Oct 15 2008
Note: I know, I know. I haven’t published Part III yet and here comes Part IV. Well what can I say? I have an unruly mind and it won’t always go where I tell it to – sometimes it just goes where it will. In this case it skipped straight to Part IV. I’ll go back and do Part III later. Probably.
“The mind is a monkey.” ~ Old Chinese saying
Oct 13 2008
I read this in a doctor’s waiting room when I was all of 18 years old, in 1982. The year before I had seen Sizwe Bansi is dead in Ashland. Nothing on earth had moved me like that. The idea of a writer who could do such a thing – such bloody, piss covered, vibrant madness and craft — Athol Fugard, I thought, was my hero. Indeed, I doubted he walked, if asked then I am sure I would have insisted the man simply floated, perhaps propelling himself with soft jabs of a pen. So, sitting there…when I saw this in the New Yorker…an interview! – I had to read it. I am now 44; I think of it almost every day.
Oct 07 2008
I guess it’s happened to me at least about a thousand times in my life that I can remember. My dreams have horrible puns in them. It’s not my fault. It’s not on purpose. It’s what my dreams do.
I’ll wake up half laughing hysterically and half screaming with horror at some utterly vicious, merciless twist of semi-conscious wit my strangely wired brain produces.
Well, this morning’s example was too good, and too topical, not to share:
Sep 28 2008
For all of you who have been following the saga of my computationally challenged reality with barely stifled yawns, I have good news! The new season of Survivor has (apparently) started ………..and I have a brand new ‘puter/pony with which to ride out onto the purpled plains of the intertubeweb and do battle with the FOE wherever they may choose to skulk! So you can now switch from one non-interesting distraction to one that at least has better production values!
The new pony (as yet unnamed, suggestions are welcome!) is new and glossy and sleek and black
and best of all, cheap!!!
For you afficianados of inexpensive laptops it is a Compaq Presario CQ50-107nr, currently on sale at the Canton, NY Radio Shack.
Now all I have to do is get back to the broadband ranch and look out!
Many. MANY thanks to all those who stood on the front lines and pitched in as this epic battle of wills between a lowly mortal and the puter Gods played out!
Sep 24 2008
Disclaimer: Once again I beg your indulgence for posting a diary such as this during a time of momentous events. It is neither overtly political nor topical. It is however a true story of life in these United States and I offer it here for those of us who could use the diversion. With respect to topical matters I have only this to say: the ‘bailout deal’ is another Republican rip-off, hold the responsible accountable, and ensure that the American people are the primary beneficiaries of any deal. At this point I am inclined to say let there be no bailout at all. Let the market that the fat cats have worshiped be their master. That philosophical note being made, I think the chances of the American people getting what is best for them out of this situation are, regrettably, slim to none.
Foreward
There was an overwhelming response to Part I of this series. The community was very kind and I was deeply touched. Thank you all for that.
There were only a couple of comments that were perhaps less than kind – but they had their own merits I suppose. One person asked the name of the guy who was killed and asked if he was just a statistic to me. I thought it inappropriate to respond at the time, but after mulling it over I now think I should.
Sep 12 2008
Thanks to the hard work of many, many people – some of whom are no longer with us – I was able to marry my longtime boyfriend in a small civil service in California last week.
This is just a quick diary to thank some of the people who helped pave that road to legal protection of same-sex marriage.
And it’s followed by a request…
Sep 12 2008
I am going to Las Vegas at the end of the month for a conference and I have never been.
Now if any of you happen to live in the area, I would be thrilled to meet up. The truth is I am going with a very boring guy and his wife, they are young and in their 20’s and probably won’t want to hang out with me anyway.
Here I am going to one of the entertainment capitals of the US and I am going to be alone. Sniff!
But since I have never been, I am looking for advice on what I can do during the evening, what the good restaurants are and any sights I should see. The first day I get there I will have most of that day and night to play tourist. Naturally I will bring ye old camera to take pictures.
Any help y’all could give in helping me have a decent time while solo would be muchly appreciated. I am staying at the Las Vegas Hilton which I am told is off the main drag so advice on how to get around and how far I will be from the cool part of town would also be helpful.
Sep 07 2008
I recently participated in the overly burdened multi-stage process that my place of employment uses for hiring. We were looking for a new manager for one of our Hem-Onc units, we have a relatively democratic atmosphere. Case in point, while doing rounds last night in the middle of total chaos the new fellow introduces himself to me and says so you’re my Leukemia expert and I said,” No that would be you.” He laughed and sad ,”Well X informs me you’re going to keep me from making mistakes while I am new.” Because, well, he is right. I will. I supervise the RNs but I also have to shepherd the new docs who know far more than me. I have plenty of experience doing this: dealing with people far smarter than I. If somebody asked me to put a one liner on my resume that would be it: I can recognize when somebody is smarter than me and in my workplace I am surrounded by them. It happens in a research institution.
We had five candidates and the one I favored is very young, inexperienced and male, still a big minority in nursing. My belief was that if we did not hire him another institution was going to snap him up and apparently for once in my career I was on the same side as the big dogs who decided to he was the right choice.
His big negative was a lack of experience. And we are already talking about experience in this charmingly obtuse political season. Who has it. Who doesn’t. What kind of “experience” do we want?
Think about how many big steps in life we take with no experience. The first time you get married, have your first child, drive a car, go on a date. Think about all the incredibly bad advice you got from those so called “experienced” people. Sure I am guilty of playing the middled aged “experience” card myself when I doll out my advice and I am just as often wrong.
The only relevant experience for being president is being president. Of course it ends up that I am defending the choice of Palin by saying this and actually her lack of experience doesn’t bother me: it is the crazy packaged as middle America that irks me. That is the genius of American cultural hegemony. It is so broad and vague that almost anybody can be made to seem just like you and I when they aren’t.
We are taking a chance on a new manager at my workplace. I don’t know what change he is bringing but I just coherent enough to know change is coming and I can either rely on my old patterns of thinking and risk becoming professionally irrelevant or learn to surf in the new ocean. People often say that change for the sake of change isn’t necessarily better but nor is it necessarily worse.
What good is experience if it is just used to enforce an existing and decaying order? What good are leadership skills it they are merely a repetition of worn out tunes? Most leadership skills are acquired when one becomes one anyway. Of course I have had plenty of leadership training at my work place but it happened long after I took my position and after I basically asked for it.
Experience in politics, at work, and in life is only a useful tool if one actually decides to learn from it, to admit mistakes and formulate new approaches.
Sep 05 2008
There is summer, and there is summer.
For those who live in seasons that change, that air, that scent of heat and sun, (because the sun does smell of life and air and heat and all things hot and white-yellow bright), the summer air is fleeting. Summer raises the heart, like a glad sweet song, then whispers to the soul silently with sweet-bitter notions of cooler Autumn straight ahead. Autumn, days that masquerade as portage between brief spurts of hottest days and stifling nights to cooler twilight and longer, darker, colder Winter.
Look at the fate of summer flowers,
Which blow at daybreak, droop e’er evensong;
And, grieved for their brief date, confess that ours,
Measured by what we are and ought to be,
Measured by all that, trembling, we foresee,
is not so long!
(part 1, go here)
Also posted at Dailykos
Sep 05 2008
I just read Starhawk's letter from the Republican National Convention protests…the one for the first. It's of course avaliable on her website, but both her site and the letter are avaliable on the orange satan:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/9/4/212613/3299
I was inspired by the diary to go look up the poem…which I'd read a long time ago, but was much too young for (even though I last read it only a couple years ago). As society changes, and I think about the discussion with NLinSP on here the other day, about radicalization and violence…this resonated.
Sep 04 2008
The last time my mother took me out to her folks’ former property in the Yakima valley was when I was around 21 years old – in 1979, a hot, hot summer day. The aging, paint-peeled-so-badly-no-memory-of-color-remained clapboard farmhouse was still there between Brownstown and the White Swan Indian Agency (and may be standing today as far as I know). It was built around 1905, the year my grandparents, Nellie and James, were married. An old straight-up style house, tented 70 degree roof, very spare and plain Victorian, narrow high window casements, tall ceilings, small rooms. Three small bedrooms and a shanty add-on bathroom.
Wandering oversea dreamer,
Hunting and hoarse,
Oh daughter and mother,
Oh daughter of ashes and mother of blood,…
**************
(crossposted at Dailykos)
