Oscar Wrap-Up, Part I

The Aviator (2004)
Sharkslayer (2004) (voice)
Gangs of New York (2002)
Bringing Out the Dead (1999)
Mio viaggio in Italia, Il (1999)
Kundun (1997)
Casino (1995)
Age of Innocence, The (1993)
Cape Fear (1991)
GoodFellas (1990)
Made in Milan (1990)
New York Stories (1989) (segment 1)
Last Temptation of Christ, The (1988)
Bad (1987) (V)
Color of Money, The (1986)
After Hours (1985)
"Amazing Stories" (1985) TV Series (episode "Mirror, Mirror (1986)")
King of Comedy, The (1983)
Raging Bull (1980)
American Boy: A Profile of: Steven Prince (1978)
Last Waltz, The (1978)
New York, New York (1977)
Taxi Driver (1976)
Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974)
Italianamerican (1974)
Mean Streets (1973)
Badge 373 (1973) (some scenes)
Boxcar Bertha (1972)
Street Scenes (1970)
Who's That Knocking at My Door? (1968)
Big Shave, The (1967)
It's Not Just You, Murray! (1964)
What's a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This? (1963)
Vesuvius VI (1959)

Film Preservation Efforts

But More Importantly...Oscar Wrap-Up, part 2

—Dorothy Arzner
First Comes Courage (1943)
Dance, Girl, Dance (1940)
The Bride Wore Red (1937)
The Last of Mrs. Cheyney (1937) (uncredited)
Craig's Wife (1936)
Nana (1934)
... aka Lady of the Boulevards (UK)
Christopher Strong (1933)
Merrily We Go to Hell (1932)
... aka Merrily We Go to ____ (UK)
Working Girls (1931)
Honor Among Lovers (1931)
Anybody's Woman (1930)
Paramount on Parade (1930)
Sarah and Son (1930)
The Wild Party (1929)
Manhattan Cocktail (1928)
Get Your Man (1927)
Ten Modern Commandments (1927)
Fashions for Women (1927)
Blood and Sand (1922)

—Allison Anders
Four Rooms. R. 1995.
Gas, Food, Lodging. R. 1992.
Grace of My Heart. R. 1996.
Mi Vida Loca. R. 1994.
Things Behind the Sun. R. 2001

—Maya Angelou
Down in the Delta. PG-13. 1998

—Gillian Armstrong
Charlotte Gray. PG-13. 2001
Little Women. PG. 1994
Mrs. Soffel. PG-13. 1984
Oscar and Lucinda. R. 1997)

—Kelly Asbury (co-director)
Spirit: Stallion of the Cimmaron. G. 2002.

—Kathryn Bigelow
K-19: The Widowmaker. PG-13. 2002
Near Dark. R. 1987
Point Break. NR. 1991
The Weight of Water. R. 2000)

—Anne-Sophie Birot
Girls Can’t Swim. NR. 2000.

—Jane Campion
An Angel at My Table. R. 1989.
Holy Smoke!. R. 1999.
In the Cut. R. 2003.
The Piano. R. 1993.
The Portrait of a Lady. PG-13. 1996.

—Patricia Cardoso
Real Women Have Curves. PG-13. 2002.

—Niki Caro
Whale Rider. PG-13. 2002

—Gurinder Chadha
Bend it Like Beckham. PG-13. 2002.
What’s Cooking?. PG-13. 2000.

—Rebecca Chaiklin (co-director)
The Party's Over. NR. 1993. (Adult DVD-Nonfiction 320.973 P)

—Joan Chen
Autumn in New York. PG-13. 2000.
Xiu Xiu. R. 1999.

—Lisa Cholodenko
High Art. R. 1998.
Laurel Canyon. R. 2002.

—Lorna Cook (co-director)
Spirit: Stallion of the Cimmaron. G. 2002. (Youth Video and DVD-Feature Film S)

—Martha Coolidge
If These Walls Could Talk 2. R. 2000. (Adult Video-Nonfiction 791.4572 I TV)
Introducing Dorothy Dandridge. R. 1999. (Adult Video and DVD-Nonfiction 791.4572 D TV)
Lost in Yonkers. PG. 1993.
Out to Sea. PG-13. 1997.
The Prince and Me. PG. 2004.
Rambling Rose. R. 1991.
Valley Girl. R. 1992.

—Sofia Coppola
Lost in Translation. R. 2003.
The Virgin Suicides. R. 2000.

—Julie Dash
Daughters of the Dust. NR. 1991.

—Tamra Davis
Billy Madison. PG-13. 1995.
Crossroads. PG-13. 2002.

—Donna Deitch
The Devil’s Arithmetic. NR. 1999. (Adut Video-Nonfiction 791.4572 D TV and Youth-Feature Film D)
The Women of Brewster Place. NR. 1989. (Adult Video-Nonfiction 791.4572 W TV)

—Anne DeSalvo
The Amati Girls. PG. 2001.

—Judit Elek
Elie Wiesel Goes Home. NR. 1996.

—Aiyana Elliott
The Ballad of Ramblin’ Jack. NR. 2000.

—Nora Ephron
Lucky Numbers. R. 2000.
Michael. PG. 1996.
Sleepless in Seattle. PG. 1993.
This is My Life. PG-13. 1992.
You’ve Got Mail. PG. 1998.

—Sally Field
Beautiful. PG-13. 2000.

—Jodie Foster
Home for the Holidays. PG-13. 1996.
Little Man Tate. PG. 1991.

—Shelly Dunn Fremont (co-director)
Pie in the Sky: The Brigid Berlin Story. NR. 2000.

—Nisha Ganatra
Chutney Popcorn. NR. 2000.

—Eva Gardos
An American Rhapsody. PG-13. 2001.

—Lillian Gish
Remodeling Her Husband, 1920.

—Jenniphr Goodman
The Tao of Steve. R. 2000.

—Marleen Gorris
Antonia’s Line. R. 1995.
The Luzhin Defence. PG-13. 2000.
Mrs. Dalloway. PG-13. 1997.

—Kerri Lee Green
Bellyfruit. NR. 1999.

—Maggie Greenwald
The Ballad of Little Jo. R. 1993.
Songcatcher. PG-13. 1999.

—Gillian Grisman
Grateful Dawg. PG-13. 2000. (Adult Video-Nonfiction 782.421642 G)

—Alice Guy-Blaché
Vampire (1920/I)
Tarnished Reputations (1920) (as Alice Blaché)
The Great Adventure (1918)
Behind the Mask (1917) (as Alice Blaché)
When You and I Were Young (1917) (as Alice Guy Blaché)
House of Cards (1917) (as Alice Guy Blaché)
A Man and the Woman (1917) (as Alice Blaché)
The Empress (1917) (as Alice Guy Blaché)
The Adventurer (1917/II)
The Ocean Waif (1916) (uncredited)
What Will People Say? (1916)
My Madonna (1915) (as Alice Blaché)
The Song of the Wage Slave (1915) (as Alice Blaché)
The Vampire (1915/I) (as Alice Blaché)
The Heart of a Painted Woman (1915) (as Alice Guy-Blaché)
The Tigress (1914) (unconfirmed)
The Lure (1914)
The Woman of Mystery (1914) (as Alice Blaché)
The Dream Woman (1914) (as Alice Blaché)
The Monster and the Girl (1914) (as Alice Blaché)
Beneath the Czar (1914) (as Alice Blaché)
Dick Whittington and his Cat (1913) (unconfirmed)
The Little Hunchback (1913)
The Pit and the Pendulum (1913)
A Terrible Night (1913)
Shadows of the Moulin Rouge (1913) (as Alice Blaché)
The Rogues of Paris (1913) (as Alice Blaché)
Matrimony's Speed Limit (1913) (uncredited)
A House Divided (1913) (uncredited)
Playing Tramps (1912)
The Face at the Window (1912)
Making an American Citizen (1912) (uncredited)
A Fool and His Money (1912)
Canned Harmony (1912) (unconfirmed)
Phantom Paradise (1912)
The Blood Stain (1912)
Fra Diavolo (1912)
Micky's Pal (1912)
In the Year 2000 (1912)
et cetera...

—Randa Haines
Children of a Lesser God. R. 1986.
Dance with Me. PG. 1998.
The Doctor. PG-13. 1991.
Wrestling Ernest Hemingway. PG-13. 1993.

—Catherine Hardwicke
Thirteen. R. 2003.

—Mary Harron
American Psycho. R. 2000.
I Shot Andy Warhol. R. 1995.

—Salma Hayek
The Maldonado Miracle. PG. 2003.

—Amy Heckerling
Clueless. PG-13. 1995.
Fast Times and Ridgemont High. R. 1982.
Look Who’s Talking. PG-13. 1989.
Loser. PG-13. 2000.
National Lampoon’s European Vacation. PG-13. 1985.

—Agnieszka Holland
Europa, Europa. R. 1991.
The Secret Garden. G. 1993. (Youth DVD-Feature Film S)
Shot in the Heart. R. 2001. (Adult DVD-Nonfiction 791.4572 SHO)
The Third Miracle. R. 1999.
Washington Square. PG. 1998.

—Nicole Holofcener
Lovely and Amazing. R. 2001.
Walking and Talking. R. 1996.

—Ann Hu
Shadow Magic. PG. 2000.

—Bonnie Hunt
Return to Me. PG. 2000.

—Angelica Huston
Agnes Browne. R. 1999.
Bastard Out of Carolina. R. 1996.

—Agnes Jaoui
The Taste of Others. R. 2000.

-Patty Jenkins
Monster. R. 2003.

—Victoria Jenson (co-director)
Shrek. PG. 2001. (Youth Video and DVD-Feature Film S)

—Deborah Kaplan (co-director)
Can’t Hardly Wait. PG-13. 1998.
Josie and the Pussycats. PG-13. 2001.

—Diane Keaton
Hanging Up. PG-13. 2000.
Unstrung Heroes. PG. 1995.
Wildflower. PG-13. 1991. (Adult Video-Nonfiction 791.4572 WIL TV)

—Aviva Kempner
The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg. PG. 1999.

—Callie Khouri
Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood. PG-13. 2002.

—Beeban Kidron
Swept from the Sea. PG-13. 1997.
To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar. PG-13. 1995.
Used People. PG-13. 1992.

—Barbara Kopple
American Dream. PG-13. 1991. (Adult Video-Nonfiction 331.892 A V-4597) 
Beyond JFK: The Question of Conspiracy (co-directed). NR. 1992. (Adult Video-Nonfiction 364.1524 B) 
Harlan County USA. NR. 1976. (Adult Video-Nonfiction 331.892 H NFR) 
Wild Man Blues. PG. 1997. (Adult Video-Nonfiction 780.78 W)

—Diane Kurys
Children of the Century. NR. 1999.

—Karyn Kusama
Girlfight. R. 2001.

—Christine Lahti
My First Mister. R. 2001.

—Mary Lambert
The In Crowd. PG-13. 2000.
Pet Sematary. R. 1992.

—Mimi Leder
Deep Impact. PG-13. 1998.
Pay it Forward. PG-13. 2000.
The Peacemaker. R. 1998.

—Jennifer Jason Leigh (co-director)
The Anniversary Party. R. 2001.

—Kasi Lemmons
The Caveman’s Valentine. R. 2001.
Eve’s Bayou. R. 1997.

—Caroline Link
Beyond Silence. PG-13. 1997.
Nowhere in Africa. R. 2001.

—Ida Lupino
The Hitch-Hiker. NR. 1953.

—Alison Maclean
Jesus’ Son. R. 1999.

—Sharon Maguire
Bridget Jones’s Diary. R. 2001.

—Cathy Malkasian (co-director)
The Wild Thornberrys Movie. PG. 2002. (Youth Video and DVD-Feature Film W)

—Penny Marshall
Awakenings. PG-13. 1990.
Big. Video. PG. 1988.
A League of Their Own. PG. 1992.
The Preacher’s Wife. PG. 1996.
Renaissance Man. PG-13. 1994.
Riding in Cars with Boys. PG-13. 2001.

—Tonie Marshall
Venus Beauty Institute. R. 1999.

—Elaine May
The Heartbreak Kid. PG. 1972.

—Daisy von Scherler Mayer
The Guru. R. 2002.
Madeline. PG. 1998. (Youth Video-Feature Film M)
Party Girl. R. 1994.

—Francine McDougall
Sugar & Spice. PG-13. 2000.

—Deepa Mehta
Bollywood Hollywood. NR. 2002.
Earth. Video. NR. 1999.
Fire. Video NR. 1998.
The Republic of Love. NR. 2003.

—Nancy Meyers
The Parent Trap. PG. 1998.
Something’s Gotta Give. PG-13. 2003.
What Women Want. PG-13. 2000.

—Tahmineh Milani
The Hidden Half. NR. 2001.
Two Women. NR. 1998.

—Rebecca Miller
Personal Velocity. R. 2002.

—Jocelyn Moorhouse
How to Make an American Quilt. PG-13. 1995.
Proof. R. 1991.
A Thousand Acres. R. 1997.

—Pat Murphy
Nora. R. 1999.

—Mira Nair
Hysterical Blindness. NR. 2002. (Adult Video-Nonfiction 791.4572HYS)
Kama Sutra. R. 1996.
Mississippi Masala. R. 1991.
Monsoon Wedding. R. 2001.
The Perez Family. R. 1995.
Salaam Bombay!. NR. 1988.

—Jessie Nelson
Corrina Corrina. PG. 1994.
I Am Sam. PG-13. 2001.

—Sandra Nettelbeck
Mostly Martha. PG. 2001.

—Greta Olafsdottir (co-director)
The Brandon Teena Story. NR. 1998. (Adult Video-Nonfiction B T2585br)

—Euzhan Palcy
A Dry White Season. R. 1989.
Ruby Bridges. NR. 1998. (Youth Video and DVD-Feature Film R)

—Kimberly Peirce
Boys Don’t Cry. R. 1999.

—Clare Peploe
The Triumph of Love. PG-13. 2001.

—Léa Pool
Set Me Free. NR. 1999.

—Sally Potter
The Man Who Cried. R. 2000.
Orlando. PG-13. 1992.
The Tango Lesson. PG. 1997.

—Gina Prince-Bythewood
Love & Basketball. PG-13. 2000.

—Lynne Ramsay
Ratcatcher. NR. 1999.

—Lotte Reiniger
The Adventures of Prince Achmed. NR. 1926. (Youth DVD-Feature Film A)

—Leni Riefenstahl
Olympia. NR. 1936-1938. (Adult Video-Nonfiction 796.48O)
Triumph of the Will. NR. 1935. (Adult Video and DVD-Nonfiction .086 T)

—Maria Ripoll
Tortilla Soup. PG-13. 2001.

—Nancy Savoca
Dogfight. R. 1991.

—Lone Scherfig
Italian for Beginners. R. 2000.

—Cynthia Scott
Jack of Hearts. NR. 1986. (Youth Video-Feature Film J)
Strangers in Good Company. PG. 1990.

—Susan Seidelman
Cookie. R. 1989.
Desperately Seeking Susan. PG-13. 1985.
Gaudi Afternoon. R. 2001.

—Laurie Gwen Shapiro (co-director)
Keep the River on Your Right. R. 2000.

—Mina Shum
Double Happiness. PG-13. 1994.
Long Life, Happiness, and Prosperity. NR. 2002.

—Joan Micklin Silver
Crossing Delancey. PG. 1988.
Hester Street. PG. 1974.
How to Be a Perfect Person in Just Three Days. NR. 1983. (Youth Video-Feature Film H)
Chilly Scenes of Winter, 1979 (aka Head Over Heels)
Between the Lines, 1977

—Penelope Spheeris
The Gospel According to Janis (forthcoming)
The Kid & I (2005)
Senseless (1998) - Director
The Decline of Western Civilization Part III (1998) - Director
Black Sheep (1996) - Director
The Little Rascals (1994) - Director, Writer
The Beverly Hillbillies (1993) - Director, Producer
Wayne's World (1992) - Director
Dudes (1988) - Director
The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: the Metal Years (1988) - Director, Director
Summer Camp Nightmare (1987) - Writer
Hollywood Vice Squad (1986) - Director
The Boys Next Door (1985) - Director
Suburbia (1984) - Director, Writer
The Decline of Western Civilization (1980) - Cinematography, Director, Producer

—Jill Sprecher
13 Conversations About One Thing. R. 2001.
Clockwatchers. PG-13. 1997.

—Barbra Streisand
The Mirror Has Two Faces. PG-13. 1996.
The Prince of Tides. R. 1991.
Yentl. PG. 1983.

—Julie Taymor
Frida. R. 2002.
Titus. R. 1999.

—Betty Thomas
28 Days. Video. PG-13. 2000.
Dr. Doolittle. Video. PG-13. 1998.
I-Spy. DVD & Video. PG-13. 2002.

—Caroline Thompson
Black Beauty. G. 1994. (Youth-Feature Film)
Snow White: The Fairest of Them All. NR. 2000. (Adult Video and DVD-Nonfiction 791.45272 SNO TV)

—Fina Torres
Woman on Top. R. 2000.

—Liv Ullmann
Faithless. R. 2000.
Private Confessions. NR. 1997.

—Agnes Varda
Jacquot. PG. 1991.
Vagabond. R. 1985.

—Wiebke Von Carolsfeld
Marion Bridge. NR. 2002.

—Audrey Wells
Guinevere. R. 1999.
Under the Tuscan Sun. PG-13. 2003.

—Lina Wertmuller
Swept Away. R. 1975.


WITASWAN (Women in the Audience Supporting Women Artists Now) is an informal alliance of women who have pledged themselves to helping women filmmakers break through the Celluloid Ceiling that restricts opportunities for women in Hollywood & beyond.




 

Drums Not Guns

(Sorry, I couldn't find a photo credit. See the Old Songs Festival website for more information.)

Yesterday was Super Saturday at the library. Once a month, our librarian puts on a show with marionnettes, musicians, storytellers, and a big crowd lines up for name tags and packs into a room to sit rapt.

The performer yesterday was Fode Sissoko, a Senegalese drummer and kora player since the age of 5, and Tobe Stover, a dancer who lives and works with Fode and did most of the speaking.

When Fode began to play the kora and sing a griot song in Mandingo, a hush fell over the room. His voice is airy and relaxing, as if his vocal cords were made of a loose-weave, strong cloth. Before long, he had invited several children up to sit in a drum circle with him, and he had them playing the beats he directed. Djembe means "coming together," he told them, so everyone must play in unison. Those who didn't have drums used sticks, and the rest of us used body percussion or just listened.

Tobe said that Fode's surname, "Sissoko," means "pierced through the heart." This is because the music made by this family is so powerful that it is like an arrow that would pierce you and stay there. Even if it had to hover at your door waiting, that arrow would pierce you when you opened to it.

He teaches family drumming in New Paltz. I asked R if he would come with me, even though our last attempt at joining a drumming circle with Ghanaian drummer Mimo Camara ended with R crossing to the bench rather than play a dictated beat. He has been playing a Remo djembe with phenomenal natural ability since he was around two. Unfortunately, he said no. Perhaps A will feel differently. I have felt so at peace after drumming circles; it may be the best way to release tension. The djembe is said to have originated as an instrument of peacemaking and healing, and the drumming circle movement centers on drumming for peace.

Fode closed with these words*

"I am that I am, I am beauty, I am peace, I am joy, I am
 one with Mother Earth. I am one with everyone within the reach of my
 voice. So be it...."

- - - - - - - - - - -
curious about the exact source; online these words are attributed Babatunde Olatunji (d. 2003), with whom Fode played.

The Cat We Love

This is our cat, Pat Lavender Will, named by R, shown here holding him. R picks up PLW several times a day and holds him in this way, or with the cat's head tucked under R's chin. A tolerant, beatific look appears on PLW's face, but that usually precedes an attempt to bite R's nose.

Sometimes R clamps PLW's ear between his lips. This reminds me of a man I once dated who licked his cats, saying that he wanted to kiss him in the way they'd like best.

PLW has deep feelings for R. Every morning R gets up and whistles for him if he's not already asleep at the foot of R's bed. He comes running, and they go downstairs, where R feeds him and watches him eat (when he's hungry he will bat his paws at passing ankles until someone agrees to watch him eat).

R has scars on his hands and wrists from PLW not appreciating his hugs. Sometimes I wonder if we would love him more if he weren't cantankerous about being touched. I had a cat once, The Bun, who would loll on his back and allow me to rub his belly, where the fur was thick and downy. PLW will draw blood if we try that.

He was a stray, and lived somewhere among the backyard fences of this street before a girl picked him up and took him to a neighbor's house and they thought of us (they already had a cat). When PLW goes off, during the day, "making his rounds" we call it, we imagine he is off visiting relatives.

There are various cats who come around our yard and look vaguely like PLW, except beat up—a flattened ear, a dullness in the eyes because, maybe, unlike him, they don't dine on organic cat food. One of these cats is so like him we call him Not Lavender Will.

Once I read a circular put out by animal rescue people in our town. There were stories about what happens to stray cats, included to convince people to neuter and spay. Horrifying things happen to cats at the hands of disturbed people, but I'm not sure repeating the details is good for cats or for human souls or for the cosmos. I go back and forth in my head about the ethics of stories, horror stories in particular.

We have a psychic connection to Pat Lavender Will. A few times, when we wanted him to poop inside, and not in our garden or under the swing set, we all concentrated on the image of him stooping in his litterbox. PLW was sitting in the doorway to the kitchen, and the four of us were arrayed around the table, visualizing his toileting. And within moments he marched to his litterbox and did the thing.

It happened again once when we were going on a long trip and he needed to be left in the house. We were all piled into the car and realized he'd gotten out. "Imagine him coming from that direction there," I said to R and A. "Imagine him trotting right up the porch steps." Within seconds, he came running, like a puppy.

There's a tree in our front yard, a dwarf maple, that he likes to climb. No more than three-and-a-half feet high, it offers him a satisfying perch from which to watch us depart or return in our car. When we pull into the driveway, if he's outside, he'll often be posed in this tree, his head poking above the branches to observe us.

One thing we don't do much is lounge on the couch. When I manage to do this, if I stay long enough and still enough, he will come and curl on my lap. Slowly we'll settle into the cat/human breathing pattern, our heat trapped in our fur and fleece until we emanate the smell of rising dough. Quiet. Then in runs R and grabs him up for a squeeze and a scratch.


picture by Steve Salmieri

Signal for Speaking

In a group of twenty children, there will be ten who raise their hands to answer your questions. Some will raise their hands so often you'll have to ignore them to search out new hands, but you will love them anyway, because the force of their responsiveness is stronger than your guilt at looking away.

The other ten, the ones who sit with their hands down, will bend, wilt, close or appear unchanged when the other hands go up. If you call on a child with arms down, in an effort to solicit something, you will only do harm.

Therefore, divide the group and find a new room and new facilitator for the handraisers. You now have a group of ten who prefer not to. Begin again. Some possible fertilizer: What is the last book you read. Name a character you like from a book, movie or play. What do you like best about your favorite physical activity. Some will raise hands, probably three to five. Allow handraisers to emerge from this group. Separate again.

You now have a group of four or five. Sit in a tight circle and speak softly. What color pillow do you sleep on. When the sun comes up, where does it enter your house. What was the last bird you saw.

If any hands are still down, separate again until you have one. What does your name mean. What song is stuck in your head. What dreams do you remember. If you could be anywhere right now, where would that be.

Now groups can be gathered and rearranged; preferably in a sunny place, but some may need extra growing space at regular intervals.

We've Got the Oranges

You can buy that on ebay for ten bucks: a swatch of fabric from The Gates by Christo. They're handing them out in Central Park, the people in the gray suits with tennis balls on poles, the docents, or whatever they call them.

It was "a good day for viewing," as they say. Forty degrees, sunny, snow setting off the brillant orange/tangerine/saffron/traffic cone color. The swatch doesn't do it justice, of course.

If I had been alone, or with my husband, we might have made a day of it and kept walking. Gates draw you on, you don't want to step off course or abort the journey. Coming to a fork, there's a desire to go on both paths and not miss a single Gate. But we were with R & A, and by the third time they asked if we were nearly at the Natural History Museum, I knew we would see only ten blocks or so of the whole.

I wish I could stop thinking of Bill Gates when I write this.

Like you, I've gotten a lot of email from friends with their photos and their comments. "It leaves me cold." "It's beautiful, you have to see it!" "Stunning." "There's not much to it." "I wish they'd picked a deep red."

I wished the color were a bit more yellow, but with the sun behind the drapes, firing them up, it is one of the happiest colors. But the festive atmosphere is the key to a public art project, and I did feel it with this one. Everyone becomes a little more present. Usually it takes a public emergency to do this for a city; how much healthier when it is art. People look into each other's faces and smile at the shared experience, attention focuses on a thing, these things—steel arches resting on their supports, looking like the wings of a stage or flags at an exposition, depending on the wind, or if you spend enough time among them, seen partially through trees, peeping from over rocky ledges, arrayed around ponds—friends.

People walking in cities drift in their heads, isolated in fantasy and connected in physicality. The Gates is a way to connect, share head space for a while and enter the same tangerine dream.

We had the Blues but that was yesterday... (see: The Oranges)

Amnesia: Depleted Uranium

H walks into my office.

"I've been reading about depleted uranium."

Oh, yeah. Depleted uranium. I try not to think about it too much, because when I do, an alarm issues from my lower spine and I feel like I'm going to pee.

We look at each other for a while.

"It's really bad," he says.

"What have you been reading, exactly?" I sort of want to know.

"I don't want you to be depressed, too." He leaves the room.

Now we are both reading about it at our computers. Here are links to people doing advocacy and protest. A lot of the info out there focuses on soldiers, and not the effects on the locals, and their babies...from Kosovo to Kabul.

Project Censored chose this as one of its top censored stories for the past year. Read more about it here and hit 'home' to check out the other 24 most-censored stories.

An excerpt:

"Leuren Moret reports, 'In my research on depleted uranium during the past 5 years, the most disturbing information concerns the impact on the unborn children and future generations for both soldiers serving in the depleted uranium wars, and for the civilians who must live in the permanently radioactive contaminated regions. Today, more than 240,000 Gulf War veterans are on permanent medical disability and more than 11,000 are dead. They have been denied testing, medical care, and compensation for depleted uranium exposure and related illnesses since 1991.'

"Moret continues 'Even worse, they brought it home in their bodies. In some families, the children born before the Gulf War are the only healthy members. Wives and female partners of Gulf War veterans have reported a condition known as burning semen syndrome, and are now internally contaminated from depleted uranium carried in the semen of exposed veterans. Many are reporting reproductive illnesses such as endometriosis. In a U.S. government study, conducted by the Department of Veterans Affairs on post-Gulf War babies, 67% were found to have serious birth defects or serious illnesses. They were born without eyes (anophthalmos), ears, had missing organs, missing legs and arms, fused fingers, thyroid or other organ malformations.'

LIFE Photoessay about birth defects in children born to U.S. soldiers.

"Moret concludes, 'In Iraq it is even worse where babies are born without brains, organs are outside the body, or women give birth to pieces of flesh. In babies born in Iraq in 2002, the incidence of anophthalmos was 250,000 times greater (20 cases in 4,000 births) than the natural occurrence, one in 50 million births. Takashi MORIZUMI's photos record the tragedy in Iraq.'"

Not tragedy. In college Shakespeare, I was taught that in a "tragedy," the protagonist learns something. Before dying.

Blagged, I'm It

The Music Quiz

Udge rightly guessed I have not yet done this quiz.

What is the total amount of music files on your computer?

115 megabytes, and much of that is stuff my husband put there.

The CD you last bought?

Let My People Go by Kim and Reggie Harris with Rabbi Jonathan Kligler. Actually, I started to buy it, and then a friend said she had a copy to give me, and she did.

What is the song you last listened to before reading this message?

My daughter singing bits of "Into the Woods" by Stephen Sondheim, which we viewed on videotape last night.

Write down 5 songs you often listen to or that mean a lot to you.

1—Lately, I play one from Let My People Go a lot. It's called "I Have a Million Nightingales," the lyrics by Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, set to music by Jewish cantor Linda Hirschhorn.

2—"Speak Low," sung by Ute Lempe

3—Peter, Paul & Mary singing "Kisses Sweeter than Wine"

4—"It Says Here," Billy Bragg

5—"Fragile," covered by Cassandra Wilson

Who are you going to pass this stick to (3 persons) and why?

I'm actually horribly stubborn about any kind of chain thing; I only did this much on account of udge, and he should bear no responsibility for my now breaking the chain.

Memes from a Marriage, #2: Weekend Getaway

—Every room in every Inn we've ever stayed in merges. The room at the inn is eternal: the bed, the bathtub, something about the heat that won't work at some point, the sketches we make, the worries we set aside, the hopeful arrival and the sluggish departure.

—Each room comes with champagne in the fridge. Except ours. We have sparkling apple juice, and no headaches.

—At breakfast, all the guests are talking about Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun. "Play Spanish 21," someone says. "The food is better at Foxwoods." "It's like an adult playground." "Sometimes people leave their kids in the car while they gamble so they opened up a day care center." We share a bubble of social isolation. Is there no one here who wants to discuss microtonal music?

—Sea jellies in a tank, glowing in the fluorescent light. They go up, they go down. Closed they look like mushrooms. Open they look like milky glass saucers. The other exhibits are too crowded with people, so we stay with the sea jellies. They are not labeled. Are they moon jellies, medusas or something else?

—The rays move too quickly to draw them so we cover paper with curvy lines. "She's drawing!" says a shocked, passing child. "Look, Dad, he's like an artist!" says another. As usual, everyone is rushing to get to the next exhibit.

—At the Olde Shoppes in Mystic (it's pretend; they're actually new), Feng Shui prevails. There are books, special candles, chimes. I get into a habit of entering a shoppe and asking straightaway, "Do you sell Chinese coins?" The answer is always the same: "Yes, but we've just run out of them."

—We are very clean, from soaking in the two-person bathtub.

—We catch up on DVD releases. These are worth watching: The (new) Manchurian Candidate, Under the Tuscan Sun. These suck: Kate and Leopold, DeLovely.

—Shore walk on a cold, sunny day. At one end of the beach, a dead swan. At the other end, a live harbor seal, sunning herself.

—We call our children but can't hear them through the cell phone. Once, A cries because hearing my voice has made her miss me.

—We find a bookstore. Bliss. But it's time for the movie to start so we must go.

—The movie is Hotel Rwanda. It reminds us of all the other movies like this we have seen, Lumumba, The Killing Fields, Salvador, on and on, genocide first, movie later. The next one will probably be about what is happening in Darfur.

—We won't be eating dinner after Hotel Rwanda. Our last night is quiet. We read and fall asleep early, missing our children.

red eft on holiday

For the next few days I will be moseying in the moss with my mate. Please check into Oswegatchie Monday night or Tuesday morning for a fresh outpouring.

Mediation Tune-Up

"Expresssss yourself."

We are doing a mediation scenario as a refresher for some third graders. Danita is one of the mediators, and after hearing the disputants' opening remarks, this is how she asks how they're feeling: she spreads her hands out on the table, leans forward and says "Expressssss yourself."

I love it. Sometimes these scenarios unroll pretty stiffly. Some of the kids don't understand that the paragraphs on the page are just suggestions to help them get into their roll ("Fred just accused you of copying off your test. You didn't have time to study because you were taking care of your sick Mom, and you're worried you're failing science"), so they sit and read the page aloud instead of plunging into the scene and improvising.

But not Danita. Natural Method actor, she cranks up her role, looking to sway the mediation her way. "On top of being sick, my mom is pregnant!" She says. "And she's in the hospital!" By now the mediators and the other disputant, a shy boy half her size, have forgotten the accusation that she cheated on the test. "I didn't get home until 3 am last night from the hospital."

The boy, getting into the spirit of the thing, offers to tutor her before the next test. "I can call you the night before."

"You can't call me! I live in a shelter! We don't have phones."

Now she is teaching me something, and it's a good cultural sensitivity lesson for future mediations.

One of the mediators asks, "What about your father?"

"He died two years ago!"

"Aha! You said your mother was pregnant! How can that be?" the mediator asks, with a look of evil glee on her face. She really wants to be a prosecuting attorney, I guess.

"Now wait a minute," I jump in. "What we want to do here is paraphrase and acknowledge how she's feeling, not try to trap her in a lie. Remember? A mediator is a good listener, right?"

Then we're back on track. "So I hear you saying that your father died two years ago, your mother is sick, you didn't get much sleep and you're worried about your science grades..."

The disputants reach an agreement to 1) study together and 2) apologize to each other.

This was the last review for this group of about 20, before they begin mediating at the peace table that's been placed at the bottom of the reading pit outside their art room. They'll be expected to mediate either while eating their lunch (it gives me indigestion just thinking about all that roiling emotion and processed cafeteria food) or missing recess (one child was so angry about missing recess for the mediation review that he came into the room and slammed down his lunchbox. He wound up leaving, unwilling to make the sacrifice.)

At the end of an intense three hours, as I left with the two other trainers, we stopped in the principal's office suite to check in with the school counselor. The principal was involved in mediating a conflict in his office. I could hear the raised voices of boys but not his. (The principal seems like a pretty level-headed, compassionate guy, if a bit obsessed with the forms the mediators will be filling out—he spent a good 10 minutes opening the training by holding up each one and explaining them to the mediators.) Outside his door another child sat, waiting for his turn.

A woman came up to him and said "What are you doing there? What's the deal?" I guess she was some kind of staff member. "Your name's been getting around lately!" She was speaking loud enough for us to hear, plainly proud of her handling of the interaction. "This keeps happening, we're going to have to make some calls. You scared of your mother? I know her—I would be!"

OK, well. Maybe it's not too late for us to spread some social skills through the next generation.

Memes from a Marriage, #1: Expect the Unexpected

Yesterday a friend told me she'd injured her foot and can't take care of it. Surgery is required. She has two kids who play with my kids, and does a lot of running around, and I couldn't imagine why, if her tendons needed repair work, she wouldn't go ahead and have it done.

"Because I can't," she said. "Because I'm pregnant."

Originally she and her husband had wanted three kids, but after a C-section and a VBAC involving various prolapses, they'd changed their minds. But the mind is a terrible thing to use for decision-making! I mean it gets a vote, but...

I love her girls. They have been the only homeschooling family we've been hanging out with that only has two kids, so they're well matched to us. I got a bit sad, that we won't have a match now. On the other hand, I, of course, adore babies.

And I remembered my first, unplanned pregnancy. How my mind thought I wasn't ready, but the rest of me differed, and was right. A third form of innate knowing (see preceding post), I guess.

Two Forms of Innate Knowing

A stops by the front door as we leave for the library. On a hook hangs a child's umbrella, a white one that came in a box with a set of paints, a Hannukah gift from an aunt. Now it is covered with red, green, yellow and red spasms of color. A takes it off the hook.

"I'll need this because it's going to rain today."

Sure enough, when we exit the YMCA later on after swim class, it is pouring.

~ ~ ~

R is arguing, first with his father, then with his mother, about using the video camera for the third day in a row to continue shooting his movie version of Matilda.

"We are your parents, and it is our job to see that your life is balanced. Life is like pizza, and it's not healthy if movie making is half the pizza. It's better to have a lot of smaller pieces."

He is leaning against the clawfoot bathtub, rubbing his eyes.

"Do not try to separate me from movies," he says. "We are attracted like iron to a magnet."

red eft's Depression Prevention Kit

Yesterday, as we ambled along a rail trail next to a mossy cliff dripping with melting ice, I told my son, "I need to be someplace I've never been about once a week, or eventually I get into a funk."

Winter is long. Here's what I do to beat the blues.

1. As per above, go somewhere you've never been, once a week. At least.

2. Take a good Vitamin B complex. Surprisingly effective.

3. Don't ingest news outside of a context that allows you to spit something back, or disempowerment is always battering at you. I like to get news from Progressive Secretary letters; all I do is click SEND and I'm complaining to my senators.

4. Aerobic exercise three times a week, some light yoga a couple of times.

5. Meditate daily, even if only for 10 minutes.

6. Get outside every day.

7. Don't eat wheat or dairy. Keep alcohol & caffeine to a minimum. And sugar.

8. Do something nice for somebody else at least three times/week.

9. Get lots of sleep.

10. Don't go more than a couple of days without writing, drawing, making music, pretending, whatever.

12. Don't watch TV. At. All. A movie once in a while is OK, but see that it isn't a non-redemptive bummer movie like House of Sand and Fog.

13. In the stressful years since 9/11, I have found these healing modalities to be extremely powerful: Energy work with a Barbara Brennan practitioner, Maitri Breathwork, Craniosacral Therapy.

14. Keep a little statue of Ganesh. Powerful fellow!

15. Listen to dreams, (you knew red eft would say that!) Here's a good blues-fighting idea from a dream I had (a woman was speaking to me):

"Imagine a necklace of fireflies around your neck, each able to transform your utterances. They remind you that you are light, divine. They protect you from thinking negative thoughts, saying negative things."


Finally, if someone is clinically depressed, try not to give them advice or come up with silly lists of things they can do to turn things around, it's very annoy— uh, oops.

here / not / here

"In Kingston, New York, "the gateway to the Catskills," we are enjoying full sun today, a sky swept clean by strong breezes that make the trees sound like the ocean on Nantucket, where I vacationed with my family last week. Our yard, particularly a large, crumbling brick planter, teems with things that grow. I can't separate these things into neat categories of plants, herbs, wildflowers. I have the most tenuous hold on which leafy growths arrived here by human intention, and which the breezes brought, but I can tell you: pole beans and pumpkins grow easily here. Groundhogs and our cat, Pat Lavender Will, eat carrot and tatsoi sprouts the moment they're up, so you have to cage those. Sugar baby melons languish, and blueberries disappear before ripening.

"I didn't know these things in Brooklyn. One thing that makes Kingston different from Brooklyn is that I own earth here. That means my daughter's placenta, which we saved after she was born at home, is buried beneath a peach tree that gave us richly delicious, juicy peaches last summer. I birthed my son at St. Vincent's in the City. No one offered us his placenta, and I didn't think to ask. It is decomposing, I suppose, in a bag marked 'Medical Waste' at Fresh Kills landfill.

"One reason we moved to Kingston is that it reminded us of Brooklyn--because of the sidewalks. They are made of the same bluestone, quarried from mountains nearby and transported downriver in the 19th century, maybe earlier. They heave from ice and tree roots the same way, absorb the sun's heat in summer, get slick and trip you in the winter, make stroller navigation treacherous, make you fall in love with them. I can't bear a town without sidewalks, or a town with cement ones. Our sidewalk triggers memories of Brooklyn all the time. Yesterday I remembered wandering the Brooklyn sidewalks after 9-11 with a bag full of boxes of sanitary napkins. Community Books had posted a sign with a list of urgent needs for relief workers, and I had brought them, excited that I had something to offer, having recently bulk-ordered from Seventh Generation. But a new sign said they were no longer needed, so I brought them along on a date with my husband. I remember my sore feet on the bluestone sidewalks, the bag banging against my shin, the helpless feeling.

"Our Kingston house, a six-bedroom of generous proportions built in 1850 that we bought with the proceeds of our Brooklyn co-op at a particularly insane real estate moment, was owned by a quarry owner at one time. He placed three vast slabs of bluestone in front of the house, leading from the front steps to the front curb. He had a bluestone carriage step engraved with his name, Boice, and it sits by the curb, next to a bluestone hitching post. My children draw on the walk with chalk, use the carriage step as a pretend stove for boiling wood sorrel and clover, hang on the hitching post ring.

"The same Hudson River that brought this bluestone to Brooklyn is the reference point connecting my children's origins in one city with their life in another. We take them to see productions by Arm-of-the-Sea Puppet Theater that eloquently tell the story of this region's water -- the political fights about it, the toil of reservoir building, the displacement of Catskill locals. We play them Tom Chapin's tribute to the water that flows both ways, 'Muhheakunnuk.' We hike to lookout spots, cross bridges, cruise on the Rip Van Winkle and point excitedly, "Look! There's the river! Keep on going and you get to New York City, where you were born!"



This is a post I sent to the ezine Here: The Stories Behind Where You Are in the fall. I'm sorry to say that editor Neil deMause is closing up shop to pursue other writing projects and be a fun dad.

The good news is that many of the fine pieces written for Here, published online and in print for six years, can still be read in the Here Archive. (Especially recommended is Neil's interview with Sandra Steingreber.) To read them in succession is to get a feel for the geography of real America, one puzzle piece at a time. The print editions are quite beautiful and it looks like they can still be ordered by snail mail.

In the land of the hearthstone tales

A bookish 5-year-old whose anger at her nasty, petty parents endows her with special powers for a while, Matilda escaped my notice until I was around 32, when I read it in a string of books by Roald Dahl. I brought it home from our much-adored library the other day for R, and yesterday he read it.

I think he loves Matilda for her love of reading, which he shares, and her keen sense of humor, and her stylish way with a good comeuppance, like putting Superglue inside her dad's hat brim so he has to go to bed in porkpie and pajamas.

Immediately after finishing it, R was planning his movie version, starring, of course, his 5-year-old sister. A is racking up a lot of screen and stage credits at this point. When it was warm, she & R mounted productions of The Nutcracker and The Wizard of Oz in our backyard at their Play Art Theater. When it got cold, video productions kicked into high gear: Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast (based on the Cocteau version), and of course, The Christmas Before a Nightmare and Lock, Shock and Barrel.

It's amazing to watch children create their own little versions of Morphology of the Folk Tale by creating something in response to a story. Certain motifs rise and dominate their imaginations. With Cinderella, it was the idea of hovering by a fireplace, and the transformation of a ball into a carriage. In The Nutcracker, the clock striking midnight became the key prop. Beauty and the Beast made much of shots of A batting her eyelashes. Often the narrative that ties these images together is dispensed with entirely, as if the image carried the full story like DNA, which is just how fairy tales work.

Applying what he's learned about stop-motion, R managed some cool effects for Matilda. Matilda's special powers make a pillow fly, and a piece of chalk writes on a chalkboard with an unseen hand. The first shot of the video is a poetic pull focus that reveals A as Matilda, seated on a stack of books, reading Great Expectations. The signature image of the story, it is also the book's cover illustration by Quentin Blake.

I love that image, and the related sequence in which Matilda, age three, toddles to the library each afternoon and reads her way through the entire children's section, after which the librarian begins recommending books by Dickens, Kipling, Austen and Bronte.

But the most moving passage comes later in the book, when Matilda, neglected by her parents, is taken home for tea by her loving teacher, Miss Honey. In a magical moment, her imagination, fed until now by books, meets her real-world attachment to someone who recognizes her specialness. I read this part aloud to R, sitting with him in his bunk bed with the morning sun lighting up the pillow, and felt his childhood and mine meet on the page, in front of the little brick cottage:

"They came to a small green gate half-buried in the hedge on the right and almost hidden by the overhanging hazel branches. Miss Honey paused with one hand on the gate and said, 'There it is. That's where I live.'

"Matilda saw a narrow dirt-path leading to a tiny red-brick cottage. The cottage was so small it looked more like a doll's house than a human dwelling. The bricks it was built of were old and crumbly and very pale red. It had a grey slate roof and one small chimney, and there were two little windows at the front. Each window was no larger than a sheet of tabloid newspaper and there was clearly no upstairs to the place. On either side of the path there was a wilderness of nettles and blackberry thorns and long brown grass. An enormous oak tree stood overshadowing the cottage. Its massive spreading branches seemed to be enfolding and embracing the tiny building, and perhaps hiding it as well from the rest of the world.

"Miss Honey, with one hand on the gate which she had not yet opened, turned to Matilda and said, 'A poet called Dylan Thomas once wrote some lines that I think of every time I walk up this path.'

"Matilda waited, and Miss Honey, in a rather wonderful slow voice, began reciting the poem:

'Never and never, my girl riding far and near
In the land of the hearthstone tales, and spelled asleep,
Fear or believe that the wolf in the sheepwhite hood
Loping and bleating roughly and blithely shall leap, my dear, my dear,
Out of a lair in the flocked leaves in the dew dipped year
To eat your heart in the house in the rosy wood.'

"There was a moment of silence, and Matilda, who had never before heard great romantic poetry spoken aloud, was profoundly moved. 'It's like music,' she whispered.

"'It is music,' Miss Honey said. And then, as though embarrassed at having revealed such a secret part of herself, she quickly pushed open the gate and walked up the path. Matilda hung back. She was a bit frightened of this place now. It seemed so unreal and remote and fantastic and so totally away from this earth. It was like an illustration in Grimm or Hans Andersen. It was the house where the poor woodcutter lived with Hansel and Gretel and where Red Riding Hood's grandmother lived and it was also the house of The Seven Dwarfs and The Three Bears and all the rest of them. It was straight out of a fairy-tale."


Happy Valentine's Day.

States of Excitement

Last night we walked a few doors down for one of the potluck parties that are a unique feature of our block. While our children, who insist on being called Lock and Shock these days, trotted in a large circle through the house, giggling and calling "trick or treat" to everyone ("The Nightmare Before St. Patty's Day," H called them), we chatted with neighbors.

One couple asked us how the homeschooling was going. "How can you do it?" the man asked. "I wouldn't know where to STOP!" He threw his head back and smiled at the ceiling, pumped by the idea. We talked about the irrelevance of school to learning and Einstein, the most popular example of someone who loathed school and followed his enthusiasms. Growing more passionate, the man later asked, "Does the state interfere and make you submit—" Here he gestured wildly, spilling his wife's wine down the front of her dress. I went and got some napkins, and told him, "talk of the state in this context gets me riled up too."

The two of them then told us about working in textbook publishing in Texas, among the forces of idiocy that exert too much power over what goes in the books, and how they'd hated having their daughter in the miserable Texas school system. The conversation broadened to cover all books, the boxes of them in our attics, what kinds of shelves they need, whether we write in them, the merits of used bookstores vs. Amazon vs. the Barnes & Noble that just opened near us vs. my all-time favorite: town library request-a-title online.

For a long time, I stood next to a plate of artichokes fried in bread crumbs with horseradish dip. I believe I ate most of it. Much of what was on the table contained wheat or dairy, but I sampled it all anyway, from cheese puffs to egg rolls. I was in a party mood.

A couple of large men were, too. For them, this meant drinking too much and attempting to tango dip women instead of offering a simple embrace for greeting or farewell. They reminded me of my parents' boozy parties when I was a kid, which I found thrilling for the food but a little scary on the testosterone front.

Another couple wanted to ask about homeschooling. We sat with them while their four-month-old baby wriggled on the carpet. The mother teaches ESL, the father teaches graphic arts, and they divide their time between Manhattan and our town up the Hudson. Sounds like a pretty good hs-ing set-up to me! The dad said, "We'll homeschool whether she goes to school or not, you know what I mean?" Yep. "Homeschool," always an unfortunate word, in this case means "enjoy learning stuff with our child." H + I held pretty much the same attitude, until at some point in our first baby's first year it shifted to, "Why would we let anyone else have all the fun and potentially spoil our atmosphere of creative delight?"

Meanwhile, the baby lay on the floor, beaming into her mother's face, watching folks drift in and out of the room, working her legs. Strutting in the air and clasping her little hands. Learning at a level of energy and focus that won't appreciably increase in sophistication, even if the subject of it may change. She needs no one to say, "Very nice baby, now add verticality."

Bouncing home with Lock and Shock I considered one of our learning mantras. Stay out of their way.

Each of us arrives knowing why we're here. The trick (and treat) is to hold on to that blissful state of excitement for the whole brilliant ride.

Dear Nik

How is it? I guess everyone wants to know that.

Guess what? Yesterday H went to the Small Business Resource Center here in the town he first visited with you, back when you were partners. Now we live here. He got some good advice about making his living as an artist. Can you imagine that? He's making calls and doing things for himself.

He'll still miss you, but maybe he'll stop thinking that he can't get paid work without the hustling and schmoozing you did so well. Sometimes he asks me to praise him for his capacity to change and grow, and I do. It still takes me by surprise when he grows! Imagine us, eyes bugging and mouths agape, every time a plant or a cloud or a baby does something a little new and different. Life always surprises us.

If you read the memorial message board H made for you, you know already that it's been hard for him to keep Cybergomi work going without you. It wasn't until last night, surfing around on his endless website, that I noticed he observes your yahrzeit every year with a little note to you. He remembers.

I remember once after R was born, you had dinner with us at our Brooklyn place. You brought a big box of Megablocks for R to play with when he got a little older. While we were sitting around the table after eating, you told a story about being in the hospital and dreaming you fell off a building and died, and in that moment you actually did die. But then you came back to life, and in your vision you laughed the big laugh everyone who knew you talked about. You laughed and laughed, because you weren't dead.

I know I'm leaving something important out of this story and wish you could come over and tell it again, and see R and A. You would have such a good time with them.

Take care. Keep taking care of us, if you don't need to take care of yourself.

Halloween Playing

A poem by Ada, age 5 1/2


Listen to the gentle
Halloween breeze,
and see the awful
things that will
happen to you.

Can you hear
the witch’s scream
and the devils’ tails
wagging? Can you
hear the soft
bones of the
skeletons roaring?

Why do I hear this?

And content, soft
in your bathtub,
with covers and a pillow.
(Why are you going
shopping in your bathtub?)

The monsters will go crazy
playing soccer. Do you
know those monsters
are no longer mean?

Somniloquy Raw

As I work with these they always get shorter and tighter, but I'm posting this one before it's been to the editing department, to honor the flotsam and jetsam of all that is hypnoid in us.


Gathering to Watch the Birds


In the courtyard, groups of people gathered to look at the bards.
I was reading and writing next to a feeder when the birds began to arrive.
A red one looked similar to a cardinal, but with white flecks on the wings.

See, this skin’s sensitive.
I don’t know, something but it was ok.

A courtyard subgroup, meeting in the courtyard anyway, has to determine a time for Linda to make up for missing all the Bible days. You don’t care? Linda doesn’t care.
Let’s just keep it on Wednesday.

In the courtyard, groups of people gathered to look at the birds.
I was reading up, writing next to a feeder.
When the birds began to arrive, the red one worked so diligently to get me over there.
A huge white one on the...

It may have hurt when he hit you but it’s good to notice when you stop hurting.
We’re all spending the night here together, ok?
A huge white one, felt uncomfortably white even though...
This is North Woods.

You need a cross-section of the pickles, huh?
Dinner is almost over, anyway.

Did you read Journey to the End of the Road?

...I’m talking to, from this website, I’m not sure who.
Remember the bookmarks.

The white one in the back, this is a new one that you aren’t using, Dad.
It’s back, fluffy back to me, fluffy fluffy back of the white owl.
Guardians would just love it.

She never needed to have her cheetah brushed, that I can remember.

It’s probably the source of the black mold problem.

The courtyard groups of people gathered to look at the bard.
Even if I was registering the most electable. I was reading the front page about Ken Foster. I was reading and writing next to a feeder, out the window.

I’m not saying anything I haven’t said a thousand times, but there’s something that’s different near here.

Space consideration, is it?

Please don’t constrain your e.

In the courtyard, groups of people gathered to look at the rain.
Or maybe, like Robin said, they need to tell people what they know, and what they know sucks.
In the courtyard groups of people gathered to look at the earthling birds.
I walk away.

I rose and ran up a spiral staircase into the woods.
There were groups of people with partners.
The courtyard group, groups of people gathered to watch, oh, it’s good inspiration.
You can read with me now: one, two, three.

When the birds arrived, Dadu thought I wouldn’t want to choose to look at them.
That’s nice.
The courtyard really wraps the studio around your roots.
Were these roots ever a feature of the landscape around here?

The pretty pod crow situation was fierce.
When she and I rose and ran up a spiral staircase, I knew, really that April best described her.
Put it out of my plan, there’s nothing...

The backyard groups of people gathered to look at the birds, which stood out.
I was reading and writing, all the way into Albany.

/underground/

In the courtyard, groups of people are open to them.
Groups of people who in Rayada.
Wanna play but be sure they both have beads.
Wanna hike where people can go visit hiking, no phone calls.

We’re encountering people who say it’s apparently not enough.

A School Day for the Unschooler

The eight-, nine- and ten-year-olds who've been meeting once a week for several weeks now to learn peer mediation with four trainers (one of them being me) have surprised me with their diligence and focus. Mostly, they learn the skills of mediation gradually, through games that introduce one concept at a time.

Yesterday we played a game where we closed our eyes while partners changed three things about themselves—taking out a hair tie, rolling up a pant leg, moving a name tag—and then we had to guess what was different. Another day we tried lining up across a room in chronological order by birthday month—without speaking. Then there are games like "Hurricane" that get people to change seats and get their blood flowing. "A big wind blows on everyone who lives with a dog!" (Flurry as several kids change seats. One is left without a seat and calls the next round. "HURRICANE!" Now everyone has to change seats.) Other games, like Telephone, or interviewing a partner, are good listening practice and prepare the trainees for the intensive listening of a mediation session.

In this age range, the kids can be less than four feet to over five feet tall, slight of build or very solid. It's fun to see this group made up of kids from two different schools mixing and supporting each other through the exercises, even if there is some teasing laughter now and then. Some of them have a lot of sadness and anger to deal with—parents who've died, parents who work long hours and spend very little time with them, contact with gangs.

During one training, when they were doing the only written exercise they've been given, one girl started crying. It was a complex activity, rewriting paragraphs to make them into "I" statements that name a feeling and a need, and she wasn't sure how to do it. We went out in the hallway together and sat on some steps. "Is it that you really really want to get it right?" I asked. She nodded. We talked about it for a bit, then she began to tell me about her home life with two autistic siblings. I could only imagine how important it must be to her to get things right.

An exercise we did yesterday was even more complicated, and I thought they wouldn't be able to do it. In groups of four, the trainees had to listen as one read a paragraph about a conflict. They were asked to focus on one of three things: feelings, needs or issues, and make a list, and they had to do it by listening, without reading along. I was surprised, after one of these had been read, to see the boy next to me making a list of nine different feelings he imagined the speaker might be experiencing.

After that the adult mediators presented a sample mediation, and I got to be one of the disputants. "My bike was parked next to hers during soccer practice and the back fender was twisted like this when I came back!" (Moving arms to look like pretzel). "And she's been vindictive before, saying she hates pink, around me and my bike. I have a pink bike!"

"She's lying! I never touched her bike!" (Huffing and crossing her arms.) Luckily there was a table between us, and two mediators. Having a safe way to ride a conflict out like a wave feels good, even when it's just playacting.

Some schools don't limit their peer mediation program to a chosen few trained mediators, but train everyone and then have a "peace table" set aside, where anyone can go and work on resolving conflicts. How great it would be if peace tables became a commonplace feature of life, both in school and out here in the big, contentious world.

How the Girl Got Presents

by Ada, 10/17/04



I was back in time with all the other Adas. Dancing Ada got a fan, and I got a ring, and all the other Adas had presents. Halloween Ada has a crown. You see, it was a storm in Jamaica.

The other Ada got a magical staff, and one Ada got a beautiful crystal, which was a saber tooth tiger’s crystal. It represented a volcano.

Then Ada got rocks. Some rocks were polished and some rocks were crystals and some rocks were gold and silver. One tube, and a big potato-looking rock. Right, Mama? And one rock was just plain old rock. And one rock was beautiful. And one rock was polished. And one sailboat sailed by.

Another rock looked like a cooked potato. But the white rock looked like the inside of a potato. But the brown rock looked like a potato with skin on it. But another rock was orange, and was polished neatly, and was shining in the moonlight. But another rock had a little mark on it that was red. And the other rock looked like it had cracks in it. The other rock was good, and there was some coal. But the other rock was old, plain old. The other Ada got a rock book, which said many stuff in it.

And one Ada got a measuring tape, like a little doobie. And one Ada got just a little candle, it was not much. One Ada got a shell, and a piece of birch bark. One Ada got very many sails to put on her little toy sailboat. And these are the very merry sails.

Studio Rayada now up and running

The first time I was alone with H, our 'first date' I guess you could call it, was when I visited his apartment to see what he had made with animation software he had written. I had been interested in animation for a long time, although not obsessed with it, dating from my childhood love of Disney and Gerry Anderson marionation to my adult attraction to works of such diverse independent makers as Faith Hubley and Lewis Klahr. I wanted to learn animation myself but wasn't sure how to go about it—how do you start up an expensive hobby when you live paycheck to paycheck?

As we sat in front of H's computer, our creative spirits bonded. These were not the sterile 3D animations of Pixar, they were flat combinations of line and plane (Miroesque) that made the most of the intense, saturated color a computer offers. In the eight years since, we've done a few animations here and there but not until this year—with babies raised to kids, a move under our belts, some stressful family events somewhat stabilized—have we been able to make anything we could take out of here and show to the world, contenting ourselves in the meantime with collecting books about couples in collaborative partnerships. Wondering exactly how they work together. Oddly, the books didn't really address the particulars of this dynamic process between collaborators.

Well, we've started to find out. The process is slow at times, jerky at others. We've learned that whatever colors H chooses, I will change them. That after three sentences of his tech talk, I either 1) tune out; 2) leave the room; or 3) in my enlightened moments, ask him to slow down so I can repeat each sentence of this disquisition full of stuff I don't need to know.

Sometimes, frustrated by my lack of access to the drawing tablet, or sensing I'm directing too much, I've wondered if it's working at all. At one point when we were stuck on a problem, I said "Maybe you don't want to animate with me! Why don't you do a project alone?" H looked down at the tablet and frowned. It was the meanest thing I could have said.

Things clicked with the last project we did, a tiny (2-minute) piece we submitted to a Valentine's Day Festival to be shown at BAM Rose Cinemas in Brooklyn. This time we worked the way we have wanted to, with input from R & A, and the theme ('anything related to Love') was right up our alley. We let as much of our joy loose as we could, and tried to focus on what we're best at—play.

What we're starting to learn about collaboration is that the process is us and our relationship, our strengths and weaknesses, our communication styles.

We've applied to two festivals with our projects now and haven't gotten in. BOO! Only 10% of the applicants do—there are a lot of people making movies out there. But we don't have to wait for a venue to show them, just as we didn't have to wait for a grant to make them. That's something to love about computers, as much as I love handmade animation.

Delicious Evening: a somniloquy

Love Is So Sweet


Enjoy, and don't wait for Valentine's Day to love!

Thanks for friends

I had a garden-variety bad morning yesterday. Got up feeling tired and anxious, tried to pick a fight with H. As we were all getting read to go to our Unitarian congregation for a service, I walked out onto our porch and didn't notice that the steps were pure ice; I did a Dagwood Bumpstead, falling up before I bumped down the stairs, knocking my ankle, my wrists and a buttock. That did it, a flood of strong feelings about a number of unrelated subjects swept through, and didn't let up during the drive and as we took our seats while our minister was reading the kids a story about Frog and Toad. I get very emotional about anything related to Frog and Toad.

After that she said that a lot of people have been going through tough times in the congregation and that she wanted to dedicate the service to healing. She talked about the Joys and Sorrows segment of the service, during which people stand and share their personal lives, and take the risk of being vulnerable, and how we all support one another because we are a community. Then she gave a sermon on how to help someone who needs to share. "Don't tell them what they should have done," she said. "Try not to rush in with your own troubles." " Offer them one concrete thing you can do for them, like 'Can I bake a cake?' and then say, 'and if you think of anything else, call me. I'm available. If you need to talk next week at 2 am, I'm available."

I have a friend like this. I can share anything with her and not worry that she will judge me. That in itself is such a rare and giant gift. She never changes the subject to herself, but is so focused on listening and supporting that I have to remind myself to listen for her as well. And she thinks of the most observant things to offer as perspective, in other words, her support is truly creative and not merely reflective, which in itself, would be enough.

She never chooses a moment when I'm down to say something like "We're so lucky," or "we're blessed," or "think how bad things are for homeless people"—all of which would be true, but which would shut down whatever emotions needed to flow through and out of me at that moment. These phrases damage by robbing the recipient of her natural ability to rebound after an outpouring, of chiding him in a moment when whatever he's feeling needs to be allowed to just be.

Actually I have two friends like this, and I spoke to both of them yesterday, and was so grateful to them. One is an acupuncturist and herbalist who recently brought by flower essences for me and H. We were talking about how the essences are working. "I was weepy all day after that fall," I said. She answered, "That was a good release."

Later that night I spoke with the other friend. In my litany of what was going wrong lately, or getting to me, or amiss, or hard, I mentioned a disappointment H & I had had this weekend, a rejection. "Hey, don't knock that one, either, that's big," she said, urging me to feel the full brunt of disappointment, rather than trying to fix everything and say it's not as bad as all that. "You guys were really hoping for some sign, some encouragement, and this is not what you were hoping for."

Being allowed to feel bad always makes me feel soooooooo much better.

Motionless Childhood

a somniloquy

“Through dreams, the various dwelling
places in our lives copenetrate.”
-Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space

Copenetrate sounds like
not a very nice term. So
could be just that they merge
nicely.

The serious dwelling place
seems more like a dormitory.
The way the kids crawl on the furniture,
I’m glad we didn’t get new stuff.

After we’re in the new house, or settled
and fancy, we travel to the land
of Motionless Childhood,
abandoned every step of the way.

Can we go now?

Motionless the way all Immemorial things are,
I take off my glasses, like Mom would.

What would you like to do now?
We could part, we could just cut loose,
travel to the land
of Childhood, motionless
the way little tiny hands
can’t seem to get mittens
on there and keep them on,
and they destroy
things, of course.

Look behind you, it’s snowing!

Throughout the region,
the various dwelling places in me
and above us
retain the structure of former days,
the treasures of human days.

They crick from people
too, century to century.

Day Off

As much as I adore my children and our funky unschooling lifestyle, it's been a long winter with very little time off for Mama and Dadu, due to shortages of money and childcare. But today, one of my sistren from the community of mediators offered to be with R & A and off we went, knowing our kids were in excellent hands. Excellente, in fact, since she spoke to them in Spanish for some of the day.

First stop on our madcap spree was the Culinary Institute of America, for an inexpensive yet elegant lunch, served by students freshly dedicated to the best in food service. I love it there, but H & I had never been there alone together. He had quiche, I had veggie chili. He surprised me by ordering a café au lait (I've never seen him order anything but tea); I had chai latté. I'll stop there because I hate it when people rattle on about what they ate.

But I do want to mention that halfway through my mixed greens I got kind of choked up about the tasty food. "All these simple living books talk about how people waste their money eating out," I blubbered. "But I don't think this is wasteful because I feel so happy and appreciative of how delicious this dressing is. This roll with the pumpkin seeds is really soft. I'm not taking this for granted!"

Afterwards, we lingered in the hallways while a group of prospective students passed on tour. "Inside this room is the wine class," the guide said. "You will be served lunch in the student cafeteria and taste two glasses of wine per course about which you must write papers."

"It's like getting a degree in hedonism," I said to H. "I wonder what the tuition is."

From there, we headed to the Vanderbilt Mansion and took a long walk on the grounds down a winding road to the river. The trees cast long blue shadows across snow traced by ski and snowshoe tracks. At the river's edge I sat on a spit of slate, earth and pines, called Bard Rock. At our feet, the frozen Hudson had heaved ice like giant slabs of peanut brittle at all angles. Created when ice breaks and refreezes, it's called brash ice. I love to look at it but climbing over it while it strains and groans gives me the willies.

Farther out, the sun reflected off the mighty white river and hurt the eyes, but it was welcome; I could almost feel my cells gratefully processing the dose of Vitamin D. Cracks, ledges and exploded knolls, made by the restless water beneath, riddled the ice. I love to cross the Hudson and look back at the west side of the river, toward the Catskills, toward the cheaper gas stations.

An eccentric park ranger, a ringer for Steve Buscemi, took us through the decidedly ugly and fawningly Europhilic Vanderbilt Mansion. He spoke at length of Commodore Vanderbilt's work ethic, his bequeathal policies, his attitudes toward various of his eight children. Any questions?

"Did you say 'blatherscythe?'" I asked.

"Blatherskite, yes," he said. "Good-for-nothing. Commodore called William a blatherskite and it wasn't true!" He was passionate on this and many other points, nodding and edging his hand along the brim of his stetson.

"Is that Celtic?"

As it turns out, it is Scottish, and refers to a talkative, foolish person. A highlight of the day, learning this word blatherskite.

"What is a mansion?" I asked him later. "I mean, what makes one place a mansion, and another just a house?"

"I don't know, good question." He frowned. "I guess it all depends on who you are. I live in a one-bedroom, so to me, just about any house is a mansion." I liked his answer. I liked this fellow thoroughly and felt deeply sorry that federal park employees can't work more than 1,069 hours in any one place, and that because of this arbitrary rule, he must pack his bags and move on to a new ranger position come summer. He knows not where.

"One of the tragedies of the war in Iraq is that veterans will be coming and taking jobs like mine," he said to us in conclusion. "And they might be great people and all, but do you want them conducting your tour?" He seemed injured at the idea of anyone taking on his job without his level of preparation; he seemed to have read every available biography of any Vanderbilt. He told us to drive safely, spun on a heel and left on pencil legs in green, carefully-pressed ranger trousers, probably to a punchclock in the visitors' center.

I looked up "mansion," by the way. Very vague indeed: from the French manere, to remain, dwell: see manor. A sojourn, dwelling. 1. a manor house 2 a large, imposing house; stately residenced 3 a) a dwelling place b) a separate dwelling place or lodging in a large house or structure: usually used in pl. 4 Brit. an apartment house 5 [Obs.] a stay; sojourn 6 Astrol. a) house b) any of the 28 parts of the moon's course occupied on successive days.

Sojourn and dwelling are two of my favorite words. And this feels like a nice place to pause and post a somniloquy.

This American Demographic

...............................................................................................................................................................................................
We fantasize about hitting the road in a vintage Airstream converted to run on vegetable oil, blogging our way across country.

Our libraries include Your Money or Your Life, Getting the Love You Want, How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk, The Teenage Liberation Handbook.

We worry about whether we should gamble everything and pursue our dreams or button the shirt and dig our heels into low-pile carpet for that 401K. Still on the fence, we do a bit of each.

We have moved too often and saved too little.

Many things inside us are on strike against the lives our parents led, and we follow suit by going on strike against external things—work, school, commuting, rat-racing, supermarkets.

It's easier to reach us by email than by phone.

At parties, we talk most to our own children.

At parties, we get excited if we find the eggplant was fried in oat flour.

At parties, we ask at 8 pm if it's almost over.

We hold homesteaders in the highest esteem but suspect we're too lazy to live off the grid ourselves.

We talk of living in Denmark, Holland or Brazil but know we could never leave our own soil.

We love hiking in the country but live in town, where bears won't trash our compost.

We believe in a higher power but shy away from labeling it, grow uneasy around anything doctrinaire.

We wonder if minimum wage will always be so minimal, if the work week will ever grow shorter, if the U.S. will ever rise as a great nation to seek to end war, homelessness, poverty and starvation. We intend to make it. We intend to see one nation under healthcare-no-deductible before we die.

Despite our monkey minds we're present, we're attentive, we love.

We meditate, we meditate.

Feminist Media Criticism for 5-year-olds

After watching Nightmare Before Christmas for the sixth or seventh time:

A: Sally is a doll and a drudge.

Me: Ha ha! That was one of the section headings in the Ken Burns movie about Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. It's true—in Nightmare, Sally is literally a rag doll.

R: 'Doll' meant sitting and looking pretty.

Me: Yeah, in Elizabeth Cady Stanton's time, being a 'doll' meant just looking pretty. It's interesting that Sally is a doll.

A: Sally is a doll AND a drudge.

Me: Yeah, because the evil scientist has her cooking and cleaning and taking care of him, right? Do you think she's a strong character?

A: No, because she's a doll.

Me: Do you think Jack is a strong character?

A: Yes, because he's the king and he's the scariest one in Halloweenland.

Wow.

My brother called me yesterday. He calls now and then from his cell phone as he walks from one place to another in Manhattan. I can always hear traffic in the background, often sirens, as he heads from an AA meeting to his gig in the chorus at the Metropolitan Opera, or to his East Village apartment from voice lessons.

I've been getting these street calls for about two years now. That's when he got back in touch with me after a long silence during which he went from alcoholism to heroin addiction and onto methadone. At first he sent emails to bring me up to date on everything. By the time he hospitalized himself after trying to kick methadone, we were talking every week or so on the phone. If I had taped all the conversations, I could edit them together and create a monologue telling some of the story of his recovery—the dealer's death threats, the break-up of his marriage to another addict, his successive moves toward getting his own apartment, his one-day acting gigs as an extra.

When he calls me now, my first thought is always how glad I am that he is alive. My second thought is will he make it? My third thought is, all any of us can do is try. My fourth thought is I'm glad he goes to three AA meetings a day, because it keeps his keel even and gives him a community of support and bless us, we all need support.

Today's call went something like this. [honk honk vrrrrooooom] "I want to try out some news on you before telling anyone else in the family, because I'm not sure how they'll react."

"Oooookaaaay. What is it?" [nervous giggle; imagining he'll say he's getting married again, making it the third time.]

"Well, it appears that I'm to be a father."

There is something in that word father, in the way it sounds in a sentence referencing one's own father versus how it sounded coming out of my brother's mouth, referring to himself. It wasn't anything remarkable about the tone of voice, but the brother I had before that phone call has fallen away and grown himself back as a different brother.

I haven't met my brother's girlfriend. That's the part that makes me most uneasy, this out-of-order progression of things, especially given his history with relationships. I haven't seen anything first-hand to convince me that this relationship will be any different, and my protective reaction to hearing he's making a life commitment to someone he's been seeing for a few months is: crappy idea. What can I do though, but what any sibling or parent must do? Let him live his life and hope he'll know happiness, and remember that I decided to marry my dear H seven months after our very first date one Hallow's Eve.

In truth, there is a whole separate constellation of reactions in me along the lines of "Whoopeeee! A baby! Baby love! All right!" And pride, tremendous pride that he pulled himself back from the precipice and is dedicating himself to building a life with a solid foundation.

There will be family-wide anxiety about this, to say the least. But alcoholic spendthrifts have sired children in this family before, and for the most part, those offspring seem to be doing okay as teenagers. Anyway, my brother is not an alcoholic spendthrift, he's a recovering alcoholic with a support network, and if he hasn't always subscribed to a holistic vision of self-care, he does now. That will stand him in good stead as a father. I called him just now and heard a subway roaring behind him. "I'm reading Whole Child, Whole Parent," he said. "All my life I've been looking for a guru, and now I have my sponsor, my acupuncturist and my voice teacher. But the best one will be the baby."

Social Skill Meditation: Hugging

There is a woman I know who does not hold out her arms to greet me. We stand a foot or two apart, smiling and nodding when we say hello. Some people, I’ve noticed, initiate hugs when approaching anyone they’ve met before, some accept hugs but never initiate them, and some of us surround ourselves with invisible bristles that shield us from embraces.

In general, people here in my new town hug more than the people in the city. When they say hello, they kiss one another on one or even both cheeks and embrace long enough to take a deep breath in and out. Their muscles relax during the breath, and they close their eyes, their chins resting on one another’s shoulders. Sometimes they sigh audibly while exhaling. They don’t stand uncomfortably, wondering when the hug will end, but relish the uncertainty and wait for some natural swell to place them arm’s length apart again.

Once, when I was living in the city, someone told me that people there don’t hug as much because it’s crowded, and they are forced by atavistic, territorial impulses to protect the space around them. Because the urbanites can never have enough space around them, they have less patience for anything that might be considered a violation of their space. This can mean not only that people don’t hug, but that they avert their eyes or greet one another in motion, without stopping at close range where they might lean in too far and invade too much.

I haven’t lived here long enough to initiate hugs on a regular basis. Part of me still bristles, in the way of city people, at the idea of being hugged, and part of me is willing to accept but not generate a hug. Now and then I sense that I am more outgoing or maternal than the person I am greeting, and when that happens, I do begin the hug. But there are people, like the woman who got me thinking about this, who might appreciate a hug from me but will never lead one, for reasons I can only guess. Maybe this woman hugs very close friends but not medium close friends or acquaintances. I fall somewhere between those last two categories. Also unclear is the question of which us is more maternal and which is more outgoing. I would say we’re about even, but my being vague about that creates a problem. I never know whether to hug her, and my lack of clarity about this always leads to my looking at her very intensely, trying to read her face for some sign of what to do, and I never gather the courage to hug her, although I am always just as happy to see her as I am the people I’ve learned to hug, breathe deeply with and sigh when I greet them, a process that, with practice, arises simultaneously, so there’s no longer a question of who started it. I wonder, after I see her and try so hard to read her face that I’m too distracted to hear what she is saying, whether she dislikes me or thinks that I am stalking her when I show up at the same events as she does and hover near her, half-lifting my arms and peering at her and then following her as she hunts for a seat, knowing I’ve lost the opportunity, because only very intimate friends hug after the first few moments of greeting.

I’d like to introduce this woman to a friend of mine who always hugs everyone. This friend never belabors the issue or tortures herself over a wrong move, but throws up her arms invitingly, yet approaches with enough sensitivity to pull away if she has trespassed or squeezed with too much enthusiasm. I could watch several meetings between my hug expert and this woman I never hug and see how she responds to my affectionate friend. My friend may have perceptions to share with me, as well. I could ask her, Am I right in thinking the woman does not want to be hugged? My friend has lived here for ten years, so I’m sure she can tell who among us is embraceable and who is not.

Do Not Touch the Coral!

"The human being is a guest in this paradise and should behave accordingly."

—Jacques Cousteau, writing of the Maldives


These are the weeks when the white loses its charm. There have been too many 10-degree days, too many consecutive hours spent inside. When it's sunny, the ice is dripping from the eaves and creating two-inch sheets below in liability zones. A whiff of spring is submerged somewhere out there, and the aroma makes me all the more hungry. So I start reading of warm places.

I've only been on one 'resort vacation.' H + I took R + A to Mexico, south of Cancun, to a lovely place called Capitan Lafitte. We were barefoot for days. A, who was two, learned to say "Walk in sand." I made a sand castle on the beach with R, lost track of time and got a sunburn that made it painful to lie down no matter how exhausted I became (very; we had no support with childcare). Longingly, I read about cenotés, fresh water springs, some of them in caves, beautiful to look at, refreshing to swim in, but dangerous with young children. "Don't wear sunblock while swimming in a cenoté," the brochures said. It contains ingredients that are harmful to the ecosystem, and in fact, it's discouraged while swimming near the ocean reefs as well. I haven't found out exactly why, but it seems that my cancer-prone skin, if protected, is an environmental hazard, and the sun is a hazard to me, so I guess I'm not the best candidate for a tropical vacation.

I yearn for one, though. This morning I am dreaming of the Maldives, because the islands were mentioned in the new Eartheasy newsletter. The Maldives have a fierce protection program for their reefs, and are working to restore coral destroyed by the 1998 El Nino, which bleached 70% of the coral on the island. A German website aimed at tourists says:

"The Maldives are unique on earth. You are presently staying on an island formed by coral. If it wasn't for the coral, there wouldn't be any islands. That is why we have to protect the coral. You think you see a stone in the water? No you do not! It is a living coral. What you see is a limestone product, which has been built over thousands of years by millions of polyps. These polyps are so small that you cannot see them. When you touch a coral, you destroy these polyps.

"The coral reef is, after the rainforest, the most complex ecological system on earth. More than 100.000 species live here. Coral is the centre of this ecosystem.

"Therefore: Do not touch the coral!"


Environmentalists like the World Wildlife Fund are calling on Tsunami reconstruction efforts to look to places like the Maldives, whose protected reefs may have helped keep the disaster minimal there, for examples of sustainable coastal planning. The Maldives are made from coral—without the coral, they'd be gone. If only U.S. leaders had such a fine awareness of our interdependence with other life processes.

Yesterday I came in from a walk and complained of the smell of exhaust in the air. "In a few years it'll smell like french fries," H said. "Because we'll be driving vehicles powered by vegetable oil." I hope that's more than optimism.

WTAM? *

The New York Times published a piece this weekend on"mommy blogs." Apparently, at this point, around 8,500 people —they didn't say whether this figure is international or domestic— log on to report, minute by minute, their experiences of parenting. Some of these are men, but as with most discussions of parenting, this one was focused on female parenting, always the target of blame and generalization. Reading the piece and following several of the links to quoted blogs, it becomes clear that the author, David Hochman, really stepped on toes with this one:

"The baby blog in many cases is an online shrine to parental self-absorption."

He meant to say maternal self-absorption. Throughout, he uses the word "parent" to hide from charges of sexism; in almost every case, he really means "mother."

On the one hand (or foot), Hochman seems awfully nasty about the idea of mothers writing our experience. But I have to admit, reading many of the blogs back-to-back (not the best way to take them in—best to find one or two you like, written by a friend or about a godchild of yours), I got a nauseating sense of American Affluence, Bombeck- (or, for the more literary, Annie Lamott)-style humor and Constant Coinage (how many words have you made up today?)—the ABCs, perhaps, of "mommy blogging"—but also staples of mainstream American essay writing these days. Some writers are relentlessly diaristic, tracking the moments of the day so meticulously that it does feel that the word is becoming justification for the life, and these mothers are forgetting how to just be. Or maybe they're unsatisfied with just being, because they live in a city where just being is practically criminal, no matter how many yoga and meditation centers there are on every block. Or maybe, I am saying Them when I should be including myself and saying Us. I confess I hope Oswegatchie does not qualify as a "mommy blog," which is obviously pejorative enough that I keep putting quotation marks around it.

I am trying to imagine keeping a public diary of my early years of mothering. What I've done instead is make baby books, hardback sketchbooks full of stories, lists of nicknames and songs and favorite books, comics drawn by me and my husband, snatches of dialogue—with the idea of giving them to our children to keep when they've left home. As I've created them, I've wondered if my children would ever regard them as invasions of privacy, or remember things differently than I presented them, or remember different things. I restrained the urge to say too much about my responses to my children, keeping as much as I could to descriptions of their development, transcriptions of their utterances, particularly their stories and dreams, because—perhaps this is a contemporary maternal trait—I do worry about being, or being thought, "self-absorbed." I wanted to give them back something of their early selves that I knew they'd forget; I didn't want their baby books to be about me.

Self-absorption is no minor accusation to level at a mother. It is to accuse her of an inability to recognize the Other, of a refusal to offer her child (or anyone, but symbolized by her child) a true reflection of self so that s/he will separate healthily, with self-confidence, able to distinguish his or her own needs and joys from those of others. This reflection is the most important gift a mother or father or caretaker can give to a child. Few people ever ask of fathers that they offer this to their children, their mates or their friends, even at this point in history. I can see why all the writers mentioned in the Times piece have responded with a blizzard of blogbarbs (<—NetLingo take note).



* Was That About Me?

sinister

a somniloquy

using the gun more skillfully
than, and in preference
to, the right;

clumsy; harder, everything

designating an influence, or
a girl as one drier,
especially one that’s just a definition;

morganatic: having the Earth give
that hand to the bride
at such a wedding;

from the custom
where all boys and girls
marry and everyone’s happy;

turning from the right before
the messages, worked by the
concatenation; made for use

while experiencing anxiety-fear.