Welcome to the V-sphere! The rebellious semi-hidden blog of an otherwise obsessively overly professional appearing, perfectionistic, female artist This is the space where you can find out more about me than you ever wanted to know. Dive in! The water is warm, but don't expect any photos facing the stern. This photo is a metaphor for how I approach life. It's not a beer ad! RSS Feed 10/30/2005 song du jour: Felicidade, Buscemi mood: So Much to Do, So Little Time... The Sunday Night Blog A Few Random But Important Things Catch Up Cosmic Quote of the day for all us nocturnal artsy types: I have seen the enemy...and it is the sun. I just made my 27th batch of Chocolate Gravy since Matt gave me the recipe last spring. I got all caught up in Jean's blog and left it on the stove too long, so I sort of made chocolate caramel, but it's not bad. Hey, it's chocolate after all...and speaking of Jean, not only did her current post of photos make me laugh so hard I've only just now stopped coughing (fall allergies), wow, it takes my best gal pal to remind me I need to blog that my work is featured in the current issue of Art Jewelry Magazine. [V bows.] They shot the work back in the summer, and the plan is to show it in the next few issues in the Gallery section. You can see it online by clicking here, and it's available at Borders and Barnes & Noble, hint hint. 1000 thank yous also to Jean for saying what she did about my work. Yes, it's a tough place to be. Naively, I always believed that one's goal as an artist was to manifest artifacts with as much creativity as one possibly could, thereby pushing the boundaries and riding that edge of consciousness. Unfortunately, being ahead of the curve means that it takes a while before people catch on enough to jump on the collectors' band wagon. What's tough about selling work isn't letting go of my babies or maintaining artistic integrity in the face of commerce but living with one's authenticity intact and living on less. It's tough...I mean really tough, but then when I manage to forget all that stress and just let myself make what I WANT to make, checks show up in my mailbox. I don't quite understand the Mystery, and I don't want to pick it apart too much. I just have to remember to take care of myself in a way that I'm not too exhausted, too worn out, or too paranoid (as the price of gold and silver sky rocket) to take my cup of tea and park my backside at my bench with mental carte blanche and GO. In other news (I did promise the near weekly Sunday catch up), for the first time since I declared my salsa intentions last May, I went salsa dancing on a Saturday night. No lesson, no one yelling at me, just a fun (and sexy!) partner. Well, I could tell you that I truly didn't suck, or that as time went by I could feel myself improving exponentially (at least until my knees started screaming at me), but instead, I'll tell you the most important thing of all: I had FUN! I even learned to maringue and cha cha cha. It's really something to be spinning around (and around and around) and not notice anything or anyone except the person I'm dancing with and the music. Fortunately, it is the leader's job to watch for and steer clear of other couples on the floor. The other top story for the week is that my son, Munchkin Einstein meets Da Vinci meets Bill Clinton, in his OBSESSION with clocks, is dressing up as one for Halloween. I'll post pictures for sure. Officially, he is a 'haunted grandfather clock,' which means an old grandfather clock with a crack in it like you find in a haunted house. Well, if you're curious as to how I pulled that costume off, you're not the only one. He wore it to an Unschooler (un)fieldtrip to Chick-fil-a an the Fernbank Observatory this past Thursday, and when all the moms, who'd heard about and wondered the same thing, jumped up and came to see, my normally NEVER-meets-a-stranger-extrovert hid behind a garbage can. "They're all looking at me, Mom. Make them stop." It was like he was living out the hell of that dream everyone has of being naked at work or school, despite being covered in overalls and substantial amount of cardboard. I tried everything to help him cope with his feelings. We talked about how much everyone liked his costume. We talked about times I was dressed up and then freaked when people starred at me. Still a nada on the ok response meter. Finally, I exclaimed "SKYLER! Do you know why everyone is looking at you? Because they want to know what time it is, and YOU ARE A CLOCK!" "OOOOOHHHHHHH," says my child. "That's ok then." and he was fine the rest of the night. Here I am thinking I'm helping my child develop emotional intelligence in a tough moment, and no, it's Skyler-logic that is required to work thru the situation. I keep wondering which one of us it is that I'm educating. It seems to go completely hand in hand. Happy Monday. Sorry about the Sun being even earlier. ;-) 10:29 PM - permanent link    email this entry to a friend 0 comments 10/29/2005 song du jour: Sikidim, Tarkan mood: :-) Shine I've been fortunate lately that several students have taken time to write reviews of my classes, much of which were passed along to where I teach here in Atlanta. Wow, you know one does hope to hear something positive for one's efforts. To these I can only graciously bow. Victoria teaches techniques used for millennia to create many of the great works of art one can see in museums. Though these techniques had fallen into disuse due to their labor intensive nature, Victoria has found many tricks that streamline and improve the processes, and she uses them to make strikingly contemporary pieces rooted in the ancient world. She teaches how to make the tools and materials necessary for each technique. One will never go into a hardware store with the same mind set again. Students are given a series of challenges and opportunities to grow their own inner voices and are encouraged to create works unique to them, at their levels of ability. The only downside to learning from Victoria, is that having completed her classes, students will look at commercial jewelry and think " Yes, I could make this, ... but why would I want to make junk?" The number of places one can learn these skills in the US can be counted conveniently on one's thumbs. In Japan, Victoria would be considered a national treasure, and she would be funded to pass these skills on to the next generation. -Al Boyers For more click on the recently updated Classes section of my site. 2:56 AM - permanent link    email this entry to a friend 0 comments 10/28/2005 song du jour: Moondance, Van Morrison mood: brrr Don't Put Me on a Shelf(?) In response to some comments and emails I've received on recent posts, it's nice when blogging is sometimes more on the dialog side. So much better than writing only to a bunch of semi-anonymous IP addresses. This from one, uh, friend in reference to my recent book tossing confession, "..glad you decided to be a writer/artist rather than a librarian-your lovers are safer!!" We can ask Jean (who is a writer/artist AND a librarian), but I believe if my life were devoted to promoting and preserving books, I probably would have only rearranged, cataloged, and reshelved them in my outrage. ;-) On a more serious though not unrelated note, I asked ebuddha what would be the ideal situation for a child to view in terms of the mom's romantic relationships. His response was exactly like the information that divorcing parents in the state of Georgia are given by councilors in the required parenting class. It is VERY good advice. It's also just damned hard because unless you're on an eHarmony commercial, that kind of slow meeting, getting to know each other conventional dating, and possibly moving toward a 'serious' relationship seems to have gone dreadfully out of fashion, and frankly, I kind of miss it. Well, maybe not entirely. (Does one have to go on eHarmony.com to do that? Ugh! Forget it.) 'Serious' still kind of freaks me out. It's no accident that I'm ok with long distance relationships. I don't seek them out either, but when that's what's happened, I've been fine with it. It's a bit like I found with online grad school. I miss the consistent interaction, but I can write in at 3 in the morning, and still cope with all my other responsibilities. Yes, they are a pain in the ass in some ways, but then, when I've tried to deal with local situations, I usually ended up going crazy that someone could demand so much of my time and energy, and keeping things separate (which in fact really is trying to please and be too much to 2 males at once) is extremely exhausting. I've found that I have nothing left for myself and way too little time to work. Having someone around who will show up for dinner more than once in a blue moon impacts my creativity in a big bad way. Working at night means that to do anything social whether it's dinner with friends, taking Skyler somewhere that goes on past his bed time, or even talking on the phone means taking a half or whole day off work. How many people can afford to do that once a week??? Of course, I do claim to be an extrovert, so not doing those things often enough negatively impacts my creativity too, so I frequently get in this quandary about whether to spend my precious away from Skyler time doing what I need to do here or engaging in the world and therefore feeling less sorry for myself in my life choice driven isolation. In regard to dating at this point I'm like feed me, show me a good time, and however good a time we have, don't act like a jerk afterwards. That's about it. Which is partially why... 2:44 AM - permanent link    email this entry to a friend 0 comments song du jour: ditto on the Van Morrison mood: ditto on the brrr My Life on Parade(?) Which is partially I why decided to give salsa classes another go. I quit taking classes last August because the instructor kept yelling at me. Now, I'm pretty much the last person on earth who needs extra motivation to want to do anything to perfection, and yelling at me will only cause the opposite result. I kept getting so flustered in class that I would screw up some tiny little detail and get yelled at some more. A lousy reward and a heavy price to pay for being someone who picks up things and moves on quickly. As Stacey pointed out, it probably wasn't any picnic for the guys, especially the Latin guys, to be taken down in front of me either. The cardinal sin in salsa, or probably any ballroom type dance, is for the woman to anticipate a move instead of waiting for the man to lead. Of course, if you miss the move, you're just plain bad at it, so there is this tiny window of one count, to read a cue, remember what it means, remember what I'm supposed to do, then do the move, and keep my feet moving correctly and on the right beats. Oh, and right, don't forget this is supposed to be fun! Have a great time. I get so stressed out just trying to dance, I would forget I'm dancing. Flirt? Make eyes at a cute guy? Enjoy the spark of tension from dancing with a stranger so close you could kiss but not? Forget it. I'm trying to remember when to turn, how far, where to spot, and what I'm supposed to do if either the wrap around the guy move is cued or the stop me in the middle of the spin by a hand on my waist. Which way do I face? What? That 4 counts is gone? I, the former professional dancer, am suddenly a failure! Oh, let me just go shake my ass alone with a coin sash wrapped around it already. But I seem to be determined to have a positive experience with salsa, so this week I tried 2 new classes, one at Dance 411, which was pretty good and fun. The other class was at a certain club that's famous for its Wednesday night Latin night. I'm not naming any names here. You'll see why. Now, I know being all social and adventurous and all, that it may come as a shock if I tell you that I can easily talk myself out of going places alone where parking is a pain, and I figure I'm not going to know anyone. Oh, I'll take off all by my little self to barely mapped parts of the world, but navigate the clubby sections of town filled with drunken idiots and those who would take advantage of them? Yuck. Besides, I really really hate crowds, and I'm deathly allergic to cigarette smoke. Not the makings of a disco queen, alas. There was also the slight issue that a guy I dated a couple of years ago used to moonlight as a bartender at that particular Latin night. I figured he would have been long gone by now, but breathless from running 2 blocks from the parking lot and insulted when the bouncer almost didn't ask for my ID, I walked straight into the room where he was behind the bar. With the number of friends (and lovers) who've gotten back in touch with me lately, I'm beginning to feel like someone hit the repeat button on my life. Well, strangely, actually quite wonderfully, though this chapter of my life had still stung a little, by the time I left, I could feel nothing but the same warm well wishes I have for anyone else. I felt kind of bad that he was still doing what he'd planned to quit in favor of a career he's quite good at and that could easily support him. - I'm no snob at all about job/career choices. If someone is happy working on the floor at Home Depot, waiting tables, or bartending, far be it from an artist who's done it all at some point to criticize, but I've learned the hard way that being involved with men, who aren't wildly successful at and loving their jobs/life choices, is a recipe for an early break up. - We caught up for a few minutes. I was surprised at how much of my life he remembered and asked about, including Skyler. (This was one of those when-Sky-was-with-Gran dating situations, and he's not a blog reader.) Then I had to do the whole salsa class with the bar as the audience. The class royally sucked BTW. I think the instructor was trashed. At one point I was turning and saw he of the big dip from last July dancing behind me. V. (would you believe) and I ended up dancing for quite a while after class. He's a good leader. Yes, something I hardly ever say about the men with whom I've danced. Cues are supposed to be universal in L.A. salsa, but one thing for certain: no 2 men do them exactly the same way (sort of like something else), and so reading them requires a bit of warm up time (also sort of like something else). You can't just jump in with most salseros and do the big moves or the multiple turn sequences easily with a bunch of guys you've never dance with (maybe if you're really drunk and don't care...yes...also like something else), and so this was my first time to dance with the same man long enough to get a feel for the moves he favors. Suddenly, it all became easier to read, and I began to relax (uh huh...you know). Eventually I got comfortable enough to figure out and fix moves that had given me trouble and to feel almost comfortable 'styling,' something that normally makes me feel like an idiot since I've only been able to learn what women are suppose to do from male instructors. Most reassuringly, this salsero had the grace and sense of humor to be patient with me (yes, the inevitable comparison yet again...) and to laugh with genuine warmth at my reactions to my occasional screw ups and lack of move knowledge. All of the sudden the Patrick Swayze/Cynthia Rhodes moves come in, and in the middle of worrying if I was doing the footwork correctly, I suddenly became aware that there was very hot man in a rather close proximity. OH, THIS IS WHY PEOPLE SALSA. O-OHHHHHHH. :-) Hey, it IS fun! Sky's off with Gran come tomorrow, and it looks like I'll be salsaing again soon...before V's trip to Atlanta is over. (No, that irony wasn't lost on me either.) I had to leave last night to make it to another club where Salima and Nalan (my teacher) were dancing at a special event, and I'd promised to take photos. I spent an hour feeling their pain as the DJ's were mixing their music and an ok drummer and a less acceptable guitarist were playing along with it (?!?) through all the breaks in the music, screwing up the look of the belly dancers' choreography, and making an hour set drag out to possibly 3. The manager of the club made a big stink about getting kicked out of his office for them to change since we'd taken it over as 'the harem.' A very tired Nalan graciously gave him back his comfy chair into which he plopped his ass down and resumed his all important managerial activities of playing solitaire and pretending to listen to our gossip. Salima had to endure a guy coming up and dancing with her, which wouldn't be abnormal if it were later in the set and wouldn't have been stupid had she not at the time had a flaming candelabra on her head and a lit torch in each hand. Nalan, who I rank with the best dancers I've seen anywhere, had to put up with some drunk unbuttoned button down staggering up and telling her his friend offered him $100 if he'd dance with her for a full minute. In the middle of her shoulder shimmies was a slight shrug and, imperceptible to anyone else watching, a look of mild disgust. Perhaps shaking one's ass alone isn't any easier after all. I played semi-discrete pro paparazzi and went home, getting to sleep earlier than I do when I don't take off work to socialize. ;-) 2:40 AM - permanent link    email this entry to a friend 0 comments 10/24/2005 song du jour:No, it's just too freakin' early mood:like I said... Hot Flames and Hot Rods Forward note: If you've only got time for one read on your busy Monday morning, check out my post on the experience of creativity. If on the other hand, you need a moderate laugh, stick to this one. Well, good lord, and good morning. It is 7:24am, and I am awake. Though I didn't quit working until 2am, I can't sleep and figured I'd venture back in the studio. I'm a little frightened and fear the worst for my sanity. I normally only get up before the sun for coerced medical appointments or to catch a plane. In fact, the last time I think watched the sunrise not against my will was when I worked all night in the studio back in August, and the time before that was almost 3 years ago in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Lying awake, I went out on deck to watch the sun come up over the water. Everyone else woke up too, and I think I missed the actual event when we were handing around coffee, and I was shushing everyone not to wake Skyler. My studio faces east-ish, and if I lean around the monitor 6 inches, I can see that pink glow in the sky. I've ceased apologizing for my nocturnal and therefore non morning person lifestyle. Past the age of 25, being up late all the time rarely deserves the reckless connotations of being irresponsible. After years of covering it up, I now firmly tell anyone, who gives me attitude, "I work at night." Most people understand the concept of 3rd shift. Most people aren't crazy or desperate enough to also work 2nd and 1/2 of 1st too. If the sound of my voice on the phone is gravelly at 11:00am, you'd better be prepared for wrath if you tease me about it. For almost 4 years I worked until at least 1am, and Skyler would wake up at 6:45am after waking me each hour to nurse. The kid can drink his chocolate milk and watch The Doodlebops and The Backyardigans without me for an hour. It's for the best. Those shows make me psychotic, and actually, I hear them in my sleep along with his enthusiastic little singing voice anyway. So the news of late is that my past is still catching up with me, but still in a good way. After the lightening strike of July, I went state of the art digital (Bellsouth-free! The bastards), and my cell phone now rings like an extension of my home phone. Much to my surprise as I was snaking my way thru back roads to do the impossible last week, get across Atlanta at 3pm on a Friday, I heard the ring, and grabbed the phone with no more than a 1/4 of a second glance at the caller ID. Good think I wasn't sailing down the 7 lanes of I-75/85. This blast from the past was an old flame. I suppose the weirdest thing in retrospect is that I wasn't the least bit phased, and only relatively surprised. Talking again seemed normal enough. (As if my life were ever that. 'Normal' is a setting on a washing machine.) I suppose it's been long enough I no longer harbor any maniac homicidal thoughts. I'm kidding. I never harbored those...unless he thought he was entering the state of Georgia...I'm kidding, really. Mostly... He assures me he bares no grudge for the shelves and shelves of books I threw at him when he didn't validate my feelings as I had the courtesy to consciously only grab the paperbacks. Actually, that's true. What he doesn't know is that my choice wasn't strictly out of consideration but also the fact that flinging hardbacks with that much force might have damaged my wrists. I know the confession of my behavior will shock you all. You're saying to your self, "Wow, I can't believe V would behave like that! I thought she really really liked books." It's ok, they were his, and while all of this is true, I can't help but tease about it since a subsequent phone call yesterday began with "Victoria, I love your blog!" One thing I'll tell you about his man: He is the only guy I've ever known to whom I would not recommend reading David Deida. Now, L., I know you're going WTF(?), but everyone else who reads this blog, will know that higher praise to a man I cannot give. Yes, even with the book episode, although you might reconsider the wisdom of trying to get me to visit and telling me the blood wiped off the spines ok in the same conversation. ;-) Ah, but another subject got me reminiscing much farther back. Jean's trip down memory lane via her past vehicles got me thinking about some of the amazingly frighteningly old cars I've driven. I can't top the cool factor of her old Cutlasses, but age before beauty, I drove more than one car manifested into existence before I was born. My first was a '63 Dodge Dart that was the first car my mother purchased on her own. It became a second car to a family of one driver to get that cheaper auto insurance rate, which defies logic, and was parked for many years. This car came complete with a hole in the back seat floor, so you could pull up the mats and watch the road go by (Don't drop anything!) and the why-it-didn't-catch-on-gee-I'll-never-know push button transmission. Yeah, push button. They were over on the left where, come to think of it, there are no controls whatever on my present car. There were buttons going down in a row, R N D 2 L, and lever next to them for park. I didn't drive until I was 18 (don't ask), and when the VW of my date for the senior prom died that very day, my mother graciously offered the keys to the Dart after her screaming that I wouldn't be riding with any of my drunk friends and my screaming that I wasn't going to the prom if my mother had to drop me off. My date couldn't stop laughing at the car. Mostly, he was amused that it went. The biggest drawback to this car was that, while some cars chug gas and even oil, this one chugged brake fluid, a little fact which my mother neglected to mention, and so one afternoon, I was driving down a 5 lane main drag when the brakes just suddenly stopped working. I managed to get it into a parking lot and, though it was still rolling, threw it into park in a panic for which I was given a great yelling at later despite my constantly reminding my mother and my grandfather of the light pole that had been approaching me. The car lived on for a few years after I upgraded to a new model, a '63 Dodge I-can't-remember-what. Both cars were beige (of all things). After that was the '72 Buick Riviera, known to my friends as The Spaceship That Drove Itself. This was a coup with gargantuan doors I could barely close and boasted the largest engine ever put into a passenger vehicle. The reason it was magically thought to drive itself was that, unless someone pulled up along side me and looked in the driver's side window, no one could see I was behind the wheel. It was a bit overkill for tiny little me, but my Depression era grandfather, who bought it for me, thought he was really getting me a luxury model. Forget that the car was over 25 though I was not. The car had one claim to fame and greatness. I once gave a ride to American dance master Edward Villella. (For the culturally challenged, Baryshnikov is[was] to Russia as Villella is to the U.S.) I was at a reception following a tour performance of Miami City Ballet, and Edward, an utterly gorgeous Frenchman from his company, and I closed the bar down. My artistic directors (along with all the women who'd been hanging on him and said Frenchman all evening) gave up and left after requesting that I give them a ride back. After a few more rounds, we all headed out to the parking lot at which point I completely panicked at the idea that an artist of this magnitude was about to get in the ever semi-trashed Spaceship from Hell. Both men were gracious and grateful for the chauffeur service. I dare say the alcohol helped. ;-) Well, it's a bright sunny day now here in the south. Wish me luck. If I creep back to bed, I might get in a couple of hours before the dreaded Doodlebops. oh, and if you clicked that last link, I know, I know, but off me. I never caved to Barney! 7:24 AM - permanent link    email this entry to a friend 0 comments song du jour: Should I Stay or Should I Go?, The Clash mood: tired Been Meaning to Blog More Photos 1:53 AM - permanent link    email this entry to a friend 1 comments 10/22/2005 song du jour: Every Breath You Take, The Police mood: resonating Creative Spirit Talking with Jean last night, I was going on about my dislike of that metaphor that creativity comes thru us when the ego moves out of the way. Because I've heard more men than women say this (actually, I can't really remember hearing any women say this.), I've chalked it up to masculine/feminine semantics, but pondering it further after I got off the phone, I realized why I always feel a knee jerk abhorrance of this idea. It's because I've never believed that we are separate from the divine. I do think we move into a space where we get in line or resonate with the Divine. I just don't think it's something outside of ourselves that requires our temporary removal in order to show up. After growing up in an alcoholic home, I spent many years doing the 12 step thing, and in that realm there is so very much talk of power and powerlessness. It all hinges on admitting the later and gaining the former only by surrendering to a power greater than oneself. There is endless talk of "thy will not my will." For the ins and outs of addiction and growing up in the middle of someone else's this concept in invaluable, but there comes a time that it too must be transcended. Eventually, neither power nor fear of lack thereof is the primary concern. When I first started metalsmithing, ideas would come to me already formed as if by a more traditional understanding of divine inspiration, and they were fairly creative in the since that they were a little different from what was already out there. There were also shapes I felt compelled to incorporate that I had never really noticed before. I still use them, but what I have found is that roll up your sleeves and work it to a true sense of completion development is essential to success and that accepting and manifesting ideas just as they pop up in the semi trained mind does not often produce a fraction of the creativity or success possible. But then, there is a 3rd stage, if you will (The initial random packaged inspiration being stage one, and the commitment to work it to death being the second). After years of intense rolling up of one's sleeves there comes such conditioning to do so that it's practically unconscious. With every breath, the creative mind is working an idea with or without the artist giving it conscious attention so that it may or may not require a more endless redrawing or rewriting in the literal sense. One of the best examples I can give is Sting waking up in the middle of the night and writing "Every Breath You Take" in 10 minutes. Freshman art students might be arrogant enough to believe it '"just happens," and some people who regard themselves as deeply spiritual may think it's their own selves that are in the way of the process, but how many notes had the man put down in succession before that? All along we nurture the evolution of our craft. My own experience is that I get in resonance with something that is all around me. Some people may call that "tapping into something greater," but I still don't feel it as something outside of myself but that which is constantly flowing thru us all. It feels like singing and matching pitch with someone else. Try this: Put on your favorite song with a vocal track (anything as long as there are some sustained sung notes in there somewhere) and sing along, making conscious effort to hit one or 2 of those notes exactly as sung in the recording. There is a physical feeling, wild and surreal, that comes with hitting a note and matching the sound wave exactly. You can feel the synchronization of the vibration of your own sound wave running parallel. For me getting into flow and flying in the creative process feels just like that. "I" and "i" are (am?...are??...damn) still here and still vital to the process. After all, while I'm endlessly finding and pushing my own edges, there isn't some spirit or Spirit out There that has meticulously honed eye-hand coordination or has some archetypal obsession with tantric iconography and with how things fit together literally and metaphorically. However she came by those gifts, they are peculiar to an "i" named V. One last thought to throw in the mix: Scientists are discovering that our senses of taste and smell are completely relative. It turns out that there is no universal taste of broccoli, that each person will have a slightly (sometimes dramatically) different sensation of broccoli whether they love it or hate it. Perhaps our experience of creativity is as uniquely felt. Perhaps this is all the experience and therefore perspective of an energetic woman, who grew up on Star Wars. Why would we assume there is only one way of experiencing and therefore one way of producing that which manifests in millions of different ways? 2:30 PM - permanent link    email this entry to a friend 3 comments 10/21/2005 song du jour: Miss Riddle, Boz Scaggs mood: TGIF...I guess Light Speed How it gets to be nearly a week between entries, I don't really know. Had lot's of stuff to write about, but NO time. For instance, last week, I watched Einstein's Big Idea on PBS. The theory of relativity fascinates me endlessly. Ya know, when one approaches the speed of light, time slows down, which really means that I ought to have more time for blogging as my life seems to move that fast. As a person, Einstein fascinates me as much as his theories, and the producers of the show did a great job of telling the story of physics as it should be told, as history of the people who figured out stuff. The fact that Einstein was lousy at math always warms my soul. I nearly flunked out of high school physics. I always ended up explaining the hard concepts to the so called 'smart kids' and then scraping by, barely, on the math, which I had repeatedly been told I couldn't do. There's a scene in the special where Einstein comes home all excited to tell his wife, the woman whose own physics career he pretty much destroyed in his selfishness, that he's just figured out special relativity. She stops setting the table, puts the baby down and says, "Would you like me to check your equations?" As they showed the history of E=mc2 (squared not x2, but I can't make the keyboard do that on blogger), none was more interesting or news to me than the contributions of Emilie du Chatelet. She was incredibly brilliant and was also the driving force behind the salon that brought together the great thinkers/artists of the time. Her father wrote of her, "My youngest flaunts her mind, and frightens away the suitors." Votaire, with whom she had a life long friendship and a brief affair, wrote of her that her only fault was being a woman. It was considered a compliment at the time. What I find so inspiring about her is not merely her defiance of conventional gender roles (she certainly wasn't the only female in the history of E= ), but her obstinent belief that Newton hadn't gotten things quite right. She was interested in Liebniz's theories and insisted that the force wasn't doubled or even quadrupled, but squared. Who would improve Newton's theories? She proved she was right and united the current theories of with the Dutch scientist, 'sGravesande. From the same site: Du Châtelet and her colleagues found the decisive evidence in the recent experiments of Willem 'sGravesande, a Dutch researcher who'd been letting weights plummet onto a soft clay floor. If the simple E = mv1 was true, then a weight going twice as fast as an earlier one would sink in twice as deeply. One going three times as fast would sink three times as deep. But that's not what 'sGravesande found. If a small brass sphere was sent down twice as fast as before, it pushed four times as far into the clay. It if was flung down three times as fast, it sank nine times as far into the clay. Du Chatelet deepened Leibniz's theory and then embedded the Dutch results within it. Now, finally, there was a strong justification for viewing mv2 as a fruitful definition of energy. Du Chatelet was one of the leading interpreters of modern physics in Europe as well as a master of mathematics, linguistics, and the art of courtship. But there was one thing she couldn't control. In April of 1749, she wrote to Voltaire, "I am pregnant and you can imagine ... how much I fear for my health, even for my life ... giving birth at the age of forty." She didn't rage at the clear incompetence of her era's doctors; she just said to Voltaire that it was sad leaving before she was ready. She survived the birth the next fall, but infection set in, and within a week she died. Voltaire was beside himself: "I have lost the half of myself—a soul for which mine was made." Love those synthesis thinkers. As time goes by at this warp speed, I begin more and more to understand the wisdom of Hallmark. I remember as a kid reading the Peanuts cards at the drugstore (This is what we did before the invention of the web...or personal computers in every home for that matter.) and seeing the coffee mugs that said "I'd rather be 40 than pregnant." As the wave starts to appear still in my fast paced life, I'm truly growing to understand that the former will indeed be preferable to the later. ;-) 5:34 PM - permanent link    email this entry to a friend 0 comments 10/17/2005 song du jour: You & I, Rick James mood: yes, still funky I have Found My (un)Tribe!!! A few weeks ago, I hooked into a yahoo group of unschoolers in Atlanta, and last Friday Skyler and I went to one of their park days. These people were so cool, we hung out at the Lake Claire land trust for 5 hours! For those of you unfamiliar with the term 'uncschooling,' it is based on the idea that education need never be forced or insisted up because "birds fly, fish swim, people think." Here are some of my new favorite quotes and blurbs about the topic. Trying to teach someone something that they are not interested in is like throwing marshmallows at their head and calling it eating. - Rue Kream from Parenting a Free Child, and Unschooling Life from Shine with Unschooling All children SHINE when celebrated for being exactly Who They Are. It sounds so simple and makes so much sense, doesn't i?t it? And yet many children are made to feel less than Whole because they are not *typical* children. They see the world and their minds work differently than the typical child. They are labeled and given the message that they need to change or be fixed in order to "fit in. and this from my new 'untribe' Georgia Unschoolers Unschooling is not a homeschool teaching method. We recognize that learning is a byproduct of living life. Unschooling refers to a philosophy of natural learning as well as a mindful lifestyle. This lifestyle encompasses, at its core, an atmosphere of trust, freedom, joy and deep respect for who the child is. We respect our children, and trust that they will learn everything they need to know through living their lives and following their passions. As parents we are here to facilitate and support them in their interests, whether that means taking a class, finding a mentor, or hanging out and living in the moment. So, if you're already getting the idea that for kids it's a free for all, you're onto something. I've always considered us unschoolers and practitioners of child led learning. My mom, when asked, says my homeschooling style is opportunistic.' I see Sky is into something, and I just go with it. It doesn't matter so much whether it's fractions, Roman numerals (his latest quest because of his clock obsession), or a spontaneous yard sale on my dining room table with a few of his toys priced at $2,000,000. Most of what my son learns is on the fly, and he sucks it up like a sponge. I've been reluctant to talk about this style much. I'll explain it to people one on one when asked, but I'm wary of the criticism. Not that I care what other people think. I just don't want to deal with being badgered, but I'm feeling inspired to blog more about it from now on. When Sky was a baby, people use to tell me how bad it was to homeschool because he wouldn't develop socially and would be too withdrawn. He talks to anyone and everyone. he goes right up to people and introduces himself, asks their names, tells them what we're up to, asks if they have a watch, tells them what time it is (correct to the minute on a face clock), and basically charms the pants (and sometimes the watches) off people. After being sick of the so called socialization worry from everyone she talked to, one mom I met said, "Now, I just tell people the short answer. 'We do worry about socialization because we're not socialists'." ;-) What I'm learning from these people and the resources I have (at last!) found through them is that I do things the same way they do. The difference would be that I feel tons of guilt for blogging while Skyler is watching TV in the mornings. I think I'm going to start blowing off the guilt. The whole point is not just to perpetually let your kids on summer vacation (although for kids who come out of school or rigid school at home that's often how they detox the first couple of months). It's to include your kids in your life and expose them to things in which they will be interested. There is no curriculumm, although if your child wants do something structured, there's no reason to prevent it, and while this crowd has no problem (and sets no limits) with TV and video games, offering something more fun and interesting is a priority. They give all new meaning to the term "live and learn." So, yes, there are the radically opposite arguments to all that unschooling is about like how the world will fall apart if everyone just does what s/he wants to. Frankly, I think there are people who crave structure and external order, so things aren't likely to fall apart with a generation of unschoolers grown up and paying taxes. (Although things may fall apart if Bush's plan for coping with Avian Flu is put into action!) Unschoolers have been around for years and are already out there. The reality: Skyler reads at a 4th grade level simply because he loves to read. I helped him learn, but I didn't teach him how to read. When he was 2, my mom figured out he could already recognize 5 words. I just kept writing words, and he just kept wanting to know what they said. I didn't teach him to tell time. For whatever reason, the son of the mother who HATES keeping track of time or being anywhere on time is just OBSESSED with clocks. It's easy to assume bright kids will behave like that, but aren't we all naturally curious? I found this on Sandra Dodd's site in response to the issue of freedom. You don't even have to have "smart kids" for them to effectively self- regulate. Gee whiz, our dogs do it. We have two dogs that were raised in a suburban back yard. We now live on several acres, still anytime the gate is left open, those dogs take off and are gone for hours. We have two dogs that were raised on our front porch without any fencing. They never leave our yard. If a dog can figure it out, I think a child has a pretty good shot. - Julie I've decided unschooling is one of the best examples of agency in communion. I have to say these were the brightest, clued in, secure, and most polite children and parents I've ever been around at one time. I wasn't even excluded for being the single mom, and, wildly, this was the best Skyler's ever been in a playdate situation. (Mine is usually the child, whose behavior upsests the khaki brigade and their 'perfect' children.) He had a blast. We both did. One of the moms asked me if I thought it was because he intuitively picked up being in a group of people, who know all kids are different accept them for who they are. Yeah, and because of that his mother wasn't a freaked out nervous wreck for a change! 1:23 AM - permanent link    email this entry to a friend 0 comments 10/16/2005 song du jour: Rapper's Delight, The Sugarhill Gang mood: still funky BEWARE: iTune's new 'Just for you' Beta!!! Oh, like I need some other black hole in which to obliterate what's left of my time... Now iTunes has that cool/totally annoying feature like Amazon. "If you like this, you might listen to_____" There's a bunch of music I've probably still got on vinyl somewhere around the house that I never got around to buying on CD (dates me!). There was a whole summer I didn't listen to anything but REM, U2, and Prince (don't ask) and gee, there it is on my desktop just waiting for my little fingers to push 'buy song.' This is what happens to me in the iTunes black hole of time and money...just .99 at a time! Lovergirl, Teena Marie Rigor Mortis, Cameo Funk Funk, Cameo All Sons of Bitches, George Clinton & Da P-Funk AllStars The Breaks, Kurtis Blow You and I, Rick James Rapper's Delight, The Sugarhill Gang Don't Be Afraid of the Dark, The Robert Cray Band Allem Alby (Remix), Amr Diab The Things We Do for Love, 10cc Smalltown Boy, Bronski Beat Ain't Necessarily So, Bronski Beat Why?, Bronski Beat Disenchanted, Bronski Beat and the Communards Gloria, U2 Could a pop/rock/r&b list get weirder? No, not really. Can't wait until I hit 'shuffle songs' on the ipod and get Hildegard after Kurtis Blow... 1:17 PM - permanent link    email this entry to a friend 0 comments song du jour:, Lovergirl, Teena Marie mood: funky Snip Snip Well, there I was getting my little mop top's hair trimmed. - How anyone can cut the hair of a constantly moving child is beyond me. It's a talent at a near Edward Scissorhands level. Better his stylist, Heidi, than me! - I'd been contemplating it for a while. You see, it's been driving me crazy lately. Even after I braid it and tie it in 2 knots, it still flops over my shoulder and into the fish pond while I'm gardening. Besides the ends seemed really ratty. So I told Heidi, "cut it to there." while my mother watched and rolled her eyes. "Wow, it hasn't been that short in a while." I said when she was finished. My mother rolled her eyes again. The floor around me was covered in hair from where Heidi had chopped a whole 3 inches off my tresses. Yes, it's only 2" past my ass now instead of down to my knees. I realize it will be a shock for most people. I'm still getting used to it. Had you going there for a minute, huh? Too bad it's only Halloween and not April Fools. ;-) 1:15 PM - permanent link    email this entry to a friend 0 comments 10/15/2005 song du jour: Oye Como Va, Tito Puente mood: wow Skyler Lost His First Tooth!!! It only seems like a while ago that I was helping him deal with the pain of getting those suckers in. The bottom front are the first to come and the first to go. It's a big step in growing-up-hood. The Tooth Fairy brought him a $1.10. Skyler wanted a "shiny new dime" like Sister Bear got in The Bearenstain Bears Go to the Dentist, but I thought with inflation and all the kid should get at least a dollar. We went to the toy store and spent it on a Playmobil toy bank. (Go figure.) Sky asked me how long it will take to get the new one in. It's just barely showing out of his gums. When he found out the whole new teeth process takes a few years, he decided it wasn't really worth the money. :-) On a big plus note, the child, who has only in the last few weeks put up with my insisting on toothpaste, has now decided my new Sonicare toothbrush, aka the tickle toothbrush is tolerable, possibly fun. 12:25 AM - permanent link    email this entry to a friend 0 comments 10/13/2005 song du jour: Victim of Love, The Eagles mood: wishing for a little quiet Single Handed Parenting V: "Hi, I need to borrow your husband." a friend: "Ok, try his cell phone. He'll be glad to work out a time." V: "What's his current favorite beer? I hate for him not to feel appreciated." the friend: "Something German" [V calls said friend's husband's cell phone] V: "Hey, I need you." the friend's husband: "Sure, how about before work on Thursday?" V: "That would be great! It won't take long. I'm having a yard sale on Saturday." the friend's husband: "Oh, so it's time to pull down some of the stuff we put up there put in the attic last spring?" V: "Yeah." the friend's husband: "No problem. See you Thursday." Ok, so there aren't many friends a single woman can call 2 or 3 times a year to request the services of their husbands without anyone even vaguely imagining a seen from The Big Chill. My ceilings are so high, I can't possibly pull down my attic steps, or I'm too short and lack the upper body strength to navigate them if I stand on a ladder. Depends on one's perspective. Before I was loopy enough to get married, I had only the responsibilities that come with being in school and living in a 1 bedroom apartment. If I couldn't handle something, I could bat my eye lashes at the maintenance guy (actually, it was more like let him mess with my acetylene torch), and I had neighbors, who were happy to look out for each other. Most significantly, there was just me to take care of. Now, in addition to the awesome job of providing for another person, being responsible for his well being, education, and challenging needs, I have to maintain a space large enough to accommodate everything. That's why I'm coining a new phrase: single handed parenting. It's so much better than "single parent," which always implies (in my case erroneously) it's a situation in desperation of a plural. My friend on who's boat the top photo was taken is a single handed sailor. That's the term for someone who sails a vessel large enough to live in comfortably completely on his own and by choice. It's NOT easy. If I had to manage a 47' boat with all that rigging, I'd be declared lost at sea in about 2 hours. When another friend was giving me a hard time about being arm candy to some dude in the Caribbean, and I told him said dude sailed solo, his expression changed dramatically. "That's different!" he replied quite seriously. He explained that single handed sailors are a class of individuals unto themselves with no 2 alike. "A group of individuals, each such an individualist they are indefinable, tough, resourceful, and able to handle just about anything, although no 2 will handle anything the same way" was how he put it. I'm stealing the definition too. I think the most difficult thing about being a single handed parent is that people - friends, strangers, everybody - assume my life is just like theirs. It is anything but. Aside from the difficulties of not having the same mate around on a regular basis for such needs as a woman has like getting into the attic, raking 7 trees worth of leaves on a 3/4 acre chunk of land, the endless task of getting the leaves out of the gutters and off the roof, someone to crawl in that icky crawlspace, etc. (you thought I was referring to something else, didn't you? ;-) ), there is the big stuff like being the sole caregiver and the sole provider for a child. All but one of my friends with children are married. They call up exasperated from time to time, indignantly droning on about how their husbands are out of town for 2 days, and they have to deal with their 2 kids all by themselves. "I have to fix dinner, AND help them with their homework, AND bathe them, AND get them into bed by myself, AND get some work done, AND I've got to clean the house." "And?" I think. "So?" Oh, yeah, cry on my shoulder. I wouldn't mind so much. I understand how hard it is (even with 2 parents!), but there is a profound lack of acknowledgment that they are describing my life at all times. -Granted I just have the one child, but everyone agrees he's like 2 or 3 at a time. ;-) - I NEVER invalidate that they are having a rough time. I just wish they might also take a moment and imagine my perspective, some vague clue that their relative is not everyone's universal. So if bitching to my married with kids friends goes completely unheard and invalidated, bitching to my single with no kids friends often results in my feeling bad I mentioned anything. I have one friend, who will just get wide eyed and say, "Sheesh, all I've got is a boyfriend, who won't act the way I want him to. Your life is 10 times harder. I'm going to shut up all complaining." - Call me happily cynical, but if 2 girlfriends cease complaining, what is there left to talk about over margaritas?!? - Actually, the your-life-is-harder card is almost as bad as the -your-life-is-just-like-mine card. It's leaves me feeling alone in the world, and that's back to the original problem. I don't assume everyone has it easier than me. I'm not that arrogant. museum docent: "There's a kids area where he can play while you wait in line to enter the museum." V: "Great! Where is it." museum docent:"In that room down the hall over there." Is there another parent with you, who can keep your place in line?" V; "No" museum docent:"Oh, well, there's usually another parent. Hmm, that will be hard then." V: "Yes, I know. That's the story of my life" the mom in line in front of me: "I'll hold your place in line if you want to take your son over there." V: "THANK YOU!!!" If there is to be any awareness from peers, it is usually in the form of a stranger, a married or partnered parent, who sees 5 minutes of what I go through - the precocious child others without training would label as ADD, the endless ridiculous assumptions and lack of awareness of a society with a 50% divorce rate that there are always 2 parents present - that causes a knee jerk though genuine sense of compassion. They look at Skyler and me, and they get a flash, a panic almost, of what their lives would be like in my situation. It's a kind of cross cultural understanding, followed by a simple act of kindness that often means the world to me. I'm not bitter about being a single mom. Angry that it was the best choice in an intolerable situation, yes, but I take responsibility for the choice, as I did for bringing Skyler into the world. After I got divorced, I lost most all of my friends in the neighborhood parent network. The rejection at a time when I could have used more support was painful. Sometimes it still is, but what I find most infuriating are the assumptions and derogatory comments of a world oriented toward 2 parent families. They aren't unlike the kind of racist comments one Caucasian will make to another about someone who is not (sometimes these comments are made from someone of one race to someone of another about an individual or group of yet another race, which I find even more ludicrous). That, wink wink, nudge nudge, you understand because you're like me; we're on the same side: against them, them being a term for anyone who is deemed not like "us." When someone makes that kind of comment to me, I just stare at them, intently and intimidatingly, with no expression whatsoever that what they have said has registered. The proper response from another narrow minded person is usually an "oh, yeah," or an "uh-HUH!" or at the very least an eye rolling with an "mmm-hmm" to show understanding and allegiance. I've found that an I'm-not-going-there-with-you complete blank with a warning stare is the most icy and effective statement I can make on the fly, and the person who made the comment will never under any circumstances make another racist comment in my presence ever again. (I've watched them look panicked and stumble over themselves to sound enlightened when they remember I'm present. They begin to think twice.) It's a single person momentary mental sit in, a tiny tiny baby step for genuine human compassion, a sesame sized seed of awareness planted. I could rant and rave, or give them a lecture, but that usually doesn't change anyone's behavior like slight intimidation can, and often I am dealing with people I know well or even love, and with whom my intent is not to attack them the way they are attacking others. Perhaps I need to adopt the same procedure for people who assume I only face the same daily challenges they do. Perhaps if, when they go on about a 48 hour stint of solo parenting children without special needs, I should just stare. On the phone I could just go stubbornly silent. I get accused of being an intimidating person while, ironically, I spend more of my energy bending over backwards to help people feel included and valued. Might as well start living up to my reputation, I suppose...Particularly when peoples' prejudices are against me. Pain is pain. Suffering is suffering. It shouldn't be compared to gain points or more sympathy. When we do so, we focus only on ourselves and bypass the opportunity to embrace awareness and show compassion. 12:02 PM - permanent link    email this entry to a friend 3 comments 10/11/2005 song du jour: the hum of the VCR recording Mystery! mood: ok Thanks Just wanted to take a moment and thank everyone, who wrote in with condolences for my family and me after my grandmother's passing. I believed I've emailed back most everyone directly (or tried. Fuad, I think you're having email technical difficulties again.), but I just wanted to say a collective thanks for the heart-felt thoughts and the love everyone shared. I feel privileged to be in a community of such genuine compassion with people who understand. Lying awake, intending but unable to sleep, I crept back in the studio, finally ready to write the powerful lesson I learned in watching my grandmother fight to live. People often utter well meaning lines of "Well, she was 91." or "Well, she lived a long and happy life." meaning to give solace, but really these things we sometimes say when we are uncomfortable with another's pain may be true, but the implication that death is no less painful is pure BS. It's not like I could have expected her to live many more years. Quite the contrary. I'd been steeling myself up to prepare for the last 20, partly because of her health, and partly because my mother verbalized such thoughts frequently. My grandmother was a steel magnolia in the truest sense, a very fragile being, who could wither at any moment, but as long as she was present, she was tough as nails. She was perfectly lucid prior to being admitted to the hospital. Granny had never had a moment of confusion, let alone dementia, in her life (post anesthesia not withstanding). She had probably had a mild stroke the night before due to arrhythmia, a condition which we're fairly certain she'd had for at least 20 years or more, but which was regarded as recent/blown off and attributed to old age. My mother couldn't stop her from eating breakfast at the hospital that next morning. (Mom drove up in the dead of night after being accosted by a large raccoon on her garbage can, see the August blog page.) The left side of her face was drawn, one eye shut, and her speech very slurred. They should have ordered swallow tests before serving her food. My mother said she ate as if she couldn't feel there was food in her mouth. Since she hadn't eaten since the day before, that was when she most likely aspirated food into her lungs, causing pneumonia. Ironically, that hospital is a client of my mother's. Swallow tests prior to anything by mouth for anyone who shows signs of a stroke is about to become hospital policy. Hopefully it will prevent others from unnecessary pain. Back to "Well, she was 91." No one is to be directly blamed for the scenario, least of all my mother, who did everything but hog tie her mother to keep the woman from eating. Her heart was beginning to wear out from old age. There is no doubt. Still, it is the all too frequent (read most often the situation) that being in the hospital is to submit to no one really having a complete picture, and therefore a plan, of what's going on. There are policies. There are rules. There are charts. No matter how kind or competent the care (and this hospital is considered one of the top 100 in the country), the fact that there is a person attached to that chart is not something that the higher ups always acknowledge. I know. I used to watch the endless parade of specialists walk up to Skyler's bed, go straight to his chart, and read everything new, before even glancing at him or talking to me. There was 3' of space between him and his chart (which was a large 3 ring binder, filled with more pages than hours he was yet alive), and I was in between. Numbers first. People second. Correct application of policies and rules caught in between. The best caregivers are like the ICU nurse, who told my mother in regard to her staying with my grandmother night and day, "Yes, it is ICU policy to only allow visitors 30 minutes, 3 times/day, and we know when it's appropriate to enforce that policy and when we need to just ignore it." Once the pneumonia hit full force, my grandmother's oxygen levels would drop dramatically, and when they did, she would hallucinate. She would pull at her sheets and start to peel off her hospital gown (we could never figure out if she was hot from her blood sugar getting too high or what). My mother figured out to sneakily give her a pillow case to keep her hands busy. My grandmother began to do things with it, gestures and actions we had seen 1000 times and struggled to remember and place. She was doing the things she had done for more than 70 years. She was stringing beans. She was sewing. She was turning the self belts to the dresses I watched her make in the 70's right side out and ironing the seams. The worst came when my mother went back to her parents' house to take a shower and a nap the second or third day. The hospital called in desperation. "She's ripping out the tubes and calling your name." My mother turned the car around and went back. In her delusion, my grandmother had decided my mother was ill. She was the one in the hospital, and Granny was there to take care of her little girl. She was wailing and thought she was searching the halls but couldn't find my mother. There is no worse fear for any mother than to feel unable to take care of one's sick child. The nurses wanted to know how to manage until my mother got back. My mother ordered restraints. We all felt completely horrible about that, but there was no other way. (For the record, they're not like being cuffed. They are soft and can allow for movement but not to where anything vital is connected.) My mother learned the trick of leaving her keys on the table and telling her mother, if you see these, I'm in the building and will be right back. It worked well except when she needed stuff from her car. My grandparents were always THE most fatalistic people I've known. I can remember as a little girl, their going on (and on) about death being a part of life. "When my time comes..." On that side I'm the descendant of English and Scotch-Irish farmers, and the ethic of life/death/renewal was duly passed down. It has been a great shock to see my grandfather at such a complete loss and total confusion of how to proceed. Of all the people in my extended family, he is the least likely I would have expected to react like a lost puppy, a lost child really. My grandmother exhibited no fear of dying. She had been saying only weeks before that she didn't expect to see too many more birthdays, and I was struck by how she declared it as an intent with no hesitation, rather than a mere inevitability of advanced years. In the end, she fought to get well not just to live, and it was absolutely clear that her motivation was ONLY that she had to take care of us. Burned in my mind are the thoughts, "Skyler is alive. His APGAR scores are decent. Now I HAVE to live. Someone HAS to take care of this child, and it's obvious, since no one took very good care of me that I'd better stick around." In the face of out the roof numbers, will was the only thing that made a difference. That's my grandmother all over. (Both of them, actually. Before also dying of pneumonia, my paternal grandmother was fully resuscitated so many times we lost count.) It was never good enough that I should know my mother was back in town and safe at home. My grandmother had to hear her voice (which usually came in a lie from a phone call somewhere along I-75 south.) What I learned that I hadn't expected to confront was that the extreme drive of Selflessness that is Maternal caregiving NEVER eases up no matter how old one lives to be or how grown and responsible one's children become. No matter how bad things got, no matter how much pain she was in, my grandmother's fight had nothing to do with herself. While some might not be the 'smother' Granny was, I believe that Selfless drive is in some form, universal, perhaps the relative Bodhisattva. Her determination to be around solely to take care of those she loved was no less strong than when my grandparents were first married or when my mother and uncle were little children. If she is out there on the astral plane, sometimes looking down until time for her next incarnation, then she is probably fretting at discovering the work hours my mother actually keeps, and stressing out that my grandfather is rather miserable without her and her cooking. One final note: For years I was furious with my mother for not stepping in and 'interfering' during what no one acknowledged was a high risk pregnancy until it was too late. We all learned huge life lessons in Skyler's first 2 years. Mom sought medical power of attorney for both of her parents, which proved to be a very good decision, and is something I no longer hesitate to give her over me. She handled her mother's care with such a grace and compassion as I can only hope to one day give her. 3:56 AM - permanent link    email this entry to a friend 0 comments 10/10/2005 song du jour: silence mood: can't even process How Do You Name the Unthinkable? With yet another catastrophic disaster - what is this 4 in 9 months? I've lost track. - I'm starting to feel the numbness of trying to process too much world grief beginning to quiver and give way. My grandmother was dying when Katrina hit, so I told myself to skip all media news, because I could only deal with the grief in front of me. Since then, I've donated household goods to families who were sheltered in my neighborhood and have now found homes. I donate money when I can, but there isn't much to go around right now. My contributions are a tiny drop in a giant bucket. I start to think about how I would react if faced with such devastation, and I start to shut down. Breaking my own CNN.com taboo yesterday, I stared at photos of earthquake rubble in Pakistan. I remembered what my son's uncle said after driving thru Louisiana to reach Atlanta in his family's flight of Rita, "You've seen the pictures? It's much much worse than what they show." Real life is worse in 3D. The closest an earthquake has effected me involved being on the waiting end of a phone for 24 very long hours on the other side of the planet from where a big one hit. Torture, but not the same as seeing the crushed building where your loved ones lay buried. My heart hurts for all in grief this year. I am one of those people who, despite the so called enlightened environmentalists, wants to say, "IT'S A WAKE UP CALL!!!" Perhaps it is now regarded as naive to look for a direct cause - and therefore blame - such as global warming as it is to say, "Allah is displeased!" I think these natural disasters are a wake up call, though not sent by someone or something. I'm not exactly white robed and chanting around my big water oaks, but I do believe we can only process these disasters with an awareness that we are NOT the most powerful thing on the planet and we should treat it with reverence not because it might get back at us, but because it's bound to take us down regularly. Remembering that might make us behave a little less impulsively and a little less stupidly, at least perhaps toward each other. I wonder sometimes, what it is about the psychological makeup of humans that frequently causes fundamentalist people to assume that every disaster is a sign that they aren't doing enough to spread the word. Specifically, I wonder why it never occurs to anyone that the message might be "God is not happy with the whole mass killing thing." What is it about sociopaths (and I'm perfectly happy to include most fundamentalists in this category, including many Southern Baptists, extreme Mormans, and Appalachian snake handlers to name a few, and not by any means just fundamentalist Muslims, though I'll put some of them at the top of the list for being most likely to behave physically dangerously) that makes them say this is a sign that God wants them to be more of what they already are? More extreme. More excluding. More violent. The message is always 2nd and 3rd person, never 1st. God is showing HE is displeased with THEM. (Yes, in all fairness, there are a fair number of women out there saying Gaia is displeased too.) People are so desperate to hear from God that bad news is better than no news at all as long as it can be projected onto someone else. It occurs to many fundamentalist Muslims that Katrina and Rita hit because God is not happy with the Iraq thing. It would never occur to a certain fundamentalist Republican president that Katrina and Rita hit because God is not happy with the Iraq thing. One good thing in the wake of utter disaster is the leaders of Afghanistan and Pakistan pledging to help rather than continue their fighting in the Kashmir region and the pledging of their less than allies (us and the U.K.) to give all aid possible. (Wonder how long it took for the U.S. to send in those choppers since no one had to wait for an ok from F.E.M.A.?) In an "act of man" in the name of God, people will take sides. In an "act of God," people are more likely to take the only real side there is: everyone's. 12:12 PM - permanent link    email this entry to a friend 0 comments 10/8/2005 song du jour: Gypsy Rain, Arman Charmakian mood: righteous (snif snif) So, You Want to Stay in Business/Keep Your Job? Back when I was in college, my car died a slow agonizing death, and I was relatively stranded when I had to work late in the studio after the trains stopped running. I borrowed a then boyfriend's second car. Somehow I ran over something and blew out a tire, which, because I'm fair, sometimes to the point of stupidity (said boyfriend's other car was a newish Porche 911), I dutifully took the car to the Mazda repair place he preferred. I don't remember the ins and outs of what they did wrong, Something about never getting the balance right, I think, but I do remember vividly that the mechanics really upset me. Anyway, I kept going back, kept trying to straighten out the situation, not just because I was responsible but because I needed the car, and the manager was exceedingly rude and condescending, and hardly willing fix their mistake. When all was said and done, I was at dinner with the Mazda's owner, venting about the way I'd been treated, and he responded by telling me that to them I was nobody, that my measly business meant nothing to them, and I should just get over it already. I don't believe the relationship lasted for too many more weeks after that. What's more, that Mazda repair place, which was a large one, was out of business within 5 months. :-) Moving back to the present, enter The Eye Gallery...or rather don't. Last March when my prescription shifted slightly, I went for new frames and opted to try a more boutiquey place in hopes of better service. The optical place I'd used for the past 2 round of glasses (my astigmatism keeps improving just barely enough to need new lenses but alas, not to see much better without them) had given me very persistent customer service, but it took several pairs of lenses and multiple trips back and forth because their lab kept screwing up. I thought I'd go for ridiculously expensive this time, stupidly thinking that they'd employ a better lab and be more individual and less volume oriented. 7 months later, my sunglasses still aren't right. I've lost count of how many set of lenses they've made,probably 6, including the warped ones, and the barely tinted ones. This time they came back with a perfect right lens and a leopard print left lens. I gave up dealing with the extremely unpleasant manager and tracked down the guy, who'd originally sold me the glasses in the first place. In the midst of solving the problem, that guy was fired. The reason I hated dealing with the manager is he is one of those people who talks AT me instead of listening or conversing. He's so busy telling me HOW IT IS, that I feel my blood pressure go up, as it did the other day when he started YELLING at me over the phone, accusing me of pulling a fast one by not going through him to get the problem sorted out. (Uh, was it my screw up? Gee, no.) I started to get short of breath, and in my oh so controlled anger, I began to do what most women do when they have to repress it, I started to cry. Good lord, how I HATE doing that!!! There's an episode of Sex & the City (oh, how I miss that show...Don't talk to me about the milquetoast edited reruns!) that deals with that very subject. There's a scene where Samantha is turned down for a job based on a past uh, escapade and becomes outraged because the guy turning her away is a total slut. In her indignation and humiliation, she's just hell bent on making it to elevator before her tears become evident. The goddess may be making a comeback, but tears are still seen as a sign of weakness. So there I was the other day, trying to disengage from he who does not ever shut up and who is never wrong before my voiced cracked. It sucked. Sometime after I'd bought my very own Mazda (an '85 626 coupe that last I heard was still running) I had a professor who pulled something similar. He was the chair of the philosophy dept. That was before we finished him off. Naively, I'd had so much fun in my other philo courses, I thought the whole dept. at GSU must be cool, but no. Despite being in this country for 15 years, this guy had an accent like Charo. He also had about as much going for him left brain wise. He would lecture endlessly about 'signs' and 'science,' and not one student in the class, including a friend of mine, whose first language was Spanish, could tell the difference. If anyone asked what he meant, he'd go ballistic and start screaming at him/her. So one day, in desperation, I asked if he'd be willing to do a list of terms relevant to what we'd just studied. He took me down in front of 30 people. Lots of diatribe about how I didn't belong in a class as complex as philosophy, etc. It felt endless. I sat there, knowing if I left I'd be flunked, and knowing, since I wasn't allowed to speak, let alone defend myself, that I was seconds away from internalized anger overload. I felt my eyes burn and the tears start to form. I prayed he'd stop and look at something, anything else, before they overflowed. I knew one gesture of hand to face, and he'd won. Even after he'd stopped ranting, I couldn't control the tears. I hid them as best I could and otherwise stayed pokerfaced. I made a lot of allies in class that day. The next class, I sat in the same space, neither moving forward to the front row, nor slinking farther to the back. He came in and started what he believed was a lecture, then spotted me, and stopped mid sentence. "Oh, Ms. Lansford, you're back! Are you going to cry for us again today?" No one breathed. I just stared him down. Eventually, he picked back up with either 'signs' or 'science.' No one will ever know which. I didn't file a complaint. I wanted to graduate. A few quarters later, I received a call from the university, explaining they'd had multiple complaints and asking if I'd be willing to describe any of my unpleasant experiences from that course to a review panel. Someone from the class had opened up a whole can of worms and told them to contact me for back up. I happily agreed. The prof had already been asked to step down as chair. He soon left all together, but they dropped the case without ever calling me in. A couple of years later, I heard from my favorite prof, with whom I still keep in touch, that my class had brought the guy to his knees and his long time career to a halt. Perhaps retirement gave him time to pursue other interests...like taking ESL. With my mom, the never practiced wrath is even worse. Going thru life like Polyanna and pretty much never hurting a fly, there's a family joke that no one had better be mean to her. She won't do anything to you, but bad things will happen to you all the same. Her ex-husband's life and career fell apart in an alcoholic haze, and he had a severe stroke at 57 (yes, that's would actually be my father...), and a boss, who once fired her many years ago, lost pretty much everything, including his job, his wife and kids, and being a member of the Episcopal priesthood, just to name a few. I often joke that revenge is a dish best served with smile and a heaping helping of creativity, but really, it's so much better, after the tears are gone just to know one doesn't have to do a thing but wait. Wonder what's become of my obstetrician... ;-) 2:07 AM - permanent link    email this entry to a friend 0 comments 10/3/2005 song du jour: Suite for Bliss Followed, Matthew Dallman mood: YIPPEE!!! RSS, FEEL THE THRILL!!! Well, thanks to Matthew, I am now blogging on blogger! Yes, as promised way back when Rommel interviewed me, I finally shifted my blog over to one with real comment features (so you don't get 'trimmed' like on the old page) and RSS or whatever the hell blogger features. In truth, since I had to hit the ground running with the new stalking Tiger G5, I haven't even set Safari's integrated reader up yet, so I've been clicking the old fashioned way, looking to see who's posted/updated their sites. And another issue is that I've yet to figure out the, I'm sure, super easy way to link on here, otherwise, Matthew, Rommel, Apple's new OS, etc. would be in blue. Oh, well. Notice I got the picture in the post below uploaded all by myself (had to debug something). Be impressed. ;-) This was a damned site easier than what I tried to do with Word Press back in the summer. Matthew, you made it painless!!! You're my hero! 5:43 PM - permanent link    email this entry to a friend 1 comments 10/2/2005 song du jour:The Look of Love, Diana Krall mood: pretty much ok And Today's Trivia Question: National Geographic.com has a new kids' game online. Have fun! (Because you're probably as much a kid at heart as I am!) Look carefully at the center of this fan. You'll see special symbols called hieroglyphs. What are they? a) ancient Egyptian writing b) decorations with no meaning c) pictures of King Tut's pets I really really wanted to pick 'c' just for the kitsch factor. ("Mom, have you seen my pet dung beetle anywhere?") ;-) 5:24 PM - permanent link    email this entry to a friend 0 comments 10/1/2005 song du jour:Fragile, Sting mood: (sigh) Postcards from the Blue In an effort to blog less in my head and more on my keyboard, I've gotten into the habit of putting down the better expressed random thoughts in a blank email (because it will save automatically when my new G5 freezes 2-3 times/day...sigh) to be p