NASA rocks

A moment (or longer) of silence

Cozy in connection

I am feeling a bit better today.

Ran a Christmas-y errand driving our "sled" through the snow and got lost inside the mall (which still perplexes me).

  

I am sensing, gratefully, a financially calmer holiday season.  I am not being as conscious/intentional/attentional to our finances as I could be, but am having some moments/flashes of clarity which are helping.

I have been more aware of my/our time.

Our cards are made, paid for, and in da house.  Hoping to get to addressing envelopes this week.

Kids' big presents have been chosen, bought and hidden.

The December weekends seem a little less crazy than the November ones.  Just a little.

This afternoon I have delegated and canceled and taken time to rest.  It has been nice to cozy up inside as the snow fell steadily outside.

The internet shared some cozy, too, about reading, knitting, unionizing...and transforming/persisting/inspiring/overcoming odds and naysayers:

Peace and love.

When there is no 12A

Don't tell my kids, but deep down inside, I kind of believe, at this point, that the earth...or at least the United States, is going to hell in a hand basket.

A small, yet telling, example.  Yesterday, Cap was reassigned to a seat in a row that did not exist on the plane he was boarding.

Down with bureaucracy!

Cabin fever

...is the name of our newest book.  A birthday gift, hand delivered, hot off the press.  The delicious laughter erupting from where he was devouring this lovingly anticipated book drew me...

Speaking of books, hearing about this today made me ineffably sad.  Such an act of cowardice and such an incredible waste.

Mongolian marvels

Cap and I caught AnDa Union last night up at the university.  We were both interested in attending this show and were thrilled when he received complimentary tickets for his involvement in The Matter of Origins last season.

It is a rare and wonderful experience when not only are you transported by music and art, but when a performance invites you, deeply, to learn more about the culture, to visit its originating source, because you have instantly fallen in incredible love...well, that is something just a bit more.

(Apparently, there is some dispute now over the relationship between the Finnish, Estonian, Mongolian and Japanese languages.  The similarities to both Finnish and Japanese traditional songs heard last night in various traditional Mongolian pieces were to our ears, unmistakable...and moving.)

Locals, there is a matinee show today.  I urge you to go.  At $15 a seat, it is truly a bargain.

Color me compact fluorescent

I am genuinely surprised (shocked, really) by the wonderful news that we, as a nation, are beginning to use less electricity.  Read the short piece here.

Food for thought

"While violence has been a factor in our slums and ghettos for decades, never has it been so deadly.  Today children face the almost impossible task of making life or death decisions all alone, in a matter of minutes, sometimes seconds.  Even those of us who have been lucky enough to survive enough violent encounters to have gained an amount of expertise in dealing with violence find the current codes of conduct to be so harsh, capricious, and variable that it makes it almost impossible to help young people cope with the everyday violence they face on the streets and in schools.  Today many children grow up in a waking nightmare of sudden death around every corner."

~ from Fist stick knife gun: a personal history of violence in America by Geoffrey Canada

Swede songs

First there was jj.  Then Loney Dear.  Now Peter Bjorn and John have my ear.  I like the Swedish pop music.  :-)

The kids and I have been digging this catchy tune lately.

Happy day of the dead

Celebrating with music.

He rocks

I highly recommend watching the interview Jon Stewart did with President Obama last night.  You can watch it here.  Jon is courageous and stays true to himself.  Barack holds his own.  He's a fast thinker, very open, and incredibly eloquent.

In other tv news, the original movie cast of The Sound of Music will be appearing on Oprah tomorrow.  I've set my dvr!

Capitalism

Stay with this past the first minute for some manatee-style giggles.

The Hunger Games

If you haven't read this book, read it.  It is very, very good.  Truly a nearly perfect book.  It's one of those books that as you're reading it, you think, how has this book never been written before?  It seems so natural, so real, so familiar, so of life.

If you have read this book and didn't think it was the bee's knees, I would love to hear your perspective.

Now, I have been working hard to curb my buying of books for personal pleasure.  But, last month, I succumbed.  The combination of my deep desire to read The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, my impatience in the face of a god-knows-how-long wait for the book from the library and Amazon's deep discounts proved too hard to ignore.

Because I hate paying for shipping, I also tacked on The Hunger Games and Anne Lamott's Bird By Bird to my order.

It took me awhile to get around to reading The Hunger Games, but once I did, I was riveted.  A few chapters in, I requested the second and third books through the library and was promptly put on the waiting lists for them.  

I finished the book yesterday.  Today, we got back from our day out much earlier than expected.  I thought I'd run up to my indie bookstore to pick up the second book if they had it.  I called and was dismayed to hear that the second book is not out in paperback ('because they can' the bookseller said).

When I ordered the first book from Amazon (for $9) I thought it was a hardcover remainder.  So when I heard that my love of a bookstore had the second book for $18, my heart sank.  I just couldn't do it.  The bookseller on the other end of the line understood.  This part of the exchange was unspoken.  How often this must come up for them, I can well imagine.

I hopped online and ordered the second and third books from Amazon for 50% off cover.  That's how much I loved the first book.  I cannot wait to find out what happens next to these characters and this society.

Alabanza

Alabanza: In Praise of Local 100

by Martín Espada

for the 43 members of Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Local l00, working at the Windows on the World restaurant, who lost their lives in the attack on the World Trade Center

Alabanza. Praise the cook with a shaven head
and a tattoo on his shoulder that said Oye,
a blue-eyed Puerto Rican with people from Fajardo,
the harbor of pirates centuries ago.
Praise the lighthouse in Fajardo, candle
glimmering white to worship the dark saint of the sea.
Alabanza. Praise the cook’s yellow Pirates cap
worn in the name of Roberto Clemente, his plane
that flamed into the ocean loaded with cans for Nicaragua,
for all the mouths chewing the ash of earthquakes.
Alabanza. Praise the kitchen radio, dial clicked
even before the dial on the oven, so that music and Spanish
rose before bread. Praise the bread. Alabanza.

Praise Manhattan from a hundred and seven flights up,
like Atlantis glimpsed through the windows of an ancient aquarium.
Praise the great windows where immigrants from the kitchen
could squint and almost see their world, hear the chant of nations:
Ecuador, México, Republica Dominicana,
Haiti, Yemen, Ghana, Bangladesh.
Alabanza. Praise the kitchen in the morning,
where the gas burned blue on every stove
and exhaust fans fired their diminutive propellers,
hands cracked eggs with quick thumbs
or sliced open cartons to build an altar of cans.
Alabanza. Praise the busboy’s music, the chime-chime
of his dishes and silverware in the tub.

Alabanza. Praise the dish-dog, the dishwasher
who worked that morning because another dishwasher
could not stop coughing, or because he needed overtime
to pile the sacks of rice and beans for a family
floating away on some Caribbean island plagued by frogs.
Alabanza. Praise the waitress who heard the radio in the kitchen
and sang to herself about a man gone. Alabanza.

After the thunder wilder than thunder,
after the shudder deep in the glass of the great windows,
after the radio stopped singing like a tree full of terrified frogs,
after night burst the dam of day and flooded the kitchen,
for a time the stoves glowed in darkness like the lighthouse in Fajardo,
like a cook’s soul. Soul I say, even if the dead cannot tell us
about the bristles of God’s beard because God has no face,
soul I say, to name the smoke-beings flung in constellations
across the night sky of this city and cities to come.
Alabanza I say, even if God has no face.

Alabanza. When the war began, from Manhattan and Kabul
two constellations of smoke rose and drifted to each other,
mingling in icy air, and one said with an Afghan tongue:
Teach me to dance. We have no music here.
And the other said with a Spanish tongue:
I will teach you. Music is all we have.

Alan's War

Stunned and breathless.  This book is amazing.  Run, do not walk, and read it.

Got student loans?

Go here for a stunning account of what it means to have a student loan (or know/love someone who does).

Plummet

The hormonal emo-PMS started sometime during common meal. I made good food, bathed happily in my friends' proclamations of satisfaction and gratitude, but could feel myself slipping into a quiet place. A familiar cocoon.

It's been a busy few days of doing, doing, doing, fueled by a burst of energy and of necessity. (update: Cap had a friend bolt cut his cast off two nights ago and he has an appointment with a second ortho doc next week. He's been in e-mail contact with our trusted family doc who has been advising him---before and after the fact of his journey as the case may be---along the way.)

By the time I'm done cleaning and shutting down the kitchen for the night and then scrolling through my Reader items, it's approaching 10pm and I'm too tired to help the kids with showers, but will the energy to give them massages. (Sag's lasts only a couple of minutes as he finds them very giggle-inducing.)

By the time I've tucked them in, blessings recited for all (Sag has some stuffed animal 'bros' who each get one, too), it's almost 11pm.

Last night, by this point, my blood was beginning to do the hormonal boil. My patience was flatlined and I hated the way I sounded. I went in to apologize and was forgiven on the spot.

A kernel of remembrance brought me back to the computer (the previous night I was surprised at the dip in our balance) and I logged onto my bank account. And there I saw it: someone(s) else has been busy, too. Using my hacked debit card number to help themselves to cash.

Anger, anxiety, a sense of invasion and hopelessness. (I feel exposed and brought into violent community against my will. And I know this is nothing compared to what millions of other souls experience day-to-day in terms of being 'brought into violent community against their wills'. This strikes horror in my heart.)

(Our bank has shown itself to be equipped to handle this type of situation seemingly efficiently, so far. The amounts should be credited back by the beginning of next week pending our faxing them back an affidavit which they have already e-mailed me a pdf of. $700. Scary.)

An episode of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia helped last night. It smoothed out the frazzle enough that I could fall asleep sometime past 1am.

This morning there were some more charges that hadn't yet posted last night. Felt like another blow to this psyche made tender by hormones. It should all be over soon. The account number has been flagged as stolen, a new number has been generated, life goes on. I wonder how much money banks lose over this kind of thing every year? I know they still make plenty of profit. It's all kind of messed up.

Woke to the sound of rain hitting air conditioner metal.

This morning the kids are watching a Harry Potter movie they picked up at the library yesterday. I'm heading into the kitchen to roast a chicken and put away the (clean) accoutrement of common meal. This afternoon, a play date at Tiina's. Tonight a planned phone date with a beloved friend.

Peace to you today.

The winter games

Last night: snow jumping.  The kids have been primed by the Mario and Sonic Winter Olympics Wii game and are digging the real thing.

Causa de atún

Vanessa made us another of her favorite Peruvian dishes: Causa de atún.  It was naturally GFCF and included two of Gem's favorite foods, tuna and mashed potato!

It was delicious.  And so nice to look at, too.  Both kids dove in.  Sag didn't like it too much, but Gem kept at it, trying to get past how spicy it was for him.  It was heartwarming for me to see how the kids have grown in their desire and ability to try a new food.  I think the love and connection they feel for V had a lot to do with it last night.

When I make it, I am going to bring down the amount of aji and then build it up again as Gem's system adjusts to new levels of heat in his food.  (Which is pretty much zero up till this point.)

I find the combination of cool foods with the heat of the aji amarillo (yellow chili peppers) intriguing.  And inviting frequent revisitation.  (The huancaína sauce and the causa are both served chilled.)

A lie, some truth and a teabagger