what's next, restlessness relative to work, yearning for something closer to my area of expertise, something challenging that could go someplace, mean more than just being a cog in someone else's machine. I guess it comes down to rate of return. I am grateful for the stability and the benefits and I resolved to stay until after the partner who was so sick had passed, believing I was genuinely needed. They've weathered that storm and I think it's time for me to begin preparing them for doing without me and me for doing without them. Am I naive for wanting some kind of meaning to work, a sense of some room for development or at least the possibility of increased reward? I have none of those where I am.
As I mentioned in the previous post, I've been twittering. I like it. With basic internet and email on my phone last weekend on my trip to New Orleans, the addition of twittering as a means of staying in contact, provided sufficient interaction. I needn't have taken my laptop, which never left its case. In the course of looking around for some sign of our beloved Blog-City's management because of Adrastos' spam problem, I wandered over to Alan's blog and found this very interesting video starring Google's own Sergey Brin, showing us all the cool new interactivity coming soon to a hand-held device near you (well, sooner if you're an ubergeek). I wonder if my little aforelinked mobile device can run this open source software.
I don't know if it's related to the spam problem, but the B-C interface is sluggish and slow today, noticeably more so than navigating elsewhere in other tabs and windows (so it's not my computer). I wonder if all those scary spam bots are dragging us down.
I'm cooking a ham (if you can call prepping Paula Deen's spiral sliced ditty, cooking) and Sis Bel, who seems to be feeling better a week out of her radiation treatments, is making au gratin potatoes. Not much of an Easter here. Mama came by earlier and left mad because I didn't feel like talking about not being happy at work right now. I still can't quite figure where she got to be the one who was upset when I was the one whose scab she was picking, but I'm way over trying. It just is what it is. She called a few minutes ago like it never happened. I wished her Happy Easter. She said she didn't want to come over for dinner.
The youngest is safely home from Hilton Head and Part 3 of John Adams is on HBO tonight. The Old Blind Dog is fed and walked and curled at my feet. Dinner is ready and, by all accounts, delicious. Who could ask for more than that?
Peace. Out. Y'all.
Blog lag
I've always sworn never to blog about lack o' blogging, but it's been so long and I have so little to say, I feel like I must. I've stayed quiet as Clinton and Obama duke it out, because, well, I like them both about the same, and will support whichever one of them ends up being the nominee unless it just keeps getting weirder and weirder and becomes somehow totally disenfranchising (I can't imagine that though).
Some of you know that my younger sister (Sis Bel) with whom I've been living since completing the cohabitation phase of my marriage (although he seems to have made himself very comfy as a permanent helper/guest in our cozy little quarters), has been very sick. For a while this winter, she slipped into a very critical stage from severe weight loss as a result of cancer treatments (radiation and chemo) and we nearly lost her, but she's bounded back thanks to a feeding tube, to which she seems to have adjusted remarkably well.
Business is thriving at ye olde KnockingShitDownCo, so my work days have grown longer and I return home at night more weary, but that's all good. These are hard times in the building industries, judging by the long line of job seekers marching to my desk, and I'm very grateful to be employed by a concern that is growing when so many are folding around us. Job security is good, I think, although the lack thereof might be of some value in overcoming inertia, nudging me to change.
I'm still making pots, although slowly, as I don't have much extra time for it. I sneak over to the studio after work some evenings, but usually on Saturday afternoons, although not all Saturday afternoons. Like riding a bicycle, it's as if I'd never stopped, and a joy (I first typed "job" instead of "joy" - hmmm). Our Friday nights lost to the closing of our bar were quickly replaced by the migration of most (almost all) of the "regulars" to a new spot that is a regular grab takeout lunch and eat at my desk haunt of mine, but which is now opening at night, staffed by the former Paradise Cafe staff, patronized by the former Paradise Cafe patrons. While we still miss the funkiness of the old haunt (the Bistro is upscale by comparison), the community (funky enough all by itself) is what matters and that seems to have survived the PC's closing. That's a good thing.
Not this weekend, though. This weekend, I'm going to see Sister Mer (a/k/a the Professor) from Houston. We're driving towards each other and meeting in the middle. You might wonder where that is... well, it's our great fortune to be able to meet in New Orleans. I'm excited about seeing Middle Son for the first time since the holidays, and hoping to get the chance to visit with at least some of those from another favorite community. All of this babbling (who, moi?) is to say that I'm sorry to be missing what y'all've (gotta love extended y'all-based contractions) been writing recently and that I haven't a clue when I'm going to get caught up. If there's anything exceptional goin' on out there in the blogosphere, nudge me please and let me know.
Otherwise, peace, out, y'all.
Edit: Golly, I almost forgot. I've been Twittering. If any of you fine folks are looking for me on Twitter, I'm here. Now, peace, out, y'all.
Calm or control?
It's easy to be serene amidst calm, at least easier than finding calm amidst chaos. I'm usually pretty good at both but seem to be losing my touch amidst the shit really hitting the fan. Not that I'm not well practiced, but it seems worse than even my usual. Additionally, I've come to believe that, sometimes, excellent stress management techniques do nothing so much as enable us to sustain, well, more and more stress. Sometimes I think it would just be better in the long run to become hysterical, declare the vapors, fall apart, give up, lean into nothing there. I just don't know how, and can't quite forgive those who do, being also slightly outnumbered by them.
I saw Michael Clayton this weekend On Demand and had opportunity to discuss it in comments to Dangerblond's insightful post about the film. Carefully woven into Tony Gilroy's tense story are themes of mental health and mental illness as they relate to moral ambiguity or clarity. Tilda Swinton and George Clooney both played characters locked in morally challenging careers. Tilda Swinton's Karen Crowder drowns in evil amidst a severely misplaced Herculean effort to maintain the appearance of professionalism, of control, of normalcy; while George Clooney's title character trudges forward, losing himself completely in trying to do what's right by his ex, his child, his brother and his job. Between them is Tom Wilkenson's brilliant Arthur Eden, obviously slipping into madness and the absolute certainty it sometimes brings. Clayton, desperately trying to bring in and control his AWOL colleague, confronts him in an alley, concluding, "I'm not the enemy," to which his old friend responded, "What are you then?" Arthur understood, even in his illness, perhaps because of it, what was right and what was wrong. Michael, so caught up in fulfilling the roles into which he had become entrenched, couldn't see. I empathize with that.Ultimately, we get up every day and try to put one foot in front of the other. Sometimes mental illness comes with great clarity, other times it's more like just plain evil. There's a fundamental difference between maintaining control (or appearances) and answering chaos with calm, it's just not always so easy to know which is which.
Sad Anniversary
It was a year ago this morning that The Oldest's dear friend Sean passed from this life. He is still so terribly missed; and his family and tender, loving soul remain in my daily prayers. I can't describe how sweet and funny and beautiful Sean was. His friends flew in and gathered last night in Wilmington, NC, where many of them went to college, to remember him.
This picture is of The Oldest (his NC friends call him Tommy) and Mike (left and right) with Sean standing behind them. It was taken on the UNCW Ad Club's trip to New York in the fall of 2005, a month before Sean's graduation, two before his diagnosis. On January 28th, I received the letter copied and pasted below in an email broadcast by one of Sean's brothers from his family. In the letter, those of us who received it were asked to share it with as many others as possible. I have no better place to do this than here. |  |
Family and Friends:
In honor of my brother Sean’s birthday (he would have been 25 today), I’m again requesting your help in the fight against blood cancers. To put what we're up against into perspective:
- Every five minutes, someone in this country is diagnosed with blood cancer.
- Every ten minutes, someone loses their fight.
- Leukemia causes more deaths than any other cancer among children.
- Lymphomas are the most common blood cancers.
- The myeloma survival rate is only 32 percent.
You can become a potential bone marrow donor with only a small blood sample or a quick swab of cheek cells!
Although Sean lost his courageous 13-month and 13-day fight with leukemia, nearly 1,000 donors (Sean’s personal