Alabama Blue Dot

"Half that tree, a phone book, and a broken arm, that's all we had left."

2011-09-25T20:24:00.000-05:00

FEMA is people.

People like the family in rural Alabama whose entire life disintegrated in the wind. The title of this post came from them. They are trying to rebuild, living in a FEMA trailer and getting regular visits from case workers who work with them to find a permanent place to live. Except thanks to Republicans, now they might not.

People like the students in northwest Alabama whose high school, the one thing that holds the town together, was ripped apart. They’re meeting in temporary buildings right now, provided by the good citizens of the United States of America by way of FEMA. Because of Republicans in Congress, a new school building is now uncertain.

People like me and those I work with in Birmingham, Alabama. FEMA has a policy to hire local people for disaster recovery. It’s good pay although the hours are brutal-when I started back in May it was 12 hours a day 7 days a week.

The local jobs are the silver lining to a disaster like the April 27 tornadoes. I was able to get off unemployment. Some of my co-workers can pay off student loans. Now our jobs are in jeopardy and the people we are working to help are left hanging.

The people who work for FEMA in disasters are not regular federal employees. Some are reservists who are deployed to a disaster like a flood in Fargo or a tornado in Missouri, away from their families for months so they can help someone else. Some are local hires like me, who can connect with their communities.

They are case managers, who work with individuals and families who have suffered enormous losses to try and regain a sense of normalcy. They are crisis counselors, who go out in the community, sometimes door to door, to help heal the psychologically wounded.

Here in Alabama and across the county, we have seen amazing responses from volunteers and donors. We help each other here, and we are justifiably proud of how far we’ve come. But that doesn’t mean it’s all we need.

Federal disaster assistance, in the form of grants and loans and people, is how all our citizens pitch in to help.

Republicans (including the ones in Alabama and Missouri and Virginia and Texas and all those other places blown away or washed away or burned up) believe that corporations are people but federal agencies aren’t. It’s a fallacy at best and a cruel and vicious lie at worst.

We are Americans and we care for each other. FEMA is people.

The first thing you notice is the sky

2011-05-08T13:46:00.001-05:00

The lights didn’t even flicker at our house the afternoon of April 27. The cable TV stayed on. That morning, when the squall line came through, the trees came down a quarter-mile from our house, but we just heard hail and hard rain while we hunkered downstairs. Then the sun came out but the warnings kept coming and so we watched.

We watched the snaky funnel cloud exploding through downtown Cullman just a mile from my in-laws’ house. We held our breaths when the sky-cam went out and we had no idea where the storm was going. It headed away from them, the weather guy said, and we relaxed for a moment.

But then another monster emerged and it was on a direct path to Tuscaloosa. Both our daughters were there. Anna was in her dorm. Genevieve went to a friend’s house, taking her dog and her computer. We were in Bluff Park, 45 miles away and all we could do was watch. For long minutes a ravenous cloud sunk its fangs and talons into the city. Pieces of people’s homes and lives spun like so many angry wasps in the funnel. All I could do was watch and wait and hope.

The campus was fine, but Genevieve’s neighborhood was devastated. I watched the video taken in the mall parking lot and that monster was right over her house. I saw no way it had survived and we consoled each other that at least she had her dog and her computer but her Little Blue Haus was most likely gone. Her dad got in the truck and drove to Tuscaloosa in the rain and went there and her landlord was already on site and miraculously although all the trees were gone, the house still stood.

It was not until this past Thursday that I truly saw the destruction. I’d already made four or five trips – I’ve lost count – but this was different. I drove up Hargrove and all of a sudden there was nothing there. I could see the sky because all the trees were gone and all the houses were gone. It looked like an African plain after a drought, like a forest after a wildfire. We’re accustomed to seeing houses and trees at eye level and now it was just wide open sky, an unnatural desert with formations of lumber and shingles and crushed metal.

Genny’s house has one of those search and rescue X’s on the window. Hers has 0/0 for no injuries, no deaths. A few doors down, it’s 0/1. My in-laws lost all their trees, and their outbuilding, and their gazebo but not their house. I think sometimes about what could have happened. If that tornado had veered a few degrees then campus would have been hit and Anna would have been buried under tons of rubble. A few degrees a different direction, and Genevieve would have been homeless. A slight variation of wind direction and a tree could have killed my mother-in-law.

But I am ultimately a practical person and it does no good to dwell on could have beens. What does help is to tell our stories. We are a story-telling species and this is mine and once it’s told then it is time to move on and do what I can to make things better.

Thunder Road

2009-09-23T20:50:00.005-05:00

Today is Springsteen's 60th birthday? Damn! I'm sitting here listening to a 1976 performance of Thunder Road from You Tube - don't know where it was, but it was around that time that I got to see Bruce live at Auburn University. It was just after Born to Run was released and I'm not sure anyone in the South had heard of this New Jersey guy. But I'm a rocker, so I was going to be there.

It almost didn't happen - the fire marshal, obviously not a rock and roll fan, insisted that not only could there not be festival seating, but there was NO FLOOR SEATING at all! So we're all in the risers, and remember this is the days when everything was hard-wired, and as Bruce is singing the first song he sprinted from the stage, LEAPT into the risers and sang the entire concert from there. It was amazing. He even sat in a girl's lap to sing one song (regrettably not mine).

Fast forward to 1984, I'm working for a congressional campaign in Birmingham, driving around in the campaign van putting up signs. On the radio someone announces that Springsteen is coming and tickets go on sale the next day. This, thank god, was before Ticketmaster took all the fun out of ticket buying. I immediately told my co-campaigner-it was Robert Houston- to take me DIRECTLY down to the BJCC, I am going to camp out. This is also pre-cell phones, remember. So I get down there around 2 p.m. on a Friday and I'm like 20th in line. Robert goes back to HQ and calls my sweetie-pie Phil and gets him to bring me down some clothes and a blanket. I stayed down there the rest of the night. Even got my picture in the paper!

Got great seats on the 13th row, aisle and man I held on to those things like they were precious gems. The concert was great - it was shortly before Christmas and the encore was "Santa Claus is Coming to Town." Close to three hours of guitar and sax and that voice and those songs. I think we stood up the whole time and hardly felt it.

I know I'm a writer but I just can't find the words for the experience of Springsteen, whether I'm blasting "Thunder Road" on the car radio or tearing up when I hear "The River" and think of what might have been. They just give me the oomph to get up and do what needs to be done.

PACT, promises and politics

2009-03-08T20:17:00.002-05:00

The Alabama pre-paid college tuition plan apparently isn't what it was sold as. We got "the letter" this week that says the PACT plan is running out of money and the board that runs it just isn't sure what to do. The fact that we were promised that our child's college tuition would be paid (I have the letter, "signed" by Lucy Baxley which tells you how long ago we paid for the plan), apparently is of no use to us now.

An interesting fact: on the PACT home page now, the plan is described as a "529" plan. But that is not what it was when it started. In fact, we got a 529 plan from out of state because Alabama did not have one at the time. Folks, pre-paid college tuition is not the same as a 529 investment plan and the PACT folks are stretching the truth by describing it that way.

Now to inject a little politics into the discussion: Our Republican state Treasurer, as head of the PACT program, apparently drank the Wall Street kool-aid and thought the market would always go up. When I was googling around earlier today, I came upon this newspaper article from the Decatur Daily during the last campaign, when the Democratic candidate sounded the alarm. But no one was listenting.

Segrest seeks PACT changes: State treasurer candidate says tuition program in trouble.

Article from: Decatur Daily (Decatur, AL) Article date:October 17, 2006
COPYRIGHT 2006 The Decatur Daily.
Byline: Bayne Hughes
Oct. 17--State treasurer candidate Steve Segrest believes Alabama's prepaid college tuition programs need a management change. The Montgomery Democrat told THE DAILY editorial board that Republican incumbent Kay Ivey is wrong if she believes the Prepaid Affordable College Tuition fund is in good shape financially and is one of the nation's top prepaid tuition funds. Segrest, a real estate agent and businessman, said Joe Hurley of Bankrate.com gives Alabama's PACT a two-star rating, while at least 15 other states' funds get a three-star or better rating.

We bought the PACT contract and finished paying for it more than 10 years ago. We got it because we figured that if we got a regular investment plan, and the market crashed the day before we wanted the money, that we were screwed. Prepaid tuition would guarantee that our children would go to college. They might have to live at home and go to the hometown university, but they would go. Now it looks like the whole thing was premised on a fabrication.

We're not taking our money out. That would be foolish - the amount we put in ten years ago wouldn't cover a year of college. And there's no way we could invest it and get a return that would cover tuition for a child who starts college in 2010. But my faith in the state of Alabama is shaken.

25 Random Things, the Facebook Game

2009-01-31T21:01:00.002-06:00

1. I would rather sweat than shiver.
2. I am a cat person. I like being around creatures that don't need me.
3. I have never been bored with marriage and family.
4. Ever since I was little, I have always wanted to see where the trail goes.
5. I can be quite happy alone.
6. I never wear heels.
7. I rarely wear makeup.
8. I look pretty damn good for my age.
9. I take things too seriously sometimes.
10. I am fascinated with quantum physics and the concept that energy and matter are the same thing.
11. I am not very romantic.
12. Office work can be tedious but I do love a regular paycheck.
13. I love to travel. Especially to places I have never been before.
14. I will eat pizza beyond the point of reason.
14. Katherine Hepburn is my fashion icon.
15. I envy my nephew Josh and his off-the-grid lifestyle.
16. I am a politics junkie of the left-wing variety.
17. The only person who is allowed to call me by my husband's last name is my dad.
18. I'd rather be hiking.
19. I see money as a tool, not a possession.
20. I like putting things in order. I just wish I had more time to do it.
21. If I could do whatever I wanted, I would have a studio and make things.
22. My name is on a bronze plaque on a library in Birmingham.
23. Don't mess with my kids.
24. A vine ripe tomato still warm from the sun is nature's perfect food.
25. Gratitude is powerful.

Nine to Five

2008-09-07T21:47:00.002-05:00

Well, I finished my first week (actually four days since Monday was Labor Day) at my first "regular" job in more than 15 years. It has been a long long time since I worked in an office, with a regular schedule and if not a time clock then at least keeping track of time.

I have definitely been spoiled working for myself. The upside of self-employment is flexibility, but the downside is that you're never not working. That is, I would fit in house work during the day but then that meant doing work work at night when the rest of the family came home.

The other downside of self-employment is, of course, financial insecurity. You never know when you'll get, or lose, a job. That's not a whole lot different from any job in today's economy, but self-employment seems even more tenuous. So when I got an opportunity to work in a new field and get a regular paycheck, I just had to give it a shot.

It doesn't leave much time for blogging (not that I have been especially loquacious anyway) but I'm thinking that once things settle down a little I can do more writing in the evenings. We'll see.

For now, I am enjoying a little structure and looking forward to that first paycheck!

Waiting for the bus

2008-08-28T19:16:00.002-05:00

I had just turned seven years old when Dr. King made his "I have a Dream" speech. I don't remember it. But I do remember, somehow, that a couple of months later a church was blown up in Alabama and four little girls were killed. In my mind, they were the same age I was and all I was terrified because people would kill little children. I, who had not ever actually seen a black person so had no reason, I suppose, to hate them, thought that I myself was in danger, because I didn't hate black people and they would kill you for that, too.

When I was in seventh grade, we were living in Panama and so the intensity and chaos of 1968 just passed me by. But one thing did happen. We had an assignment to memorize a speech and deliver it in an assembly. I went to the library and got a book of Great American Speeches and I found one by this guy named Martin Luther King. I was enthralled, "my four children will be judged not the the color of their skin but by the content of their character." Again I felt like I was part of that, that I, still never having met a black person, was entitled to be judged by my character as well. When I gave the speech, it was the only public speaking I ever did as a child where I did not stutter and shake.

The next school year, we were living in Summerville, South Carolina, outside of Charleston. My dad was in Vietnam. All the buzz in my junior high school was that the schools were going to be integrated the next year. That year, I rode my bike to school. I would ride from home, down a couple of roads, then turn left along the fence that enclosed the elementary and junior high campus. The campus was on the right, and across the street were houses that were made of wood, a little shabby with metal roofs. Little black children were standing in front of those houses waiting for the school bus. Little children, like me, who had to look across the street to a school that all these other children were going into, but they had to wait in the cold and rain for a bus to take them somewhere else.

How could anyone be so cruel to a child? I somehow understood that the people who made those rules really did not see these children as people. If they did, they would not be so cruel as to force them to watch as other children went to a beautiful shiny school while they had to wait for a bus.

On this night, Barack Obama will accept the nomination for President. I know in my heart that he will win. And this middle-aged white woman has tears coming to her eyes at the thought. Those little children are probably grandparents now, and I hope that they will be watching too.

=^..^=

2008-07-25T07:46:00.009-05:00

We lost our precious kitty Piglet today. She joined our family 15 years ago, when Anna was just a toddler. She has been a good cat and we'll miss her.

She was an indoor cat although she would escape into the great outdoors every once in a while. She loved sunny windowsills and liked to sit in front of the window and look out. We have a picture of her not long after we got her, sitting on the back of the couch and staring at the fish in our aquarium. She was a good sitter.

Her name came from her curled-up tail, which we considered having taken off but the vet said wouldn't bother her. It never did, and it made her extra-special. We called her Piggle and Squish-ems because she was always fat and squishy. That's how we knew she was sick - she wasn't fat any more.

Piglet liked to just hang out and chill. When she was still a kitten, she would play inside with her companion Tigger (figure out where we got the names?) but went outside only rarely. Tigger was an outside cat who came in at night and slept with Genny. We lost Tigger to leukemia in 2000 just before we moved to Hoover.

We're put Piglet where we are building a courtyard, and we will make a plaque to set among the bricks and flowers.

We'll miss you.

On stimuli

2008-07-09T17:19:00.002-05:00

We just got the much-vaunted "stimulus" check in the mail, the one that's supposed to save our economy even though the money was borrowed from China and Saudi Arabia. For a lot of folks, the money is probably going right back out to products from those two countries - cheap plastic crap or gasoline.

So my plan was to be subversive and put it into savings. But then... a couple of weeks ago the Taurus that we bought for our daughter ($1,500 off govdeals.com!) blew a serpentine belt. We got a new belt on it, but then the shop told us the reason it snapped was the compressor on the air conditioner siezed up and the whole AC had to be replaced. There went our "stimulus" check, but at least it was spent locally.

There's a little bit left - I got my hair cut at a good salon and I'm going to get a new pair of glasses. At Costco, the left-wing warehouse store. So I can still be a little bit subversive.

Earthquakes

2008-06-16T21:25:00.002-05:00

If it weren't for the earthquakes, I'd send my daughter to California to go to college and live her life. Because in California, my amazing Anna would be able to marry the girl of her dreams if she wanted to.

I have to admit I never considered myself the marrying kind, and when I did marry at the age of 30 it took some adjusting. Nearly 22 years later, I look back on the adventure and think, why would people want to deny this opportunity to anyone?

I fail to understand how anyone who claims they want to "preserve marriage" thinks that the way to do that is to deny it to people. It defies rational thought that two people who are the same gender can't get married because if they got married then there wouldn't be marriage!? How does that work?

Maybe by the time Anna's old enough (wait till you're at least 25, sweetie!) we will have made some progress. I know I'll keep trying. It's for the children. Like mine.

Family by Fate and by Choice

2008-06-02T13:15:00.002-05:00

I come from a large family. I'm the oldest of six - a brother and four sisters. My Aunt Bea, my mother's sister, had ten children. Of all those kids, one turned out gay - one of my cousins, who lives in North Carolina with his partner. Of my siblings, only two of us had children - my brothers' two sons, and my two daughters. One of my daughters is gay.

Why the family history? Because although the vast majority of the marriages and partnerships in this family are heterosexual, we're still an LGBT family. Most families, if you cast the net wide enough to encompass a family reunion, are LGBT families.

Families come in so many permutations, and the one that today's American fundamentalists insist is the only one, isn't. Family is a malleable concept, changing based on the culture, the times, and the human spirit.

As far as I'm concerned, a family exists when the people within it call themselves a family. Whether they're the same gender or not, whether they have children or not, whether they are the same generation or multiple generations, they are family. Let no man cast them asunder.

Sounds like Bull to me

2008-05-24T10:53:00.002-05:00

This has to be a drive-by post; lots of house cleaning and car cleaning going on today. Many others have commented quite eloquently on LaLa the Mayor's "decision" to not sign a proclamation or approve a parade permit for the nearly 20-year-old Pride Parade. He says a "personal lifestyle choice" should not be "endorsed by government."

There are a lot of things that are personal lifestyle choices: wearing expensive clothes, borrowing money from friends who you give government business to, attending a Christian church, participating in medieval Catholic rituals. Being gay is just not one of them.

What a fool.

Two Boats and a Helicopter

2008-04-27T21:37:00.006-05:00

Once there was a man whose house was in a flood. He stood on the porch as the waters rose. A boat came by, the driver urged the man to get on board but the man said he was waiting on the Lord to save him. The waters rose, the first floor was flooded and as the man looked out his second story window, another boat came to rescue him. The man turned the boat away, saying he would wait for God to rescue him. Finally he was clinging to the chimney on the roof. A helicopter flew overhead and dropped down a ladder. The man waved it off, saying Jesus would save his life. Finally he was swept away in the waters and drowned. At the pearly gates, he saw God and said, Lord, all my life I did as you asked but when the time came you did not save me. And God said, "I sent you two boats and a helicopter, what else did you want?"

Mayor Larry Langford wants us all to pray and wear burlap and ashes, so we'll stop shooting each other. "We're hoping this will get the attention of God as we humble ourselves and say to God, `We need you desperately,'" one citizen says. "We need to humble ourselves and ask God to forgive us, and he will heal our land," proclaims a preacher. Langford tells the people at his revival meeting to pray for an end to the violence plaguing the city.

Here's another story: In Wisconsin, parents let their little girl die. She was sick, from diabetes it turns out, but they wouldn't take her to a doctor because they believe in the Bible and that prayer would heal her.

Langford and his preachers and an awful lot of Birmingham's citizens are like those parents.

Why do you think that you do not already have the attention of God? And more importantly, what exactly do you expect God to do? Are you waiting for some magical light from the sky that will transubstantiate bullets into butterflies? Perhaps you expect every thug and miscreant in the metro area to simultaneously have a Road to Damascus experience. Maybe you will wake up tomorrow, the ashes still gritty on your forehead, and all the falling down houses and unkempt yards miraculously will have picket fences and fresh bright paint.

Or maybe, just maybe, God wants you to get out there and do the work. Maybe he has sent you what you need, but you're ignoring it because you'd rather make a spectacle. That way it looks like you're doing something. But in reality, your child is dying.

It must be the ZIP Code

2008-02-02T12:38:00.000-06:00

I've gotten two robocalls for Republicans in the last three days. Don't know why they're calling me, except that I live in a ZIP Code that includes a lot of rich people.

The McCain call was actually pretty benign. It was recorded by an Alabama person (I didn't take notes unfortunately). He talked about how McCain was the best person to lead us in the war against radical Islamic terrorism, and he invoked the sacred name of Reagan.

UPDATE: Just got another McCain robocall, this one from McCain himself. He's ready to lead the nation as a Reagan Republican. Lower taxes and return "our party" to the small government principles it was founded on. Secure our borders, appoint conservative justices like Alito. Protect the sanctity of life, which his 24-year record supports. Best qualified to fight our relentless enemy of radical Islamic terrorism. We can and will win this war.

(Good thing he's not promoting the sanctity of marriage, considering his record in that regard. And it seems like saying he wants to return to small government roots is a bit of a dig on the current Republican party, no?)

The scary one came today from Mike Huckabee, who recorded the message. Sounding oh so sincere, he talked about how he was the one to further conservative principles and be a leader for "conservatives like us." His main focus - and this is what scares me - was how he would immediately get to work on a federal "life" amendment and a federal "marriage" amendment. No details of what those actually entail; I assume his target audience responds like Pavlov's dogs to the words and doesn't need an explanation.

He also talked about how he "cut taxes 94 times" when he was governor and that he would be the person to promote "the values of Alabama."

Not a word from Huckabee about the economy or Iraq, which as we know are the main issues people care about. At least McCain, misguided as he might be, acknowledged the issue.

Most of us, regardless of our political bent, are a lot more concerned about whether they'll have a job and be able to pay the mortgage, or whether their family member or friend is going to come back from Iraq in a flag-draped coffin. They really don't care about the homosexuals and they barely care about abortion. They might parrot the lines that the preacher gives them on Sunday, but in day to day life they are a) more tolerant and b) more realistic than Huckabee seems to give them credit for.

If you must vote on the Republican ballot, please for the sake of our nation, vote for anyone but Huck. That kind of narrow minded dogmatic thinking doesn't deserve the respect of your vote.

Beyond the Pro-Choice Cliche

2008-01-22T21:23:00.000-06:00

The Birmingham News ran its annual "Roe v. Wade is bad and women are stupid" editorial today. I've gotten to the point that I don't even get mad at them any more, because it's the same old stuff. Abortion kills babies. Women are idiots. Just Trust Us.

Well, I have decided that I am beyond pro-choice. I am pro-abortion. Perhaps a stupid thing to say on the Internets, but damn it I'm tired. I was annoyed when NARAL changed their name from National Abortion Rights Action League to a meaningless acronym. I think "pro-choice" is a weak and meaningless word and "right to choose" is a meaningless phrase. We gave power to the forced-birth advocates (I will not call them pro-life because they're not) when we stopped claiming abortion, and now we're letting them set the terms of the debate.

There shouldn't even be a debate. Abortion is a medical procedure. Any woman who gets pregnant should have access to an abortion if she wants one, and I don't care why. It's none of my business. It's not the government's business, and it's not some sidewalk preacher's business either.

And, you anti-abortion folks who might actually read this, remember - if you think abortion should be illegal "except" - except for rape victims for example - they YOU are pro-abortion. You just think the government should be making a decision instead of the individual.

This is the letter to the editor that I sent in to the Birmingham News. We'll see if they print it.

I gladly celebrate the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision. That Supreme Court decision recognized that every citizen has a right to make personal medical decisions without the interference of the government.

Roe v. Wade means that no politician can force me to bear a child against my will. Without the right to abortion, the state can decide for me whether I should have a child.

Once the government is the one making the decision, then you have had your rights taken away. If today the government can force you to have children by prohibiting abortion, then tomorrow it can force you to not have children by requiring abortion, e.g. China.

If you want to speak out against abortion or even demonstrate across the street from a clinic, I completely support your right to do so. It's a free country. And I want it to stay that way.

Il viaggio a Italia

2007-10-31T15:44:00.000-05:00

Real life interfered with blogging life for a while. I had a lot of work to catch up with, and then I was preparing for a fabulous two-week visit to Italy with my mother. She goes to Italy every couple of years, and it's my turn to go with her. We will go to Pompeii, Florence, Bergamo and Como (the last two are in Northern Italy in the mountains). I set up a travel blog, please visit!

Not enough lipstick

2007-10-01T17:17:00.000-05:00

So now our fiscally responsible Jefferson County Commission wants to hire 'em some PR. According to an article in the Birmingham Business Journal, they've put out an RFP (Request for Proposal) for someone to do "multimedia public relations including radio, television, newspapers and magazines."

OK, so are these the same "radio, television newspapers and magazines" that the Commission thinks AREN'T telling the great things the county is doing? The "media" who are just focusing on the negatives - you know, like cutting out $26 million dollars from arts programs that are one of those positive things that we could tell people about except well, we won't HAVE them anymore.

And I guess these are the same media outlets that get eleventy-hundred self-serving press releases a day (full disclosure - as a PR person I've sent my share of them, which is how I know this) and the commission actually thinks that their PR guy/gal is going to get a serious reading of them?

No, what will happen is that the firm will come back and tell the Commission that they will have to buy time if they want their message out. And that's more taxpayer money getting spent to tell taxpayers they're not getting ripped off, that everything is fine, just move along now, and whatever you do, don't look behind the curtain.

In 2004, the County Commission had a $250,000 contract with a PR firm, and that didn't even include the cost of the ads. By 2006, the county had spent $202,000 for PR work over 15 months, and $320,000 more to print and mail four newsletters (Birmingham News, April 2, 2006)

There's always a question about how money could be better spent, but considering that the County Commission is thought of just as highly (actually lowly) today as it was in 2004, even though it's a new group, the argument could be made that $570,000 of OUR money was spent on programs that didn't work. Maybe it could have been better spent on crime prevention programs or parks or potholes.

If you're doing your job, a communications or PR pro can help you communicate with the public. If you're doing a lousy job, the only thing PR does is wastes money and makes the public and press even more cynical. And if you keep doing it, then, well, it's the definition of insanity.

Sorry guys, you can call yourselves fiscally responsible conservatives, but you're just trying to put lipstick on a pig.

On black armbands and hope

2007-09-20T21:35:00.000-05:00

I'm wearing a black armband Friday to protest the war in Iraq. It's part of a national movement (see iraqmoratorium.org) to break your daily routine the 3rd Friday of each month as a public demonstration of how many people want the war to end.

So when I go to the doctor's office, when I wait in the driver's license office for my new 16-year-old to get her license, I'll be wearing something I haven't put on since we protested the Vietnam War in high school. Maybe someone will ask about it. Maybe I'll have a chance to engage someone in a conversation.

One thing I know for sure - it is a pitiful and lame response to the catastrophe that is Iraq, and as glad as I am that there is something I can do it feels almost worse than doing nothing. No soldier will evade an IED because of my armband. No wife will get her husband back earlier because of my piece of cloth. No Iraqi family will get to stay in their home instead of leaving everything behind just to survive, because I have a different wardrobe one day a month.

But it is something, I guess. As we learn from quantum physics, the smallest change in the smallest particle is still a change. Enough small changes, and pretty soon everything is going in a different direction.

Small changes can coalesce when we little people take a stand and then recognize a fellow spirit. When I'm walking through my neighborhood and I see a blue dot sticker, I smile, I recognize a kindred spirit, I don't feel so alone and I feel like maybe I can do something more. I feel hope.

I might only be a quark (a blue quark in a red photon field?) but I can do something. And maybe it will give me the courage to do more.

"Maybe life's meaning is not so much found, as it is made." Opus, by Berke Breathed

It was 16 years ago today...

2007-09-20T10:34:00.001-05:00

Well, this picture is from more like 14 year ago. But my baby turns 16 today. Oh, the stories I could tell, but I won't. I'll save those for the 18th birthday!

Now she's getting her driver's license! Some cultures have bat mitzvahs, others have quinceaneras, Southerners have drivers licenses as their rites of passage. And even though I'm not from the South, both my daughters are. So we will make the trek tomorrow to the license office and if we're successful (it's a long line!) she will drive by herself to her birthday party Sunday. I will be right behind her, of course. She can leave the nest but for a while it will be more like a bungee jump so I can reel her back in.

So here's to a great kid - writer, poet, animal lover, kind to people, lots of friends. She's already making a difference in the world and we are expecting greater things in the future!

Breaking: Water is Wet!

2007-09-10T09:42:00.000-05:00

An article in the Los Angeles Times today tells about a study that demonstrates

liberals tolerate ambiguity and conflict better than conservatives because of how their brains work.

We are also open to new experiences, and those mindsets apply to our everyday decisions as well as politics. (Of course, for some of us, politics IS an everyday decision!)

People who identified as conservative tended to respond in a "knee-jerk fashion" during the test.

Liberals had more brain activity and made fewer mistakes than conservatives

A researcher who was not connected with the study said

the results could explain why President Bush demonstrated a single-minded commitment to the Iraq war and why some people perceived Sen. John F. Kerry... as a "flip-flopper" for changing his mind...

He added that liberals could be expected to more readily accept new social, scientific or religious ideas.

Even with the danger of uncritically accepting every new bit of information that passes my way, I still see the liberal mindset as a better way to live in a constantly changing world. It certainly makes life a lot more interesting and fun when you're always learning and enjoying new experiences.

(This isn't a partisan thing. I know plenty of Republicans who are educated, informed and able to look at all facets of a situation. And there are an awful lot of Democrats, at least here in Alabama, who want to do things the way they've always been done and are interested only in perpetuating the existing power structure.)

Politics, Parenting and the Democratic Cowards in Congress

2007-09-07T14:16:00.001-05:00

As I watch our Fearless Leader in action - his sociopathic disregard for other human beings, his obsession with his own image and legacy - it occurs to me that my lifelong commitment to not telling other people how to raise their children might have been misplaced.

How different might our country be today if someone, anyone, had told GWB "No" just once in his life? What if his Dad didn't get him out of National Guard duty? What if his mom hadn't enabled his drinking problem? What if he had had to pay the consequences, just once, for his actions? (And no, "crying" is not a consequence, but merely more self-indulgence.)

Now, I'm not the world's best mother. Much of my disinclination to give advice to other parents comes from my understanding that they might not approve of me, either. When my children were young, and they didn't like something I made them do or kept them from doing, I would tell them I was trying for my place in the Bad Mom Hall of Fame. Later, my older daughter told me I wasn't really a Bad Mom, so I changed it to the Mean Mom Hall of Fame.

My point to them was that I was not their friend but their parent. It was my job to love them unconditionally but to insure that they knew how to behave in civilized society. That meant that we never considered ourselves better, or worse, than anyone else. We encouraged and appreciated their achievements, but emphasized that those were just part of the whole person. I made sure to ask what their friends were good at, what things other people did better than they did, what they learned from others and vice versa.

It also meant that we took what seemed like small infractions very seriously. We really didn't have very many rules, but the ones we had we were serious about. You don't lie, you don't cheat, you don't steal. You are kind to people and creatures and the world around you. If you cut off the cat's whiskers ("Mom, do you think that Tigger's whiskers are too long?") you get a stern discussion of how cats use their whiskers for feeling around and if it's dark and she starts to bump into things it is your fault. If you take a quarter out of the cash box at the nature center and try to tell me you found it on the floor, you not only don't get a candy bar, you find out about how we use the money to buy food for the animals and when you steal you are taking food out of a cute little flying squirrel's mouth and now you can do some community service by cleaning out cages.

And if you are caught at 2 a.m. in a church parking lot playing the Flaming Tennis Ball of Death game, you get grounded for a month even though the reason you snuck out of the house in the first place is that it is so UNFAIR that you're 16 and you have to be home at 10 p.m. in the SUMMER!

What does this have to do with politics? The Democrats in Congress are acting like parents who just want their children to like them. Well, let me tell you - your children will not like you. They will scream at you and call you names and pout behind closed doors and write nasty things about you on livejournal that they will not let you read. It doesn't matter because you know that you're doing the right thing.

Democrats are cowering before Republicans, the 30 percenters, when the vast majority of Americans want us out of Iraq. Democrats are afraid of being called names if they don't give in. Well, you're going to get called names no matter what you do - it's part of being the responsible party. Grow a thicker skin and do the right thing.

Best Birthday Ever

2007-08-25T17:42:00.000-05:00

Actually it was last week, but I have to share what my amazingly talented children gave me for my 51st birthday. Genny created a painting, in green which reflects my nature nuttiness, and Anna wrote a poem that nearly moved me to tears.*

We ate out at Fish Market (I enjoyed an oyster poorboy which was definitely NOT on my diet!) and then went by Publix for a cake - I had two, count 'em, two slices of this chocolate and whipped cream concoction. Phil's best gift was to not tease me about how far I seemed to backslide.

I have hung the painting and the poem on the wall in my home office, where I can see it and be inspired.

subtract nothing, multiply the marble

If I could count the things
you've done for me,
the number would stretch beyond
the atmosphere-
explaining to me the
secrets of Pi,
and why I always get
a B in math.

But no numerical equation
could fit all the wonders
of you, mother.
X equals carrying me out
of the bathroom when I
had finished a shower.
Y is rock-a-bye baby.
Z is long conversations,
telling me it'll be alright.
There aren't enough letters,
not even numbers
to figure us out.

But I am no mathematician.
Thoroughly an artist, always.

So I think of myself carved from
marble, beginning as a clean cube
at birth, slowly being chipped
and molded. I'll never forget who it
was that made my hand so smooth,
that sanded down my fingertips and
engraved in the creases.

I'm a statue not yet finished,
parts of me so mysterious,
who knows how perfect they could be.

But I'll never forget my sculptor,
and never be finished until the final touch,
that final scratch or scar,
is etched on by you.

A Series of Fortunate Events

2007-08-06T09:02:00.000-05:00

It could have been angels or Jungian synchronicity. I'll take plain dumb luck as an explanation for why my friend and I walked away from what could have been a horrific auto accident Friday.

We were on our way to New Orleans, toodling along about 70 in the fast lane. We'd been on the road 20 minutes or so after a stop for lunch and fuel. Then wham! - a big cardboard box flies off the flatbed truck in front of us, whop! onto the road not five feet in front of the car. Verna steers to the left to get around it, but there's not enough time and whap! we hit the box and start spinning. One spin, two spins, backward across two lanes of traffic (you could see the skid marks) onto the embankment, then the rear tire catches in the soft ground, but we're going down hill and the car tips over onto my side. I see grass slide by and then whup!- we're upright again in a small pile of dry brush. The whole thing took maybe 10 seconds, and we walked away.

We did go to the UAB emergency room (my darling husband drove the 70 miles from Birmingham to pick us up) to get checked out but there are just a couple of bruises and some back strain.

This is the series of fortunate events:

When we stopped for gas, Verna asked me if I wanted to drive her car, and I said no, let's switch the next time we stop. If I had been driving, I don't think I'd have been familiar enough with the car to handle an emergency. She did a superb job.
The box that fell was packed with acoustic foam ceiling tiles, as opposed to a box of pipe joints or other shrapnel. We basically crushed it when we ran over it, so it flipped into the median and although the road was covered with pieces of foam, it didn't cause any other damage.
The biggie - nobody hit us when we were spinning. That's what I was terrified of and I still get a shiver when I think of it. Everyone was driving the speed limit and the people behind us saw what happened and slowed down.
The embankment had been mowed recently so there weren't any hidden things to run over. And there weren't any of those ridiculous real estate signs either - I would have hated for one of them to go through my window when the car rolled. And that "clear zone" that ALDOT gets harassed about by tree-huggers like me? I am sure glad it was there.
The only pile of dry branches and limbs in a mile was right where we landed. I did have to yell at Verna to turn off the car (don't want any fires) but it made for a much softer landing than the brush and trees.
A state trooper was on his way to another wreck and happened by 30 seconds after we came to rest. He was terrific and very helpful.
I had my camera with me and the first thing I did after I got out of the car was to reach back in and get it and start taking pictures. It always helps to be able to document.
And of course we were wearing our seatbelts. If we had not (and I never put a car into gear without fastening my seatbelt) then we would have been tossed around and probably broken our necks.

Some wreck investigators came to the scene, and they said accidents like this usually end up with someone in the ICU or dead. It makes us angrier as we think about it, that someone didn't take five extra minutes to thoroughly secure their load and my kids nearly ended up orphans. C'mon people, pay attention - imagine your mom is driving behind you (and that you like her) and tie down your payload accordingly.