Currently The Carols of Christmas By Various Artists see related

Haiku Christmas 2008

through the Afghan fringe

tip of a gray velvet ear

and kitten’s whiskers

Christmas tree glowing

amid boxes and paper

the lovely girl reads

homebound family

snow changes everything

peace is the best gift

Currently Reading To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Perennial Modern Classics) By Harper Lee see related

"Sam the Doctor" Targets Jews in Smear Campaign

Recently I've received bizarre chain letter e-mails:  One was sent to try to persuade folks that "illegal aliens" were going to be stealing away their social security.  The other was designed to persuade Jews that Obama posed a threat to them.  Both were propaganda campaigns that rhetoricians would call "appeals to fear" and both were filled with falsehoods. 

When I receive such stuff, I feel compelled to respond.  I fear that this does not make me popular and may make me lose friends. 

This is the second time this petition--to persuade Congress not to vote for a bill that would grant "illegal aliens" the right to collect social security--was sent to me; the first time was months ago.  As far as I can tell, there has never been any such bill before Congress.  Here's what I wrote to the friend who sent it to me:

This e-mail petition has been floating around from time to time, but it's filled with errors.  First of all, illegal aliens who somehow have managed to get jobs in this country probably HAVE been contributing to social security, taxes, etc, even though they have no chance of ever recovering anything they contribute.  In essence, most of us who happened to be born here--through no particular effort of our own besides pushing through the birth canal--should be thanking these underpaid and downtrodden workers for contributing to our retirement fund.  Most of them deserve our respect. 

 

This petition is designed to be derisive. It's easier to stomp on the poor people below us in the hierarchy than it is to deal with those above us.

 

If you send around a petition that says no golden parachutes for the wealthy who are walking away with our pension funds, I would be more inclined to sign it. 

concerned about allegations widely circulating on the  Internet  about ... Barak [sic] Obama with claims that he was a closet terrorist sympathizer, raised by a fundamental Islamist,  educated in radical Islamic Wahibism, a cohort and confidant of Lou  Farrakhan, a disciple of racist Jeremiah Wright, a true Muslim  masquerading as a Christian convert; that he refused to salute the  American flag, wear a flag pin or say the pledge of allegiance....

How about this issue? Survival! [NB: Note his appeal to fear]
Our history as a people has  taught us quite clearly, and as recently as 70  years ago, that  complacency and comfort in what is viewed as an enlightened  society  with a "temporary" politically persuasive candidate with strong  oratory skills can be a very dangerous mistake.  [Note his comparison of Obama to Hitler.]

This time my spouse sent a careful letter to his aunt, taking apart "Sam the Doctor's" smears.  Me?  I sent it on to my local news editor. 

Hopefully "Sam the Doctor" will get the come-uppance he deserves in the media. 

And if "Sam the Doctor" gets outed in the media?  Remember that you read it hear first.  That's my unabashed plug to get more readers, which in turn will make me write more. 

Currently Watching Dexter - The Complete Second Season By Michael C. Hall see related

Vampires and vegetarians

My daughter,  like most girls her age, has become enthralled with the Stephanie Meyers series of books about a teenage girl who falls in love with a vampire, sometimes referred to as the Twlight Saga.  If you are one of the few people who has missed this cultural phenomenon, let me just say that the books are primarily set in Forks, Washington, a woebegone town in the midst of the Olympic Peninsula rain forest. 

This book phenomenon will turn up in cinema in November, and I quite expect I will be attending a midnight showing with my kiddo and her buddy.  I’ve decided to listen to these books on tape because knowing what your daughter is reading gives me a chance to be part of the discussion.  They are, after all, her first romance books, and they provide an avenue to discuss the pitfalls of teenage love and lust.  I recall a similar phenomenon when I was about her age, rushing home after school to watch Dark Shadows, a fairly cheesy soap opera with a very enticing vampire.  

I’ve managed to get through two of the books thus far, and they’re not bad really.  I am troubled that the Native American kids from La Push are characterized as a gang of werewolves, one of the enemies of the family of vampires, but one with whom there is a treaty.  Personally I’m hoping that the protagonist will end up with the very tall werewolf, but she seems to just want to be friends with him and take advantage of his good will toward her.  Lots of stuff for discussion there.

And while she’s immersed in these books, tomes which she is reading voraciously, I have also been watching the second season of Dexter, the serial killer who works as a forensic blood spatter specialist, one who kills only serial killers who seem to be beyond the pale of the law.  That I am both a vegetarian and a fan of such dark comedy amuses me.  I suppose that Dexter intrigues me because the layers of irony are well written.  Frankly, the most graphic violence comes at the beginning of each episode, during  Dexter’s preparation for the workday, as he cuts into blood oranges, sizzles meat and eggs in a frying pan, flosses his teeth, pulls an opaque tee-shirt over his face.  Is Dexter a monster or a “dark defender?”  There’s much to explore in this series about addiction, family and office politics, the nature of good and evil. 

Today I attended the “Flock and Fiber Show” in Canby, Oregon, where I met a woman whose favorite sheep is named Pinto Bean.  Pinto Bean has provided the fiber for many sweaters, but now she is becoming old and arthritic.  Soon she will become meat.  Since I am a vegetarian who eats a fair number of pinto beans in the search for protein, I find it incredibly ironic that this Pinto Bean will become meat. 

Last night’s dreams were detailed family tales, centered around a minister’s large family, which seemed to be incredibly angelic and loving.  However, when the mother and father were away at church services, the teenage sons delved into discussions about the nature of the sacred and the profane, as inextricably linked as the library and the plumbing. 

What do I make of Pinto Bean’s impending demise? I’m glad that she has received much love from the friends who will soon eat her.  I’m glad that I have the privilege to stick with legumes. 

Currently Listening Gershwin: Rhapsody; American in Paris see related

The Accidental Pilgrim

I distinctly remember meeting such a woman when I lived in London for ten weeks in 1988.  She was appalled to discover that the McDonald’s menu in London did not have the identical items that were on the menu in her hometown.  On the other hand, I was appalled that anyone would go to another country and choose to eat at McDonald’s, although honesty forces me to admit that I have done so myself upon occasion. 

During the past summer my family engaged on a home exchange in Paris; admittedly this was a way of having a home away from home, but we chose to do so in order to immerse ourselves in the culture more than tourists usually do.  We exchanged our 90-year-old house for a modern flat near Gennevilliers and Saint Denis, suburbs of Paris where most of the people on the street seem to be of African or Middle Eastern descent—unlike the very white Portland where we live.  Still, the fact that we even noticed this meant that we were, indeed, tourists. 

There were many things about the exchange that made our visit as comfortable as traveling by armchair: a modern kitchen, laundry facilities, a van at our disposal, sweet kitties to share our beds.  We did take many traditional tourist excursions.  Joe planned our activities to balance our individual interests. For example, he took our daughter to EuroDisney on one of my fibromyalgia rest days.  He earned my gratitude and praise for that particular undertaking, especially since he rode the roller coasters with her, despite his terror of heights and his phobia of crowds. 

Owing to my love of stained glass, Joe planned an excursion to the gothic cathedral at Chartres.  Ignorant of the history of Chartres before we went to France, I was simply seeking eye candy. 

After trudging up the hill from the parking lot, pushing my trustee walker over the cobble stones, I was initially unimpressed with the cathedral.  The entrance was covered with scaffolding, with wooden planks across puddles and beggars at the door.  Once inside, the first thing I noticed was the gift shop, while my daughter spotted machines that could turn a Euro coin into a pressed souvenir. Then she became a bit of a beggar herself, asking for a Euro to purchase a candle.  I indulged her request, expecting it would soon become flattened and impressed with an image of the cathedral. 

But a minute later she returned, with a candle in hand, wondering what she was supposed to do with it. I told her the idea was to say a prayer and place the candle with the others.  Even though we have not raised her to be a religious child, this was not entirely unfamiliar to her; she gives a donation and asks for blessings before the statue of Kwan Yin at the tea shop in Portland’s Chinese Garden.  When she asked me what she should pray for, I suggested that she say a prayer for her birth mother.  I also asked her to say a prayer for my sister (who is fighting cancer) on my behalf.  Two prayers for the price of one candle?  My frugality indicates my sense of that candle as a souvenir rather than an offering.  After all we were visiting Chartres as a family of tourists rather than believers.

We began to make our way around the cathedral at different speeds.  While I focused on the stained glass, Joe and AmyBea began to examine the friezes of Biblical stories. Later I learned that he had explained that these panels were important for explaining the scriptures to the illiterate masses centuries ago, a point that I had not considered.  Sometimes a Jewish husband is just what you need to get a better sense of Christianity. 

These friezes were interesting for me as well.  In fact I was finding the stained glass to be somewhat disappointing, perhaps because guidebooks had set me up to expect something much more spectacular than other cathedrals I had visited. To the trained eye, this is probably true. However, I was tired, ignorant, amd cranky from pushing my walker over uneven surfaces, feeling frustrated that I could not keep up with my husband and daughter. 

As I made my noisy walker way around the cathedral, I was entirely unprepared for the vision of the Madonna and child that I came upon. 

She is known as the Black Madonna, and there is a small area cordoned off around her, with low seats for those who wish to sit before her in prayer.  I did not want to disturb the worshippers, so I simply sat on my walker’s bench outside the small chapel, hoping to study this figure a bit further.  Suddenly I found myself weeping, great tears flowing down my face, my heart crying out, “Please make me a better mother” repeatedly. 

I have no idea how long I sat there, long enough to watch true worshippers arrive and leave. And then somehow I was reunited with Joe and AmyBea as we made our way towards the exit.  I wanted now to stop at the gift shop, searching for a postcard to remember this experience, although I doubt it is one I will ever forget.  It felt like, well, a watershed, in my life, although I cannot tell you what it means. I do not believe that I will become a religious person because of it, although I did find myself contemplating the purchase of prayer beads.  Certainly something in me opened up in a way that I had not expected.

Once we were outside the cathedral, we came upon a black priest, with an African accent.  Actually AmyBea was so busy examining her smashed coin souvenir that she nearly walked right into him. I found myself thinking it likely that, unlike us, he had come to this place as a kind of pilgrimage.  Although I had arrived as a tourist, I left a bit more like a pilgrim than I ever could have imagined. 

Joe and AmyBea hoped to walk around the exterior perimeter of the cathedral to discuss gargoyles and flying buttresses.   I decided to plop myself down outside a café across the street, to have a glass of wine and to write a postcard. While sitting there, I looked up and noticed that there were statues encircling the cathedral, high above the street level.  I assumed they were saints, although I am entirely unfamiliar with the canon of saints.  Although they differed from one another in size and stature, the five figures directly above me all had walking sticks.  I imagined that they too had been pilgrims who had made the trip to Chartres despite the physical difficulties that their walking sticks denoted.  Perhaps, I thought, if one could be a good enough to be a saint, even with physical limitations, then perhaps there was a chance for me to be a good mother, at least a better one than I had imagined possible earlier that day. 

A few weeks later, as I described this experience to my Catholic cousins, I told them that I had seen five saints with walking sticks, failing to explain that they were statues.  Probably because this tale was coming from the family member known for telling ghost stories at family gatherings, they thought I had had a vision. In all its stone reality, this experience was more like a recognition rather than a vision; it feels like a small miracle nonetheless.  Many centuries ago, someone decided to arrange those statues in a particular order.  It is hard to imagine that he could have known that one day far in the future, a woman would sit in a café across the street, see five saints with walking sticks, and experience an epiphany. 

Rites of Passage at Timothy Lake

For the past six or seven years, we have joined a very special group of families on a camping trip at Timothy Lake, a glorious spot on the eastern slope of Mount Hood.  Our families have a few things in common:  We all have daughters born in China, roughly the same age, 12-13, some from the same orphanage, and at one time most of our girls studied Chinese with Jennie Lee.  We see a couple of these families outside of the camping trip, but others only once a year. 

This three-day camping trip has become filled with traditions: 

For example, there's always one potluck night, when each family tends to prepare the same dish: Our family makes macaroni and cheese plus a vegetarian curry garbanzo/rice dish; the Goods bring a berry dessert; the Lifton-Wong family barbecues salmon if I remember currectly (or perhaps they bring the potstickers); the Lloyd-Stanglands bring a fantastic Greek salad that I dream about all year.  (Other families include the Robichauds, the Hansens, the Hoppe-LaFleurs.)  Another tradition is the roving breakfast, with a gang of girls tromping around from one campstove to another, chomping on bacon here, pancakes there, and variously flavored ramen noodles at various stops along the way. 

On Saturday mornings, a group of moms--Connie, Barb, Deb and Beverly--trek the entire circumference of the lake, while the rest of the parents hang out by the lake, watching the girls cavort in the water. On Sunday mornings there is always a rock-skipping contest, with the teams being the Americans vs. the Chinese--although who ends up on each team is entirely random, no longer based on birthplace.

This year the oldest girl, Jessie, turned 13, and we have begun the newest tradition: the rite-of-passage bead ceremony.  Each girl or family presents the rite-of-passage girl with a bead and a word that describes the message they want her to take forth, and the girl creates a bracelet or necklace to remember this rite.  Jessie showed her maturity as she received each carefully chosen bead and message in turn, and then she asked us to tell ghost stories around the campfire. David and Steve have been rehearsing ghost stories for many years while teaching elementary and middle school.  Someone began a ghost-story-stream with a single sentence, followed by another sentence by anyone who felt inspired to add a line.  And so it went until we were all rollicking around the crackling campfire.  (Jessie asked me to write about the experience on my blog, so this one is for you Jessie.)

These important traditions hold us together, give us a common identity.  Most of the girls will tell you that the Timothy Lake camping trip is their favorite event in the year, even surpassing Christmas, and most of the parents would agree.  And that's saying a lot, given that camping is tough on the bodies of parents in the 50-60 age group.

Over the years, individuals have taken on particular responsibilities:  Beverly organizes booking the campsite; Steve makes sure we have a campfire at the crack of dawn and makes an ice run on Saturday; David and Bob are in charge of boating equipment; Joe and Ray are strong swimmers who serve as lifeguards if necessary. 

Some years there are families who can only stay one night.  Two years ago--the year when our exchange student arrived from China on the first night of the campout--our family thought we would not make it.  But I couldn't stand the thought that we were missing out, so I dragged my family members out of our Portland beds at 4:00 am, bundled them into the van with cereal bars and the promise of a pit-stop at McDonalds.  That morning we watched the sun rise over the pink glaciers of Mount Hood. To everyone's surprise we arrived at the campground before some of the overnight campers had even crawled out of their sleeping bags.  That year the trip fell in August, and the air was thick with butterflies.

This year the trip fell in August once again.  Since Joe was going to be in Iceland during the campout, and since I am no longer strong or agile, AmyBea and I wondered whether we would be able to pull it off at all.  Without Joe to pack up the van, set up the tent, cook most of our meals, I came up with the plan that the two of us would simply sleep in the van, without a tent.  I reckoned that it would be toasty warm, so we packed only the air mattress and a couple of blankets.  This turned out to be a mistake; vans are made of metal, which chills more quickly than the ground does.  AmyBea and I were shivering critters on Saturday morning, grateful for Steve's crackling campfire, and I was especially grateful for Diane's strong coffee. 

A few families were planning to leave on Saturday afternoon, and Barb and Steve offered to loan us their sleeping bags for the night but, as luck would have it, we didn't need them after all.

Jessie's family organized a lakeside hot dog barbecue early on Saturday afternoon.  The girls and walkers were famished.  Indeed, AmyBea ate three hot dogs, and for a moment I thought she might have four.  A few minutes later, after the three departing families had started to pack up, Kendall decided to practice for the next day's stone-skipping contest, but her shot went astray. Kendall is extremely strong, as tall as her Mom although she's only 12, and an expert at Taekwondo.  So when that misplaced stone hit AmyBea's eye, it struck with remarkable strength.  AmyBea cried out immediately.  It took the watching parents a few moments to figure out what had happened, but when I saw AmyBea's bloody eye, I knew that this was serious.

Fortunately, Ray Stangland, an ER physician, quickly came to check her out--with the aid of Diane's reading glasses.  He diagnosed a hyphema, sometimes referred to as a bruised eyeball, and calmly helped me determine that we needed to get AmyBea to an emergency room.  Everyone, especially Diane and Kendall, helped pitch our stuff into the back of the van.  Ray told AmyBea that she needed to keep her eye closed during the trip.  He joked with AmyBea about not eating any more hot dogs until we got to the ER, telling her that it was her job to keep me awake on the long drive. I realized that he was giving me hints to watch for signs of a concussion, and I'm really glad he did. 

Thus began our two-hour, 80-mph drive to OHSU--screeching around mountain curves, with flashing lights warning other drivers that we were coming.  Since AmyBea didn't have her eyes open, and she was rather spaced out anyway, she was oblivious to our speed and flashers.  I half hoped we would be stopped by a traffic patrol, whom I intended to ask for an escort, but none appeared.  I tried to keep myself calm and keep tabs on AmyBea by giving her words to spell, a favorite mother-daughter bedtime game from a few years back.  She had trouble spelling many words that she has known for years, and at one point she blacked out for a few seconds.  I was absolutely terrified on the inside, trying not to think about my nephew who lost an eye in a similar accident (at the same age) some years ago.  I tried to copy Ray's reassuring demeanor while driving fast, negotiating curves and traffic, thinking of spelling words.   That I succeeded, even though AmyBea can usually see right through me, tells me that this was the acting performance of my lifetime, one that I do not hope to repeat. 

When we arrived at the ER, AmyBea was still having a hard time staying awake.  A little while later the three hot dogs made an unfortunate reappearance.  Night began to fall as we waited for the resident in ophthalmology, who was in surgery, and I could think of no more spelling words.  She blacked out a second time, and we invoked the help of her best friend, Zoey, via cell phone, to keep her awake. After the ER physician witnessed the vomiting and black-out, he sent her for a CAT scan to rule out an intracranial bleed. 

The CAT scan gave me the opportunity to call Joe, awakening him in the middle of the Icelandic night.  What a horrific phone call to make and receive!  I finally fell apart, crying at length, but I managed to get the tears out of my voice when they brought AmyBea back the room.  Once the CAT scan was read as clear, the ER physician said it was okay to turn out the light and let AmyBea sleep while we continued to wait for the ophthalmologist. I was exhausted, my adrenaline spent, but I could not really rest. 

Dr. Rao, the ophthalmologist arrived around midnight.  A wonderfully calm and reassuring young man, he examined AmyBea at length to make sure that there was no additional bleeding within her eye ball that would damage the optic nerve.  Finally he patched her eye and wrote prescriptions for eyedrops.  He told us that she needed to rest, reclining at a 30-degree angle for the next few days.  In the wee hours of Sunday morning, he sent us home, assuring me that he expected AmyBea's eye to recover completely.   

As I fell asleep, I started to think about next year's gathering at Timothy Lake.  We will be there, for sure.  After all, AmyBea will be turning 13, and I have already chosen the words I want to pass on to some of the other 13 year olds.  Even before the unfortunate stone incident, I had already chosen "strength" as my word for Kendall.  As for AmyBea, I have many words for her--intrepid and forgiving are just two.  It seems to me that she has already survived many important rites of passage.  And, I suppose, so have I.

Perhaps I'll suggest to the group that stone-skipping is one tradition that we should reconsider. 

The above photo of AmyBea was taken about a week after the stone incident, by our houseguest, Anna Mair, a photographer who is currently living in Oman.  Anna has entitled this photo, "Intensity."  That would be another good word to give AmyBea next year. Thank you, Anna, for the photo and for getting me started on xanga!