Melt Away

Whenever I feel like I'm losing perspective, I think of the "Cosmic Address" movie narrated by Tom Hanks at the Natural History Museum. Things bother me less when I pretend I'm watching my life from some spot across the Universe from the Virgo Supercluster.

Yesterday was the last rehearsal before Beltane, the ritualistic celebration of Spring, for which AJ & her classmates will be acting the part of snow elves who dance in a flurry and then melt away.

"I'm too shy!" AJ cried as the other snow elves whirled onto the stage. She sat on my lap on the grass and watched. I felt sad, too sad, for her, because she's been talking about the Beltane performance since before Christmas. I didn't say nearly enough comforting things, because in truth I thought she should just make herself run out there onstage with the other elves. And we had driven her quite a ways from Ray's playdate, and bought dinner so we'd have something to eat, and that type of thing.

I also sunk into a bit of a depression, because if it had been me and my mom, she probably would have been really angry at me. In some way it was happening to me.

On the way to the car I drifted outside the Virgo Supercluster and bounced back enough to remind her of all the fun things about Beltane that we'll be enjoying even if she decides not to dance tomorrow.

Ada became cheerful in the car and began talking about a rule-driven ballet class she is interested, quite mysteriously, in taking. "Maybe I can wear this leotard to the Have-to-Wear-Blue ballet class," she said happily, pointing to her funky aqua velveteen garb. I don't think so!

At bedtime my jaw hurt, and she practiced Compassionate Touch on me. We have a picture book about this healing modality. Kids put their hands on or near the injuries of other children until they feel better. We do it a lot around here, because it feels good. She fell asleep with her hands on my cheeks saying, "Just breathe, Mama."

Her sleep was tormented by nightmares all night. She woke crying at one point because her beany cat, Spike, was buried in mud and she was unable to clean him. She kept changing beds, and climbing over bodies to get away from the cat, who scratches sleepers if they put their hands too close to him.

"Just breathe, sweetie," I said.

Go Spouse, Go!

My husband went out for a walk.

So what, right? Big deal.

However: it's the second day he's done it in a row. How about that?

For someone who named his e-zine "Glum Homebody," who learned to drive at the age of 46 because he didn't think he needed to go anywhere, who in fact is rarely seen more than three feet from one of his five? six? computers, who in short never goes anywhere, this is revolutionary.

This could lead to big things.

I hope it does.

Because only something BIG is going to prevent a catastrophe around here such as for example

foreclosure.


Bringing home the bacon often means:

leaving the home in search of the bacon.

So please turn your intentions to this: that H will continue his daily walking meditation.

We must pound the pavement, because under the pavement lies:

the beach!

We all need a little more beach in our lives, and I don't mean the eroded-by-tsunami kind or the flooded kind or the oil-spill kind. Just the fun-in-the-sun-with-the-SPF-100-clothes-on kind.

I digress.

Walk!

Walk for sanity, walk for exercise, walk for ideas, walk for privacy, walk for neighborliness, walk for bagels at Peter's Deli. Join a Crop Walk and feed the hungry!

Walk H, walk!

Bluestone Beat Blues: There and Here

Being from Brooklyn, and having a very dear friend in the author/editor of Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn, I'm a faithful daily reader of that fine blog.

OTBKB keeps me up-to-date on Brooklyn real estate travails and travesties.

So similar to the issues in Manhattan when I moved from there back to Brooklyn in 1997, after two years in Chelsea: the land of Barnes and Noble, Old Navy, and Bed Bath and Beyond. Back in the 80s when I worked (but didn't live) there, Chelsea had featured a bunch of factories and a topless bar. Some set of choices, huh?

Now when I read about Brooklyn I think of my new home, Ulster County. There are many of us Brooklyn expats up here. Many. Maybe we feel secure moving up here because we know we're tied by that big rope, the Hudson River, to the city we came from. When my husband and I first visited Kingston we jumped up and down with excitement at the bluestone sidewalks! Sidewalks! Walkability! A link with Brooklyn, which is lined with the very same bluestone from the very same quarries! Home!

And like my Brooklyn home, this one is changing. Moving "beyond gentrification into the realm of big-money development," as OTBKB put it. Ulster County, with its dozens and dozens of homeless flood victims, its lack of affordable housing and jobs, its climbing real estate prices, is positioning itself to attract more wealth.

Recent local stories:

KINGSTON - A retired Brooklyn attorney who has already bought a significant Rondout parcel has now purchased two more, including Island Dock, and is set to buy another property where a scrap yard had operated.

KINGSTON - Mayor James Sottile wants a sweeping investigation of possible violations of zoning codes at the city's waterfront at a time when he says developers have stepped up interest in properties along the Hudson River and Rondout Creek.

Air quality worsens as Ulster develops
In contrast to nationwide trends, air quality in the Mid-Hudson Valley is not improving, according to a report released today by the American Lung Association.

KINGSTON - Adding to its eclectic mix of shops, the city's Stockade District is about to pocket a high-class billiard hall, designed for tournament and everyday play, and featuring an upscale restaurant.

KINGSTON - A New Jersey developer laid out plans Tuesday night for a $50 million condominium complex that would rise up to 12 stories at the site of the Uptown parking garage on North Front Street.


Is development bad? Is bad air quality bad?

Some things I know for sure:

—The Rondout Creek is more than an opportunity, it's an ecosystem.

—Everyone I know would rather see a good produce market (organic and affordable, please) return to Uptown than a billiard hall and an upscale restaurant.

—Adding buildings and people to sites taxes our natural resources in a way I don't see being discussed in these articles.

—There are measures you can take to add density to your town while protecting your waterways, flora and fauna.

I notice that when political leaders here tout the development of our region, they tend not to use words like "affordability," "sustainability" and "smart growth."

Describe Kingston? Well, it's got fancy boutiques and restaurants and historic this-and-that and upscale this-and-that, a big crime-and-drug section that makes plenty of people afraid to drive to the library I walk to a couple of times a week, lots of traffic, cars that drive too fast through residential neighborhoods, and a long strip of malls with chain stores that siphon dollars from our community. And WalMart. Yuck! Let's do better!

So how about the vision thing? What kind of lives do we want in what kind of a town, 10 or 20 years from now, should we happen to be here?

There's room for many a-more

See that?

That's a Conference Bike.

I first heard about it from a friend named Stoller who had happened on it on the internet because of a typo. The guy who invented it is named Staller.

I can't stop thinking about this bike!

Kingston is pretty flat, at least the half mile or so around our house. I imagine climbing on the conference bike with my family of four and taking off for the library, or for Jane's uptown for lunch. And maybe folks would hitch a ride with us and come along! It's such a comical, happy idea. Doesn't it make you happy to think about riding this bike?

Something this big has got to take up enough road-space to make it safer than those thin and fragile frames that I feel nervous about riding around on Kingston's one-foot (if that) shoulders.

If it weren't for how sick it makes me to be in a town where everyone smokes cigarettes, I'd say I really belong in Amsterdam. There are all kinds of useful bicycles there. Why don't things like that take off here, when it makes so much sense? Where is our common sense, I ask you?

It costs $18,000, by the way. Five thou more than our first Volvo.

Maybe we could move to Amsterdam, get a job at one of the umpteen-million museums there, like the Museum of Fluorescent Light Bulbs or the Museum of Drug Paraphernalia, and buy a clean and friendly vehicle like the conference bike with the money left over from the sale of our insanely-priced American house when we downsize to a houseboat on an adorable canal in a flat city where people care about the air except for that little matter of the incessant pollution of their lungs and the air immediately around them. "Nearly half of all traffic movements in Amsterdam are by bike."

And when we're not out on our bike?

There are common-sense ways of getting about on the Esopus Creek, too.

"Spring comes, and the grass grows by itself."

Yesterday was a Birth Day at our house.

My son,

who is old enough to make French toast and young enough to think that the F-word is Fart,

who shows a charming mix of primary and secondary teeth when he smiles,

who makes movies more often than he can be bothered to watch them,

who never says I Love You to his parents but often writes it,

whose passion for drumming is matched only by the force of his refusal to study percussion with a qualified instructor,

who toilet trained himself at the age of two by peeing in every available receptacle in our home from a half-coconut shell to a hat, always while giggling mischievously,

who in the weeks leading up to this birthday climbed into our bed at night when he'd seemed no longer to care for bed-sharing,

who has never been constipated, suffered an earache or complained of nightmares,

who in his short life has created two film companies, one restaurant and a website,

who named his Siamese beany-kitty "Harmony," our flesh-and-blood tabby "Pat Lavender Will" and his fictional creation for a series of stories he's illustrating "Pussy Pat,"

whose favorite artists are Jan Brett, Jerry Pinckney and Beatrix Potter,

whose bedroom floor is covered again with artwork a few days after he picks it all up,

that son,

turned eight.

He Ain't Heavy

In meditation practice we talk of staying in the present moment. We talk of Beginner's Mind. We are counselled in non-attachment.

Parents practice this practice moment to moment. We wake up to a new day every day, rediscover our children and avoid labeling them in our minds, let go of prior irritations, allow ourselves to meet our familiars afresh, as if we were Bill Murray in Groundhog Day.

As we advance in this parenting practice, which those of us without children conduct with our creative projects or our pets, we try it out on our siblings. Once we have mastered it with our children/projects/pets, who inspire infinite tenderness, and our siblings, whose friendship will likely support our waning days, we may turn to the challenging work of approaching our parents this way. If we are very brave and patient.

The topic of siblings brings me to my brother, whose aforementioned loss has occupied and preoccupied the past couple of weeks, and who is now in the process of breaking up with the girlfriend whose pregnancy had heralded a new era of stability, permanence and commitment in his life.

This twist might have been predicted except that to predict such things would be living in the future and not the present. It would be to approach The Brother not with a Beginner's Mind but with an Intermediate Mind or even with a Cynical Mind or Degenerate Mind. It would mean attaching oneself to Judgment, to Projection, even, in the case of my family to a kind of Genealogical Epidemiology the study of which would be inappropriate because always, since we do change even heal over time, potentially wrong.

All experience is good experience. Instructive and enriching!

But to say that, in the moments following A Loss, is very trying to the bereaved and disrespectful to the figures of Grief and Lamentation that cluster around Loss. So I dressed in black emotionally for a time, but since my brother is emerging to make Big Changes and review the decisions of the past half-year, I suppose I can change my clothes now, too.

Even though I know You Know What You Know When You Know It, which truth makes I Told You So the more heinous, there is still a part of me wishing for recognition for Not having said ITYS, moreunder, for not having Told Anyone So at all, but listening time and again to family news with, okay, maybe not a Beginner's Mind but if Beginner is say, Guppy, maybe I've worked toward a Minnow Mind or an Eel Mind. Which recognition I now give myself in my private-yet-public blogspace.

Whew. I think I feel better.

At any rate my brother feels better now that he's returned to the big-enough task of rebuilding himSelf, and in time his former girlfriend will feel better, too. I wish her peace and confidence on her journey, as I wished it for the spirit who came and went and took with him all that was happening before its time in a period of rapid and fortuitous change.

Sister Pepper Spray of Enlightened Compassion

The Unitarian Jihad is on the stroll. Look out for nonideologues proclaiming, "We are Unitarian Jihad. We are everywhere. We have not been born again, nor have we sworn a blood oath. We do not think that God cares what we read, what we eat or whom we sleep with." Like me you can get your own Unitarian Jihad name by following the link. I kind of like my name.

Tonight the Unitarian discussion group, Issues of Our Times, met. AJ came along with me because there's always some food. She ate grapes and drew a page full of ballerinas en pointe with their hair immaculately dressed in buns (AJ brushes her own shoulder-length tangle every three or four days) while the rest of us talked about:

—Terry Schiavo (the denial of death, political exploitation, legislation based on one case, hypocrisy)
—the recent local flood (what are we doing to help the flood victims? with a decision to collect for the Red Cross or some other relief agency)
—the ethics of shopping at WalMart (not sure? read Jonathan Tasini)
—what is ethics anyway?
—the role of compassion and intuition in public policy
—the American way of death
—the political impact of the Pope

Stuff like that. At a table of people whose bumper stickers range from "Freedom Isn't Free" to "Speak Up for Peace," we found a lot to agree about and the disagreements stayed friendly. In my experience, Unitarians respect diversity of opinion too much to let conversation degenerate into the draining zing-zing of debate. And no one can take the moral high ground because everybody at the table knows how hard we all work as volunteers to keep the place running and support each other.

All in all, a wholesome environment in which to raise a kid, and that's saying a lot nowadays.

Mindfulness Meditation: Abundance

I applied to a summer writing program where Grace Paley will be teaching and I was accepted. Then I had to decide whether to fork over the thousand bucks and leave the fam for six days. I decided yes.

Then I decided no. H never goes anywhere and I feel guilty when I do. PS we've had no income to speak of for two years and isn't it irresponsible to throw money around this way.

But I hung onto the participant sign-up form instead of mailing it in, because not just Grace Paley but Amy Hempel and Christine Schutt will be there, all writers I like, and there's a field trip to Emily Dickinson's house. It's feminist writer's heaven.

Then I called my sister and told her the whole story and she said Go. I said But the money. She, being thrifty, said You're right, the money.

My best friend was away and I could not get her sage advice, but I still had the form Monday when she got back so I told her I'm not going. I'm not leaving H with the kids (I did it last year for 12 days so I could go to a colony and it still feels like last month I did that!) and then there's the money.

She took all that in and chewed on it for the day.

Then she called me at the end of the day and said Wait a minute, your thinking is off, way off on this one. She said You are trying to save money by depriving yourself when you and H could be bringing in more to maintain yourselves. You are choosing self-deprivation over abundance. Besides, you're with your kids, like, ALL THE TIME. Which is true.

But it was the abundance thing that won me over.

Just keep the money flowing out and it's got to start flowing in eventually, right? Tidal law.

Breathing in, I get paid.
Breathing out, I create.

Breathing in, clear cut forests return and thrive.
Breathing out, we breathe out ozone.

Breathing in, the Third World prospers.
Breathing out, the tiny percentage of people who control most of the world's wealth freely relinquish their stranglehold on the resources, eliminating poverty and eradicating terrorism in all its forms so the planet can enjoy what time it has left in its fragile corner of an unpredictable universe.


The form is in the mail.

An Unpleasant Middle-Aged Moment

I am sitting at my computer at 12:08 am while my family sleeps out in the backyard, in the tent we pitched today for R's 8th birthday "Lock, Shock and Barrel" party, which will not surprise faithful readers of this blog. It was strange, hearing AJ yell "Trick or Treat" and sing a song she made up: "Lock, Shock and Barrel picked some flowers..." while R popped ghost and pumpkin stickers into goodie bags on a warm April day. Running with the 'concept party' idea, R, inspired by a phone conversation I had this morning with a friend of ours who excels at theme parties, had created an oversized die out of a square cardboard box, somewhat like the dice in Oogie Boogie's den. There was a chart to tell you what to do based on what you rolled: Hide and Go Spook, Shock Toss, or Kidnap the Sandy Claws (this involved grabbing a garbage bag, finding a pillow hidden somewhere in the yard and shoving it in and smuggling it into Oogie Boogie's lair—the tent).

R enjoyed all this enormously even though two of his friends arrived too sleepy and shy to play and two others didn't make it to the party at all. R had picked out all the snacks and arranged the table in the kitchen, too. My son so loves to plan and set up a party that he really doesn't care how it comes off. I've learned a lot from him and his Mrs. Dalloway approach to entertaining.

So as my children fell asleep in their little sleeping bags, after their day of excitement, I read Jonathan Franzen's
The Corrections until my sinuses, stuffed from a cold I've had this week, and the pain in my neck from the angle at which I held the flashlight to see the page, grew too uncomfortable. Then I lay looking up at the gibbous moon. Through the tent screen and without my glasses, it was a white, cross-hatched smear.

Pat Lavender Will lunged at the tent flap like he was trying to kill it. I unzipped it but he had retreated. "Gato!" I called, because that is what I call him, because even the boy who named him calls him Puss, because honestly, who is going to call him Pat Lavender Will? "Gato, come on in, check it out!" Cat entered one paw at a time and stepped on each sleeping bodybag, and satisfying himself that we were all there and that he did not fancy joining us, he slipped back through the flap.

But as I vipped the tent shut he kept attacking the zipper. Me: "Gato, do not attack el tento!"

H: What's this? Red Eft's Spanish for cats?

R: Spanish for Cats by Red Eft, the Novelist!"

And so my family mocked me, until they had fallen asleep and I was left with La Luna, my blurry friend.

My sinuses clouded up and I voided them repeatedly, using tissues bought at a certain health store where EveryThing smells loudly and consistently and malodorously of incense and vitamin tablets, a smell particularly repugnant to snuff out of a kleenex. I dozed for five minutes. I wondered where I had left my mouth guard, knowing I'd be clenching and grinding once I fell into a fitful, poorly-cushioned sleep. Under me, the camping "mattresses" were failing to inflate. Somewhere outside the tent, a one-sided cat fight erupted.

"That's it! I'm going in!" No one objected, but continued slumbering peacefully in places deep within the sleep cycle I have not had the pleasure of visiting in many years. I shuffled into the house with my middle-aged-person's water-filled pillow that allegedly supports cervical wellness, stopping in the kitchen to eat what was left of the birthday party food: Hickory Barbecue Soy Cakes, which sounds gross but tasted pretty hearty, cracker jacks, gluten-free pretzels, and gluten-free chocolate cake. We eat like a family with celiac disease.

The house is unearthly quiet and still.

What Fences Make

Steve the Fence Guy was here today, making a new fence in our backyard.

One way you can judge whether a fence is yours is: the good side should face out. If the good side faces you, then it must be your neighbor's fence. But that is relatively recent in Kingston, it is said. When we look around to various yards, the fences are facing every which way. The guideline is no help to us. We have decided to replace all the fences around our yard, just to be neighborly, seeing as how people love fences, even though we have no dog and our kids are now old enough not to need fences for safety. So in fact we need no fence, we pointed out to the the nice neighbors to the north. "When you sell, it's a good thing to add value," they said. "People love fences."

The six-foot stockade going in at the back of the yard is so high because a woman in the house back there once yelled at R for barking at her dog. She told him she was going to call the police. He was, of course, terrified, and didn't understand her reaction, since her dog had barked at him and he was just saying hello back in dog language. The other neighbors are nice so they get four-foot fences.

Before the whole array was a motley mix of stockade and French Gothic spaced-board but now we're going with just stockade, not to block the views but to keep things more consistent. We're neatening.

Wherever Steve is replacing fence there are dilapidated boards and old two-foot chain link or wire to put out. Several generations of fences requiring removal. He started in the way-back today. There's a stockade fence that's falling apart and a couple of different kinds of wire fence, some of it grown into the hemlock trunks back there. There's a chain-link fence that borders the Jehovah's Witness parking lot, and gaps are filled in by scraps of lattice, a real mess.

First thing, Steve asked for our survey because he couldn't figure out where our property line lay back there with all those fences. He decided, after measuring three times and scratching his head a bit, that it lay just this side of all the broken, twisted pre-existing fences. So it turns out that behind our carriage house we are actually adding a fence instead of replacing, and now there will be a two-foot gap in-between the new and old fences, which feels like a waste of property but what can we do, we don't know who the landlord is of that house with the nasty police-calling dog woman. Plus the thought of that wire and rusty-nailed splintered boards staying there when I thought it would all be cleared out is making me a little sick. On the other hand, if you can't recycle something your choices are to cover it up or haul it off to a landfill and there doesn't seem to be much difference, so.

We'll do the same thing if we ever remodel our kitchen, which has an environmentally-dreadful vinyl floor that people consistently mistake for fine parquet: just cover it with the new floor, people always say. You don't want to pull that stuff up and atomize anything used to lay it down in the first place. It's better off right where it is.

My husband just said to no one, "There goes Oscar, walking around in our yard." That's the Shitsu that lives next door to the north of us with the nice fence-loving people. So I guess Steve created a gap he didn't fill today, and now H, who like me is fighting off a flu, has to go out and make sure Oscar gets properly re-fenced-in.

Meditation: Intuition

In an online discussion group I'm in, a couple of us are talking about intuition. I realized today while thinking about it that I don't consult my intuition often enough. I wait for it to send me clear, strong messages. At the most critical times, those messages do come. But I think my intuition is an underused resource.

Often, perhaps always, the messages come while I'm meditating. But the time I meditate (morning, sometimes evening) is not always the time I need some direct knowing. I'm going to try to remember to meditate when I want to awaken an intuitive response to an issue at hand.

I miss meditating in Brooklyn. Now and then I would walk to the Botanic Garden's Japanese Tea House, take the little path around the pond and meditate on a sheltered bench there. Doing this in Spring, among the cherry blossoms, was purely peaceful. I could imagine I was in Japan. Once, while sitting there, I got a very clear message about making a family trip that turned out to be a truly relaxing vacation. Many other intuitions came to me on that bench.

Also during that period, I read essays and books on direct knowing. One essay, in a book about authoritative knowledge, concerned the use of intuition in midwifery, full of anecdotes told by women helping other women in childbirth. In one of these anecdotes a midwife had received an important insight about helping a woman's labor along while standing outside, looking at a star. It gave me the sense that intuition is a fundamental principle of the universe. We should remember not to overlook it when we're casting around in the sea of choices.

Have an intuitive day.

Love and (Twisted) Logic

There's a parenting training system making the rounds in our area called Love and Logic [registered trademark]. It's not a new one: the book Parenting With Love and Logic came out waaaaaaaaay back in 1990. (When it did, it endorsed spanking, a position the guru of the program, Jim Fay, reversed in 1998.) (Which you might notice is a little behind the curve.)

My heart sank when a beloved friend handed me the flyer for a Love and Logic seminar. My gut knew I wouldn't agree with it, and the website, which I read through at some length, confirmed my concern. Parents are promised simple, clear techniques for getting compliance from our children, offering behaviorist methods that don't bother to ask why children act in ways that sometimes challenge us.

A lot of people my age with kids believe the parental is political. Forged in the anti-nuke, Central America solidarity or pro-choice movements, we know that we are raising stewards of the planet whose commitment to conflict transformation is forged in those minute, daily interactions we have with our children. So we take in these parent training efforts with open minds, alert to elements of coercion.

Here's one scenario from the Love and Logic website. (I'd cut and paste it but there's a copyright on it and the writer doesn't want it altered—so please follow the link and read through the scenario from their web page. Read the whole site—it's a great way to familiarize yourself with their philosophy without spending any money!)

Here are my problems with the advice given:

—Why would I say "this is so sad" and not "you look like maybe you're feeling really sad—are you?" Every conflict is an opportunity to help a child define and express feelings. Same goes for adults.

—If I say, "When you lie to me, it drains energy right out of me," I am not only giving power to my child to drain my energy, I am refusing to take responsibility for my reaction (and modeling that lack of responsibility to my child). That's why "I" statements are so much more effective. A simple alteration to an "I" statement might read "I feel really drained after that exchange!"

—Asking the child "How are you planning to put that energy back?" accomplishes two things: 1) it tells the child I need to be taken care of; 2) it introduces the idea, transparently, that our relationship is an economic one, which is elaborated later on in the scenario with the suggestion that the child hire a babysitter so the parents can go out and relax.

—The last resort of selling a toy to "pay for the drain" is probably the most damaging of all, because it is undertaken without warning (although it's hard to bemoan the child's loss of a toy called the "Mutant Death Squad Action Figure"—and you do have to question the values of the parents who enroll in this program if this example 'speaks' to them). Selling an action figure to pay for babysitting because your child lied to you is not a logical consequence; it's a punishment. Parenting philosophies that dress up punishments and call them consequences, or counsel the use of threats but call them "limits," do not deserve our support.

There are other philosophies out there that are based on compassion and authenticity. Positive Discipline has the advantage of concerning itself with the possible reasons for conflict, looking behind behavior to the emotional life and developmental issues of children. Elaine Mazlish and Adele Faber have written very useful, compassionate books about limit-setting and siblings. Nancy Samalin has written with great understanding about parental anger.

And there's a new book out by Alfie Kohn addressed to parents. (His other books, covering school issues such as testing, grading and competition, are worth reading if your children go to school). Unconditional Parenting offers an astute analysis of behaviorist parenting methods and shares Kohn's reflections on parenting from a foundation of love and trust. It's a great book, check it out or give it to a young parent in your life.

Absolutely Still

This is a week of mourning in my family.

My brother and his girlfriend were told that their second-trimester baby has Trisomy13, a genetic syndrome that results in multiple malformations. As with all things genetic, there are lots of statistics: Babies rarely make it to term. Forty-five percent die within the first month, 90% by six months and less than 5% reach 3 years.

This strikes me as ironic: the same Catholic hospitals that refuse to terminate such pregnancies are plenty enthusiastic about charging for chorionic sampling and amniocentesis, the diagnostic procedures that inform parents of these life-threatening anomalies. How can it feel to be a baby in the last trimester, carried by a mother full of sorrow? Perhaps the Catholic hospitals should promote total ignorance, if they're going to refuse to abort a fetus with an inside-out stomach, a hole in his heart and no hope of seeing his first birthday.

Yesterday, there was another sonogram, and forms to fill out for the termination. The baby, who had been quite active during previous sonos, was absolutely still. We're all hoping he moved on, as much as he'll be missed. He was conceived of so much healing and such high hopes, and it really breaks my heart to imagine how my brother feels right now.

His name is Cyrus, which is Persian for sun, and was the name of my mother's father. I wish him love and joy on his journey.

Deep Listening Reading in Kingston

ANNOUNCING
Deep Listening ® at Alternative Books
35 North Front Street
Kingston, NY


Book Party and Signing Celebrating Two New Books:
Listening in Dreams by Ione
&
Deep Listening; a Composer’s Sound Practice by Pauline Oliveros

Saturday, APRIL 9, 2005
at
7PM
(By Donation)

Listening in Dreams; a Compendium of Sound Dreams, Meditations and Rituals for Deep Dreamers
Plus This is a Dream!
by IONE  
an iUniverse / Deep Listening Publications Release

Contributors Include:

Me! Red Eft!

And:
Laura Biagi, Anne Bourne, Wendy Burch, Joe Catalano, Raylene Campbell, Seth Cluett, Caterina De Re, Jenny Fox,Heloise Gold, Andrea Goodman, Nancy Graham (aka red eft), Janet Hammock, R.I.P. Hayman, Harrison Ryker, Jukka-Pekka, Kervinen, Henry Lowengard, Norman Lowery, Michelle Nagai,Vonn New, Pauline Oliveros, Scott Smallwood, Sarah Weaver
***

Ione is a dream facilitator, author, and educator who has taught and lectured extensively throughout the United States and Europe. Since the 1970s she has created small and large dream events and festivals in many cities. Most recently she has been creating Dream Festivals annually in the New York's Hudson Valley. Ione is also a psychotherapist specializing in the creative process, heritage, myths and dreams. She is the Founding Minister of the Ministry of Maat, Inc., and regularly recreates ancient rituals at the sacred sites of Egypt. She is the author of other books including the memoir, Pride of Family, Four Generations of American Women of Color, Doubleday/Broadway Books
                                                                                                  ***

Deep Listening; A Composer’s Sound Practice
By Pauline Oliveros
an iUniverse / Deep Listening Publications Release
Paperback 13.95


Deep Listening: A Composer's Sound Practice offers an exciting guide to ways of listening and sounding. This book provides unique insights and perspectives for artists, students, teachers,  meditators and anyone interested in how consciousness may be effected by profound attention to the sonic environment . Deep Listening® is a practice created by composer Pauline Oliveros in order to enhance her own as well as other's listening skills. She teaches this practice worldwide in workshops, retreats and in her ground breaking Deep Listening classes at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Mills College. Deep Listening practice is accessible to anyone with an interest in listening. Undergraduates with no musical training benefit from the practices and successfully engage in creative sound projects. Many report life changing effects from participating in the Deep Listening classes and retreats.

Oliveros is recognized as a pioneer in electronic music and a leader in contemporary music as composer, performer, educator and author. Her works are performed internationally and her improvisational performances are documented extensively on recordings, in the literature and on the worldwide web.


Both books available at:
www.deeplistening.org/dlc/
Amazon. com
www.iuniverse.com/bookstore/
www.BarnesandNoble.com

Ms. Apprehension

AJ and I are in a restaurant having a snack while R is at his art class.

At a nearby table, two men sit with a young boy (ten or so). They are looking at rosters of some kind, talking about what is there. "I've had my eye on him," says one. "Jordan. Who would you pick?" says the other to the boy. They both have dark wavy hair and similar features, I think they must be father and son. The father is wearing a plain white T-shirt. "I would pick, I think, this one," says the boy, pointing.

They're picking race horses! Is there an OTB around here? Jeez, they're teaching that kid to gamble. I guess some people figure that's a rite of passage. I guess some people make their living this way, with their good picks. Sleazy way to raise a kid, though!

I go back to my brussels sprouts and my chat with AJ.

Tuning in again, one is mentioning a "swing," the other a "player."

It's not racing at all, it's baseball! Right, Spring, baseball, makes sense, all the pros go somewhere, Florida it used to be, and these guys are tracking their progress. But they are paying such close attention, they seem to know everything about every player. So they must be gambling! These men are training the kid how to bet on baseball and be obsessed with each player before the season even begins! It's like a Jason Robards movie or something! With James Coburn as The Sleazier One! And Jackie Cooper as The Boy.

I finish my barbecued chicken wings, cleaning my fingers with thirty-eight napkins, while AJ plows into her ravioli with red sauce, having decided the tortellini with pesto was not what she wanted and convincing me she really needed to order this second pasta dish.

The Dad says "What about her? She had a really good swing. She played third base really nicely."

That doesn't sound like pro ball. The Dad is pointing to the roster and looking expectantly at the kid. These guys must be coaches. This is actually pretty neat, they're having a meeting about setting up their team.

"If we had a chance to pick without anyone else picking, who would you choose?" The father asks his son. AJ is ready to go to the bookstore next door and look for a gift for a friend. ". . . unless you saw any other player here that was much stronger than we had rated them. . ." We leave, the three heads still bent intently over the roster of names of ten-year-olds.

What great coaches. They are consulting the boy about every choice, actively seeking his input and expertise. What fine, upstanding members of the Woodstock community. A brief view into another world for me, the team-sport-hating mom.

Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote

West said the bottom of her canoe was scraping the tops of cars as she, other SPCA staff and U.S. Coast Guard personnel evacuated the shelter's 38 cats, 25 dogs and nine rabbits.—Kingston Daily Freeman

While we were blithely tromping around in the rain in our old Brooklyn neighborhood this weekend, people upstate were sandbagging their properties. While we sat with our children, transfixed by 3D Imax images of life around the ocean's hydrothermal vents in Aliens of the Deep, people not far from our house were fleeing their homes.

Without thinking twice about flooding we drove home from New York to find a detour at our traffic circle and our second route blocked by traffic cones. We succeeded on the third try, and uptown Kingston, where we live, is fine, but downtown was flooded, the route to Woodstock was closed, and people and animals in towns all around us were evacuated. Barges broke loose from their moorings, cars overturned, people were swept away in the current.

On and on the rain will say
How fragile we are

Five inches of rain. Water falling from the sky, water recently ice, water contaminated, water rising, water multiply-filtered, water submerging, water eroding... outside today it looks like an ordinary spring day, cloudy and a bit muddy.

At the beginning of April I had intended to post a link to this (RealAudio) reading of the opening of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales by Alan Baragona of the Viriginia Military Institute Department of English and Fine Arts. I can't judge one Middle English accent against another, but I like this best of the ones I've heard.

Against Testing

I was tickling AJ and she was laughing and—

R cannot go on. He cries into a pillow. H and I wait for him to be able to tell us what he's feeling.

Was it something that happened between you and AJ or a feeling that happened inside of you?

Inside of me.

We wait. R leaves to find the cat and brings him back and puts him on the bed.

I was tickling AJ and I thought of how I'll have to take that test that homeschoolers have to take. I don't want to take it! It's none of their business what I'm learning. They can take their own test to see what THEY know, but it's none of their business what I'M learning.

I tell him that some would agree with that position and others would say that parents have to prove their children are learning, and the only proof the school people will accept is a test every couple of years. I tell him I agree with him; it's none of their business.

Am I supposed to take it next year? No. The year after that? No, I don't think you have to take it until the year after THAT.

Aaaaawwwow. He flops on the bed, face down.

R, you can call Kate and ask about it. Ask Darsen; she did fine with it and she hates math.

I don't need support! He says. I just don't want to take the test!

I am misreading him. It's not that he's anxious about the test, he's angry. This is a matter of principle.

Legislation is being contemplated in New York that would ease the regulations for homeschoolers. Called The Homeschool Freedom Bill, it calls for an elimination of the bureaucratic forms and testing of the current regulations.

The problem with this legislation is that it would also open the door to the possibility that lawmakers will butt in to homeschooling matters whenever they feel like it in the future. For this reason, many homeschoolers are opposed. Here's what Linda Dobson, a well-known writer on homeschooling issues, has to say about it:

"Wow. Doesn't it sound great - a New York Senate bill (S. 4767) that would actually do away with many of the paperwork burdens the state's homeschoolers have tolerated since 1988? Ever heard the saying that if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is? That's when it's time to look past the sizzle and examine the meat.

"Right now everyone from the President to the local principal is jumping on the educational reform bandwagon of the day - accountability. Can we really believe that while the nation races toward increased testing and "proof" of education, New York home educators will be the only ones granted less accountability? It is extremely naive to believe that S. 4767 would make it to a vote without any changes, and any changes would likely reflect the current testing craze climate.

"Do we want homeschooling issues addressed by the legislature instead of by the Commissioner? The Commissioner is one man who has stated he doesn't want to make regulatory change, at least not right now. Hand the ball over to the legislature, and we could face new bills - and new threats and new fights - each and every time the legislature convenes. Additionally, at some point all the words used in laws need to be defined. Do we really want to let loose the state legislature to define homeschooling for us? Do you think their definition will match yours?

"Finally, there remain serious, unanswered questions as to the constitutionality of state jurisdiction over homeschooling. Supporters of educational freedom are now studying the issue and gathering the materials to support their case. If we concede to state supervision via legislation now, the argument for true educational freedom is compromised, possibly destroyed.

"The introduction of S. 4767, especially at this moment in time, is not in homeschoolers' best interests. Senator Kuhl introduced this bill at the request of a small minority of homeschoolers over the objections of many others. He has played deaf, dumb, and blind when presented with reasoned requests to simply delay its introduction. Why? Some speculate he's in a power play with Commissioner Mills. Others have noted he has a large homeschooling constituency he'd like to have vote for him. Still others note the "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" mentality that emanates from Albany.

"Whatever the reason, you can bet political games are afoot, and I resent homeschoolers being used as pawns. Educational freedom is too rare - and far too precious - to allow Senator Kuhl to give it away on a whim via S. 4767, which is why I cannot support its passage in any form."

Which means that for the forseeable future, there will be a testing requirement, and four reports a year, and an annual educational plan to submit, and a longer narrative report in the years the test isn't required. In New York we get the Hudson, the Adirondacks, the Great Lakes and Niagara Falls and the Oswegatchie River, but we also get this.

Since he could speak, R has been an articulate advocate of autonomy (Gr autonomos, independent < autos, self + nomos, law). Independent learning. Autodidacticism. Some people learn best that way, and I for one support them.