Sunbeams: They taught me that the truth would make me free but failed to warn me of the kind of trouble I’d get into by trying to tell it—I remain duly grateful. --Margaret Atwood
without a period as you wanted it no end for you only endless tesseracts now thank you grade 6 here I sit this same cover in my hands my father's black leather ethan allen recliner and the living room dissolving into another world other worlds
"If I have something that is too difficult for adults to swallow, then I will write it in a book for children." -Madeleine L'Engle, Nov. 29, 1918-Sept. 6, 2007
Thursday, August 30, 2007
god will not bless an educator driving a BMW who doesn't even seem to recognize the fact that she is driving around with an extra apostrophe. This car parks every day in my SCHOOL parking lot!
Running the Numbers An American Self-Portrait by Chris Jordan
"This new series looks at contemporary American culture through the austere lens of statistics. Each image portrays a specific quantity of something: fifteen million sheets of office paper (five minutes of paper use); 106,000 aluminum cans (thirty seconds of can consumption) and so on. This project visually examines these vast and bizarre measures of our society, in large intricately detailed prints assembled from thousands of smaller photographs. My underlying desire is to affirm and sanctify the crucial role of the individual in a society that is increasingly enormous, incomprehensible, and overwhelming."
I certainly would not want to presume to have any anything original or enlightening to say about Harry Potter. I'm the one who has to keep asking my husband for clarification about events/names/spells in the past six books, since my memory for details has always been hazy. He fills me in, as does my 8-year-old son who just finished Order of the Phoenix , when I ask them if they remember what a Squib is, or just what, exactly, the Fidelius Charm does. Heck, I just now made the connection that Sirius Black's animagus form was a dog! I know, you're thinking, she really doesn't have any authority whatsoever to speak about the adventures of the Boy Who Lived. Undesirable Number One. But as I've been reading Deathly Hallows, and thinking about kids all over the world reading it, I have begun to feel a bit hopeful about the future. I know how influential a story can be when you're 12. The pre-pubescents and adolescents may not get it now, but the seeds are being planted somewhere deep inside of them, and will reveal themselves later on by the choices they make, the beliefs they hold, the values they cherish. These are the things I like to think they will remember: 1. Always take umbrage at the Umbridges of the world. 2. Never trust what the Prophets say. 3. Tattoo also means a constant drumming sound. 4. When evil finally takes over all our trusted institutions, you will be standing outside feeling very, very alone. This is normal. 5. Latin is a cool language. 6 People with Power lie. 7. There really is a place apart from the known world.
deflated balloons in dark alleys a moment worth capturing and no camera addictions locked doors how long will it take me to get my GED? inability to see shadows because you're standing in the way you have no friends 7 is enough
It's still rather magical to me how the internet can take me from here to here to here and then instantly, transcendently, bam! To 1987, age 20 (half my lifetime ago), wandering through campus in the drizzle and the dark at 2 am with It'll End in Tears by This Mortal Coil in my Walkman, mourning (to put it mildly) my lost love up on the 9th floor of Tingelstad Hall. Ironically, this music helped me keep my sanity during one of the lowest, most self-absorbed times of my life. The raw power of music in youth. The exponential power of the world wide web. Here's to the future: Gary (my lost love and now my found friend) and his wife Allison are expecting twins!
lyrics to "Song to the Siren" by This Mortal Coil
On the floating, shapeless oceans I did all my best to smile til your singing eyes and fingers drew me loving into your eyes.
And you sang "Sail to me, sail to me; Let me enfold you."
Here I am, here I am waiting to hold you. Did I dream you dreamed about me? Were you here when I was full sail?
Now my foolish boat is leaning, broken love lost on your rocks. For you sang, "Touch me not, touch me not, come back tomorrow." Oh my heart, oh my heart shies from the sorrow. I'm as puzzled as a newborn child. I'm as riddled as the tide. Should I stand amid the breakers? Or shall I lie with death my bride?
Hear me sing: "Swim to me, swim to me, let me enfold you." "Here I am. Here I am, waiting to hold you."
here's me: In Segment 45 of Springs Culture Cast, reporter Sue Spengler interviews zombies, drag queens, religious homophobes, and Mike Jones at the 17th Annual PrideFest Parade.
In Segment 51 of Springs Culture Cast, reporter Sue Spengler goes behind the scenes of a dress rehearsal at the Colorado College/Opera Theatre of the Rockies Vocal Arts Symposium.
if you wanna see Craig (and JOHN WATERS!), go here.
So many of you reading this right now have earned all ten of these, and I just wanted you to take a moment and remember that every thing we do as mothers in this fucking world MATTERS and is significant not only to our families' lives, but to the planet we so often do not gracefully inhabit. Browse the website, read some stories, know that if I were rich I would buy for you all these little token gems of appreciation. But here they are, in virtual form, as my gift, for all the diapers we've changed, years we've nursed, choices we've made, and tantrums we've endured (both our childrens' and our own!) P.S. Sorry, guys, I couldn't find any papa merit badges..... P.P.S. Nor any for mamas of school-agers or teenagers.....
all the sharpies are safe in their drawer unable to ink on unsuspecting, though orderly, desks the diaspora from years of clinging has been flung into piles of relativity you would not be able to see the order amongst the chaos i'm not ready yet for the men and women who will come to me seeking not only past tense verbs and the pythagorean theorem but love acceptance worth respect welcome friendship meaning in the past and pythagoras' problems (damn right triangles!) i give it all all the while safe in my drawer with the sharpies
is what my 8-year-old son Grant wrote in the August 2nd square on the calendar hanging on our kitchen wall. At least he got the apostrophe right anyway. He's been reading the Harry Potter series furiously, and has gotten through books two and three in the past week (having read The Sorcerer's Stone a year ago), and is at my feet presently with The Goblet of Fire. He reminded me that Nearly Headless Nick had a "deathday party" with rotten food and raucous ghostly guests and musicians playing "not even real music".
He then most wisely informed me that in death years, Granny is only one year old! I'm wondering now if all our living years are like the negative numbers on the number line, and when we hit death, it's ground zero, and then the years we are no longer among the living can be counted into infinity. Or at least as long as there is someone left to count. Nearly Headless Nick was celebrating his 500th deathday. We will be dead for so many more years than we are alive.....
This was the most interesting thing I saw in Cleveland when we were there visiting Aunt Sarah and Uncle John. Well, that and the WWII submarine in which I almost puked just from imagining the stench of 50 men enclosed in tons of steel and which made me angry once again about the money and resources we squander on war. All this while my boys were having the time of their lives lining up the guns and peering through the periscope.... The free stamp just reminded me of something I wrote when I first started this blog in january....
Ok, so mom was already on youtube...you never know what a search will turn up.
Here she is in a news conference in Washington, D.C., speaking in defense of Oregon's Death with Dignity Act, which legalized physician-assisted suicide. This law, passed not once but twice by the Oregon people, was being challenged in the US Supreme Court at the time by then Attorney General, John Ashcroft. It later became known as "Gonzales vs. Oregon".
Compassion and Choices used every tool at their disposal to assist in the fight. My mother became one of those tools: a patient-plaintiff in the case, a simple woman who spoke simple truths about her own experience.
But it's not a simple issue, death. Like birth, it has swirling about it so many of our fears of the unknown, not to mention the irrational beliefs of so many in power. What is best for an individual human being so often gets lost in rhetoric and religion. In the end, however, my mom, Oregon, and all of us who value the freedom to make our own choices, won. It its summary, the Supreme Court majority did not mince words: 'The Attorney General's unilateral attempt to regulate general medical practices historically entrusted to state lawmakers interferes with the democratic debate about physician assisted suicide and far exceeds the scope of his authority under federal law.'"
She never did use Oregon's law, but I witnessed first hand how its existence helped her - not to die, but rather to live.
One year ago today, my brother and I went out to Oregon to tie up loose ends with our terminally ill mother. She had been given a two month diagnosis a few weeks before, but seeing as she had outlived the odds already by surviving more than five years with stage IV breast cancer, we figured she had at least six more months left in her. After I filmed and watched this, however, I knew the end was near. Not all of us are privileged enough to see the other side before we cross over, but I'm convinced she did. She left us 10 days after this video, on August 2nd, 2006.
on the bike path our evening shadows a mystery look up! not the sun nor the moon but suburban giants with lit faces made wicked by your imagination or friendly two wheels and a heart beating faster than your pedals screaming with joy
the fair was fun last words on your lips before succumbing to sleep only to dream of ferris wheels and girls in pigtails holding tight to their prize chickens
