Raising a Revolutionary

Starvation

2012-01-26T11:58:00.000-08:00

then
not having
consumed any
spiritual food

she expired

_______________________
'cept, then there's always the modern-day spiritual... food-like...

Annually

2011-12-04T16:18:00.000-08:00

She is resplendent when she's like this

positively glowing, talking
of the hanging of these lights
pulling them up and over her head
laughing

the lady Madonna herself.

I am the interloper when it comes to this

sulky as a teen, sniveling
around this house, pouty
that it's come around again,
so fast

the hunkered Scrooge-face herself.

Then she reminds me that she knows
it's not about all those things,
the presents or the stockings or
hanging perfect lit-up balls

"It's about family,"
she says, "that's all."

__________________________
So maybe it's true that i have done all right managing the annual questions that come up this time of year. This year, with people occupyin' streets and parks and houses in the name of economic justice, i naturally walk around wondering if i've taught the rebelangel well thus far, seeing as how i've often let the consumerism run away with her. Then she says stuff like "it's about family," and i'm a little more settled. A little.

In spite of the regular Scrooge-face i wear this time of year, i could perhaps admit that this holiday comes around at the right time. When there's so little light and the landscape of the northern hemisphere goes monochrome, we need something to look forward to; something to give back the light -- so we fling ourselves into this holiday to keep from flinging ourselves off bridges.

Back in the way-back dizzy this holiday was the festival of light, the celebration of the return of longer days. Some believe this to be the reason that Jesus' birth was deigned to be right around now -- to give the Pagans a little more enticement to jump ship and go Christian. We've got a celebration like yours, right around the same time... so you don't have to give up nothin'....

Those are questions about this season's purpose that i've never quite reconciled. In any case, the return of the light does seem to me to be a good thing to celebrate. And of course, the reminder that at least once a year we will remember our loved ones and call them often, to talk of Christmas oysters and who will put the star on the tree and what size shoes the little ones are wearing.

We will remember, as we so often forget, that we have people in the world, and that they're thinking of us on this very day.

They're writing our names on sugar cookies
kissing our packages before they go off in the mail
they're laughing at the ornaments we made in kindergarten
they're sipping egg nog and wishing it was the kind we make
they're wishing they were hugging us and making fun of us in person...

They're knowing that if not now, then soon again
since at least once a year, we will think of them...

23 days before winter (or Dawn is Dead)

2011-11-29T10:25:00.000-08:00

You might expect the night to be like this

merciless,
swallowing you whole

then the dawn comes
and she's
cold and pallid
no pulse

somehow you're surprised
when
you poke her
hoping for a quiver
but she doesn't move

nothing rises
nothing grows

begging for a break
you lie down beside her

curled up, a question mark

but it's all no good

give it up son,
she won't see you anymore

you, like her

dead

til

spring

comes

Crazy Reflected

2011-11-10T16:46:00.000-08:00

Now i've never taken any of this life stuff easily

speedy shots over the space

between miser- and revelr-y

letting feelings flow like storms,

or storing the nuts for winter.

So when i watch my crazy reflected, i should not be surprised...

Obsession, in the rebelangel's world, comes in the form of the toys she's playing with at the moment. She flings herself wholeheartedly into a love for one brand or another, while i stand back in awe at her vigor. When i watch my crazy reflected, i should not be surprised...

Right now it's Barbie that's caught her eye. (Before the more feminist among us gasp, you really must know that most of them were inherited from my childhood collection; thus in this case hypocrisy is a bigger evil than the threat of lowered self esteem.) She spends hours in her room singing soft songs about their exploits, dressing them up in this outfit and that one, daydreaming about Barbie campers, dream houses, hairdos...

Before that it was Littlest Pet Shop, before that My Little Pony, before that Build-A-Bear... and on and on as far back as toddlerhood when Dora came on the scene and made her sing those crazystupid songs about how we did it, we did it... me siento loco por que we did it...

She loves these things like children -- a love that takes on new dimensions with every passing moment --

and then she drops them for no reason whatever.

For me, it's not so much toys. It could be any manner of person, place or thing -- those naked nouns just waiting for me to complete them. I'll dress that mannequin up in Gucci, carefully ironing around the buttons, polishing the shoes, applying makeup and coiffing the hair, getting everything just so, barely thinking of anything else. Then someone flips on the lights and the makeup looks garish; the Gucci looks douche-y, everything's wrong. It could be men, or this blog, or any number of other new exciting things i take on. Hot. Flip. Cold.

I can rationalize and intellectualize a lot of things to come to some conclusion about how i should proceed with this rebelangel -- but usually that's when her shenanigans are not ones that i share.

When i watch my crazy reflected, i barely know what to do. I don't want to temper her happiness, or mine, when it comes along. But this feast or famine business... well it's bizn-ass. To pull back from the famine and work more on the sustainable food, i have to do something. And perhaps that means doing less at first.

Perhaps i need to display a little restraint with the next mannequin, and hope she does the same after Barbie goes the way of Dora. Sustainable food.

love in the summertime

2011-07-06T19:38:00.000-07:00

el verano is the time
when we're
hanging out the door

heat hardly quits
yet we
only ask for more

rolling on the floor
where thieves have spat before
tossed crooked coins galore
(the truth, it makes the swelter
better than before)

el cuerpo, mas calor
demasiado, calor
it's always way too much

yet still we seek

amor

Portland is Bipolar

2011-05-18T15:41:00.000-07:00

It's about this time of year when this little burg called Portland starts showing its bipolar ways.

'Round about the first 70-degree day:

Cars create crashes to stop for girls on bikes
Sunglasses get bought, or resurrected from their dark despairing depths in the glovebox
Everyone smiles at one another
in fact
everyone looks at one another as if their eyes have been glazed over with a funky grey haze for so long, they're not even sure what they're seeing is real

and there's a twinkle

and

complete strangers walk up to you in the grocery store saying stuff like
"i don't mean to be rude
but you look really hot in that shirt."

That's all good and all, but the trouble is, i've been wearing this shirt for months and no one has said a word; i've been trying to catch the eye of the hottie in the grocery store for even longer to no avail. I've been biking my ass in the rain and getting soaked, waiting to cross Powell Boulevard.

Now it's sunny and even hot outside and the opposite comes in, flowing fast as Mt. Hood melt. Dang, people, we are in serious shortage of Vitamin D, and it's abundantly clear how short we are when we start to stock back up.

I'm not suggesting that uninvited comments from fellow shoppers are not a slightly-creepy-yet-welcome addition to my day; i'm just saying that perhaps we could spread it around a bit. Like say it's the middle of February and you see a single woman you don't know. Don't go so far as to ask her out or buy her a floppy red rose, headed for the bargain bin; but maybe you let her know that you like her shirt. Maybe turn away from selecting the perfect 20-ouncer in the microbrew aisle and just flash a smile.

Perhaps we act like summertime is not the only time worth living.

Perhaps we do our best to imagine the grey funk is not all around us, even when it is. That would be nice...

De la casa del padre

2010-12-30T16:14:00.000-08:00

She comes in reeking of
country funk and old couches
dirt skimming her fingernails
a tick crawling around in her hair

Forgive me for being irrational
but this is not the way i left her

After i've coaxed her into
vitamins
two tonight, baby
greens for dinner
plenty of cream rinse for her hair
we lie down

She tells me
she loves him
more than me
that she wishes she were dreaming
so she'd wake up back there.

3 Ways to Stay Green During the Holidays

2010-11-30T23:18:00.001-08:00

There's going to come a time in the not-too-distant future when our kids are going to look at us with disgust when we discuss some of the not-so-eco-friendly choices we used to make; much like the way we currently look at people when they talk about not putting kids in car seats or smoking inside the house. Our resources are running out at an alarming rate, and for that and other reasons, more people are coming into consciousness about our impact on the earth.

One place that our consciousness has not evolved quickly enough is in our approach to the holiday season, so for that reason I'm going to do Raising a Revolutionary's first-ever Top-Three list. This:

3 Ways to Stay Green During the Holidays

1. Forget the debate over the plastic or the cut tree. Neither. If you simply have to have a Christmas tree, "because we have kids," or whatever reason, choose a live one. Buy it from a local nursery, looking trimmed and lovely in a large pot. Put it in your home for a week or so, and then plant it in your yard or donate it to a piece of land that needs it. In our case, we've used the same little guy three years running, and will finally plant it this year. It doesn't get much greener than that.

2. Assess needs vs wants. I almost cringe when someone asks me, "what does your daughter need for Christmas?" My response is usually "nothing," because i have a hard time believing a girl who has healthy food and clean clothes to wear needs almost anything at all, especially in comparison to the precious little that children possess in so many other places. But the reality is, she has grandparents and aunties and other people who feel the need to buy gifts, and it's hard to say no all together. I would like to be that austere, but alas.

So besides the obvious suggestions of "buying fewer gifts" or "asking for a charity donations in your name" in order to stay green, there's the added option of asking for specific things that your family might desire, but may be less tangible than a new pair of jeans. Ask for a CSA membership, grocery gift cards, piano lessons, art museum passes, or some other enriching activity in the stead of needless stuff. Be specific, because if you don't, your loved ones will be compelled to buy the jeans.

3. Get the wrapping under wraps. Seriously, multiple garbage bags left over from your family's tear-through of the things under the tree? Even if it can be recycled, (which much of it can) it's easy to fall prey to the biggest oversight among the 3 R's of Recycling: forgetting the "reusing" bit. If you have gifts to exchange, use a gift bag, and hopefully, a reusable one made from non-synthetic fibers. It might have looked ghetto a few years back, but in a few years it will look ghetto if you don't do it.

At some point, it's just going to be out to be a stuff-monger. Get ahead of the game and help green the holidays right now.

The Rub

2010-10-21T21:22:00.001-07:00

I stopped writing for a while because i got sick of hearing my own voice in my head, when there seemed so many more pressing things to spend my time on.

Then some of you started to clamor about missing my drivel, so i tossed out a few more cyberwords.

I railed about how i didn't need a man to make me happy.

Then, on account of increasing negligence on the part of the rebelangel's other parent, and the late nights it forces me to spend writing for this roof instead of writing for fun, i got to thinking about how badly she needs a positive male influence in her life -- a steady one who sticks around and spoils her like a father. I actually even started to think about settling down. Shhh... don't tell...

I preached and praised the place i live for its progressiveness, its positive energy, and its proximity to sea and mountains.

Then, like the thinnest putty knife wedged in a stubborn crag, someone brought up leaving this place, because perhaps i wouldn't have to work so futilely elsewhere. That old stone started to give way.

A while back i would have told you that never would i have imagined leaving this home of mine within the next year. But since the rub's come to do its rubbing so many times lately, i have to say i don't know anymore. I make decisions and then make the opposite one. I do something or nothing and the universe drops the other side in my lap.

I sat down to write tonight and i had nothing in mind, but this is what came out. So obviously the answers are not definitive in my head, and i need to work some of it out on this public page.

So i ask you: should i stay in the place that has been my home for the better part of ten years, where a mostly-absent father and his helpful mother live, but where it's far from my family, and the gaggle of hipsters with liberal arts degrees make unemployment consistently high? Or should i move within a morning's drive of my own parents and siblings, where the economy is better and the sun shines 300 days a year?

I try not to sway you too much with lofty words that adorn any one side more than the other, but it's almost as if the script is already written. The unknown always seems a bit rosier, and worth a try if you're having doubts...

A case for spiral pegs

2010-09-23T21:40:00.001-07:00

"We were like spiral pegs in a square hole..."

S is an amazing mother of three who whisks through life making friends wherever she goes, and bringing her three bright, engaged youth along with her for the ride. She also happens to have dreadlocks so long that she can sit on them. She and her family just moved to a new school on Portland's west side, where, even though this is still the left coast, you'll probably find more than a fair share of polo shirts and stay-at-home moms.

Thus, the spiral pegs comment.

So here is my friend, this spirited, strong woman, feeling that she and her family didn't belong in this public institution for learning, and praying for her daughter as she embarked upon her journey in the new school.

But i say, among all the well-heeled, west hills Portland parents, she is needed at that school. Kids, and parents too, need to know that there is more than one way to live life, and in spite of what might appear to be a "dread appearance," there is nothing to fear or disdain or even assume about our differences. We all have to live in this world, and if we can't accept ourselves and our fellow parents who frequent the schoolyard, how are we to get along in the wider world?

What's especially scary for me, when i think about my own child's contemplation of self worth, is the thought of self-exclusion -- of someone excluding themselves from participating in something, because they make the assumption that they are going to be excluded anyway. I don't begin to assume that's what my friend went through -- it's just where my mind went wandering when i heard her comment.

The rebelangel and i could have been those cast-offs, if i would have written the script that way; me with a more carefree appearance and profession than most other moms at her school, and her with the most outlandish array of mismatched fashions this side of the Cascades. Believe me when i say we stick out.

Still, i've been part of the parent's association for more than a year now, and i stay not for the fellowship, or a feeling of do-goodery, but because i feel that someone needs to be there to represent a demographic that is decidedly not the stay-at-home mom, everything's-perfect type of scene. I am the youngest member of the association by many years, and the only one who is single. While my asides about not needing a man don't really ring with this crowd, (and admitting i do want one often gets people thinking i'm going to steal theirs) i think i do manage to change some mentalities once in a while about things like gentrification, diversity, and inclusion.

I do not fear to speak my mind when more well-off parents make assumptions that "everyone will be able to pay that much" for an activity, or they say things like "what is wrong with these people?" when other parents don't show up on time for events. I am not afraid to suggest that perhaps that parent had to take the bus to get there, or perhaps that other parent just got laid off, or perhaps they're exhausted from working a low-wage ten-hour day to support their families.

Life is not rosy or comfortable or cookie cutter for everyone, and if we allow cookie cutter people to run the show, those who break the mold will be forgotten.

So i beseech you -- you with the torn jeans and roller derby friends, you with the dreadlocks and the off-the-grid profession, you with the fears that everyone knows better than you -- include yourself in activities that you think you don't belong in, especially when they involve our youth. Especially when they involve your youth.

When you get over your own perceptions of exclusion, you find that you can have a voice for youngsters who might have the same feeling. Then you begin to influence what happens in that place, and other places, and the world.

Too

2010-06-18T22:59:00.001-07:00

In a world where everything is just too, i try not to do too much of anything. Nothing too flowery, indulgent, hippy-blissful or trite. Being as that's how most of my stuff is, nothing else gets writ.

Except for the usual epithet, i suppose. Lately there's this one that's been getting poured to the curb, for a few whom the title fits: "that mortal example of their time."

I've been reading this book about the creator of Time magazine, Briton Hadden, who sank his teeth into the world of journalism in the 1920's and forever changed it. What grew back from those bites was a scar tissue superior to the original, a new way of writing that favored the Homeric epithet over the exhaustive description. In between madcap hours at the helm of the soon-to-be-giant Time, Hadden lived raucously in the speakeasies of New York and Cleveland, and died in his early 30's. He, the man who could have been a magnate, was that mortal example of his time.

Then there's the way history will remember this time now -- this economically turbulent time -- almost 100 years after Hadden. Here now, while trying to maintain a level of humility that says 'i neither deserve nor don't deserve this,' i know that i too am that mortal example of my time. I've lost my job, and now totaled my financed car. Parallel to the moves that are being made all over this country, i am now in my own employ, and choosing buying outright over another financed vehicle. Small business owner over corporate slave. Cash over credit. History will record these moves, similar to how i now live them. The mortal example of my time.

(Or maybe just one of the many to be pushed and pulled and forced into decision making due to the constraints of the time?)

In honor of free education

2010-05-25T14:04:00.000-07:00

We get ready for kindergarten as if nothing has changed. I rush her out the door... "grab your mochila, your lunchera, don't forget to brush your hair...," i prattle on, the naggy mother trying to keep it all together. Since kindergarten started, her lanky legs have sprouted another three or four inches. She's growing faster than the Oregon grass that's gotten so long in my backyard. It's just another day, we so casual yet frenetic while we go about getting ready for another blessed foray into free education.

Out on the dividing line between the Atlantic and the Caribbean, on an island that's been called Ayiti since the time of the Taino, another little girl gets ready for kindergarten too. B is five; a quiet, diminutive little nymph with hair twisted into three or four sweet ponytails.

If they were side by side, B would be dwarfed by the Rebelangel; her spindly arms and short stature would fit the mold of a preschooler in the States. The Rebelangel, meanwhile, would match a third or fourth grader's stature, were she to go to school in Haiti.

There is a thread that ties these two children together, so far away from one another. They don't know it, but they are bound by my effort to keep a kindergartener thriving in school. In the rebelangel's case, all it takes is the effort to get her out of bed, her lunchbox packed, and the time it takes to drive her to school. The cost of her all-day kindergarten is not for me to worry about, and now, like no other time in my life, i am feeling so grateful for the wonder of public school. Yes, it has its troubles, (which is why i spend a few evenings a month dabbling in the doings of the PTA) but this child can READ, and sing, and play, and do mathematics, thanks to her wonderful bilingual school -- and it costs me nothing.

For B too i am making an effort toward her education, though it has nothing to do with packing her daily lunch. Her parents, who i have come to know during my time in Haiti, are the hardworking sort; her father toils up a mountain every day to teach school, and preaches at a nearby church every Sunday. When a family friend lost their child, they paid for the child's funeral because the child's parents could not. This, at the expense of being able to pay their own child's kindergarten tuition.

If this doesn't tear at your heartstrings, i don't know what could. So you can guess what i did.

I am paying for B's tuition for the year, so that her wonderful parents don't have to worry. You could scoff at me for being so rash, when my gas bill needs paying and the food is dwindling in the cupboard. But for ten hours (or less) of my work time, I have seen that a little girl -- and especially girls need it in Haiti -- gets a chance at an education.

So when i'm packing the Rebelangel's lunch in the morning, i am now also sending hugs to B, and hoping she's kicking her spindly legs in happiness, all the way to the schoolyard...

(I don't mean to use this blog as a means to solicit you for cash, but if you are inspired by this story, you could help too! Check out www.noramise.org for more information on the organization i'm working with, doing direct action with the people in Haiti. You can make a difference, with just a few hours of your own work time.)

Too

2010-05-08T15:44:00.001-07:00

There are just too many words

too many things to say

too many poems i won't write today

so i'll just say

thank you

thank you.

Off to Haiti on the red-eye tonight. See you when i return...

This one skit on Family Guy

2010-05-03T11:43:00.000-07:00

Even though we don't love each other anymore

you still hold my memories for me

back on that road where i left you.

Like how there was this one skit on Family Guy that for some reason we thought was so hilarious,

only now i don't know why, and i want to know why again

or how there were these places in Vancouver where we fell back in love

and i want to know where they were exactly, if only to visit them on my own

and what i looked like when i gave birth to your child

and the funny things i said then

and why you fed me Thai hots, with some perspective on it being good for pregnancy.

All these times, they glimmer

like how places get smaller in the rear view mirror

til they're just part of the clear heat rising from the pavement.

Even though we don't love each other anymore

you still hold my memories for me

back there where i can always find you.

This happens. The only person who knows what happened in your life at that moment you're trying to remember, is a person you now try to distance yourself from. But it's nice to know that in spite of that usual feeling of get-away, this memory holder was still only a phone call away.

A crutch made of flesh

2010-05-02T14:34:00.001-07:00

i just get so tired

tired sometimes

sometimes it's all just too much and

i just can't hold it.

i am lone Atlas,

fixing to shrug.

i wish for you to

prop me up

make dinner

tidy up the house

see that homework is done

and television is not

i wish for you to

hold me in those arms

so soft, so hard

so i don't fall

give me a crutch

made of flesh

that's all.

A lot of you have been visiting me in my dreams. We've laughed, we've understood. And it makes me need the crutches less. So keep dropping by.

When a dog lives alone

2010-04-30T14:11:00.000-07:00

When i get back from

so far out on the Caribbean Sea

all around the house will

hang an air of mopery

hair will cover the couch

the floors will need to be swept

a round nest about the size of an Akita

will be burrowed into the bed

she'll cast her tubby brown body against me

the happiest of the happy-to-see-me's i'll ever get

i'll bust out her collar, ringing it like a crown over her head

and her brown eyes will say

don't ever leave again.

I wrote this for my nine-year old dog Libre, who, ahead of my next trip to Haiti, is already missing me.

Economic eco-logic

2010-04-15T21:08:00.000-07:00

So early in spring

when the camellias drop their

last mushy pink blooms

it's already too late to

do anything but surrender to

this city stretch of land

no more idle winter hands

groping for the warmest thing in the night.

Maybe it's apt timing. Maybe it's spring and i am ready to do more than curl up on the couch. But whatever is playing into it, my need to tighten up my economic situation is fitting nicely with my desire to be increasingly self-sufficient. I am prioritizing a lot of travel in the months to come, and that has me being a bit more stingy with the after-school treats, the trips to the arcade, and the happy hour cocktails. It also has me honing my strategy for planting the garden i want to feed us all summer.

But all of that is just fine, in so many ways.

Our country, and the entire world by proxy, is suffering an economic downturn that comes at the hands of too much, too fast. Many have been too greedy, and it's come back to bite us all. So what do people do when they're strapped for cash? They find ways to save. And happily, those modes of penny-pinching can turn into a lighter tread on the earth. When i ride my bike to get the kid from school, i save money and burn less fuel. When i choose the turnip greens sprouting in the garden over the o.g. baby spinach at the co-op, i choose zero food miles over hundreds. Again, i save cash, and the resources it takes to feed me involve my own effort. The list goes on. Less eating out. Healthier for me, and cheaper. Keeping the old bikini instead of going for the shiny new one beckoning me at Target. Maybe not healthier for my spirit, but what did i need that new one for anyway, when there are four or five hidden in my dresser? Plus, i suppose the lift i miss out on from the retail therapy is traded for an austere sort of pride in just needing less.

I think i've said something like this every spring that i've had this blog. When the camellias start dropping their blooms and those first signs of spring are no more, i start feeling like the clock is ticking. There is time only to do the work of the mind during the day, and in the evening, to do the work of staying self sufficient, by working in the garden.

Bottom line: Save money by doing more things on your own, and you'll get back at least thrice -- through the power of self-sufficiency, a healthier relationship with your world, and a bigger bulk in your wallet.

The Travel Bug

2010-04-06T17:49:00.000-07:00

'Giiirrll... you best get to writin...'

We all know a place we've hated to leave, but been relieved to be out of. Maybe it was the vacation with the family that lasted a day or two too long, or the beautiful beach that was covered with sand flies; a pretty picture to take home, but tough to live in.

We've endured these love-hate vacations, and then we've gone home.

But the trip i just took to Haiti was not one of those where you can arrive home and hang your new trinkets on the wall, comfortable and happy to be that way. Instead it is one of those that whispers to you, "you're leaving this place, but this place is not leaving you." Out of the blue the voice appears, mocking you when you thought you've gone scot free, say, when you're having a welcome-home beer with friends. It cackles and says "you'll be baaacck..."

It's true, so when the voice comes out, with its assured black tone, i can only nod. The voice, and the place, have shown their digging little ironies before. I might have been relieved in some ways to be leaving the squalor of Limbe behind, but even when i was gone, i knew it wasn't over.

The night before i was to leave Haiti, we were clean and fed, having taken showers with running water in a Cape Haitian hotel, and having gorged on rice and beans and beer from the corner restaurant. The town of Limbe had left its mark on us through our experiences -- cleaning a trash pile in the marketplace, digging in the hookwormed soil, looking down on the heads of children, writhing with bugs and sores, pumping and purifying our water by hand; but it was the last night, in the city, and we thought we were going to make it out relatively unscathed.

But in the night, a hundred or more bugs came up through the mattress or wall or some other godforsaken, pestilent place and bit me all over the arms and face. "You are leaving here, but here is not leaving you..." The voice scared the piss out of me, and made me wonder what it was meant to teach me. After several permutations, i think i am beginning to figure it out.

I carried this pestilence away from Haiti with me -- scrabbling at the crowded bordertown market, Rosedanie and i with a UN police officer in tow, looking for medication to heal the wounds; watching the doubletakes from Dominican tourists we met on the beach; seeing Portland friends pull back in disgust when they spotted the arm and face. I was pissed off before we even landed, expecting those looks of wretched awe. And this is nothing, nothing, i kept thinking, waiting for someone to go too far in their disgust so i could erupt with a diatribe about how good we have it here at home.

For the most part though, i kept it to myself, and i am glad about that now. Even in that defensive state i came back in, with the bug bites so raw, i knew that i didn't know what was going on in Haiti, could never really conceive it, before i set foot across the border. So i could not expect others to get it, just because they had some awful reaction to my bug bites.

What is operative now is not that i have this great need to convince others that it's bad down there. (Although, in another niggling little irony, that is the essence of the documentary project i am working on with Helping Hands Noramise) What i have learned from the experience of taking something home with me -- something other than tourist trinkets -- is something entirely different than the other experiences i've had in other foreign lands.

There, i came, i saw, i bought the trinkets and i went back home, knowing that home was where i belonged. But in this experience, i sensed that something was left there that will not make it back home. I sense it was left there to remind me to stay on the ball while i'm here -- to honor that place by working harder in this one. At the same time i have these marks -- which have now turned to a group of purply scars -- to let me know what's come with me in lieu of the trinkets. I think it's called justice, and i'm still trying to figure out how it's going to look, hung next to my wooden Chinese masks.

There are a few other things at work too. Getting bitten on the face is also a challenge to the vanity -- now reminding me that i don't have so much time for social gathering and preening in the bar bathroom. Such things may matter in this world, but they take time away from doing the work that affects that world.

So in that way too, the bites were a reminder to get to work, to stop gazing at the navel and do works. So far, that has meant forsaking the gazing of anyone else at my navel too, which after several weeks, i meet with a resigned sigh that it must be this way. It's somehow fitting. I just don't have time.

As of today i am on day six of a nine-day cleanse. For six days i have barely eaten anything but nutrition shakes and almond butter on carrots. I have the strongest desire to stop at the local coffee shop and ask my favorite barista to pour espresso down my throat. But the timing of this cleanse, i suppose, is apt. I can't just cave and head for the java joint while there are so many tougher challenges ahead. What does that say for my ability to endure more bites, more trash piles, more sad looks from hungry kids? So those thoughts operate upon my battle with this rigorous cleanse regimen too. It's strange and not strange how all of this is connected, and how one thing justifies another seemingly unrelated thing...

This trip to Limbe certainly was one of those that i've hated to leave, but been relieved to be out of.

But not out for long. I will be back on a plane to Haiti in May. The humility i am learning is showing me that maybe in work i will fail, and none of you will grasp a single thing more than you knew before, after seeing or reading what i bring back. But i cannot sit here and do nothing while the mark of that country is still upon me. Or even when the scars are gone.

So now, instead of the dark, cackling voice mocking me for not knowing that i'd never really leave Haiti behind, there is another deep one, strong in its tone, slightly mocking too, but light like a white sky in April, and it says

'giiirrll... you best get to writin...'

2010-03-31T11:31:00.000-07:00

There are reasons we say Limbe with a note of awe.

When we entered this town those reasons may have had to do with the trash piles and hungry bellies we'd been told we'd encounter here. But there is so much more to it than that.

It is a new day and gloomy clouds spit enough rain to turn the streets into muck. We have boots for our feet, should we want to venture outside the church compound, but today we won't go out too much. That's the awe-inspiring thing about Limbe, and about Ayiti in general, i think. So much can be done within a sphere as tiny as this churchyard.

: Another use for a metal can

Thus far, most of the work of the Noramise team has been in planting gardens and distributing seeds. But today the focus shifts a bit, to pursuits that plant some other seeds of hope. Some of the team begins to assemble a rocket stove in front of the church. The goal is to show people a way to cook food quickly and efficiently, without the use of charcoal. Charcoal, locals tell me, is the reason the hills surrounding Limbe are not covered with a blanket of towering trees. So many have been cut down, they tell me, to fuel the cookstoves that sit outside every home. Since a rocket stove needs only a few small sticks, it could prevent further deforestation, if the idea catches on.

Story continues here

Talk from the toilets

2010-03-25T20:28:00.000-07:00

The feces talk that happens for us in Ayiti would most likely not be sanctioned by the FCC. There's plenty of graphic talk about the size, amount, speed and consistency of the things that come from our bowels; it's kind of a check-in about each other's general health. For one of us, the latrine has been a constant companion today. While some of the team was peeing on the sides of the trail on the way up and down from Massabiel, another team member was up and down the presbytery stairs, to the dank and forbidding toilets behind the church. Next to old latrines that hit you with a reek from 30 feet away are new ones, still whitish and spanking clean, but not yet open.

Story continues here

What i tell you when you're not here

2010-03-24T02:06:00.001-07:00

I went for a bike ride today

and i breathed in you

all the mouth-breathing

grubby hands

chubby toes of you

i cleaned your room

pretending you'd come in to see it

a surprise just for you

about a week too early

i apologize for only having the white cheese you hate

even if i have days and days til you'll beg me to go to the store

when you'll finally erupt with

'not tuna again mama...'

truth is,

i'm sick of tuna too

and bread

and noodles

and popcorn

and all the things you ask to eat

that i secretly eat when you're gone

they're not good for you

they'll rot your gut

and i planted flowers for you

plucked from a neighbor's overgrown patch

i know when they're blooming their tiger lily colors

you'll pull them out by their roots

and bring them to me in a mason jar

flower water spilled down the hall

you'll also bring breakfast in bed

soppy bread and jam

butter on the side

i'll eat it and

i'll delight in all of you

all the mouth-breathing

grubby hands

chubby toes of you...

i miss you.

In the glory

2010-03-22T22:01:00.000-07:00

funny how you know

others think you're strong

so when you're not feeling so

they just don't believe you

they don't hear you

they just ask you,

"mama, why are you sad?"

-----------

It's funny how the clarity and the silence that i begged for in the clamor of the last evening came to me not in the quiet moments between me and my bed, but this afternoon instead, in the speed and the everything that passes at 70 miles an hour. I gain so much with the din of the highway -- telling me again and again that i don't really know what i need necessarily, or even what i am.

In the days after my return from Haiti, i did what i could to re-establish the bond with my daughter. But somehow she knew that the guilt i was feeling over needing to do that was marring my ability to process what i'd been through. So after the first day of bikes in the park and arcades and movie theater popcorn, my insightful little girl asked to go to her grandma's house the next night.

It furthered my guilt for a second to think that the heavy-heavy i was going through had affected her to that level -- that she could not deal with what mama was going through and had to flee.

But that was not it at all, as i see now. She really had the tremendous audacity to see that she was not what i needed. That i needed to shore up my reserves of love and strength and doing-ness for another night and day, and to be with her later on.

So she gave me that night.

What an amazing child this is. This picture of her is what she looks like when she thinks no one is looking, when she's singing to herself and lost in the glory of what she sees. She delights in these little moments daily, and sometimes i capture them.

And what the highway reminded me today, as i left her for her Spring Break week with her father, is that other times she allows me to have these moments myself, knowing i will come back the strong mama who she can believe in again...

Digging in Massabiel

2010-03-22T21:57:00.000-07:00

The construction of the Massabiel school garden is a tri-lingual affair. Kelda and Tobias are getting confident enough with their Kreyol to initiate the first doings on the designated spot -- the clearing of rocks and breaking of earth. I am pitifully aware now of the need to speak Kreyol, and i try in haste to double remember the words i've learned on the trip up the mountain. Mwen gen parle Kreyol... I want to speak Kreyol. My self-admonishment is abated a bit by the coming of a man who lived in the Dominican Republic as a youth, and thus speaks Spanish. He skirts around my asking his name, but our mutual language allows us to share a lot. He tells me how hard it was for a young Haitian man to find work in the Dominican Republic, and how much hate he encountered from his fellow islanders. So he came home to Ayiti be with his people, at the expense of even less work to be had.

: Building the garden path

"Y el gobierno hace nada..." The government does nothing to help the people, he says, a sentiment i will hear echoed at least twice daily from then on.

Story continues here.

Limbe to Massabiel

2010-03-17T23:33:00.000-07:00

On normal weekdays Delano Cadet boards a bus-taxi on the far side of Limbe and rides for about 30 minutes to a trailhead outside the town. Then he walks a narrow path climbing along the Riviere du Limbe for about an hour, to the school in the village of Massabiel. Delano is a teacher there, though today, school is not in session. All the schools in Ayiti have been closed since the earthquake hit in January. Limbe and Massabiel are far from the earthquake zone, but Delano tells me everything in Haiti is run from Port-au-Prince. When Port-au-Prince is in turmoil, the trouble reaches even as far as this little mountain school. So instead of carrying books up the mountain, today he's carrying some of the hand tools the Noramise team has brought. The aim is to build a garden at the school, and to check up on the one the team put in a few days back on Delano's family land...

Story continues here

Home now

2010-03-16T10:59:00.000-07:00

The mountain town of Limbe sits about 22 kilometers from Haiti's capital of the north -- its teeming city by the sea -- Cap- Haitien. Locals call the city Okap, spitting the syllables out with a mix of excitement and disgust. When we hear them say Limbe, it's said more like a question -- as if the speaker is not sure at all why we might be going there. When we're traveling the road back, leaving Limbe behind, we utter its name with a breath, as if we've dodged an ear-splitting bullet...

Today is the first day my computer and i have been in touch with one another. I just haven't been ready. For now the story of going to Haiti and back is going to spill out slow. Today, i touch upon a 22 kilometer journey, from one city to the next. The rest of this tale is on the Bay of Rainbows site.

Disfrutala.

Sugar in my cup

2010-02-28T08:46:00.001-08:00

Sun is streaming in these Portland windows for the first time in a while and i am contemplating whether i should drop a spoonful of sugar in my morning coffee. I have a lot to do today; it will probably help me gulp down more of this bitter black love and get on with my tasks. But i think twice -- more sugar equals more compromised immunity equals sickness when i need to be damn well.

I am leaving for Haiti tomorrow. Tomorrow tomorrow i love ya tomorrow, when i will see what i can really take in terms of tough travels. Sure, i have sipped yak butter tea with monks in filthy hovels in the shadows of the Potala Palace, fled feo motels in the crustier parts of Latin America, and slept on streets when the morning bus was coming early enough to justify it -- but this is gonna be something else. I hope i am ready for it, and on account of that the sugar in my cup seems a bit too decadent.

But i gotta get on with it -- got too much to do today...

Ifs and Wishes

2010-02-22T17:34:00.000-08:00

Helping Hands Noramise in Limbe, Haiti

A week or so ago someone mentioned to me the chance to go to Haiti, and i found myself saying "i wish i could do that. If i could make it happen, i would be so grateful..."

Now that wish is coming true, and i am so grateful.

But that's got me thinking about ifs, and wishes.

I suppose if i were to really wish for something and hope for it to come true, i'd wish for something a lot bigger. Instead of wishing for the chance to go and shoot doc in an earthquake-ravaged country, i'd wish for a world where there were no earthquakes. I'd wish for a world where babies don't lose their mothers; where no one is buried in a post-disaster mass grave.

I'd wish for a world where there are countries like Haiti, with their unique Western-hemisphere blend of African and Caribbean, that don't qualify as the poorest country in the Americas. In my ifs and wishes, there would be no country on that list. We wouldn't even have that list.

I'd wish for a world where pictures are beautiful and used to document beauty, and not to wake the world up to atrocities that exist a few hundred miles away from their shores.

I'd wish for peace. Period.

Those are my ifs and wishes, in a dream sort of wish-way.

I also have more ifs and wishes, if you'd like to help me fulfill them. I don't ask often, but i am asking now.

On March 1, 2010 i will fly to the Dominican Republic and take the bus on to Limbe, Haiti, to document the work of Helping Hands Noramise, a non-profit organization working to develop sustainable industries and agriculture in the north of Haiti. They too have a lot of wishes -- and we could use your help bringing stuff down when we go.

Check out Noramise's wish list here to find out what you can donate to the cause.

Myself and my film crew will humbly be accepting donations for Noramise all this week. We would like to have everything packed and ready by Sunday, February 28, so if you have things to donate, holler at nicolevulcan@hotmail.com.

Here's to ifs

and wishes...

Is helping hurting?

2010-02-18T00:22:00.000-08:00

When Hurricane Katrina struck there was nothing i wanted to do more than bust out of the cold concrete walls of KEVN-TV, drive a truck and a camera down to New Orleans to do what i could. I never did it, on account of the baby still nursing at my breast and the job that seemed so important for my financial and familial future.

Now Haiti is calling and i really have no reason to say no. Except there are stories like these about volunteers being a detriment, when you have no higher disaster or medical skills to contribute. Sure, i have some of those basic medical skills, so i am not starting from zero. But when the opportunity arose for myself and a film crew to get down there, i had to start thinking real.

When the wound is so raw and tender, will i, as a documentarian, be a help, or a hindrance? Do we need more people down there just telling the sad story to the world? And even if i live off Luna Bars for the entire time, am i only doing more to stress the infrastructure?

Such, i think, are the real questions one must ask if you really want to help out. You may have the best intentions, but what will you do when a distressed person is hungry, and wailing at you in French, and all you can offer are some mini-DV tapes, slapped together in a 10-pack? Should you just tape them and steal their veritable soul to sell to the masses? I am disturbed, jostled, yet feeling strongly that i have to see it for myself.

One thing i know is that if this thing goes off and i find myself tagging along on an aid plane in a few days time, i am gonna need the help of all of you. At present, most of you don't feed me with cash, or even encouraging comments (though i could use 'em), but in the coming days i could very well need your help in terms of wisdom, prayers, thoughts, words of warning, and of course, catchphrases in French. I will keep you posted.

Half Stockings

2010-02-14T21:14:00.000-08:00

She spends her afternoons slowly picking away at one knee of her white tights. First it's a smallish tear, then a gaping hole, then pretty soon she's tearing off the entire bottom half.

Then she poses for pictures like this -- a wild-eyed, single-stockinged blonde Pippi in a lacy pirate skirt.

I'd like to introduce you to the rebelangel once again, because i am starting to get to know her too -- in the way i know she's gonna be. This girl is an artist right down to her stockings, (or half-lack thereof) and i just hope i'm helping her blossom the way that she should.

She's always been this way -- this creative pixie throwing just a tad too much pixie dust everywhere she goes. Only since she's started school it's become more pronounced. In some ways, getting her up early every morning and packing her off to this regular routine has done wonders for her. She's blossomed under the regular schedule, the regularity of her circle of friends, and the methodical path of learning things like math and reading. But at times she's also been a holy terror to get out the door in the morning, fussing and throwing temper tantrums if her outfit isn't just right. And then there's me being a holy mother terror right back, because, heaven forbid, she's tried to mix brown and fuschia.

But that's where i have to remember to be conscious of how she's blossoming. She fusses because she feels everything deeply -- perhaps deeper than i can muster. And what she's fussing about is her mark on this planet. When you're a kid you have so little that you can put your own stamp on -- there's no quirky artsy car to be had, no profession that's a source of pride or your own intricate garden to tend to -- so nearly all that's left is your room, and the clothes on your back. And of those remaining, it's only the clothes that allow her to express herself outside the walls of the house.

So i have to remind myself of how important it is to her to feel comfortable in what she's leaving the house in. Yes -- to some veto on my part of course, in that things can't be ill-fitting or inappropriate. But if it's a matter of her trying to mix colors i wouldn't mix, or wearing some rippy stockings, i have to let go. I have to admit that most of that need to let go comes from my own ego. If i think she looks goofy, the kneejerk reaction is to think it reflects upon me and who i am as a person -- not to mention who i am as a parent. And that has to stop.

I remind myself of this poem from Khalil Gibran as i am walking through the halls of my child's school, with other mothers casting questing looks at my child's half-stockinged legs:

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.

So baby,

maybe i will strive to

be like you

and rip up my

stockings too?

Slam style, beat length

2010-01-29T19:43:00.000-08:00

What's that you ask me?

What's with this empty face?

Empty not,
honey dear

empty's nowhere in this place

let me attempt to tell you
what's plain beyond the stare
how i walk and talk and daydream
on things you don't see there

see i

dream incantations
i
walk with gods and more
i
weep meditations
i
devour metaphors

i
stride in step with furies
i
float above the trees
i
look down on creation
i
come back into me

i rise with hopes astounding
bed down in reverie

the face may look empty,
but the mind will never be.

Comeuppance

2010-01-28T14:03:00.000-08:00

I can tell when my father says
"now, Nikki,"
that i'm forever that
jean-jacketed
Aqua-Netted
tight-rolled preteen
knowing nothing whatever of the world.

I could start to get emotional about the tone of one simple pet name, or i could get real and realize that maybe, in this case, i really do know nothing whatever.

The deal is, i'm in the midst of a deal that could see me owning not one or two, but three rental units in the next couple months. I am scared shitless that i am going to screw it up, work the margins the wrong way, forget some important financial obligation that must be factored in, or otherwise fall right back into... where i am right now.

I want this comeuppance so badly -- have for years. At this moment the best way to ensure i'm not going to do any of the above-named things is to consult the wizards and wise-people in my life, and listen when they give their assessment. Even when the prideful preteen with the puffy bangs comes out in the conversations that are supposed to be so adult.

So that's one thing.

The other is, in spite of my desire to be so independent, i am freaked about making this decision on my own, as a single person. In this case, one of the best parts about being single appears to be the rub too: When things go right, pat your owndamnself on the back. When things go wrong, I have no one to blame but myself. So will i loathe myself if i make the wrong choice in this case?

Or is this question here to teach me that love and loathing should not be so conditional -- that we should not love someone or start hating them only based upon the choices they make?

So that's the other thing. I can consult the oracles in my life and ask them what they think, but in the end I am the one writing the checks and taking on the pile of stress, and perhaps stacks of cash too.

Hustle for Haiti

2010-01-26T11:46:00.000-08:00

Her hands are moving so fast they're a blur for this Blackberry phone pic.

If i've asked myself in the past what hustle feels like, this is the answer. This is my friend Chelsea, putting up one of the posters she had commissioned in the past week. But the poster is only the mere tip of the iceberg.

I have to spend a moment giving mad props for the grassroots kick-assery that this woman just pulled off. I spent most of my Sunday helping her set up for "Helping Haiti," a music and auction event at the Mt. Tabor Theater, that Chelsea organized inside the tidy span of a week. Not only did she raise thousands for Haitians by tapping into her local resources, but she got innovative too. The event allowed you to choose between five different organizations to donate to when you walked in the door.

My humble contribution pales in comparison to the hours, the planning, the shoring up of every resource -- media, musical, organizational, financial -- that she put in to put on this event. But whether you have a few hours or a whole week to commit, it's the type of stuff we should all be doing, whenever we get the chance. Props!

We're all desperate to save our kids

2010-01-20T14:30:00.000-08:00

The hours from the first to last kindergarten bell go by in mad fashion. I go tramping all over these six hours of parental freedom as if they were the only thing keeping me from the mad house, and the poor house. And they are, by most accounts. I must work and schlep and scrape -- such is the life of the single parent.

I keep this frenetic pace because feel i have to save my daughter from all the ills that could befall her -- the calamities of poverty and absent fathers, and all the peripheral, sometimes awful people that appear present because of them. I am desperate to save her from all of it. So i take on more than i could possibly accomplish in those six hours, or even double that, hoping overkill will quell the beasts.

This, at the expense, sometimes, of actually being with the little revolutionary.

But i suppose we're all desperate to save our kids from whatever ills befall them. It's just our nature as parents.

A single father i know is watching his son drown in the emotion of losing the step-family he'd come to love. So the father is desperately treading water, shirking his work duties, hoping to keep his kid above the surface.

A single mother i know is drowning in debt, missteps, and lack of support. She's so close to the eye of the black hole that i had to step in and help her in her fight. Her desperation to save her kid has rubbed off on me, apparently.

In the movie Extraordinary Measures, a father goes on a mad chase that sees him creating a company, selling it, spending less time with his kids because of it -- all in the hope that he'll find the life-saving treatment for his two ailing children. And he found it. I just saw the Portland-based film at an advanced screening two nights ago, and it has me thinking a lot about desperation, and what we'll do to save our kids.

Does it mean more than patting yourself on the back for working so hard during the six hours your kid's at kindergarten? Should it actually mean taking time away from said kid during what could be bonding time?

Like the movie pointed out in more extreme terms, sometimes the bigger picture has to win out -- whatever that is. In my case, the desperation to rise above poverty has to come before putting together puzzles with my kid after school. For that single father, it means the opposite -- that money has to play second fiddle to his kid's emotional health. For that other single mother, it means swallowing the pride and accepting help from a person you never would have imagined accepting it from. For the man in the movie, it meant only coming home on the weekends, working the week long to help find a medicine that could help his kids.

We are all desperate to save our kids -- though sometimes we have to make the decision we don't want to make in order to save them.

** Related work: Manifesto -- a piece about legacy
Pretty Pink Bows -- a piece about schlepping

Little Pill

2010-01-13T10:40:00.000-08:00

I'm barely hanging on,
but
one little pill is keeping me on the boat.

It's been one of those days when it's all just too much -- the defiant child making one too many stabs at defiance, the various jobs spreading me thin all over the metro area, scraping together a dinner before the next school event this evening... i operate as if it was required that we attend this social gathering even after our long day; the kiddo's two-year old sister in tow, both of them poking and whining and bubbling into meltdown mode on the ten-minute drive. I have little good to say; the muttering mother uttering nothing motherly.

On these days i am the coffee cake
one dry hour away from
becoming a pile of crumbs.

When we get home there are more outbursts and eruptions and i blame myself for not keeping it all together. As i gulp down a handful of vitamins i wonder if i can survive this. Ha. On the radio this day are Gazans living under siege, Haitians reeling from another disaster, Sudanese maybe never going back home again -- and here i am, whining about bratty kids and too much work. Too much abundance. Ha.

The acceptance that my life is at least comparatively good is the first step toward giving the crumbs some form again. The second is this handful of vitamins. They signal my effort to honor myself.

One little pill, or two or three, swallowed with the intention of taking care of one's self. A puja to yourself is the tighter grip on the hull.

I'm barely hanging on,
but
one little pill is keeping me on the boat.

Mean Girls

2010-01-05T18:04:00.001-08:00

Jesus, it starts already.

Your kid has barely broken in her first pair of kindergarten sneakers and already you're having to coach her about healthy friendships, respect, and the meaning of the word bully. Even if you don't exactly use the word bully.

When it comes to girls, bullies aren't just bullies. They're friends too.

In the case of my kindergartener, the bully is the best friend. She's the best friend who lavishes cheap dolls on my daughter, all wrapped up in holiday leftovers, then professes "i'm not your friend" the same afternoon. She's the one who my daughter loves to bring gifts for too -- and to let her borrow her things. The last time my kid borrowed that kid a pair of boots (why the hell they were in her backpack, i don't know...) it took four days of begging for my daughter to get them back. And when we did get them back they stunk like sockless feet and jumping in puddles.

This is a lot to take, this lesson about respect. It's tough to convince a child that the way someone treats your things is often the way they regard you too. Especially when your voice has that unconvincing twinge to it while you're giving out the lesson -- since you're the one who's allowed your ex to mangle your car on more than one occasion.

What i'm saying is, there's a lot of 'do as i say, not as i do' around here. And it enrages me to see my daughter allowing what i've allowed, on some smaller scale.

So maybe this is how the world really works -- you are expected to teach your children the lessons you didn't learn so well the first time. (Or even the second or fifth.) Believe me, i'm trying to make this one heard.

No end to love

2010-01-02T18:41:00.000-08:00

Some people say it's saintly.

I say it's necessity.

It's only when i sit down and think about it do i know that there's more to the reunion between myself, my daughter, her younger sister, and the sister's mom. I could say that we mothers need each other, on account of a faraway father, and our mutual desire for a break. It's easy to trade off, letting each other get some time away from full-time parent.

But it's really more about love.

I finally asked myself how long was i to keep hating this person, who may have come into the picture before i was fully out of it, and hate her precious daughter, because i was jealous of something that happened long ago?

I came to this conclusion one day when the rage was bubbling up in me about the injustices and negligence doled out to these children by their father. I couldn't stand that these children, who so badly wanted a sibling, did not have a place to be together. And i simply couldn't take the thought that our children would suffer because of lack of love.

So i opted for love.

Within a matter of a few hours, really, i threw out the old disputes and hatreds and old, musty jealousy. Gone. These children deserved more love, not less.

Within a few days, this child who is not mine was playing happily on the floor of my daughter's room. She will probably not remember a time when she wasn't welcome to play there. It was not my choice to welcome her to this planet, but now that she's here, there can be no end to that love.

I buy myself presents

2009-12-15T11:06:00.000-08:00

The box of four stemless wine glasses are a bargain at $6.99. They're an adequate replacement for the ones that got broken by a careless housemate, one by one, until only two of eight remain.

If only I could slip in them into the tiny cart, without the rebelangel spotting them.

The deal is, I buy myself presents to put under the tree on Christmas morning -- as if they came from Santa. The kiddo is convinced i've been a good girl this year, (though she says sadly that Daddy hasn't...) so it would be preposterous to imagine me not getting a present from the jolly old elf. This box of bargain stemless-ware is just right for the ruse -- but getting them into the cart is the tricky part. If i had a partner, they'd be the ones playing Santa for me, and vice versa. That's not the case now; though it's not the part of this little scene that gets me pontificating.

I spend a lot of time working on honesty and openness with my kid, yet here i am going so far as to buy presents for myself to maintain this myth of Santa. Why do we do this?

I've also spent a lot of time trying to deconstruct our holiday traditions -- trying to get past the consumerist angle of it all and honor the true spirit of these cultural celebrations. So how does Santa play into it?

He's a benevolent lover of children who spends all year crafting toys for them. He magically slips into the homes of every girl and boy on Christmas morning, that is, if they've been good while he's been watching. Seems sweet, but why does it feel just a bit wrong?

Last year i wrote about how great it was that Santa is around, because it helps keep my rebelangel in line. But this year, i'm starting to rethink that. Why should i let my daughter believe that someone other than me has to keep her in line? Or that someone other than me gives her gifts for the holiday? And if this season is all about "giving," why does she not have to give anything but cookies and milk in exchange for that pile of presents?

A blogger for the Vancouver Sun has been deconstructing our Santa ruse this week. He talks about how in other forms of magic or myth, children usually know they're pretending. With Santa, at some point they're aware of being duped all these years -- and that can be a tough pill to swallow.

But there's also the "spoiler" element to this whole thing. Who wants to be the parent of the kindergartener who spilled the beans to the rest of her class that Santa is a fake? And who wants to be the first to tell their kid that magic doesn't exist in the way they thought it did?

There's some powerful cultural pressure at work here, that's leading me to finger the wine glasses at TJ Maxx.

Sometimes, the most innocent and whimsical ideas take the most work to ponder. For now, i resolve to allow the ruse to continue. But if and when she asks whether Santa is real, i'm not going to lie.

The kid date

2009-12-14T10:35:00.000-08:00

He has kids. Or maybe he doesn't. Either way, your own time is not exactly your own when you're a single parent. So if you do just possibly, maybe have that 'only-because-winter's-terribly-boring' kind of feeling and get the hankering to go out with someone whom you might be interested in, you could get Grandma to pinch-hit for the night, or you take part in what i like to call the "kid date."

You know, where you invite a friend along to one of the kid outings you're already taking to the ski slope or the ice rink. If you both have kids, then activities like this are probably going to be more necessary -- since getting two sets of sitters could be a daunting task.

These kid-dates can be quite pleasant for the fact that the two of you could-be lovers have plenty of opportunity to break the awkward metaphorical ice, while keeping the kids from falling on the actual ice. Not as much pressure, wondering whether you're going to have an awkward kiss later on (in front of the kids?!) or whether he's going to throw in some meek attempts at chivalry. It's just you, being your regular parent self, with a companion to join you for once. At least that's the way you can think of it, to help yourself feel calmer about dating.

Then again, it can also painful at times, when your kid insists "you guys are boyfriend and girlfriend" halfway through the event.

For the most part, though, it's a good way to deviate from the plain ol' living room date, where you invite the person over after the kids are in bed, for dinner and movies and whatever else. That could be more of an intimate affair than the kid-date, with its natural "out" clause. Meaning, if you end up going on a kid-date and don't actually want to pursue further dates, you can call it simply "hanging out," and pretend it wasn't a kid-date at all. Either way, you got out of the house, and you all had fun.

Removal: The Real Form of Protest

2009-12-01T16:17:00.000-08:00

I have to hand it to Flashpoints and Pacifica Radio for doing a kick-ass job laying out the colossal mess our financial markets are in -- telling us who the key players are, what the WTO has to do with it (pressuring Brazil to de-regulate their banks, like we did, for one...), and what the hell we can do about it.

One of the things the guest on the show pointed out today was that people continue to protest over deregulation and the abuse of power by banks. But while they're demonstrating and holding a protest sign high in the air, a corporate credit card is bumping around in their wallet.

Greed still pays -- and guess who's paying? Us -- when we allow these large banks to leverage the pithy savings in our bank accounts against bad loans and hedged credit. When we protest outside of Bank of America, we perpetuate the myth that these corporations have power over us. Truth is, whoever holds the cash has the power. So the first step in the real war of resistance is not to demonstrate, but to remove our pithy savings from their coffers.

These corporations only have power because we give it to them.

And people are the same. A shaman or a charming soothsayer is only as powerful as the people who follow him -- however blindly.

Lately i and some of my people have been coming to terms with other people's falls from grace. We all know people we've believed were demigods; maybe they're old lovers, or maybe they're old friends.

At times we've believed so deeply in these people's power that we've refused to stand up for ourselves and demand the dignity that everyone deserves. We've put up with so many injustices from these so-called demigods, because certainly they must be smarter, more charming, more deserving of love and respect than ourselves.

When we finally realize that it's all pathetic bravado, the temptation is to tell them how pathetic they are, as publicly as possible.

But that's just like protesting outside the glassy towers of Bank of America. Our attention to these people's injustices simply validates their existence, and their power, when our energies should really be spent moving away as quickly as possible from the source of injustice. When someone mistreats you or turns their back on you or doles out a series of small yet overwhelming gestures of disrespect, don't waste your breath railing at them about how bad they are. Just leave them behind.

And start leaving your savings under the mattress.

Saving Energy

2009-11-22T15:08:00.000-08:00

I apologize to those for whom this is really, really old news. But i just got an energy audit from the Energy Trust of Oregon, and i want to make sure everyone knows about it. It could save you a ton of money in energy costs year-round.

You call up this awesome non-profit and they come out to your house to check how well your heating system works, how much insulation you have, how well your windows are sealed and whether your faucets are leaking, among other things. They replace your showerhead with a lower-flow one and put in new faucet heads on your sinks and replace all your old incandescent bulbs with compact florescent ones. They also leave you with a booklet on tax credits and incentives you can get from the state and the federal government, to improve efficiency in your home. And the whole consultation is free!

I got my landlord to agree to do this, after the outrageous numbers on last year's gas bills. With another four to five months of cold weather ahead, and me paying the bills on my own, i figured i should try to spare myself the aggravation and expense of literally feeling the heat sucked out of the windows that lack sealant and the walls that lack insulation. Hopefully the landlord will make some of the improvements, since in the end they'll get the money back in tax credits.

If you are a homeowner and you live in this state, you've got to do this, to save yourself some cash. At the Green Cities conference earlier this year, Mayor Sam Adams talked with mayors from other parts of the country about how Portland has become a leader in sustainability. He said the issue of sustainability was important, but the way that city leaders could convince their constituents that it was needed -- beyond the more altruistic idea of environmental stewardship -- was because of money. Sealing up your house saves you money. Sealing up a government building or school saves us all money. It also just happens to conserve our natural resources too.

If you don't live in Oregon, you can find some of the same tax credits and incentives for energy efficiency in other states too. They might not come to your house and do the work for you, but the programs are out there to be found.

2009-11-15T20:32:00.000-08:00

Out here in pale sun

kicking maple leaves around

walking it off,

walking it all off.

It's the night that will envelop me;

blinded by the wet black dark

and rage

for what you've done this time.

On these long nights i start thinking

There is so much he doesn't see, this father of this child of mine.

He doesn't see a little girl on a purple bike, splashing through a puddle and slamming on the brakes. She's wobbled a little and is clearly frustrated, though normally this puddle would not be such a big deal. But this time, i call out "are you ok?" and she answers with less than the usual rebelangel pluck.

"I don't have a dad anymore," she sniffs, kicking at the wet pavement.

This is not true, per se. She's been catching snippets of my conversations with friends, which were supposed to be hushed, and behind my bedroom door. But she always knows the score, more or less.

She knows i've resolved not to let her be at her father's house for a while, on account of the string of sketchy people with missing teeth, the girlfriend with the stripper vibe, the phone that's cut off again, the reports of unreliable parenting, and a feeling i get in the pit of my stomach when i think about his spiraling life of late. I don't even want to invite the rage that would come should i ponder what danger he's possibly put her in, while she's been in his care.

Still, i am feeling the usual pangs of sorrow for my daughter's self-esteem, for the statistics about daughters and absent fathers, and for her feeling that my decision means she 'doesn't have a dad anymore.'

I tell her that she will always have a dad who loves her, no matter what. I shore up some kind of reassurance for her, because that is the only thing i can do -- reassure, and pray that it comes true. But i hate that i have to be the one to tell her that her father loves her.

Truth be told, sometimes i wish he weren't around at all. He brings so much sorrow to the people who love him -- his mother whom he ignores until he needs something, his two daughters with whom he oversleeps and overyells, their respective mothers who he's emotionally manipulated one by one, and even at the same time. He continually makes promises and breaks them, yet here i am reassuring her that he loves my daughter, because anything else would be an even bigger blow to her psyche.

At what point is it all right to give it to a kid straight that their parent is fucked up?

Is this just a bitter realization that they must come to on their own, since all other meddling will be seen as such? And does this non-meddling mean we as the other parent are supposed to defend the fucked-up parent's love for their child, when the conversation comes up?

I'm like Seinfeld in this way

2009-11-14T10:45:00.001-08:00

Going along,

listening to the music

convincing yourself

'this is a pretty good tune,'

til one comes on that makes you go

'awwwww...'

and you leap up

to dance and trip-step and

get spun on that song.

So like a melody,

love is this way.

You know it all in the first few notes.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

These days i suppose i'm like the characters in Seinfeld, who i once derided for being so picky. They'd drop their love interests for minor infractions, and i just didn't get it. Now i do, and i do it. Not that there's anything wrong with that...

Is it that i am getting older, and more able to see what i want? Or is it that mixed with the fact that i have extremely high standards for the rebelangel's male influences?

Way back when, when episodes of Seinfeld were part of my purple-Bugaboo-jacket, 1990's consciousness, i suppose i found it hard to believe that someone knew themselves that well, because i suppose i didn't know my own self so well. Rejecting someone for the way they ate just seemed ridiculous.

It's not that i come up with quite such petty reasons to turn people down, but they are more particular than they used to be. Like the man i decided i couldn't date because i didn't like his teeth. Or the Leo man who seemed a bit too into himself -- a cardinal sin for the Leo woman who wanted that attention pointed my way. (I didn't say my requirements were rational...)

So i guess i'm just like Seinfeld in this way. And no, there shouldn't be anything wrong with that...

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It's a song that grabs you

and you want to sing it over and over and over and over and over and

* Related article: Why I'm Not Waiting for Mr. Right *

* Related song: Jolie Holland's Damn Shame *

Four Doors Away

2009-10-25T20:42:00.000-07:00

"And these here, they're in for life..."

I'm inside the medium-security section of Coffee Creek Correctional Facility. I'm here to do a radio project that gives a special troop of Girl Scouts the chance to voice their stories of living life with a mother in prison.

Around me moms and daughters are sitting close together, laughter tinkling around the room as they spread the peanut butter on their sandwiches with plastic knives. The coordinator of this program is explaining to me that the 'N/A' next to some moms' names on this list means this is all their gonna get. There will be no more comparing this time in here with what they might someday do out there. They are here for the rest of their lives.

Only a few names say that -- most will get another chance to raise their own daughters -- but there are those few... and for them i stand in total amazement. What a feat of strength it must be, to see your daughter leave through the locked doors after just a short time.

Four locked doors away is the sweet still air of a sunny Saturday in Oregon. In a couple hours, the girls here today will say a sorrowful goodbye to their mamas, and wait another two weeks to come back. Even if they do come before that--on a regular visit and not one with Girl Scouts--they won't be able to sit on their mom's laps like they are today, or hug them for as long as they want to. The special rules for this Girl Scout troop are just one of the ways these mothers are getting back their basic humanity, even while behind bars.

As a parent, I can't comprehend the idea of not being able to embrace my own daughter. It sets the hairs on my arm on end to think about it. I want to tear up or run out of the room, or call my daughter on the phone just to see how she's doing. I have a profound respect for these women for what they must go through, when the fourth door slams shut.

I can hear the more traditional people in my life whispering, "well they're in there for something, so don't feel too sorry," but I don't think of it like that. Convictions or not, overworked DA's or not , three-strike-rules or not, racial profiling or not, suspended sentences for petty crimes or not, Measure 11 or not -- it's unnatural to look at your baby through a layer of glass, or have restrictions upon how and when you can snuggle them.

In just a few minutes, I'll leave through those four locked doors. I'll be grateful when I get to the other side, watching the way a puff of a cigarette rises above the parking lot, in a place where nothing else moves, the way the October light plays on the dappled back of a horse, ridden by a little girl across the street from the prison, and how everything out here seems to move so slow and so fast... and how freedom feels different, after only mere moments of not having it...

The mothers and daughters from the local Girl Scouts Beyond Bars program will be featured on my radio show, Bread and Roses, on KBOO 90.7 FM in the coming months. Stay tuned for times and dates right here, or at www.kboobreadandroses.blogspot.com and www.nicolevulcan.com.

Switching things around

2009-10-20T21:16:00.000-07:00

It's not that i don't love writing on this forum. That's not it at all. It's just that when you're a scrappy freelance writer, you often have to write the stuff that pays money first, and sometimes late in the night, you can twist your head around writing for fun. I wonder what that is sometimes...

Amidst all of that, I'm also getting more serious about my online profile. That's why I've created www.nicolevulcan.com to establish a web presence that doesn't necessarily present me as the harried mother of a spirited child (right off the bat anyway-- they're gonna figure it out eventually!). I'll also be moving this blog over to Wordpress one of these days, to give the whole thing a classier look.

For now, drop by my new site and leave me comment, telling me what you think. If you do i'll be your bestest friend and love you forever.

Chillin' green

2009-10-14T22:28:00.000-07:00

As you will see from the right-hand side of this blog, it is supposed to be about self-sufficiency, single parenting and social change.

Sometimes i deliver, other times i ramble about the woes of raising a rambunctious kid. (Who, by the way, is doing much better about listening to her teacher these days -- no thanks to my woeful whining on this forum.)

But once in a while, i actually have epiphanies that combine the self-sufficiency, single parenting and social change all in one. Maybe they're not that revolutionary to all of you, but they make me feel better, and they save me a few coins.

So here's one:

When the wind starts blowing and cold air is seeping in, making you not want to set foot outside your door, you have a couple choices to make. You could crank up the heat and resign yourself to paying out the nose for the next six months, or you could stave it off a bit longer by snuggling. Yep, i just told you to snuggle your way out of your cranking up the furnace, and using the fossil fuels that bring the unhappy bill to your door.

I've probably admitted at least once that i sleep with my kid. I try on occasion to get her back in her own bed, but then cold weather comes along and she becomes my own little sustainable heater. Imagine it. Instead of having the heat cranking all night, you are curled up around a 98-degree body, eight hours a night, times 6 months. That's not a little coin--it's a lot.

Just add food and water, and she will warm my bed all night -- no gas bill involved.

Birth and Growth

2009-10-08T22:54:00.001-07:00

It comes around every year. Our house gets doused in black and orange; more garishly than we dare to go for the Christmas green and red.

We just love Halloween -- because it's near the girl's birthday, and because we get to invent characters for ourselves that we may or may not really want to be. I tend to go for the grotesque-ish versions of real life people -- J.D. the androgynous personal trainer, Cindy the sleazily-polyestered 70's skiier, Rodney the Butt Rock Roadie. I get really damn serious on this blog but in real life i am kind of funny. The kiddo, meanwhile, goes for the princess kind of stuff -- tiaras, gowns, and Tinkerbell. I tried to get her to put in the ugly teeth i got in a three-pack this year, but she was having none of it.

Last year I wrote this blog about sustainable Halloween. All of it still applies -- only this year we added a huge pumpkin patch to the garden to harvest our own jack-o-lanterns too. I had grand illusions of selling my orange beauties at the farmer's market, so my dad rented a tiller early in the spring and got the ball rolling. When my copious planting yielded only about 30 pumpkins, some smaller than a softball, I decided to use them as painting projects during the kiddo's birthday, instead of hawking them in the rain at the amateur's table.

By the way, I wrote a story about the girl's birthday last year around this time too -- so i suppose now is a good time to reflect on that one as well. Happy 6th, my love!

Changes

2009-10-07T20:19:00.000-07:00

It's eight o'clock at night and i'm rousing myself from a warm spot under the covers of my daughter's bed. She drifted off to sleep about thirty minutes ago. Me, i pretended to be wide awake for about five, then slid slowly into rest and comfort for the next 25. Counterintuitively, now i'm pouring myself a glass of wine to wake back up.

It's just so quiet here, with the house all to myself...

But this the way i've wanted it -- just me, my kid, and the starry black night to fill in whatever way i choose. I've relied on the presence of other people to fill my time and thoughts for too long, perhaps at the expense of my child, and i'm through doing it. I'll take the lonely pop of a bottle that will be drunk by only me over the sad flash that crosses my daughter's face, when she realizes her home may not be the safety zone she thought it was.

It went like this:

I had to make a choice between an old old friend (and roommate) recently, and the little girl in the other room, who's turning six this week. If you have any conception of the strength of a mother's love, then you know which one i chose. But it was hard -- pushing the friend to the side over the wrong words spoken, and knowing that i'd be facing more poverty and quiet nights because of it. Knowing that i may lose a friend over something that could be twisted into being not that big of a deal.

What i realized though, is that my daughter was watching. She would know that i had allowed someone to treat her with disrespect, and she would remember. What would i want her to remember -- that a roommate had spoken to her the wrong way, and i had passed it over? Or that her mother had wrapped her arms around the sanctuary that is our home and said "no more"?

The word 'sanctuary' kept running through my head, and i knew i would have to make this decision over and over, should i keep choosing to have roommates.

So among the other changes that are upon us due to kindergarten, there's another one -- that our house is our own. No late-night forays to the back patio for a glass of wine and conversation with the old friends and roommates, but no deciding who is more important than who either.

Titles

2009-09-29T21:37:00.000-07:00

I've been really neglecting this blog lately, and here's why:

I'm stepping back to evaluate whether encouraging this revolutionary behavior has been such a good thing.

I know i've said it before, kind of joking-like; that someday i might regret calling this blog what it is, because it could lead to her being a teenage Republican (positioned among the liberal-minded throngs here in Portland) or the leader of some yet-to-be-formed gang. But when your child is independent (and is named thusly), shouldn't you love her for what she is, even if she starts acting the rebel part in the kindergarten, and you're getting called in for after-school conferences on the second week? Or should you encourage another sort of title?

I ask myself if she is merely acting the part that i've cast her as -- the charming, deviant rebel who pays heed to no one but her mama. She can't read yet and she has no clue that there is a blog about her and me out there in cyberspace called 'Raising a Revolutionary." So should i give her a different title, or is it a mere coincidence that i'm reaping what i've sown? It's a conundrum that has me unable to write much that heralds the rebelangel side of her for the time being.

In any case, things are a little more strict around our house these days. If she doesn't obey her teacher, there are no sweets, no tv, and no playing on the playground after school that day. I might still call her a revolutionary when i find the time to write (which isn't much, on account of all the consequences and rewards i'm finding myself paying heed to), but nowadays i'm trying to regard her as a spunky brainiac, when she comes around asking what i think of her.

Hasty

2009-09-16T21:29:00.000-07:00

We musnt' be hasty now, mother

we mustn't be hasty.

We shouldn't start pointing fingers,

thinking it's all over when

your most beautiful creation starts

stepping outside the lines.

After all, look up to the title of this blog and it's called

'raising a revolutionary.'

So why you so surprised when you get one;

when you're the one parent of many who's getting the talking-to

after kindergarten;

when you're the one who's losing steam at the third meltdown of the night

lo, around seven o'clock?

Mustn't be hasty.

Mustn't start thinking that studies like these and parenting groups like these

are laughing raucously at your attempt to do things right.

Must put child to bed earlier.

Must feed healthier food.

More protein.

Allow less television.

More exercise.

Less yelling.

Must wait.

Somedays do come

2009-09-10T23:59:00.000-07:00

I always knew someday

you'd reach out your arm

point a finger at some distant star

and fly there.

I always knew someday

you'd start being a child of the universe

and not just my baby

and that day is today.

Today you start hearing the words of others

as much as you've ever heard mine.

Today you'll look forward to leaving home,

having your own life,

having secrets that only you know.

Today you'll leave my arms, and

teachers will guide you

girls will make friends

boys will make fun

the wide world will beckon;

you'll know it's all yours,

i give it to you, as i know it --

bungled, rotten, and repaired,

askance, askew, and amazing...

So here it is

just like that

just come back to me

and tell me all about it.

A bit of a retraction

2009-09-09T19:11:00.000-07:00

So i admit it. Perhaps there are things that a partner is good for. Perhaps i was a bit hasty in one of my most recent posts.

Like, say, you've been working like death on a project and finally get it done. And then it doesn't work the way it's supposed to. So there's more finagling, more consulting the oracle, more pushing away the kiddo like the harried, overworked parents in the movie Coraline.

This is when a partner might come in handy, to talk you off the ledge.

Maybe that's also the role that roommates have served for me for the past few years, and just now i've flung them all off, so i'm feeling the void. In the evolution of things i've decided it might be better to have one's own place -- including the kiddo of course -- and all the peace that comes with it, as opposed to all the financial security that comes with having more people paying the rent.

Over the past few hours i've been maniacally checking and cross-checking all the reasons why the project in question is defunct. If i had someone who cared about my well-being here in this house, they would say something like "Ok missy, time to drink some wine and think about this whole mess tomorrow." Instead i'm trading the maniacal checking for the mad tapping of these keys.

Wine,

breathe,

i can do this...

Forgiveness

2009-08-25T15:15:00.000-07:00

How long does it take for you to forgive? I suppose if you are a strong proud Leo type, it might take you close to a decade to bury the hatchet.

Not that i am proud of being that way.

But today i am sitting at the computer with a smile on my face and a few tears threatening to pop out of my eyes, because i finally heard from a friend who i haven't spoken to since 1999. She and i had some disagreements about whose man was whose back in the day, and haven't spoken since. This after living together for almost two years, bouncing around Portland together when living in Portland was only a pipe dream, and doing all the things that best friends do. Then one day, i found out something i didn't need to know. And i dropped her.

It seemed so simple at the time. Someone crosses you and you cross back. Or you walk away. But now that i've found her again, it makes me wonder what all that negative effort was for. Did i really need to expunge all trace of her from my life? Did i really need to spend so much time lamenting about how she'd hurt me, so that ten years down the road i could just forget again and try to Google her name to find her?

Granted, there are some things that people do that can't be forgiven. But as the years stretch out, a lot of those things lose their strength, until you're left wondering if losing a friend was worth the effort it took to hate them. This lesson has taught me that life is too short -- i've missed out on the birth of her beautiful daughters, her marriage, her career... all the marking points in life that you want loved ones to share with you. I've forgiven her, and she me, and now we can move on.

Hopefully we have the next 40 years to make up for the last ten.

My Name is Independence

2009-08-16T15:51:00.001-07:00

A trip to the library today got me spinning about a new project.

I was crouched down by the kid-sized stacks in the parenting section, looking for kid books on divorce and split families to explain some questions my daughter has been having. The titles i was finding were "My Mommy's Wedding" and "My Mama is Away," among other titles i've already forgotten that deal with the big 'D' word.

It hit me that most of the books explained to kids either the concept of divorce, or how to deal with the fact that one of the parents was getting remarried. This got me thinking about how often conventional wisdom is telling my daughter that someday this too would be her reality -- that one day mama would get married to someone and she would find ways to deal with it. And it seems that everyone around me is reinforcing that belief.

It's in the little comments from friends: 'o someday it will all be easier, when there are two incomes in your house again..."

It's in the asides from family: 'o someday they'll be yet another wedding..."

It's in the hope in a little girl's voice: 'mama, when you have another baby, i want you to name her such and such...'

It's in the parenting section of the library, that provides no literature about someone who may have a child, yes, but who just might enjoy the fact that there is no wedding ring on her finger. Take time to gasp here, if you must. Or roll your eyes at my demand that another fringe lifestyle be endorsed by the public library.

But i am very bothered by the fact that so many people believe that women -- especially women with children -- need a partner to save them from the terrible fate of going through life alone. I am bothered by the fact that even my own child has little conception that it can be any other way -- and that even though she lives with me and doesn't bear witness to any lonely crying from me, she too believes i must be lonely.

I suppose among other populations, this conception of the independent woman only goes so far too. A childless woman too may spend most of her young life in a powerful job, living high on the hog with all her material needs taken care of from her own hand alone. But once she reaches a certain age, people begin to question what she's doing with her life. Will she get married, have kids, settle down like the rest of the world? Or will she bear the scarlet A-title we call "Old Maid?"

Is this really the way we want our girls growing up -- believing that if they're alone they're less than fulfilled; that they're just half of a person and need outward validation to feel whole?

Let me make this point perfectly clear, though. I am not, as this post might seem, categorically against marriage. My parents have been happily married for 32 years, so i know from their experience that it can be a good way to live. What i am against is the notion that all of us -- all us poor single people -- are somehow not as good without someone by our sides, and we must all scramble out to find a mate.

So there is really just one thing i feel i can do about it. Start writing books about the topic to fill the stacks of the parenting section.

They first one is all but written -- about a girl named Independence who got her name because her fierce mama believed in the concept. She's got a house and a dog and chickens and a life she doesn't always understand, especially when her other friends have dads and stepdads and even second moms. But she learns that love is not something that can be sought for love's sake, and that a person can be happy, even when there is no one around to tell them they're great.

"My name is Independence
my mama gave me that name..."

all i could carry with two hands

2009-08-15T19:33:00.000-07:00

24 bottles, iced down for the party.

24 figs, 12 stalks of basil, 6 pounds of blackberries, three pounds of tomatoes, and two carrots.

One little girl, kindergarten size.

It's good to be here,

holding the latter two

instead of slinging the first

on the journey back home.

The Buffalo Chip 2009: A recap

2009-08-11T11:44:00.000-07:00

The first time i went to the Sturgis Rally i was 15 or 16. My friend Linz and i drove her banged up Subaru up there from Rapid City, parking on a side street so we wouldn't be seen not rolling in on a motorcycle. We wore no hooched-out clothes and carried no cash. To us, black leather was stupid and the old sluts who wore mere clutches of it, barely covering their aging breasts, were stupider. We were Rally rookies -- besides experiencing the constant roar of motorcycles passing through Rapid every summer of our young lives.

And that's more or less the way it remained for me, until this year. Even when i worked in tv news in Rapid City, the closest i got to being at the Rally was coordinating live shots with our on-the-scene reporters. Not quite the same when you see the action from a ten-inch monitor.

So that's probably why i feel the need to catalogue a bit more about working at the Buffalo Chip Campground this past week. I don't relate to the signs at the massive biker mecca that read "Welcome Home Riders," but it's still one hell of an experience, and it has to be shared.

And there's just so damn much to tell.

This year, my time is my own, and the promise of banking a few grand and going home to see my sister, nephew and parents at the same time was too tempting to pass up. Plus... the stories...

So here it goes, day by day, starting with July 31st:

Day 1

Em and i roll into the campground, wearing the least hoochie of our hoochie Rally gear. That is is, if you call ripped-up leggings and a longish, ripped-up blue t-shirt "least hoochie." A mad gale of wind is blowing all through the center bowl of the campground, the dust cloud over the scene highlighting the fact that most of the bikers have yet to roll in. It's Friday, and many of them are still finishing off a week at the plant or the machine shop and packing up their gear. We haven't sold a single drink yet, but my sis is more than ready to spend some cash on a Buffalo Chip sweatshirt to keep warm in the wind. Soon all the bartenders' scant clothing is covered up by warm coats and even a few pairs of gloves. The Hawaiian Tropic/Miss Buffalo Chip bikini contest kicks off in spite of the cold weather. My favorite quote was from the model who said her interests were 'go-go dancing and shopping.' As the slow, cold night progresses, our most notable customers are a pair of short locals in ill-fitting bandanas, drunk as sailors by the time they reach our bar. They're enamored with the ripped leggings and ask more than once, "how much do you cost?" They also ask me to turn around at the end of the bar like i'm cruising a catwalk in Milan. Some of the other workers find a nest of newborn bunnies in a firepit near the bar, and cover it up with a picnic table to protect them from the soon-to-arrive throng of steel-toed biker boots.

Day 2

Sly and the Family Stone rock the main stage, minus the Sly. Em and i are assigned the "upper Steel" bar, where bikers can ride up above the crowd onto a metal deck and burn out their back tires in a haze of smelly black choke. We wear matching black shirts, white skirts, and get our picture taken incessantly. We get offered $100 to take the tops off, to reveal the matching bras underneath. We don't.

Day 3

Em and i work a day shift near the "beach" -- a manmade lagoon with a couple rope swings and a blow-up slide. Security starts regulating the women who decide to take a nude dip in the heat, telling them they can't go topless. Men strut around with big bellies and awful suntan lines, while the women fashion pasties out of duct tape to cover their 'offensive' parts. Margaritas and straight shots of Cuervo sell by the dozen, and a young Wyoming miner posts up at my bar, regaling me with tales of riding his friend's scooter to Sturgis after he fell asleep behind the wheel of his truck and wrecked both his motorcycle and truck in one fell swoop. A couple Vietnam vets in patch-heavy vests poke fun of the jailhouse tattoos on one of the women in pasties. Among other ill-done tats, she and her husband have the words "white" down the back of one arm, and "trash" down the other, with a little devil tail coming off the 'h'. People walk by my bar asking for directions to the pickle lickin' contest and the mechanical penis ride.

Day 4

Country demigod Toby Keith headlines on the main stage. Cowboy boots outnumber biker boots, and the place is packed. The singer scores major points with the crowd with two 'we love our troops' songs and two 'America rules' songs. I get assigned the Top Shelf bar -- a private party with a great view of the stage. A legion of short-haired middle-aged South Dakota women stomp their boots to the music and try to extract their own cans of Coors Light from my beer tub. They tip quite well though.

Day 5

It's been raining off and on all week, but this time it dumps ten-gallon buckets just as Cheech and Chong are set to light up on stage. The stoner crowd is already mellower than most, but the thunderstorm puts a big damper on things. I work an outside beer tub with one of the Hawaiian Tropic models. She becomes my best friend ('o my god, i totally love you!!') when i score two yellow plastic ponchos off the Geico reps who are passing them out -- throwing them from their covered golf cart the way small town beauty queens toss roses to an adoring crowd. Somehow the Tropic model's ass still looks glorious, even while wearing plastic. I am more of the drowned-rat type of girl. I head home early, my cowboy-booted feet about the only thing that stays dry.

Day 6

I already did this one, and it was a doozy. See the highlights here.

Day 7

Em and i sleep well past one o'clock and wake to shower and reapply our now-caked makeup and dash back to the Chip. We work together in a bar fashioned out of an old school bus. A national champion Lakota hoop dancer gets a handful of beer-bellied, middle aged bikers to hoop dance with her, until one by one they drop out of the festivities -- on account of the thin air and the higher elevation than they're used to back in Missouri. A Christian rock band takes the bus bar stage next -- their pack of adoring teenage fans testifying with their hands in the air. No one buys beer or anything else until about one o'clock in the morning, when the main stage closes. We spend about 11 hours standing, and about 45 minutes sweating. Earlier on the main stage, hair band Tesla asks the crowd whether they want to go back to 1986. A few hands clap in affirmation. A man's girlfriend falls in love with us as bartenders and sisters, and advises her man to give us an extra tip. He openly refuses, because after another round of storms we're wearing jackets that cover our skimpy clothes. Truth be told we are beginning to give up on getting decked out each night.

Day 8

We are beginning to realize this year won't be quite as lucrative as most, with the incessant rain soaking the ground and leaving the bikers to hunker down in their campers and tents. Then the big shit hits. Golf-ball size hail slams down on the metal roof of the bar we are working. We close the bar windows and try to stay dry. Somehow Em gets pelted with a huge hail ball, even though we are essentially inside. There's talk of a tornado and i whisper to my sister that we will be the first to take shelter in the walk-in beer cooler if anything serious goes down. We are working with a Hawaiian Tropic girl from California who believes we're going through a war in this storm. She stares at us in awe, with our local-girl cool about the whole thing. When the clouds pass it looks like it's snowed outside, and both my sister's car and our dad's truck have cracked windshields. We are some of the luckier ones though. Other people who took refuge in their motorhomes had to hunker under blankets when their windows started busting out one by one. Balls of hail leave windshields with clean round holes, and people's tents lie on the ground in sad sloshy heaps. We hear that bikers who were out on the road had to hop into friendly people's cars on the Interstate, watching their Harleys take a beating while their heads got spared.

Day 9

LAST DAY. Hoochie outfits are more than over with. We've even stopped taking pictures of our getups, because we're too tired to dress alike and even more tired of smiling for photos. Instead we take unsmiling photos of the pack of us hunkering down in the bar, when yet ANOTHER round of thunderheads boom through our vicinity. Two words: Over It. We beg our boss to let three of the four of us check out from the bar, so the one who is left can try to make some money off the boot-wearing bikers who brave Lake Buffalo Chip to get to our bar.

It's our turn to drink booze aplenty, count our money, and dream of the trip back home.

Sturgis

2009-08-06T03:21:00.000-07:00

There i was, blazing down a dirt road in a cowboy truck, giving the one-finger wave to the ranchers who passed by, watching baby cows storm the ditches where they'd busted loose of their pens. Ahead in the distance was Bear Butte, a Lakota sacred ground; below it a hundred thousand bikers' campers and tents and Harleys sat under a yellow grey haze of heat and hedonism.

How did i get out there, thirty miles yet from civilization, in a ripped up pink tank top and ass-short shorts?

There i was, rum and vodka and all manner of biker-loved boozed dripping down my legs; smiling for pictures while Steven Tyler crooned on the stage nearby. Old men in black leather vests taking my picture and me smiling like i did this all the time. I wasn't taking off my top on command like some of the other chicks, but the ripped-up shirt was almost the same anydamnway...

How did i get here, behind this bar, winking for tips?

I've been working at the Buffalo Chip Campground this week, during the biggest party South Dakota has ever thrown -- the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally. There have been weird things to report all week, but tonight, during the full moon, has to be the weirdest succession of events thus far. And it's only Wednesday.

It started off pretty normal, as far as the Chip goes. We bartenders (including my baby sis, working alongside me all the while) counted out the money for our cash registers and made our way to the bars we'd be working at. Tonight ours was next to the stage where Aerosmith was set to go on around 10:30. Only about four hours to lube up the crowd with Jaeger Bombs, shots of tequila and a boatload of Miller Lites before the band went on stage.

Things were going along quite nicely when lightning started streaking across the sky -- parallel to the ground in mad flashes. The chicks in leather bras and dudes in leather vests couldn't have cared less that their parade was getting rained on. Aerosmith -- fucking Aerosmith, man -- was about to go on stage. So they waited it out in the wet, howling at the full moon when it finally came back out, dancing in the rain and drinking more than anyone really ever should.

The band had rocked about half of their set when all of a sudden Steven Tyler's mouth was moving, but nothing was coming out. Some wires had gotten crossed backstage, and since our bar was directly connected to backstage, both Steven's mic and our bar lights went out at the same time. That wasn't about to stop the old rocker from rocking it, so he headed out onto the wet stage to party with the crowd and dance around. Until he fell off the end of it.

The crowd erupted into cheers, thinking the sixty-something old guy was trying to crowd surf. I wonder who it was who first noticed the blood coming from the back of his head. In a matter of a few minutes, Steven was whisked off on a stretcher, under the cover of someone's camp tent so no one could take pictures, into an ambulance bound for Rapid City. Since it's just a few hours hence, there's no word yet on how he's doing, but the word from the dustbowl is he broke his head open, and busted his collar bone.

So the show was over, and our bar was doused in blackness. We stayed open a bit longer, fishing cold Miller Lites from the trough of icy water one by one and holding them up to the light of the street lamp near the bar to make sure they were the right ones. A series of three unfortunate events -- the thunderstorm, Tyler's fall, and the lights going out were just about all the excitement i could take for the night.

But things just kept getting weirder. While we were counting out our money, the ladies in the business office noticed that one of the Hawaiian Tropic models who double as bartenders alongside us at the Chip had been stealing money in the form of pocketing cash for beers. Or at least that was the word on the street.

Then at the gas station, where my sis and i were stuffing our starved faces with nasty nachos, a woman came in blabbing about how the US Marshals were escorting her home, because the Hells Angels had threatened to kill her when she tried to extract her friend from their clubhouse. Apparently the friend was being kept there against her will -- a 21 year old naive bimbo who thought it might be cool to hang with the Angels during Bike Week was now getting the scare of her life. We rode in the wake of the Marshals all the way to Rapid City -- 35 miles from where they'd started.

Really though, how did i get here?

It's four in the morning in South Dakota and i am tired. And i don't think i can take any more surprises tonight.

Gypsy Math Lesson

2009-07-21T16:35:00.000-07:00

Some of you have heard tell of the gypsy math lesson.

A few of you have raised objections about its name.

Others have raised objections about what you see as me pimping out my kid.

But all i know is the kiddo has been learning one hell of a lesson about math and human nature, and she's more than ready for addition, subtraction and even fractions in the classroom.

It goes like this:

The kiddo and i have been making flower pins for the hair, and she's been selling them at the festivals we've been attending this summer. At the Northwest String Summit the whole tribe of Harmony kids got in on the fun -- first taking apart a bouquet of silk flowers, gluing the blooms onto hair pins, watching them dry and then hawking them on a blanket near the rest of the vendors.

Women old and young can't resist; you see them stroll past the blanket, casting the initial uninterested look the kids' way. Then their gait starts to weave in the direction of the five-year old cherubs, so earnestly trying to get their attention. Most times they don't even know what the kids are selling until they get a good look inside the jewelry box positioned on the back side of the blanket. But by then they're hooked. The girls proudly announce it'll be one for two bucks, or two for three, twirling the fake blooms into the unsuspecting customer's hands. The ladies paw their pockets for loose change and walk off a little more festive-looking than they were before.

This last time, the girls sold out. Then i went back to town for more flowers and they sold out again. When it was all said and done, each of the kids knew how to make change from a five-dollar bill. They each got to buy a sno-cone or two with their own money. They learned lessons about what things cost and what they must do to earn enough to buy what they'd like.

It's a great summer lesson, this gypsy math, and i'm sorry to disappoint the naysayers by saying we'll be doing it again next year.

But when the sun goes away again and we all start hiding away inside for the season, we'll probably switch back to an allowance. Gypsy math is making me broke.

Keepsake Video: Numero Uno

2009-06-30T20:37:00.000-07:00

Some things are best heard from the mouths of babes.

So here you go.

(By the way i think this is a great way to do something unique with all that home video parents shoot of their kids, so if you know anyone who wants something like this, send them my way...)

Other people's kids

2009-06-29T16:32:00.000-07:00

I've had a kid in my care for more than five years now.

Not necessarily all the time, but for the most part i've got it down.

But this week i did something i have not really done since i was much younger than i am now:

Watched other people's kids.

Without my own kiddo to play ringleader and parade the group around the house. Or at least without her mixed in with the other people's kids.

We went for a walk in a quiet, carless Northeast Portland neighborhood, gradeschooler girl skipping a little ahead, preschooler boy bobbing a thin plastic basketball as he walked alongside me. There were no cars, barely any bikes; the pall of clouds was just its long grey self -- nothing moved except us. But i was terrified. Terrified of one of them darting out into the street and colliding with a very quiet and very fast car, terrified a tree would choose that moment to fall. And i would be in charge of someone else's kids when that thing happened.

I don't remember feeling like this back when i would babysit the kids down the street, long before i had one of my own. So is this just the mama in me, or is it that i am no longer a teenager and now have some conception of mortality?

I can let go and not dwell on the fact that my child and i could be taken from one another at any time. But somehow taking on another mother's pain is just too much to bear.

They played on the playground while i darted my head around to keep my eye on both of them. I wondered how the teachers milling around the nearby schoolyard could bear being in charge of 28 young ones at the same time, all of them careening in a thousand different directions, skinning their knees, learning swear words, creeping scarily close to the unlocked gates where any old perv could wander in and do the unspeakable.

The playground trip was short -- begged off by impending rain. Next time i watch someone elses kids, hopefully i will have the rebelangel as wingwoman to somehow put things in perspective. Otherwise, i might end up with no hair.

Last Thursday

2009-06-27T13:39:00.001-07:00

If you get the chance to make it to Portland for just one day, make it a Last Thursday.

Once a month the cops shut down Northeast Alberta Street so all the young talented artists who toil in their ill-lit Hawthorne apartments can come out and peddle their wares on the sidewalk.

Old bike parts get welded together to make sculptures, painters put out their best pieces done on old doors and tabletops, girls duct tape cardboard boxes together and sell kisses while DJ's and glass blowers line their tables up in legions.

And everyone else comes out just to watch it all go down.

Short men in old fedoras and leather vests come to dance with girls in red underwear passed off as pants. Scruffy pirate vagabonds in borrowed hemp gear beg for tallboys of PBR, and girls who shop strictly at the Goodwill assume it's a safe bet to buy them one. People bump funk and do the Stankleg outside the barber shop, kids in wagons clamor for ice cream, and this time, people gathered in the middle of the road to do a collective Moonwalk for Michael, on the night of his death.

Crowds of friends of friends of friends gather at one small bar table, gleaned in the early hours before everyone got sick of art and opted for whiskey instead. Everyone makes eyes at everyone and entire crews stumble to house partys together to bump more Michael til the wee hours.

It's a mad collection of all that Portland has to offer, crammed on the same sidewalk for one night a month.

It's just too much fun to miss, so if you're in Portland for only one day, make it a Last Thursday.

Catchup!

2009-06-22T18:00:00.000-07:00

The days go by so fast when there's biking to do, weeds to pull

and kids to rejoice in,

after they've been gone at grandma's all summer.

So here's a bit of what we've been doing in this warm weather,

besides scrawling on this blog:

First and foremost, the kiddo is now riding without training wheels. At five she's beating her mama by two years -- at age seven i had to be convinced by my five year old sister that training wheels were no longer cool. For this rebelangel, it took me telling her that no, she couldn't go ride bike on the street by herself, but if she learned how to ride with two wheels, i would build her a track around the massive back yard.

So now i'm cutting the path for the track.

She's also on a full-on reading bender, thanks to Summer Reading. Falling asleep with her books curled around her like the usual circle of friendly teddies.

And we built a firepit.

It was cause to buy stuff for S'mores.

Now if the Oregon rain would stop creeping in each evening like a troublesome relative, we'd have reason to roast our marshmallows out there, instead of in the fireplace.

Sunbreak

2009-06-13T12:49:00.000-07:00

In the less-than-sunny Northwest we have this term that i've never heard used anywhere else.

It's called the Sunbreak.

It's the time when the patina of clouds that seems to always be smeared across our sky clears. The sun comes out and we scream "sunbreak!!" and go out to smile goofily at the neighbors.

Maybe it's just for a minute, maybe it's for a few hours. When it's long enough, a cacophony of sound erupts in the neighborhood -- kids come out to dust off their squeaky bikes, moms take off their sweaters and weed the garden, dads take the restless dog for a walk. We all scramble to find the sunglasses that got tossed aside when the last sunbreak ended.

Meteorologists use the term on the news, and we wait not-so-patiently to see the promised sunbreak materialize. Weather people are trained to monitor the trends in the weather and report it back to us.

Journalists, meanwhile, are trained to monitor the trends in life and report them back. So that is what i am doing. I am monitoring the trends in life and i believe a sunbreak is on the way, in economic terms.

In the midst of the most recent goofy smiles about the sunbreaks, my neighbor and i talked about the trends we're seeing. We are both budding entrepreneurs and we're starting to see the potential of our current state of affairs. We have little money, but we do have creativity. And pluck. And the ability to rise above the headlines about record unemployment and see that people still need to live. They still need to eat and be housed and entertained and nothing thus far has happened to our planet (like being hit by a major meteor) to make plants unable to grow and human hands unable to work.

For my neighbor it means getting her hustle on and starting up a company that links businesses to customers. For another friend it means getting her hustle on and using a wider network of connections to get to keep creating her art. For me it means getting my hustle on by wearing this coat of many colors.

There are countless other breaks in the clouds i could mention. Are there good things you're seeing from the state of things? Is it toughening your skin, making you more creative... helping you think outside the box?

I don't know people. All i know is it's sunny here outside the cubicle. I am giggling goofily, and i've finally found that lost pair of sunglasses.

Looking at the stars

2009-06-12T20:25:00.000-07:00

We may be standing in the gutter
it's just that some of us are looking at the stars.

I didn't write that.

It was scrawled on the chalkboard in the bathroom of KBOO today when i went to "host" our weekly news and public affairs program, Bread and Roses.

I use the term "host" loosely because all i really did was play a bunch of old stuff that had aired before, stumbling with gravelly voice through the segues.

I'm a bit weary from travel and the mad dash to carry out all the single adult-type activities i won't be able to do when the kiddo comes back tomorrow night. Meanwhile, old friends and lovers dash in from the pockets of this planet i'd forgotten existed. Ideal work prods me forward through the days. The grass keeps growing and the sunflowers start to get bigger, and i crave sleep increasingly.

How did this happen, this pace? Maybe i really don't believe in myself enough to really believe i'd be doing anything but moping around the bedroom during this time of unemployment.

But apparently, we may be standing in the gutter, it's just that some of us are looking at the stars.

Oregon is boasting a 12 percent unemployment rate, and it's starting to get the most hopeful among us down. My friends who are employed secretly long to be one of the ones out on the uemployment line, and the ones out here among the 12 percent are downtrodden. I don't know how to bring them up, other than leading by example, not giving up, and continuing to look at the stars.

Pedalpalooza 2009: Geeking out on bikes

2009-06-05T15:48:00.000-07:00

There is some serious bike geekery in store for us, here in the city that has 10,000 of them cross the bridges into downtown every day.

When Pedalpalooza kicks off this month, this one will be happening in my hood:

2ND ANNUAL FO-PO BAR CRUISE, 2009 EDITION.
Smokey's Bar, SE Foster Rd and 56th Ave 10:00pm
When the “powers-that-be” harrumphed themselves into a shlump over the inaugural Fopo Bar Crawl, their sneering jeering and careering could’ve been mistaken for jealousy or a what a small lump of lumpenproles might have called ennui. (Wrongly.) Reeling and stealing, a-flippin’ and a floppin’. Yet pride be damned, here we are once again, one year later, prepared to retort with Fopoplectic snorts of our own. So don’t be a schlub, get out of that tub and come be part of the hubbub club... Without you, the 2nd Sometimes-cheezy Oft-times-sleazy Fo-po Bike and Bar's a no-go, joe. Euphonius, iwalkedwithazombie@comcast.net

That's just one of close to 200 events keeping Portland weird and in shape this summer. Check out the rest at this site.

My Coat of Many Colors

2009-06-05T01:24:00.000-07:00

Although we had no money

i was rich as i could be

in my coat of many colors

my mama made for me.

In this great swirl of working on my own i've accomplished a few things. One is playing these Dolly Parton songs again and again and editing this video for the Siren Nation women's music festival. I'm also editing another man's book and establishing a PR campaign for a friend. It's as if the universe has opened up and accepted my grand plan to work from home and go for bike rides in the middle of the day.

And it feels a little strange, this notion of actually getting what you always wanted. There's the fear of some green sea monster about to rise up from the great Pacific and steal it all away. As if i don't really deserve to be happy.

One of my great friends in this town is one of the most righteous women i know. She has a powerful job and a prosperous home and a loving man who dotes on her. So what is wrong with this picture? She feels out of control of her own destiny. Or at least she feels that this is not what she always dreamed she'd have.

So what do i say to her? How do i help her realize her own great happiness, when i myself have only just now begun to realize my own, via a fuck you from my longtime employer?

In this downtrodden economy, the buzz on the street tonight seemed to point toward getting fired. Because drawing the dole is apparently better than serving a master she just doesn't believe in anymore. Not ideal, but it's a start in a new direction.

But it's more than that. It started for me with the fuck you, but what's resulting is the chance to be un-beholden to anyone but me. This has meant wearing a coat of many colors -- but in a mix of hues that delight only myself. A little black and white is the video i just edited. A bit of red is the ink i use to edit that man's book. Some yellow to shoot another group's promo video. Some green and orange, in the pumpkins i'll sell this fall. And pink for the cheeks of my rebelangel, enjoying her summer in the backyard, her mama by her side.

With this palette of colors, i am rich as i could be, though perhaps not in the cold hard cash kind of way. I am rich in freedom.

Now to pass the life preserver out to the next righteous woman, drowning in the cold gray sea...

Hiatus

2009-06-03T22:10:00.000-07:00

Cool air is just beginning to seep into the house. Spent the day mowing the lawn in a miniskirt; the same one i wore two nights before on the streets of sultry Panama City. It's denim and has that crossover appeal.

In my neighborhood basketballs have been popping on the sidewalks since dawn, neighbors popping off at each other until it seems the whole apartment complex is embroiled in this loud drama that happens when 12 families share one big blacktop, and all the while the Real ice cream trucks are braving our shady little street, staving off the creepier variety with the few sad popsicle stickers slapped on the minivan.

Basketballs. Neighborhood brawls. Ice cream.

This is summer in southeast Portland. It's hot and the dog spends the day holed up inside -- the opposite maneuver than the rest of us who are fairly well free of staying inside for any length of time, now that the sun has arrived and isn't going away. We spend much of the day kicked back in lawn chairs, watching the plants grow and the chickens peck. This is summer, almost anywhere in the USA, played out again and again and again from Georgia to Salt Lake to Portland.

I am back from the farthest south i have ever been, and i have to say the little jaunt to Panama City and back did little to stop the tide of feeling like escaping during our long wet winters, only to return on a day very much like today. There is land to be had, and so many dreams to realize before it can be bought. I have spent an awful lot of time on the road of late, and i have to say i haven't been this elated about life in quite some time. Yet the prospect of settling on to a piece of property that can be bought for a song is what is manifesting from all that time putting one foot in front of the other.

I have to thank my friends SR and SM for some of this. This is my original road crew, never really gone from my life since we did our first big trip way back when, but back in a more significant role this past year. How strange how these things work out; me thinking i am around to remind them of who they were all along... but me getting that same thing from them.

Remembering once again that losing your job is perhaps the best thing that could have happened to you, because it reminds you of who you were and what is still important to you.

401k vs. Credit Cards: Which would you keep?

2009-05-19T14:51:00.000-07:00

In my unemployed state i have made what appears to be a controversial decision.

After my last day, i cashed out my retirement account. Then i promptly called the credit card companies i have owed money to for years, gave them the money they wanted, and told them to scram.

I told this to a friend and he exclaimed "how could you do that?" with plenty of disgust. Does he have some secret ownership in Chase Bank?

I don't know, because to me it seemed like kind of a no-brainer. I have been in the vicious cycle of paying minimum payments for so long, there was no way i was going to see my way out of it without seriously sacrificing my lifestyle. Like eating ramen for the next six years and selling the car. So what could i do?

My thought is, i want to buy a house sometime soon (unemployment or not). Those longstanding balances with their 20+ percent interest were not going to do anything but continue to destroy my credit score and cost me much more than the 401k was even worth.

So what's so controversial about this decision? I am debt-free (besides the student loans, of course...) and my credit has been instantly improved, thereby increasing my chance of investing in real estate in the near future. So will i be cursing myself for squandering that few thousand, when i am 65? Doubt it.

The Sweet Road

2009-05-16T00:18:00.000-07:00

It had been so long i think i just started tellin myself i no longer needed it.

As if me and the sweet road were old friends who still loved each other, but just somehow couldn't see eye to eye anymore.

But i was apparently delusional. I know that, because for the past two weeks or so, here's how i've been (literally) rolling:

My friend Lacy showed up one morning, on her way to Idaho for the day. I wasn't doing anything so i grabbed my two cameras and a change of clothes and went along for the ride. We stopped to take pictures of horses and broke into an old cement factory to explore. It was eerie and dusty and the main house near it was filled with rotting mattresses and old needles. I realized i've become a chicken about these sorts of jaunts, because i got jumpy every time a car would cruise past. It was just the adventurer in me, afraid to come out adventuring...

Three days later i packed up and flew out to Salt Lake City. The kiddo was there to meet me, along with her grandparents. This trip stood in stark contrast to breaking into an old Portland Cement factory -- staying in a 4-star hotel, shopping, eating sushi, touring the Mormon temple and hobnobbing with a lot of affluent engineers. But it was the road nonetheless.

I got home around noon with the kiddo and spent a few hours in our backyard in the sun. Then i hosted "The Chicken Show" on KBOO -- two hours talking about chickens and raising funds to keep the station going. When it was over the kiddo's other grandma offered me two tickets to the Grateful Dead in the Gorge. The next day. I just couldn't resist, even though i had barely gotten home and was fairly well beat down already. Within about an hour i'd arranged a companion, and i was off the next morning, through the Columbia Gorge once again, which i'd just traveled through by car the week before, and over by plane the day before. I felt like a weary trucker, sights fuzzily set on the destination, while the miles passed one by one; where all there was to do was enjoy that one beautiful moment with the tires buzzing, the music rocking, and the wind blowing my hair.

The sweet road and i have been enjoying a renewed courtship, and i already see the summer flying by, like all those mile markers i've already passed this spring.

Happy Mothers Day

2009-05-10T21:55:00.000-07:00

Happy Mothers Day everyone!

Special wishes to my mama and baby, who are together today in South Dakota.

And if you haven't read the RebelAngel's family history involving Mothers Day, read it here.

A Week Without Driving: A Recap

2009-05-10T21:37:00.000-07:00

My car and i have a relationship again. But it's one of those where at least one party decides it's time to be together, but spend lots of time apart. Maybe you've heard one of your friends make mention of such a blurry make-up and in the back of your mind you're thinking i give them three months.

Well maybe it's just that i'm considering giving Ona the three-month trial period too.

After a week without driving, i am sure giving up the car can be done.

There's really no way i'm going to give up having a car all together; it's just that now i'm considering having one that doesn't cost me so much in payments each month.

An old Saab like i used to have or a Volvo that can be cherried out for road trips and cruises to the coast. Or a VW. Or a BMW.

Many friends of mine live without large vehicles. They motor around town on bikes or scooters or motorcycles, and they manage somehow. It's trickier with the kiddo in the scooter sidecar, or pedaling behind me, but it can be done.

The last two days of the no-car fast were somewhat of a disappointment, in that i actually found myself driving across town to go to a party. But if i hadn't had the option to drive, i would have sacrificed either my social life by missing it, or my personal time by riding the bus.

So now i'm just considering opting out of the option.

Mak-daddy

2009-05-06T11:32:00.001-07:00

Happy Birthday to Makoa! Our little man is two.

A Week Without Driving: Day 6 Uuuuuuhhhhhhh

2009-05-03T01:56:00.000-07:00

....uuuuhhhuua...

This not-so-revealing pic was supposed to show why i had to break my resolve.

I'm sorry. But it just so happens that i was carefree enough to think i could have one too many whiskeys (the kiddo is gone, after all) and then ride bike to the Max station, waiting not-so-patiently at the stop.

It just so happens that i might have thought the Max wasn't coming, so set off down the cobblestone Old Town street to find the Max heading my way two blocks down. So i head off in a you-ey, following the Max's path, not especially noticing that a gaping section of the pavement is neatly cut away. Crash bang boom. Thus, the road rash on the arm, (which you can't really see in this picture) the sore-ass hip, and the dislodged chain that caused me to miss the last Max and ride the 10 glorious miles home in the sticky rain. Complete with sticky rain pounding on my looks-like-road-rash-but's-really-poison-oak face.

So all that's why i broke fast and drove to my friend Mik's birthday party this evening. After a rough 23 miles the night before, road rash on my arm and leg, and forest rash on my face, (which you can't especially see in this picture) i'll be back on the wagon tomorrow.

A Week Without Driving: Day 5

2009-05-01T11:01:00.001-07:00

There once was a girl named Ona, blue as the sea, named for a beach on the mid-Oregon coast, so loved, so secret to the rest of the world...

How many of you have given your car a name?

Ona has been with me for nearly three years now, trekking through nasty snowstorms, holding steady in the Oregon rain. She's been a bit sad lately, having to stay home all the time. I gave her a name because she's a big part of my life. So why haven't i done the same for my other trusty steeds?

So that is what i am doing. I figure if i anthropomorphize (sp??) my cycles, i might start imagining they're sad too, when i leave them at home too long.

Everyone, meet:

Astrid, the steady, Scandinavian type. Solidly built, a bit heavy, but a hell of a grocery-getter. (O, and behind her you'll see sad Ona, wishing to get out of the driveway)
When Astrid has this attached, she becomes Mamacita. The kiddie bike seat just got replaced by this tandem attachment, so we will see soon how Mamacita really rolls.

Pippi, the curly-handlebarred one. She's fast, smooth, and a bit goofy-looking, with her mishmash of parts. Best for independent rides, when it's only me on the road and everything is going by so quickly...

The bike in the foreground has yet to be named by her owner, but for now, we'll call her Baby Spice.

There are two other bikes in the garage, but for now, i've chosen only to name the ones that actually have a prayer of being ridden. Someday though, that old cruiser will make a fabulous comeback...

A Week Without Driving: Days 3 & 4. Slippery Spokes

2009-04-30T16:32:00.000-07:00

I might have told you that i've come down with a case of poison oak. On the face. It's now creeping a cruel course down my neck.

And it's posing an interesting dilemma as i carry out my week without driving.

Should i wear the bike helmet, or not?

On normal occasions i don't mind taking the dork-route and wearing it religiously. This head has to provide for the rebelangel, after all. But seeing as how i've got a terrible allergy to anything even posing as poison oak, i risk the horror of recontamination if i wear it now.

So for now, i'm not wearing it. The Portland hipsters who don't ride bikes will consider me cooler, without the hat-head and the corny white-stickered headgear. And the hipsters who do ride bikes will scoff, sneering 'amateur' as i pass them by.

Revolutionary Giveaway: Tea for Singles

2009-04-29T23:12:00.000-07:00

I just can't help it.

Single Edition gave me some free samples of Revolution tea, and i have to share with all of you. The tea and this blog share a name, after all. Or at least they share some similar concept.

Write me and tell me why you need this small slice of relaxation, and the Revolution teas are yours.

Lovely Photos

2009-04-29T13:49:00.000-07:00

Many thanks to Toni Greaves for taking these beautiful photos of me and Indie! Some of them might appear in a film about the food industry in the U.S., so stay tuned. But for now, they're gonna be all over my blog.

As if this blog wasn't enough...

2009-04-29T13:16:00.001-07:00

I am now blogging about dual-immersion schooling for the Oregonian's site. What this gig lacks in compensation, i hope it will make up for in credibility. I aim to be something of a local parent resource on dual-language immersion programs in Portland, and i figure having a forum on the site for the largest newspaper in Oregon couldn't hurt.

If you grew up in a home where more than one language was spoken, i imagine you know the incredible advantages it has given you in your lifetime. Even if your other language was Swahili or some other language that is not necessarily spoken on the mean streets of Chicago or P-town.

If you didn't grow up like this, then you too likely know the the incredible advantage that your bilingual friends possess. Americans are way behind the 8-ball on this one, and we have to change that, one little revolutionary at a time.

So add this to your reading list, if you are so inclined:

Oregonlive's Spanish Immersion blog

Revolucion!

A Week Without Driving: Day Two

2009-04-28T20:02:00.000-07:00

So maybe i've been just a little bit spoiled, with this having a car thing and all.

Without one, i am much less likely to leave the house for any old reason. I see my roomie Sascha go through this all the time -- the needing to get somewhere, and the deep heavy sighs at knowing it's not as easy as just hopping in the ride and turning the key. I've been home all day -- but that could also be due to the drunken biking i did last night and the poison oak that's popped up all over my face. It's been a haggard day, and swollen eyes are not the cutest.

So this helmet and bike bag i've been using have been sitting on the table all day, since being plopped there last night.

A week without driving

2009-04-27T11:47:00.000-07:00

So here is what is happening:

The kid is gone.

I have no real gainful employment, save scribbling on this forum.

The fridge is full and there is plenty of... o wait. The chicken feed and chicken wire i need might cut into this plan. We shall see.

But i am resolved to leave my car in the driveway for the next week. Plenty of people go without cars all the time and bike or take the bus, so why can't i? In this picture you can see i have no shortage of trusty steeds to rely on -- thus, no excuse.

So for the next week, stay tuned for my updates on Not Driving. I already bike quite often, but this is a new level. If i'm headed downtown, i will have to start learning the real ins and outs of the number 19 and 72 buses. Or hope for a ride from friends. Does that count?

Ok, so maybe i'll go get that 20-pound bag of chicken feed, and then start after that...

Boyfriends: how young is too young?

2009-04-26T21:09:00.000-07:00

I walked into the kiddo's preschool the other day and three of the girls (including mine) were teaming up on the new boy named Elijah. They were all taking turns kissing him while he ping-ponged between them, looking like he was hoping to bounce out of their giggly circle.

The first crush has come earlier than i had hoped, but should i be all that surprised?

Then today, it just so happens that my sister reminded me about my own sordid past with boys. She told me my five-year old daughter had passed on the story of kissing Elijah by putting her hands on her own face, rolling her eyes, and breathlessly spouting "I can't believe I'm telling you this," like she's already some tween who swoons at the thought of her crush.

"Like mother like daughter," my sister said, while her husband yelled from the background, "Quit kissing boys in front of your kid!" But i assure you, this single mama is most discrete.

What's even more scary is that it might really just be in her genes to do that stuff, with little prompting in my present life:

Danny White was my kindergarten crush. He had sandy-blond hair and ripped jeans and shared his name with a Dallas Cowboy. I followed him around the kindergarten, even though he made a "yuck" face every time i got too close.

Then there was Brian Hagler, my spiky-haired sixth grade boyfriend who hauled his fourth-grade brother out for a double date with my third-grade sister. (Uhhh, don't know how our parents sanctioned this...) After a movie Brian and i escaped to the apartment stairwell, where fourth-grade brother and third-grade sister caught us in the throes of our first kiss. My sister will never let me forget it.

Then there was Andre, who stole a cubic zirconium ring from his mom to give to me. When i eventually broke things off with him, he threw a kickball into my face and there had to be a parental sit-down at school.

My sis and i were laughing our heads off today about all this business, but you can see where patterns begin at a young age, that could be repeated into adulthood. So should i be doing more to ensure she doesn't get too boy crazy?

Suggestions, please. If these first mental encounters with boys are any indication, i am not much of the ideal study.

The Rebel crosses the line: is she a racist?

2009-04-26T15:24:00.000-07:00

This story is painful to tell. I'm almost embarassed that it actually went down.

But i am going to share it with you all, in hopes of finding some way to deal with it. I've told you before that the name of this blog is "Raising a Revolutionary" because i seem to have produced the most rebellious little angel the world could know.

But most of the time, i think all of her rebellion is really just some big attention-getting scheme.

We were in the car at the airport yesterday, just her and me. She was about to fly off for three weeks with her grandparents, and we were spending a few moments together alone. A lady was loading a baby with cute pink fingernails, coffee-colored skin, and a tuft of sweet baby fluff into a car next to where we parked. I said something like, "look at that cute little baby over there," to my rebelangel. She sighed, and with a mischievious look, responded "I don't like brown people."

O. My. God.

A few weeks ago we talked about Dr. King and how he helped make sure all kids could go to school together.

A few weeks before that she'd been at the birthday party of one of her favorite friends, who is a lovely shade of caffe-con-leche.

And one of her favorite things to do is enjoy a clandestine bowl of ice cream with one of my favorite friends' husbands -- who is a shade of tawny brown.

During that talk about Dr. King i called them "brown people" because i don't like the term "black" to describe someone who really is not "black" at all. So here she was, parrotting my term and twisting it around, knowing full well it would piss me off.

So should i let it? Or should i just know that it was something she said to get a rise out of me, and i should just let it go?

In my dismay, i told her harshly that that is not the way we talk about people, just because they are different. I tried to explain that how would she feel if someone didn't like her, just because she has yellow hair and blue eyes. And i reminded her of all her brown friends, who would be sad if they heard her say such things. (This reminds me of my radio show with Damali Ayo, an activist who speaks out against the concept of having the "token black friend." Perhaps pointing out who our dark-skinned friends are is in this category, but it's also teaching a humanizing lesson in this case...)

She got a little choked up when i mentioned her favorite friend and her favorite ice cream conspirator. So i hope the admonishment hit home.

Like i said, i think she acts the rebel part just to get a rise out of me. This time, it really worked. But i hope she walked away knowing that somethings are just not ok to be a rebel about. I can handle the fact that she's a lifelong vegetarian who is curious about meat. I can handle that she likes Hannah Montana shirts over the organic cotton one i bought her. But this is too much, and i hope she gets that.

Repost:

2009-04-25T10:56:00.000-07:00

We hate our enemies to provide ourselves with excuses for possible failure.

I posted this some time ago, and it just seems to be relevant all the time.

A Good Kind of Storm

2009-04-20T23:19:00.001-07:00

It's nice outside and life is like one big mad storm.

But a good storm -- like one where you and your friends stream outside to dance in the rain, spilling beer and flinging off the flip flops.

One where you forget that two hours have gone by and suddenly you notice your fingers have gone all pruny. That kind of mad storm.

I've been off the job for about a week and a half and it also feels like five minutes. Life moves so quickly when you are not watching the clock and missing out on all the sunshine behind a desk. That is not to say life is all grand and i have all the money i could ever want. The car still needs new brakes and the credit card companies keep calling, but i could almost say i almost have all the freedom i ever wanted.

My parents have been in town this week and that's meant lots of shopping and eating and of course, a nightly nightcap to keep us all sane. But this time my dad and i have also been attending the Green Cities Conference put on by the National League of Cities, and it's been pretty good fun.

People from all over the nation are here to tour Portland and laud its many green benefits. And there is almost nothing i like more than lauding Portland. My dad is here with a handful of members from the Rapid City city council, to figure out ways to make (one of) my hometown(s) more sustainable. It's good to see the word is getting out to even the nether regions, and that Portland is something of a test case.

Add all that to my newfound freedom and ability to get out in the world a bit, and i've been having a grand week and a half.

Propers

2009-04-15T23:58:00.001-07:00

Another nice thing has happened. Check out my single mama spotlight on singleedition.com.

A little about me

2009-04-14T21:35:00.001-07:00

I got this idea after reading Canadian Bald Guy's post on his blog about single parenting. (Shout out, since this thing is all about networking!!)

If you're just tuning in to my site because of Modern Single Momma, thanks for checking it out! If you stumbled upon it another way, be sure to check out her blog for a Who's Who of single parents on the web.

I want to use this post to allow you to get to know me. This site is about self-sufficiency, single parenting and social change.

I write a lot about self-sufficiency, because it's getting more and more crucial for all of us. If you haven't already starting doing things like growing food and changing your own oil to save a little cash (and to help the environment too, in the case of the garden), then i believe you will be soon. The state of the economy and the environment are making it so.

If you're interested in this topic, check out these posts:

Victory Garden

Self-Sufficiency

Greening Halloween

This is also a blog about my life with my rebel of a daughter, and how i'm learning to be a true revolutionary by raising one!

Stories about her rebel soul can be found here:

Rebellion Among Rebels

My Kid is Pimping Me Out!

Co-Sleeping

The Hannah Question

And finally, this blog is about social change.

I just lost my job as a television producer and writer, thanks in part to the economic downturn. (By the way, i'm now out on the freelance market, and loving it! ) But workplaces began deteriorating long before this crisis gave companies an excuse to abuse the worker. Check out these posts if you want more:

Changing Your Workplace

Be Happy You Have a Job

Using Our Gifts

Thanks for visiting, and happy reading! Revolution time!

Ups and downs

2009-04-14T12:15:00.000-07:00

The good news:

I'll be featured on this site this week, in a who's who of single parents.

The bad news:

Freelancing is hard. Doors are slammed shut right after you get the chance to sidle inside. Or sometimes they are not even opened.

But the house is somewhat clean, a load of black dirt is arriving on a little white truck this afternoon, and life goes on.

I'll Rise

2009-04-13T18:52:00.000-07:00

There is so little i could gurgle out the wordhole to explain the happenings of today. So i will let the righteous words of Maya Angelou (via Ben Harper) do it for me:

You may write me down in history
With your bitter twisted lies
You may trod me down in the very dirt
And still like the dust
Ill rise

Does my happiness upset you
Why are you best with gloom

Cause I laugh like Ive got an oil well
Pumpin in my living room
So you may shoot me with your words
You may cut me with your eyes
And Ill rise
Ill rise
Ill rise

Out of the shacks of historys shame
Up from a past rooted in pain

Ill rise
Ill rise
Ill rise

Now did you want to see me broken
Bowed head and lowered eyes
Shoulders fallen down like tear drops
Weakened by my soulful cries
Does my confidence upset you
Dont you take it awful hard
Cause I walk like Ive got a diamond mine
Breakin up in my front yard
So you may shoot me with your words
You may cut me with your eyes
And Ill rise
Ill rise
Ill rise

Out of the shacks of historys shame
Up from a past rooted in pain

Ill rise
Ill rise
Ill rise

So you may write me down in history
With your bitter twisted lies
You may trod me down in the very dirt
And still like the dust Ill rise
Does my happiness upset you
Why are you best with gloom
Cause I laugh like Ive got a goldmine
Diggin up in my living room
So you may shoot me with your words
You may cut me with your eyes
And Ill rise
Ill rise
Ill rise

Out of the shacks of historys shame
Up from a past rooted in pain

Ill rise

Ill rise

Ill rise

Amy Goodman in Portland

2009-04-12T19:49:00.000-07:00

Life is sweet when you can meet one of your she-roes.

I "met" Amy Goodman yesterday when she gave a talk at the Bagdad Theater in Portland. I saw her last year too, but that time the RebelAngel acted like such a handful (with us in the front row) I had to escape to the balcony to dole out some discipline. Then i went home and drank wine straight from the bottle.

This time, i left the girl at grandma's and volunteered at the KBOO booth. I snapped this picture while i was supposed to be womanning the hallway, where Amy's line of followers were waiting for her to sign their books. I also slipped her one my snazzy new freelancer business cards, for whatever it is worth. She was in and out of Portland within three hours, so i doubt she even had time to process my offer to freelance anytime, anywhere for Democracy Now!

But it's still a good day, when you get to meet one of your she-roes.

Easter

2009-04-12T18:19:00.000-07:00

Holiday times are always a little confusing, if you're a person rooted in individualism.

Parents know we are not raising our children in a bubble. Traditions are easily imparted on the very young through a trip to the grocery store or a visit to a public school. How is a kid not going to catch on to the fact that millions of kids are getting candy and other treats, on a holiday known as Easter?

I've written on other holidays about how we manage traditions vs. consumerism in our house. Religioustolerance.org has been a great resource for me to explore the roots of traditions and find ways to explain them to the little one. If you haven't seen the movie Zeitgeist yet, definitely check it out. It also gives you an idea of the universalism in all religions, and how if you're hatin on one, you're probably hating on all of them.
This from Religious Tolerance:

"Many religious historians believe that the death and resurrection legends were first associated with Attis, many centuries before the birth of Jesus. They were simply grafted onto stories of Jesus' life in order to make Christian theology more acceptable to Pagans. Others suggest that many of the events in Jesus' life that were recorded in the gospels were lifted from the life of Krishna, the second person of the Hindu Trinity."

In our house, Easter is a welcome holiday, because it gives us a few different things to do with our eggs. You need to get creative with eggs when you have chickens. You're always looking for something else to do with them. The brown eggs our lovelies give us turned out with these deep colors when we dyed them -- so lovely for spring. Later, after we egg hunted and ate chocolate, we watched a movie together and the RebelAngel took pictures of the dog.

And whether you love or hate holidays, or just hate their implications, sometimes it's just a good excuse to spend some quality time.

Solar City

2009-04-10T18:36:00.000-07:00

This story might just make you get up and do the hula, like my nephew here.

It's about a place touted as being the United States' first solar-powered city.

Beautiful.

A breath of fresh air...

2009-04-10T16:52:00.000-07:00

... time to exhale

2009-04-10T14:52:00.001-07:00

'Someday baby

when i am a man

and others have taught me

the best that they can

i'll buy me a suit

and cut off my hair

goin to work in tall buildings'

Some days you're down.

You're standing outside Little Caesar's looking at your kid and wondering if you'll be able to pay for that five-dollar pizza tomorrow, since soon you'll be out of work.

Other days you're up.

You've accepted that pizzas will no longer fly from the sky from your toiling in the suburbs, and moved on. And it just so happens, the day after that last gasp is one big breath of fresh air.

That's the way it's been today. O, i knew i wouldn't be crying and sipping all day from a big bottle of Vendange, but i didn't know today would actually be progressive. But now that i've lived through much of this day, i know now more than ever that this is a move i was meant to make. The song above was shown to me several months ago, in a mix CD that Sunshine made. The lyrics, and so many other small details of life have been encouraging me to do what i eventually did, but had to be forced to do. I suppose i just refused to listen to the cues. But now that i'm here, life is pushing me along.

The things that have come about, one day after ending employment:

- A request from Single Edition to do an interview about my life as a single parent
- A shout out from the wonderful women at iHeart Single Parents, to be one of their "Single Parents to Watch" in an upcoming article
- An offer to do freelance script writing for a four-month project

- A free tax preparation from Abbot Tax Service, because i am unemployed.

So no, i won't say 'goodbye to the sunshine

goodbye to the dew

goodbye to the flowers

and goodbye to you

goin to work in tall buildings.. '

Workplaces that suck

2009-04-09T15:26:00.000-07:00

You're contemplating your career. Along comes a job that seems glamorous, fun, and fairly well matches your skill set. But to succeed at the job, you must:

- Work nine to ten hour days, with lunch at your desk
- Work holidays, even Christmas and Thanksgiving
- Work weekends
- Know that four months out of the year you can't take time off
- Deal with constant deadlines, and produce a product EVERY DAY that makes you feel like you've run a marathon EVERY DAY
- Work any time something bad happens that allows everyone else to stay home (like the Arctic Blast ).
- Handle delicate life-and-death issues with sensitivity, as well as sensationalism

Sooo...

would you take the job? I am writing this from the desk i have inhabited for the past three years. (Ok, so i've moved around to different desks, but you get the picture) I am compiling this list because (if you haven't figured out from my other posts), i am more than ready to break out of television news. For a person who works behind the scenes, it is a thankless job, and then just when you've started to hit your stride, you might get let go.

I interviewed Ellen Bravo, author of "Taking on the Big Boys: Why Feminism is Good for Families, Business, and the Nation" a couple weeks ago for a show i did for Bread and Roses on KBOO.

She told me that when you're looking for a new job, you might not have the leverage to actually try to change the list of faults that i've named above. And you might not even find a good workplace in your skill set, to avoid the pitfalls named here.

But what you can do, when you feel your workplace sucks, is to find ways to make it better. Bravo encourages people to band together, whether it's as part of a union, or just a small collection of souls who want to change things in a workplace. She says finding just one other like-minded person can mean the difference between despair and total empowerment.

I am out of here in just a couple hours. It could not come sooner. I don't know, if i could have stayed, if i would have had the guts to work for change in my workplace.

But in the typical motherly fashion, i guess i will say, to those whose workplaces suck, to do as i say, not as i do, and get out there and find your like-minded co-workers who will work for change with you.

It's your life. You might as well make it as happy as you can.

Agonizing

2009-04-07T23:02:00.000-07:00

Two.

More.

Days.

It's that slow.

Spent the last two days hoeing and weeding and churning the compost, during the most beautiful three days of the year. The RebelAngel and i spread seeds in the trenches of a few of our most fertile and ready beds, before the chickens came and busted it all to hell an hour later. It's obviously time to build some barricades for our three squawking darlings. It was so idyllic but in the back of my mind there was always that thing...

That going back to work thing. Only two work days left. Eighteen hours within those same walls. With spring coming and the self-sufficient feeling that comes with it, i am ready to bust out. So many people told me that when things like this happen, much better things come out of it. I didn't know how to respond let alone believe it when i heard it, but now i think it know what they were talking about. I feel that better things are on the horizon, where the RebelAngel is the benefactor of a happier mama, who has more time to get totally filthy, while we blow bubbles and dig in the dirt. And build fences for chickens.

The Last Gasps

2009-04-05T15:42:00.001-07:00

I'm pretty good at moving.

I've been doing it my whole life. When i was three we packed up and left Minnesota, never to return again. After i'd lived in five states and one foreign country i came back to go to college there, but i am getting ahead of myself.

The point is, i've been moving around since before i could remember, so packing a box or two is really no big deal.

Except when you're packing for a trip you didn't really sign on to take.

Except when you know it means someone is taking away your livelihood.

At work today i packed a red copy paper box full of the old notebooks, scribblings, story ideas and pictures i've gathered over the past three years here at channel 12. I will work the last two days of my tenure here without that full desk drawer of crap. Then it will probably sit in my bedroom collecting dust for a while, before i around to filing it away.

It's a monumental step, more than a real ball-buster of a task, this packing up the desk. It signifies my freedom from the corporate world while at the same time makes me feel like i am at the edge of a cliff, about to pitch over.

Tonight is the last television news program i am going to produce, at least for a while. Afterward my weekend peeps are throwing me a barbeque -- the perfect sendoff since it is so freaking beautiful outside.

Later i will tip a glass on my fresh cut lawn, to the next step, and to moving that box of office crap into my home office...

Twitter Makes You More Productive

2009-04-04T09:28:00.000-07:00

I knew there was some reason i found myself geeking out til the wee hours, when the last bits of a long story needed to be finished so i could go to bed. I was working on my productivity.

The next time your boss starts leaning over your shoulder while you're tweeting your followers about what you're having for lunch, just tell them it's making you a better worker.

New Love

2009-03-30T21:29:00.000-07:00

I slip into bed and he comes with me.

He's smooth, black and has one hell of a good reputation. I'm sure to be up til the wee hours, examining all of his best features.

In fact, i can tell this is the start of one long and intimate relationship.

I am falling in love.

Fast.

But sorry ya'll, he's not the type to put a ring on my finger or fulfill the little revolutionary's wish to have a stepfather. That's cuz he's a phone.

He's a Blackberry Pearl Flip, fresh from the phone store. If i thought i was getting addicted to technology before, with the Facebooking and Twittering and the videophoning across the ocean, i was merely trifling. This astonishingly reasonable purchase (how does a free phone sound?) is the next big thing. Imagine it! Getting tweets and emails and surfing the web from your car! Playing music! Taking photos! Ok, i know i may be one of the last to get the memo on superphones, since i've had a free work phone for the past three years, but i have to say i am loving it now.

So later this spring i will be the ultimate contradiction, with my feet dirty, down in the garden, while my fingers are tweeting about it above.

School Time or Dad Time?

2009-03-29T11:44:00.000-07:00

The kiddo's laid back on the couch, arms folded over her chest. She looks like she may shed a tear.

I've just gotten done telling her that she missed Pajama Day at her preschool, and she's pissed. Since her pops lives near Eugene, she misses a lot of school to go down and spend time with him. She's five months away from kindergarten, when missing school is not really an option, so for now we figure it's best to let her spend some extra dad-time out in the country. She's always eager to go back to Horton to spend some time with her three kitties and the mud and the man-house madness. Except when it means missing out on special days at school.

I explain the situation -- that next year she won't be able to spend as much time with her dad, since she has to go to school in one city or the other, and it's going to be immersion school in Portland. This triggers another round of crossed arms and teary eyes. So she's pissed about missing school on one hand, and on the other hand she's pissed about missing her kitties. It's a heartbreaking world where she can't have both -- even though she should be able to. These dramas may seem small when compared to all the trouble the world is in. But to her they are the world. She must learn about compromise at such a young age, and also disappointment and longing. She is a bit of a Drama Princess, with her tears and huffing and crossed arms over missing Pajama Day, but still, i feel for the things she has to go through.

Sometimes you just can't win

2009-03-27T15:04:00.001-07:00

You can blame the economic crisis for a lot of our woes and worries these days, but sometimes, the things that wake you in a terror in the middle of the night are due to just plain old bad luck.

Take my friend Sammy Prettyflowers, for example.

Mind you now, this is supposed to be a funny story.

He's a fisherman who spends his life alternating between 24-7 work on an Alaskan fishing boat, and 24-7 slacking on beaches in exotic locales like the Phillipines and Malaysia. And in the time in between those two, he lives in Portland.

He last left the Rose City in December, after months of unemployment and a few too many trips to Devil's Point. He hadn't planned on getting another fishing gig for the winter, but when the ten-buck an hour jobs at the corner store started being a hotter and hotter commodity around here, he had to go back to the old standby. Since then, he's endured the following calamities, which may or may not be due to the economic crisis:

- A broken-down truck, in the midst of our Arctic Blast . The shady repair shop he decided to go with made him wait a month to get his car back, so during the heavy snow, he was driving around a Daewoo. Or not driving around a Daewoo, since it couldn't be moved from its spot in front of the house.

- Two weeks of squalor and disappointment, fixing a broken boat while languishing in Seattle Harbor. He got the winter job and moved promptly to the harbor to set off for Alaska. But serious repairs caused delays and way too many a night stumbling home from the bars near the harbor.

- More disrepair and disgusting food. When they finally made it to Alaska, they had to hole up for a little while longer, because their refrigerator had broken down and they needed to get a new one. And all new food.

- Dismal fishing prices. This story tells a slightly different tale, but Sammy says their first trip out yielded them much less than in other years. This was in part due to their late start, because of the broken fridge and the spoiled vittles.

- Shitty Weather. When they made it for their second run, all was going along according to plan, when the boat broke down again. Sammy says they were already enduring some scary water and weather when the boat just crapped out again. But because of the stormy weather, no one would tow them back to town for ELEVEN days. Imagine sitting on the deck of brokedown boat for eleven days twiddling your thumbs and hoping you don't get tossed into the sea. You kind of have to laugh.

-Volcanic eruptions. You may have heard that the eruption of Mt. Redoubt shut down flights in and out of Anchorage. The same is true for all the puddle-jumpers too. So guess what? That boat that left them stranded out there in the ocean now can't be fixed, because none of the regional planes can bring in the part they need to fix it.

And then, to top it all off, he's got a broken truck to come home to. Sammy tells me it's still not fixed, even after all that fuss and trouble back in December.

Sometimes you just can't win.

But hopefully, come April, there will be cars that function and skies that glow a clear blue, and a home to look forward to, that looks so lovely in spring.

Are you defined by your job?

2009-03-22T12:30:00.000-07:00

This post is what we in the news business call "a talker." I can't tell you how many times i've felt some kind of satisfaction when someone asks me 'what i do' -- and i've been able to easily respond, because i have a job that everyone recognizes. Even if they think journalists are something resembling pond scum, at least they know what we do. A person who analyzes the productivity of your local library or spends his days making the stuff that un-sticks your pots and pans can't quite explain their career in one word and expect anyone to understand. But i've had that.

These days, a lot more people are finding themselves defined not by their employment, but by their unemployment. I think it's got to be a life-changing experience for someone who's always had a title, a business card, and status. I've had a lot of contemplating to do about what my real goals are since the bosses dropped the bomb. Occasionally a ray of light shines through and i have a clear idea what the hell i am doing. Other times i think creating my own path is freaking insane.

So what's it all worth? Does having a so-called prestigious job have any bearing on your actual happiness? Does what you do for a living define you? And can you feel like a whole person when you're not defined by a job?