Wordless Weekend
On Thursdays, Cindy and I work a split shift. I go to work at the college at 8am and leave at noon to pick up Huck and Nell at the Waldorf School. Then we go to my house. At 2, Cindy comes home from work and I go back to teach a class at the college. Then at 4:30, she takes the kids to granddaddy’s for music night and I meet everyone there.
Andrea says that on Thursday afternoons we should just go about our normal home activities and that we don’t have to entertain Huck and Nell, but the truth is that they entertain us. Here are some pictures to prove it. The first one shows them in a game that Huck calls “pigs in rug.” Nell is sticking out the top while Huckle is sticking out the bottom. Next is sand art at the counter using a bunch of stuff Cindy got from free-cycle. After I went back to work, they made cookies with Cindy. Here they are in front of the oven watching them bake. The deal was they had to wait to eat them until they went to Granddaddy’s where they would share them at music night. Huck ate all of his dinner in anticipation of the “big” cookie he had shaped just for himself.
A little over a year ago, Cindy’s niece Ashley moved in with us to go to college. She loaned me a book called the Faith Club for a trip we were about to take to Hawaii. The book was by three women who lived in New York City, a Muslim, a Christian, and a Jew. Their initial intention was to write a book for children to help them understand the differences among the faiths in the aftermath of 9/11. However, once they began working on the project, they discovered that they had much to learn from one another and much to learn about themselves and their own particular religions.
Ashley was a deeply committed Christian, and we had many discussions about the differences in our faiths, for I’ve been a practicing Buddhist for about 20 years. Still, I was very surprised and impressed that an eighteen year old would loan me such a book–one that discussed so directly topics that have so many folks in the world at odds with one another. I knew this was a very important book.
Before we came home from Hawaii and before I finished the book, Ashely died in a car accident. Her death was one of those enormous wake up calls about the fragility of life and how it can end all too suddenly. One of the most significant outcomes of her death was a clear understanding of the importance of infusing love into every interaction with others for you never know which encounter might be the last. During the days immediately after Ashley died, I finished The Faith Club which deepened my commitment to appreciate and respect the various beliefs and practices of others. Those were powerful days of reckoning with the book and Ashley’s passing tightly linked in my mind.
Several weeks ago a dear friend learned that a man she had been partnered with for 10 years had died of aortic anyuerism. They had parted ways 10 years ago and had not seen each other since, nor had they resolved their differences. My friend’s sorrow shot through me. It was another reminder to not miss a single chance to set things right, to follow through on a commitment, to respond fully from a heartfelt place.
It’s almost impossible to explain exactly how that event led Cindy and I to decide to take advantage of the newly passed California law that allowed us to marry . . . but therein lies the impetus for our momentous decision. The ceremony took place with Cindy’s parents as our witnesses–a sweet, joyful quiet event that made us OH SO HAPPY!
Several days later, Andrea decided to invite a small group of people to a reception in our honor. The group that gathered filled me with awe, for the mix was unbelievably eclectic and a tribute to the power of good will. There were conservatives and liberals, gay and straight, Christian, Buddhist, agnostic, ages 3 to 95 toasting our marriage. Cindy and I stood among these people feeling the shaky ground upon which we all stood, our differences set aside though floating close at hand.
I thank Ashley, and the Faith Club, and my friend’s ex-partner for keeping me dialed into loving. I thank Cindy’s parents for always being there. I thank Andrea for her amazing capacity to love and for knowing what to do and when. And I thank Cindy, whose boundless love fills me with faith every day!
Columbia College hosted the Wild & Scenic Environmental Film Festival, a traveling festival that included 6 hours of films from the annual festival in Nevada City. We went last night but didn’t make it through all the movies which lasted until after 11pm. However, we did see 6 incredible films–revealing and thought provoking, sometimes amusing and very often including spectacular photography.
I was looking forward to one called “Pollen Nation” which talks about the beekeepers and their importance to the agricultural industry. The folks who cart bees around the country to keep our food growing are an interesting lot.
Probably the best segment was “The Story of Stuff,” an eye-opening film about the real costs of our consumer driven culture. Juxtaposed as it was to an email message Culley sent with a link to an article by Pat Buchanan, I was slinking down in my chair feeling like a real sleaze. Buchanan and Annie Leonard, the producer of the film, each point a firm finger at my generation–“the baby boomers, oblivious and self-indulgent to the end”–as being particularly responsible for the mess.
Between the economic crisis and the environmental crisis, it’s hard to not feel depressed and a tad bit hopeless.
Thank goodness on the way home Cindy was able to point out a few minor ways we have personally changed our ways, e.g. no more credit card use, recycling everything possible and participating in free-cycle, and shopping for work clothes at the consignment shop.
Just to feel like the festival motivated another change, when I got home I dug out our cloth bags for grocery shopping. I also think I might volunteer to do some writing for the Citizens for Responsible Growth. The only way I can see to effect change is to start locally!!
I’ve always been fascinated by the fluidity and flexibility of the English language. While other English teachers found the use of contractions and slang in student papers a fault, I wanted to take a closer look and see if perhaps the student’s word choice revealed a sub-text or at least more than one level of communication at work in the paper.
I find it exciting to watch new words emerge and take hold in the language. For instance, I’ve watched with fascination as the word “text” has turned from a noun to a verb with the advent of text-messaging.
Journalists are perhaps most effective in creating, adopting, and adapting new words that eventually make it into the lexicon through formal inclusion into the dictionary. I haven’t done the research, but I suspect that poets are also a source of new words (though perhaps not quite so rapidly and directly as those moved forward by journalists), for poets know and enjoy language with particular relish.
My friend, poet Mary Meriam, has written a poem in which she introduces a new word for same-sexed partners who join in marriage. I’m not going to reprint the poem here as it is awaiting its initial publication in the CHIRON REVIEW. However, I do want to showcase the word which I initially read on the Lesbian Writers List-serve when Mary first posted her poem and the word with its definition.
Mary’s poem is lovely in setting the stage and rational for this new word, so forgive me dear poet if I do the word a disservice by plopping it down here without the poem:
The word is marae.
Will you be my rae?rae [RAY]
-noun – the affectionate, legal, and religious term for the spouse or partner of a gay or lesbian person.marae [ma-RAY]
-verb – to join as spouses or to take as a spouse, in the marriage of a gay or lesbian person.The neologisms rae and marae are derived from “My Rae,” the name Lillian Faderman gave to her courageous and devoted aunt. As a new term for gay and lesbian partners, “my rae” honors Lillian Faderman’s tremendous courage and devotion to gays and lesbians. “Marae” means “sacred place” in Polynesia. At the marae, culture is celebrated, customs are explored and debated, and weddings and birthdays are held. [(c) 2008 Mary Meriam]
So what do you think? Will this word make its way into our lexicon? Would you use it?
Last week Nell started pre-school. I got overly busy (nothing new in my life) and didn’t get a post up acknowledging this big day, so here is my delayed report.
I was honored to pick her up from her first day at Waldorf. When she saw me, she leaped into my arms and buried her face in my shoulder. Apparently this tough little soldier who marched excitedly into pre-school, was VERY happy to be reunited with the familiar at the end of her first day.
Here she is a little later a Dearma’s in her adorable little brown cotton dress with belt–a new outfit for school.
Poet Kate Evans has responded to my blog about publishing gay and lesbian memoir on her blog Being and Writing. I met Kate at the East of Eden Conference where she was promoting her book of poetry Like All We Love and I was pitching my book to agents.
I didn’t find an agent at that conference, but meeting Kate was probably even more important in the bigger picture of writing and publishing. First, she connected me with the press for her book, Q-Press, a sadly now defunct entity and not part of the story I told in my Publishing Journey. Though I didn’t go with Q-Press, it was an important step in the journey. Talking with them and with Kate, I got more clear about what I wanted with regard to publication. What I learned is that I wanted more control over the timing of the publication, and Q-Press (who was probably going under at the time) was not moving too swiftly. One thing I can say about Outskirts Press is that they move swiftly.
Another thing I learned from Kate was that she had written a book, Negotiating the Self, that held important information for me as a “new” lesbian who was a teacher. This book caused a crucial paradigm shift, for it helped me understand the edges of my homophobia and gave me some strategies for managing my fears in the classroom which undoubtedly made my classes more inclusive for all.
Then there was Kate herself: enthusiastic, generous and bold. Watching her, I saw what it takes to promote one’s book and also one’s self as a writer. I’ve recently reconnected with Kate via the Women Stirred web site where she is a contributor. Again the timing of our meeting is perfect. Kate Evans is one of those risky writers who serve as a pathfinder for me.
If you are looking for models for your own writing life, I recommend following Kate Evans.
Clare is 2 months old! And whenever I can wrestle her away from the siblings who are always in line to hold her, I take my chance to enjoy a few seconds of her baby soft skin and delicious baby smell!
Mondays are going to be my day at home school. The day will look something like this:
First, I will be doing some preschool activities with Mary Autumn, Aliou, Leon and Athan. For one thing, we’ll be doing fun things with letters and phonics. In the picture below, Leon is drawing an L in the sand. Today we read books about letters and practiced writing a couple of letters on handheld paddles before working in the sand.
Next, I work with the older girls, Anna Mae and Gianna, on their Little Red Schoolhouse homework. In the picture, they are hard at work in the school room. One thing that is quite clear about home school is that the kids accomplish a lot in very little time because they are able to get VERY focused. The girls did map skills and spelling work with great concentration.
Focused work was also apparent when I next headed to the Harrelson’s where we are working on a Language Arts program that combines reading, writing, and grammar with some history lessons. Cody, Taylor, and Kyle breezed through the preparatory set about words like revolution, declaration, and independence, and then got right to work reading and locating main points in a short article. Their skills were top of the line and it’s only the 2nd week back in school.
It sure is a pleasure to witness the kids’ minds at work processing and digesting and learning all kinds of new things from latitude to colonists to nouns to the multiple meanings of the word revolution. And I enjoy the laughs too, like when Leon connected the “d” sound we were working on with deer and then his little mind leaped sideways to say, “Deer is female!” as he remembered the song “Doe a deer, a female deer. . .”
I’d say Mondays are going to be lots of fun.
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