Against the Wind

The weather is great today, I’ve worked well used my time well, and still am not caught up, but I’m not farther behind. Quentin and I have a three day weekend for the Covington fair. So life is good. I’ll get the second side sewn on my quilt top, and work Friday on the paper piecing to get the last two sides on.

Time for a political cartoon. This one speaks to me.

Cartoons by Henry Payne
Pete always said he’d like to do cartooning if he could only draw. I would like to put together logical arguments about why we need to be alert and alive to the world around us. But here the cartoon says it better than anythink I could write.

Meanwhile, there’s a photo saved to use today from the NYC trip.

Each of us goes to his own adventure. Some have friends who will dress in colors to send us off, most of us just march along as best we can.

The train arrived in NYC, and Quentin and I with a great deal of help from Bartley schlepped our bags through Penn Station through the subway and to Tania and Bartley’s little building. The part of Brooklyn they live in is just as cute as it can be. Their roommate was moving out so we poked our bags up in their apartment and loaded up the bicycles to get onto the subway again, and go to Governor’s Island on a Sunday afternoon.

Governor’s Island is in the harbor, near the Statue of Liberty. There were many, many people there, and by the time we arrived, all the rental bicycles were out, so you had to stand and wait and wait for people to turn theirs in. As one came in, out it went. Bicycling around the island it’s hard to believe you’re in the middle of NYC, and the city never sleeps. Out on the island with the vacated baracks, the officer’s housing and the paths from there to somewhere.

What a great time we had. More photos tomorrow.

Mid semester blahs have hit me in a big, big way. Maybe get the shed torn down and make myself a little deck out there.

If the story begins, “A man came into town,” I guess that would be my new neighbor. The rental house next door has a new tennant. Single man with two big dogs. Seems to plan on doing handy man sorts of work. I could think of several handy man jobs that need doing around here.

I saw a fishing camp that would almost have to be rebuilt from scratch to be livable, but it’s perfect for me… 700 square feet and on a lovely bit of bayou. Where oh where to find a contractor and get a reasonable price for the fix up work.

OR… wouldn’t a nice deck and garden in my “wooded” back yard be suiting for a much smaller price? Or a sunroom. I’ve been so jealous of Betsi’s sunroom for a very long time.

What really chaps my hide is that I’ll go through all this dithering and end up doing nothing. What a ring tailed wus I am! Very predictable though. Poor Carlo, how did he ever put up with me for so many years?

So I’m about ready to attach side two of my quilt round robin top. I’ve made an error, but not enough time to correct it, and get other things done that need doing. Blogging for example?

After a lovely couple days in Washington D. C., we went on to New York City. I had been walking and I thought I was ready. Nope! I’m still not over that exhaustion.

Politics is discouraging, writing is at full stop, my teaching is less enthusiastic than it should be. I’m not progressing well toward the current quilting deadline. However that said, I still whistle in the rainstorms.

Driving home from work I was listening to some of the great content available on the internet. Mississippi Public Radio has programs at 9 am which are locally produced and of local interest. Friday is the Gestalt Gardener, Felder Rushing. He’s the kind of guy who makes me, a shrub disinterested schlub feel like gardening should be fun, and wow, I’d like to try that! The landscape fellow he had on the program this weekend and he made the point that the most challenging situations bring out the most creative solutions and interesting gardens.

The video that follows is the first of four parts of the speech Bibi Netanyahu gave in the UN after the well publicized speeches of some of the vicious perveyors of darkness in positions of power in the world.

The times call for some creative solutions. What can I do? What can you do? What can we do to hold fast to that which is true? Can we save the beauty that we know and live? Lies are the new verities. Propaganda is the new art. Politics is discouraging.

An essay I ran into earlier in the week from my Canadian Catholic newspaper writer tried to deal with, “what can we do to keep the faith?”

“What can ‘normal’ people do to fight stuff like political correctness, and help win back a little order, decency, freedom and sanity in our society?”

So, daily, I cling to my little yard that needs mowing, my little table and bird feeder out in the yard, a circle of friends, and pray often and earnestly for God’s will. And I pray for His hand on my wonderful grandboys, my girls. “His eye is on the sparrow…”

Quentin playing by the lake in the Mulligan’s (daughter Tania’s inlaws) neighborhood. Fall’s Church, VA July 2009

“Children begin by loving their parents. After a time they judge them. Rarely, if ever, do they forgive them.” - Oscar Wilde

Exodus 20:12 Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.

Now that I have adult children, I’m getting plenty of judgement from my kids. I’m starting to appreciate the wisdom of the commandment! But. I think my mother, who I’m enjoined to honor here, never could admit the warts and humanity of her father. My grandfather buried himself in grief for his lost son. Mother always felt guilty that the wrong child died, that her father could never have grieved so much if she instead had died. So she never engaged in a normal rebellion and separation from her parents through adolescence. It must have come as a horrible surprise when her children didn’t act likewise. I guess we were loved well enough to know that we were allowed to grow up. Mother never seemed to get it though. She wanted to be much too entangled in our lives, and was more than willing to manipulate.

Now that they’re gone, perhaps it’s too late, but I think it’s easier now to forgive. It’s easier because I’m not entangled in some battle with my mother, unable to communicate with my father. I can talk to Daddy now. Mother is not trying to push me to live some variation of the life she thinks I should want.

Meanwhile there are these wonderful grandboys. They’re getting excited to turn 9 and 4. Cameron was here today with his ropes and black hat. He’s going to have an Indiana Jones Cake. He says something like “InanaJones” and talks and talks telling me about the way he’s going to beat his villains. Sunday I took the boys to see the alligators for a couple of minutes. Cameron was really funny getting nervous about the alligators. But he ran down the boardwalk over the marsh to go look at them. He’s a boy, 150% boy. Someone tell me that we create those differences culturally and I’ll just have to laugh at you.

Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.

The landscape in Falls Church, Va is verdent and reminds me that those lush hills were wild once. But the gardeners have made it accessible.

Damascus. the past is a foreign place, yet we carry it with us.

I can quickly end up with a paralyzing load of links and thoughts before writing. Too many ideas are just as stifling as too few.

Paralysis. That’s the theme of the last few days. I do what needs doing to keep my classes going, putter a little with my quilting, and get nothing else done.

Paralysis seems to come from too little that needs doing, or too much. Or maybe it’s a weakness of my spirit. Today I have already found some great links, and internally I see links among and between them. Perhaps you will as well?

Wretchard had this video of an ancient movie short, a travelogue of Damascus and Jerusalem with a literary work about how the past is always foreign.

Perhaps I’m just mining or dredging a bit in the crevasses of my head, but it seems to me that for better or worse, the past is also something we carry with us. And it has a capacity to damage unto the third and fourth generation here in a new land. In Jerusalem and Damascus, the past and its evils are carried for millenia. The travelogues take us back 80 years, but the world we see pushes us much further. There are echoes of crusaders and moslem conquests, diaspora and the Ottoman empire.

Years ago, when I was thinking about life and such, I was much taken with the idea that humans are nearly miraculous in their abilities to move toward health, both physical and mental. Some circumstances of our physique or psyches cannot be overcome, and must be accomodated, but mostly we are amazingly resilient. We can choose to be mentally healthy in some horendous circumstances, and we can choose to let ourselves be crippled by trivialies. I was reminded of these reflection when I read the second of Shrink Wrapped’s series of essays on the drift of psychiatry, and the diagnostic manual, “Better Living Through Chemistry, pt II.” He is not pleased with the state of his profession. His notes about how psychiatry can, in the interest of helping unhappy folk, essentially tie them into dependency and chronic “stuckness.” What a damning insight, if the incentives for psychiatists are to keep the unhappy in a medical paradigm, without pushing for health. We have seen the enemy, and he is us!

Enough. More later. Off to collect homework for Q man.

Cooking is one of those things you do out of love. Winifred spent the day in the kitchen, providing Quentin and Bartley and I with a lovely sit down meal. She has to work against hands that are most uncooperative, yet she cooks magnificently. Paul’s rock garden was blooming, and when I came out into the kitchen and saw all the little bouquets he’d set out I cannot but smile even yet today. What a lovely gesture.

Pluck, gumption? Living demonstration that ‘winning’ comes by getting yourself up one more time than you’re knocked down. Even when the knocks are lack of assets to start the journey. (Finish strong)

Treated badly? Big corporations are unfair? Don’t get mad, get even, get over it, get on with your life and carreer. (United breaks guitars)

I woke up this morning singing “United Breaks Guitars!” I know something has gotten deep into the psyche when I wake up singing it. It’s got a great hook, the production of the video is not elaborate, but it’s effective. Keep it simple, keep it clean, tell your story.

One day at a time tell your story. Broken guitars? Broken hearts? We all have ‘em. It’s whether you get up and finish strong. UNITEeeeD! One humanity, one day at a time. Finish strong.

How much do we effect those around us? To what extent are our decisions and actions reflected in behavior of our friends and relatives? I ran into a blog with a You tube video that followed the data from the Framingham Heart research to see how people’s decisions about smoking and losing weight played out in lives around them. The video is an hour long, and I haven’t had the time to see it through. In some sense it’s surprising. I guess the idea that you can quantify such an effect is a bit surprising, though this is exactly the math I was at least mildly interested, 100 years ago when I thought I might have the right stuff to be a mathematician.

When Tania was born, I decided that I was not going to be a fat mama because I didn’t want that example for my child. That resolve lasted until I joined the 200 club carrying Marianne. But I did have the right idea. Somehow I still have to learn to quit eating through my emotions. I may never conquer that, but I can make one good choice at a time and try to keep it under control. So, is it about blaming your fat friends and relatives for your battle of the bulge, or is it taking responsibility and fighting your battles and letting others fight theirs, being hopefully a good example.

I’m back from another very short Winfield experience. I made notes of all the seed thoughts on my iPhone. The overarching bit of Winfield that stayed with me this year is the creativity that hangs in the air. It’s almost like a miasma overhead. The musicians strum and hum and jam and it’s all night long. I’m no musician, but I catch the fever. I want to come home and write something. Write something well, so I can capture the beauty of knowing your gift and being willing to get out there and try to light a candle.

Dana’s music is absolutely amazing. He’s got to be one of the best amateur guitarists around. I have some video of him playing, but I’d rather produce a creditable You Tube video. Not that it would go viral, it’s probably not accessible enough. Not enough hooks to go viral, but it’s pushing the limits of what a guitar can do, what a good guitarist can do.

Quentin was amazed to buy a CD of Todd Hallawell. “He is a real musician?” “Yes he is.” And doing pretty well at it it seems. “Your brother is too.”

I have a photo that is a keeper of Quentin and Kelly off fighting droids in the field behind Ann and Robert’s house. Today I hear that Kelly has H1N1 and is the first confirmed case in his school. Quentin and I have had mild sniffles. Hope we weren’t the vector. It’s certainly around in our schools.

We all can grab the vibrations out of the air, and effect one another, and plan to be positive.

Come and listen in to a radio station
Where the mighty hosts of heaven sing
Turn your radio on, turn your radio on
If you want to feel those good vibrations
Coming from the joy that His love can bring
Turn you radio on, turn your radio on.

Turn your radio on
And listen to the music in the air
Turn your radio on and glory share
Turn your lights down low
And listen to the Master’s radio
Get in touch with God, and turn your radio on.

Photo by Don Fakoury from the hymn sing.   I missed it, but was there in spirit.

Linda commented that this will be a bittersweet Winfield. They are certainly all different. I very nearly backed out to stay home when Uncle Don called to say they had bailed to Oxford, as the river was high and rising. So far no serious flooding, but ’twill be a different experience with a camp site in Oxford. Some of the older generation with thr big rigs have no need of trying to pull out in the middle of the night to beat a rising river.

For today, I’m wishing I’d have stopped and photographed the Canadian River bathed in orange light. But so nice to meet Ann & Robert for a wee visit before heading on north tomorrow.

Lights out here. Good luck with the dental fun Linda