History, and some lessons.

I grew up in a non-nuclear family setting. My parents divorced when I was eight, and I lived a few years with my single-parent mom, and then a few years with my single-parent dad. Luckily, before they divorced, my folks had the sense to move back from the wilds of the Great Plains, to Michigan, where they originally met, and where their respective parents still lived. When they divorced, and became single parents, they both were lucky enough to have their moms to help them out with their three obnoxiously precocious children.

Now, those of you who've been following my ramblings for any length of time may have recognized that I do not have a "traditional" mother-daughter kind of relationship (whatever that is) with my mom. Her mental condition combined with my typical early-teen angst to produce some rather spectacular conflict (I imagine that standard sullen rebellion might look pretty intense through a lens of psychosis and paranoia, but at the time, I wasn't exactly able to be charitable). So, you know, in addition to my confusing gender-bendy-sexual-abuse issues, I didn't exactly have a good relationship with mommy. I suspect this is part of what makes me who I am.

However, I was very lucky to have not one, but two amazing mother figures in my life. No, they weren't the typical kind. No, I didn't have that bond-y closeness that does whatever-it-does that can only come from "a mother's love" or whatever touchy-feely bullshit. But I learned how to be a woman from my grandmothers.

.....

My mom's mom, who was one of my primary caregivers after my parents divorced and my sibs and I lived with my mom (while she worked full time and finished her B.A.), was and remains one of the few truly "good" Christians I know. My dad used to say she wouldn't say shit if she had a mouthful, and that's true...but she was also one of the most genuinely kind and caring people I have ever known. She taught me more about grace and courtesy and giving then I actually exhibit in my life these days, but she made a sterling example that I aspire to on a daily basis. She wasn't perfect - she and her mother sniped like harpies in the most hilarious ways. She lost her temper with my brother a lot (but then, most people who've spent more than five minutes in his company are guilty there). She even, on occasion, swore (seriously, I heard her say S.O.B. once - not the actual words, just the abbreviation).

She was a really strong woman, and not a "traditional" one for the time. Back in the sixties, her husband (my mom's dad) was institutionalized (he, like my mom, was schizophrenic), and she was left with four kids to raise on her own (I'm pretty sure she didn't get disability checks at that point in time). She had her mother's help, of course, but she did it. She worked for the State of Michigan until she retired. She raised three boys and my mom - all of whom went to college. At some point, she remarried and gained a stepson...her second husband died when I was a toddler, and she was alone again, living in a farmhouse on a dirt road way back in the Michigan countryside.

She was a model Christian, tithing regularly, doing good works, the whole bit. She read her Bible, and she did her level best to live by its tenets. Sometimes, when I stayed home sick from school, she would let me tag along to the Rescue Mission Quilting Circle, where I would tie yarn in knots and gleefully listen to the old women talk about their families and churches. Sometimes, she would let me come with her to church choir practice, and it was at her elbow that I learned to sing harmony and gained the vocal flexibility that still is one of the prime joys of my life.

When I was around twelve, she married a minister who told some of the best clean jokes. He's a die-hard right-winger, and I rarely see eye to eye with him, but he makes her happy. I have never and will never talk with her about my spirituality....not because I'm ashamed, but because if we never talk about it, I know she can tell herself I'm not going to burn in Hell. I detest her sons, and I will never tell her that either.

.....

My dad's mom is a straight-talking matriarch of the first order. She had six kids with two husbands, and never worked outside the home - except inasmuch as everybody works on a farm. When my mom was diagnosed, and my sibs and I went to live with my dad, we spent a couple months staying in a camper in my grandma's backyard.

It was my freshman year of high school, and I was at that really awkward stage, and on top of all that usual rigamarole, I was dealing with the revelation that my mom was crazy and I'd spent the past couple years being angry at her all the time over shit she couldn't really help, not to mention the joys of going to a brand new school. Those first couple months, coming home with the stack of books I was using to escape my real life, and talking things over with my no-bullshit grandma...it helped me put things in perspective, and not take on too much guilt over being human and out of my depth.

She taught me a lot about family, and what family means, and what family does. She operated a complex web of cousins, aunts, uncles, family friends, and several generations of various family ties. She worked the gossip mill like a champ - and taught me that everybody spends time in the doghouse, and nobody is beyond redemption. She also taught me that gossip is a kind of accountability, and the trick to avoiding its effects was to not do anything you minded people talking about. That's a rule I really try hard to stick to in my life, though I'm sure some of my crazier choices are popular topic of conversation these days ("Is she a communist or what?").

When I graduated from high school, my grandma gave me her valedictory pin. It was a big deal, because I was the first of her grandkids to be going to college. I'd been a really good student in high school, probably should've been my class valedictorian (not that I'm bitter), and wasn't - but my grandma gave me her pin anyway, and that pin was salve to my wounds on that score. I felt like I was some kind of standard-bearer, and I was so happy to feel like I was doing her proud.

When I dropped out of college after the first year, I didn't visit or talk to her or my dad for six months. I felt like I had let her, and the whole family, down, and I was consumed with guilt and regret and self-loathing. When I finally went and saw her, she dressed me down right to my face, telling me what a jackass I was being, and that I was breaking my father's heart by not talking to him, that shutting them out was a slap in the face, and who cared about some damn pin and some damn college.

I did my time in the doghouse, and survived it.

.....

Between all the moving around my parents did when they were married, and all the moving around they did after they divorced, I never really got attached to the idea of a physical place as "home." But my grandmothers have both lived in the same two houses, six or eight miles apart in a little tiny town in Michigan, for my whole life. Their phone numbers haven't changed, either - they're one digit apart. My idea of what makes a family, and what makes a home, is tied into these two beautiful, strong, amazing women.

I haven't lived within four hours of either of them since that brief stint in Michigan after I dropped out of college. I moved first to Atlanta, and then to Chicago, and in the eleven intervening years, I've been home three or four times a year at most. When I do go home, I usually only spend a couple days - see the parents, go to some big extended family functions, see the neices and nephews and the sibs if I can work it in. I don't usually make time to visit my grandparents. I'm a fucking idiot for that.

These women, these two women who taught me so very much about life and how to be a good person, are both in very poor health. My mom's mom is going through kidney failure and a third round of chemotherapy, and she is not doing well. My dad's mom has just had a Hospice consult and is now only taking sleeping pills and pain meds.

My life is so much different from either of my grandmothers' lives. I don't think I could be who I am, who I am supposed to be, and have stayed any closer. But I will regret to the end of my days not making more space for them in my life. In the time that remains, I can't even begin to come close to making up for that lack, but I want to try. I hope I have the guts to not let my guilt stop me from doing the right thing, because I love them, and I am grateful to them, and I have not done their love and their gifts justice. I haven't given them the tiniest fraction of what they deserve of me.

Even in this, they're still teaching me.

FUCK YOU doesn't seem to cover it today.

My thoughts today are with my comrades in the Twin Cities, who have bravely chosen to protest the RNC. They have been met with interference at every step, including "Homeland Security" and other resources purported to fight "terrorism." This video is horribly disturbing on its own merits, but is even more unsettling because the man being attacked so brutally is someone I know and have worked with.

Where the fuck is justice in this?

Where the fuck is freedom in this?

Where the fuck is there anything to be proud of?

How can anyone purport to call herself a "patriot" and think this is okay?

Where the fuck is the outrage from the RNC itself? They have the power to make this end, to stand up for true American values, to halt violence used against AMERICANS right here on our own soil...not by faceless scary brown people whose countries are sitting on top of resources we covet and whose cultures we don't really understand...but by "fellow Americans" in riot gear and using chemical weapons.

Who the fuck is the terrorist in this scenario?

Hey, John McCain (or your new puppetmaster, Karl Rove): stop this. Or FUCK YOU more than usual.

UPDATE: The ACLU is calling for an investigation into RNC shenanigans. Also, brownfemipower has an awesome entry about why this stuff matters.

UPDATE 2: Found this post through Twin Cities Indy Media, and it is awesome; it talks about the point of what's happening at the RNC, and some ideas about civil disobedience and nonviolent direct action in general.

UPDATE 3: This listing from Common Dreams outlines some of the violence and targetting of activists and journalists. CREDO Action has an action going to call out the major news networks for not screaming about this threat to a free press.

Rolling on a river.

The Mississippi River is a thread connecting two major pieces of serious Work in the Universe today: New Orleans, crouching in preparation for Gustav to roll onshore, and the Twin Cities, where RNC protesters and the GOP faithful who seem determined to undermine any action that might mar the convention are battling it out in the streets and soon in the courts.

No matter what happens, my spidey sense tells me Something is Afoot, and It Will Be Big. I'm sending good juju to both ends of the big river today, but especially those whose lives and livelihoods have already suffered Katrina's devastation, and now may face another round of horrors at the hands of Gustav and the Bush administration's ineptitude.

I'm sending protection, support, strength, and hope to the people who most need it (and also as much cash as I can spare). If you are able and inclined, please do the same.

I'd get back in the saddle.....if I could find the saddle....

Even though I'm feeling much better, I haven't been posting much these days. Mostly because all my brain can think up is "I'm feeling better, but still fucking exhausted and not quite back to full speed." Which, you know, is like talking about breakfast cereal on the excitement scale. Yawn.

I do seem to have, this afternoon, some spare brain space for thinking. It's not in-depth, or anything, but I've got some random thoughts to share....kind of a lightning round of what-the-fuck's-going-on-these-days. Enjoy!

* Tim Russert: Fucking shame. Hey, meainstream media wanks who purport to be his heartbroken and respectful colleagues: quit fucking talking about how he struggled with his weight and it eventually killed him; he worked out daily and ate reasonably well (or at least that's what his close friends keep saying) - what the fuck else is a normal human with a fucking life supposed to do? How about a little respect for the passing of a really amazing human being, a damn good journalist, and one of those lucky sons-of-bitches that finds his purpose in life? As usual, mainstream media, you can FUCK OFF.

* George Carlin: Another fucking shame. We shared the same birthday. We shared some political views and social criticisms. I loved the moment at the end of "Jersey Girl" where he says he doesn't want to die alone; it was some of the most poignant acting I've ever seen, even in such a relatively unimpressive movie. His books make me laugh every time I pick them up and re-read them. The world is less cool without him.

* Obama & FISA & public funding: I like Obama, and I think he's a great Senator, and will be a great President. But, like I've been saying to everyone I know who's got their starry-eyed idealistic blinders on, hoping he's a "change they can believe in," the man is a politician. He's not some naive tyro outsider - he's a Chicago pol who makes shrewd decisions based on walking the fine line between his beliefs, what's best for the country, and what's best for his own career. I think he's a damn sight better than a lot of the Dems out there carrying the party banner (ahem, Ms. Pelosi...), but I never forget that he's a politician. He's going to make a lot of compromises I don't like. This isn't a surprise.

* I recently subscribed to Yes! Magazine. I had stumbled on a few of their online articles, and really enjoyed them, and sent for a trial issue....and lo and behold, it's fabulous. There's a sense of activism and community and respect and this spirit of openness that I really like, and - with the exception of the one article on investments and banking bullshit (green your investments! put your money in a local credit union! pay yourself first!) - I really have enjoyed every article I've read. I was reading it at lunch the other day, when all of a sudden something really intense that I hadn't even noticed dawned on me: there were no ads. Not one advertisement. Not a single one! No product placement, no glossy photography, no objectification of human beings, no shilling for ANYTHING! I suddenly felt even better about paying my $20 for four issues a year - not only because it's writing untainted by advertiser interference, but also because it's printed on post-consumer recycled paper, with creative commons copyright licensing.

* Words I am thoroughly tired of hearing: "staycation" and the suffix "-bits." Please, media, we all fucking know gas prices suck; STOP talking about how everyone's taking a staycation to save money, as if you're so damn clever. Seriously, precocious smart-mouthed fifteen year olds, Stephen Colbert, and Joss Whedon make up witty new words...it's less cute when journalists pick it up as if they're equally trendy and cool. Not so much. Also, let's quit it with the bits! Girlybits, thinkybits, squickybits, bloggybits, snarkybits, snootybits, squishybits.....I am just fucking tired of all the little pieces of things! I want something in its unadulterated entirety, not bite size pieces. I'm a grown woman. I can handle it. Seriously.

* Musica: New albums I have picked up lately include Jason Mraz's new one (We Sing. We Dance. We Steal Things. This one doesn't wow me as much as the older acoustic stuff, but there are a couple tracks I cannot stop playing; and "Details in the Fabric" makes me tear up *every* time.), Alanis Morissette's new one (Flavors of Entanglement. Some of the tracks are a bit dance-ier than I'd like, and some are more maudlin than I'd like....but there are a couple priceless ones in there, too. I particularly dig "Incomplete," which features the line "I'll know God, and I'll be constantly one with Her night, dusk, and day."), and Alexi Murdoch's Time Without Consequences (an older album I had never heard of, but am loooooooooving....I could listen to "Orange Sky" on repeat forever!). I'm also enjoying some random tracks from Crooked Still, a "newgrass" group that brings really cool percussive strings (originally a contemporary of my fave fiddler - Casey Driessen - and now some other players doing similarly awesome stuff), banjo, and the gorgeous vocals of lead singer Aoife O'Donovan...it's tasty stuff I highly recommend if you dig folk music, bluegrass, or pretty voices. Also on my playlists lately: Duffy, Amos Lee, and (as always) Green Day, Dan Bern, and John Mayer.

* Miscellanea: In my continuing shift from cute shoes to sensible shoes (and possibly from young-and-hip to old-and-crotchety), I heart my Birkenstocks. I also heart summertime.....but not so much the crazy raining and humidity. My hair, in particular, could do without the humidity. The permaculture gardens in the backyard....well, let's just say that they're having some trouble with bugs; our backyard is like an insect smorgasbord - it's so bad, I actually can't go out there for more than a few minutes, even with bug spray. Yikes! I managed - though still not up to full energy - to assemble two cat playground thingies....the cats seem to be enjoying them, which bodes well. Next cat-related excitement: the cat genie, which costs a bundle, but basically means no litter and (most importantly) no scooping cat shit anymore! Woo hoo!

Katrina, times 50.

I'm heartsick at the news from Myanmar today...possibly 100,000 lives lost, millions homeless, entire cities flattened, a food-producing region devastated in such a way as will likely have widespread and long-lasting impact on future crops. Adding insult to injury, apparently the military junta that calls the shots in Burma is dragging its collective heels in getting humanitarian aid from outside the region over the borders so help reaches those who need it - not to mention prioritizing a "democratic" referendum of a proposed constitution (that just so happens to solidify the junta's power) over basic disaster relief.

It was bad enough that the junta cut internet service in Myanmar, destroyed media access, and took action against protesting monks....but now they're not easing restrictions so as to rush emergency assistance, in the face of the worst natural disaster since the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami? What the hell?

ETA: Here are some ways you can help. Also, there's this resource from the American Red Cross. More when I find them.

Enough.

Five years. Almost four thousand dead troops. Another nearly thirty thousand wounded. Something like a million Iraqi civilian casualties (it's somehwere in the ballpark of the number of civilians Saddam killed over his thirty five years in power).

It's senseless. It's immoral. It's smokescreen for a host of other atrocities. It's part of what's destroying not only this country, but countries around the globe. It's killing too many people, maiming too many people (both physically and emotionally), and leaving people at home and abroad destitute and devastated.

It's time it was over.

This makes me sadder.

This is fucking pathetic. I don't have anything else to add. I'm almost crying right now.

An historic day...that shall live in infamy.

In 26 years of citizenship, I have always railed against those who lived in this country and disdained it. I have always been annoyed with anti-establishment sentiment and anti-American rhetoric coming from Americans. I have always been proud to be an American.

Today, I'm not so sure about that.

I am so very sad. I am so very angry. I am so very shocked and heartbroken that the majority of people in this country do not see the encroaching doom of the world. I am amazed that the electorate is so mired in ignorance and apathy that it has re-elected a man who champions war over diplomacy, who sacrifices the lives of soldiers and civilians for undoubtedly questionable motives, who preaches fire and brimstone from a pulpit that shouldn't be a pulpit, who will no doubt continue taking this country down a path where our freedom will be in danger, and who will do all of this with a Congress and a Supreme Court stacked in his favor.

It is very difficult for me to see any hope in this situation.

I find myself perosnally angry with the people I know who espoused not voting, or voted for Bush (including one friend in Ohio). I find myself wondering if I can carry on any kind of civil dialogue. I find myself wondering if I'm as close-minded as those whose doctrine I do not share, and I think I have come up with the reason I am so terrified of the next four years.

Four years of Bush will, without question, mean further inroads against abortion rights, against stem cell research, against gay marriage, against women's rights and racial justice, against the separation of church and state, against the disappearing middle class, against union labor and workers' rights, against the environment, against fair treatment for those "arrested" under the "Patriot" Act, and countless other freedoms so many Americans take for granted....so, basically, my freedom (and yours and everyone else's in this country) will be restricted by the laws Bush enacts according to his beliefs. To bring that down to real-world terms, if Bush has his way (and it looks like he will), I won't be able to get an abortion, I won't be able to marry a woman, my father (a union electrician) could wind up with even less work than he's had over the past four years, if I shoot my mouth off or engage in non-violent civil disobedience I could be in danger of arrest without benefit of attorney or due process....the list goes on.

Conversely, if a Democrat was elected, does it mean that Republicans would all *have* to get abortions? Would Republicans be *required* to marry someone of the same gender? Would they be forced to join unions or restricted from attending church or persecuted for not recycling? I don't think so.

That's the fundamental difference I see in the two parties that (let's face it) run our country. Republicans are lobbying to restrict freedom (ironically while alleging to champion it for Iraq....and whatever other country is next on the list) and Democrats are just trying to keep the options open.

There is and always has been roomin this country for everyone....but with this election, the message I'm getting is that there may, in fact, not be room enough for everyone, especially if you're not on board with the majority. It's like the rich kids in high school all over again, but on a terrifyingly larger scale....this time they've got control of the country, and instead of relegating those of us who don't have the right family or clothes or country-club membership (or church or bank account or summer house or political views) to the crappy table in the lunch room...well, I'm not going to prognosticate, but it's a helluva lot scarier than that.
And you know, it's not just that I've got family that has been, is, and will be sent to war in Iraq....it's not just that my idealogy is so different....but there are tangible, real-world changes in my life for the worse that are pretty much directly attributable to the policies of this administration. I can only assume that four more years of it will mean a continuation of the ass-fucking.

It's hard to find a ray of sunshine in that skyfull of shit.

Bad news. Really bad.

Last week, we lost my nephew to SIDS.

They don't make words to describe the grief and sorrow of losing such a young child with so little reason or explanation.

I'd been home the previous weekend for my dad's annual hog roast & beer fest. That was a reasonably good time, with beer galore, and music, and pork and most of my dad's family. I didn't get stuck playing nanny, which was nice, and I also managed to work ina visit with my dear friend Jeremy, which was awesome.

I came home and of course, promptly got sick. Fever, aches, chills, headache, the gnawing certainty that given the slightest encouragement, my lungs would start kicking out mucus by the gallon. I spent Monday and Tuesday swaddled in blankets and drinking juice and eating chicken soup. Good times.

Tuesday night I got the call. It floored me. I spent the rest of the evening, when I wasn't on the phone with one family member or another, staring at the wall trying to process. It was impossible. A couple sleepless nights and restless days on the phone making arrangements and trying to support my brother and sister-in-law, I went home.

In defiance of tradition, the visitation was open-casket. In case just the thought of a child's death wasn't horrific enough, to see it....it's indescribable how difficult that was. It's heartbreaking.

The funeral itself was horrible. First, I had agreed to sing...which I did, somehow, I'm still not sure. I was shaking the whole time, and the second I got back to myseat beside my sister, I completely broke down. My brother spoke of his joy when Aiden was born, and how happy he was to have a son, and how devastating it was to lose him so soon.

And then there was the pastor who conducted the service. Religious tolerance being a theme in my life lately, the mid-service sermon wherein the pastor actually said, "Aiden is in heaven now....if you ever want to see him again, you must accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and savior." Call me crazy, but I don't particularly like my grief being used as leverage to recruit me for the big team in the sky.

The weekend was an ordeal, and I am glad to be home, to be in my safe space to go through my grieving process, and to work through all the stuff this set of circumstances and the attendant events brought up for me. Oy. My work is cut out for me.