Pecha Kucha San Antonio at the Pearl Stables

Tonight, I joined Bill and Pam and Alison for my first Pecha Kucha.  It started an hour later than I expected so I didn't stay for the whole event--but I'll plan ahead not to miss any of the speakers next time.

There were eight speakers, and each had 20 slides, each on the screen for 20 seconds.  The stables were packed and they had to turn people away--that's how popular it has become in six years.

Anyone can apply to speak about any subject they are passionate about.  The term pechakucha is Japanese for "chit chat"--an event started in Japan for creative professionals so share projects and ideas.

San Antonio is one of 855 cites around the world that hosts this event--with wine and snacks from several eateries at the Pearl.

For San Antonio creatives who might want to participate in future events, check out their website: pechakucha.org/cities/San Antonio.

Pam, Bill, and Alison

Alison and I with the bumper stickers
Pam gave us

eggs

Here's a blog for you foodies and writers:

http://www.poormansfeast.com/archives/eggs-sustenance-maternal.html?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=On+Eggs%2C+Sustenance%2C+and+the+Maternal%3A+...&utm_source=YMLP&utm_term=...

Good report

The day my lively, vivacious, 91-going-on-sixty-year-old mama leaves is never a perky day, so I was predisposed to grumpiness during Hour 2 at the oncologist's clinic today--even though the news was excellent.  No malignancy!  (To top off that good news  later in the day, I got a call from last week's two skin biopsies--both benign.)

So I should be reporting just that, period, with gratitude (which I do feel big time!) but I am going to add some grump along with gratitude. Should an appointment made six months in advance start two hours late?

I spent Hour 1 in the waiting room with a roomful of gloomy women and bored-looking husbands, no one talking or holding hands.  A silent TV played clips from last night's Oscars, but no one was watching.  It was eerie, but that's what cancer doctors' waiting rooms always must feel like, a bunch of random patients like ourselves considering our mortality.  

Hour 2 was spent in the cold exam room wearing a plastic gown. By the time I got the good news, I was so disgruntled that I left knowing that would be my last time in the office of the premier breast doctor in the land--according to the posters and articles plastered all over the room and hallways.

I wondered what I had been doing a year ago when one single cell divided into two or three--walking with Elena?  talking with a friend?  making dinner?  We're all busy minding our lives when suddenly something happens out of the blue that can change everything.

I'm one of the lucky ones.  The gift shop sells mostly snacks and cancer hair scarves. Had my story gone another way, I could have been buying a new scarf instead of grumbling over a late doctor!  

It's SO sad, taking Carlene back to the airport, which I did at 5:00 this morning, she rolling her purple suitcase and walking like a sixty-year-old.  Up since 2, I'm canceling everything today but a trip to the oncologist to mark the one-year-anniversary since my tiny surgery.

Mike has some medical tests this morning at the same time, so I called to wish him well on his on the way home.

I have concluded that movement, diet and living by the truth as best we can are the three pillars of good health, and he agreed.  He's been working out diligently at the gym as I have, and we're both feeling great most days, so I don't expect any bad news on either front.  Just yesterday he said he was having a James Brown day again.

My house seems too empty and lonesome at the moment to do anything else but go back to bed for a couple of hours, then return to my workouts tomorrow.

Carlene and I had another great visit and she loved spending time with some of my friends--a trip to Castroville for lunch with Joy, Charlotte's birthday party at Liberty Bar, and drop in visits from Pam, Kate and Freda.  As we were saying goodbye to Will, Veronica and Elena last night, Elena yelled to Nana, "Hugs and kisses to take back to Georgia from me!"

Veronica was trying to get some four-generation photographs and Elena kept making silly faces.

"Please just one nice smile!" her parents kept saying.

Finally, exasperated, one of them said, "There will be consequences if you don't behave."

Without missing a beat, like a buyer weighing the worthiness of her purchase, she asked, "What will they be?"

Since no one could come up with any, she continued with her faces.  Apparently, it would take a pretty bit consequence to alter her creative expression for the camera!

Carlene's Last Night in Texas for now

Though I'm campaigning for her to come back in April.....

We had a delicious dinner at Cappy's to cap off a wonderful visit:

The chairs we painted this week

Friday in Castroville

High 80s, perfect weather for a drive to Castroville to meet Joy for lunch--after going to Qigong, and posing first for Carlene.

Lunch at the Castroville Cafe

Bra strap showing and all

Carlene and Joy

Charlotte's Birthday

I forgot to take pictures!  But what a delicious and lively lunch we had--Gerlinde, Charlotte, Kate, Janet, Carlene and I--at the Liberty Bar!

Carlene and I got delicious pot roast and everyone else had pasta.  The best thing of all was coconut custard--yummy!

Carlene convinced me to take my new old chairs, now painted yellow, to Lee to cover and staple the seats in, so we did that early this morning.  Now I just have to wax the chairs and they are ready to go!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, CHARLOTTE!

A day at a time....

Carlene and I were going to go to Fredricksburg yesterday but we got busy doing chairs and forgot to go.  I painted them yellow while she unstapled all the seats for covering, then we went to Pottery Barn to check out neutral rugs.

I woke up at 3:15 as usual and was going to go get a coke and I heard a voice from her bedroom, "Are you going without me?"

So there we were driving along Austin Highway and she said, "Coffee is so good at this hour!  Most people think you have to wake up first to have coffee!"

She's cleaning out her iPad and I'm writing this, then going back to bed with a book Freda loaned me--a conversation about Joy by Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama.

Maybe we'll do a road trip today, maybe not.  We'll wait til the sun comes up to decide.

Sunday and Monday

Yesterday, Will and family spent the afternoon and evening with us--and brought us farm-fresh eggs from their chickens:

Before they arrived, we went to Katherine Trenchard's art exhibit by Woodlawn Lake.  Here's Carlene in her beautiful old house.  She does intricate paper cuttings.  If you didn't make it this year, I recommend trying to see her work at next year's walk.

During the night, we were all awake half the night due to a powerful storm.  We got heavy wind and rain, but two miles away a tornado struck down at Broadway and Nottingham, Charlotte's condo getting most of the damage. At this point, no one can get in or out, but Charlotte, thankfully, is in Dallas and missed it.  Large air conditioning units flew into the windows of some apartments, but no one was hurt as far as I know.

Today, after NIA, I had two biopsies on my back, then we caught up from some of last night's missed sleep and watched Mr. Church.  Sitting on the porch later, we had some visitors--Crystal and Tequila (or Tiki) who were going door to door collecting donations for a project to help young single mothers.  We had so much fun talking to them.  They are lively young women with stories to tell--living in shelters and abuse; they are part of this project as a way to contribute to their families and help them move into careers that will make them better able to provide for their children.

Saturday

We packed yesterday so full that we were both in bed by 8:00 last night.

While I was doing Qi-Gong with Renae, Carlene walked around the parking lot at Gold's; we went to the farmer's market, then to see Alison's exhibit at the Off and On Fredricksburg show.  After chalupas,  I chalk-painted two chairs yellow on the porch--a beautiful spring day!

Then, Veronica and the kids and Pam came over for a visit and Carlene and Veronica put together my new sewing table with help from Elena.  Nathan helped me make cornbread and strawberry short cake.

Carlene's Arrival

Carlene arrived this morning right on time, then we went to Artisan's Alley to get some chalk paint and had a delicious brunch at The Bread Box.

When someone at the Shoppe asked Carlene about her good health, she told her she eats an orange every day!  Who knew???

We stopped by Leila's for me to get a haircut.  I could see tears in Leila's eyes when she told us her mother called from Iran to say, "I wonder if I will ever get to see you again."

A gratitude present

It wasn't my birthday, or Thanksgiving, or any other special occasion--so I was surprised to drive up and see a package on my porch yesterday.

When I opened it, because of all the fragrances inside, I'd have known who sent it without a return address.

Jocelyn, who sent it,  called it a gratitude present.  Inside the box were several beautifully scented candles, a jigsaw puzzle, a box of Nabisco Sugar Wafers, and bath bombs!

Bath bombs are white balls, a little smaller than baseballs.  When you dissolve them in your bath, you want to stay in the tub all day.

I'd like to propose following her lead and starting a new tradition.  Instead of giving presents on special calendar dates, we should do what she did and send gratitude presents to each other, whenever we feel so inspired.

It can really make somebody's day to get a present out of the blue!  Mine was like a party in a box!

Thank you, Jocelyn!

Mike said something last week that keeps echoing in my mind: "Learning love and freedom is something we have to practice every day."

Someone else said this week, "Happiness is as much about letting go as taking in."

Holding on isn't the best way to happiness.  If it were, we'd be happy hoarders.  If it were, we'd be saying, with great joy, "I just gained 30 pounds!" Letting go of things, giving them to someone whose time it is to have them, releasing ideas and expectations, even some of our cherished opinions from time to time--these seem to bring more happiness than holding on.

When a stranger reached into my wallet and took $450 last week, I felt shocked, but why should I be?  Robberies happen every day; I've just been lucky enough so far not to have to know this side of someone else's desperation and need.  

After hours of trying to figure out how it may have happened, who it could have been, lying awake almost all night, I woke up with a sense of peace about it.

I'm like a dog with a bone with any story.  I want to know all the particulars. I want to understand how the parts fit together.  I'm consumed with a desire to know the truth, even if it's not the one I wanted.

I do know this: love and freedom ask us all to give up on perfection and to let go of our ideas of how another person (and ourselves) should be. Sometimes the practice of love and freedom requires intentional demolition of certain beliefs about "should."

If you love the butterfly, you have to let it go.  If it comes back to you, it was yours all the time. 

When Giving Is All We Have 

Alberto Ríos, 1952

                                              One river gives
                                              Its journey to the next.

We give because someone gave to us.
We give because nobody gave to us.

We give because giving has changed us.
We give because giving could have changed us.

We have been better for it,
We have been wounded by it—

Giving has many faces: It is loud and quiet,
Big, though small, diamond in wood-nails.

Its story is old, the plot worn and the pages too,
But we read this book, anyway, over and again:

Giving is, first and every time, hand to hand,
Mine to yours, yours to mine.

You gave me blue and I gave you yellow.
Together we are simple green. You gave me

What you did not have, and I gave you
What I had to give—together, we made

Something greater from the difference.

Thursday

What a beautiful Thursday in San Antonio!  62 degrees and sunshine.

Carlene is packing for her Texas trip, summer clothes mostly in her new purple suitcase.  I wonder what it was like to travel back in the days of trunks.

Mine arrived today--thanks to Mike's excellent packing--in perfect condition, along with a key to it in a sparkly little blue change purse and another valentine card.  It's been a really good week, and is topped off with unwrapping the trunk and Angela coming this afternoon to clean my messy house.

I got a mostly good report from the doc this morning, all but having pre-diabetes, which I'll conquer with a low-carb diet, no breads, no pasta, no cakes or desserts.  As Bonnie's friend's father said, "If it tastes good, spit it out."

Juana Ines, a series based on a true story

In this excellent Netflix original series, set in late 17th century, the story begins with the expulsion of a beautiful, brilliant, and spunky young woman (Juana Ines) from her uncle's home.  She is sent to court to win the favor of the viceroy and the vicereine--just as the religious leaders are conducting an inquisition and burning all books not approved by the church.

Self-educated, Juana Ines is as well-read as the university-educated men charged with questioning her for her suitability as tutor to the viceroy's daughter. Before being quizzed rigorously by those men, however, she is warned that women "should remain ignorant for the better service to their husbands."

The monarch's wife had what we'd now call bipolar disorder--though there was no name for that in the 1600s.  She could go from giddy to rage in seconds.

She was also a lesbian, but there was apparently no name for that either: one of her maids said she "had the  devil between her legs."  She falls in love with Juana Ines, a "bastard child" who can marry no man because her illegitimacy makes her ineligible in the eyes of the church.

This is a fascinating story about the extreme control of women by the church fathers and the quest of one woman to live a life of an enlightened mind.  Convents provided the only real refuge for women like Juana Ines--but they, of course, had their own set of rules and powerful control.


The story is set in New Spain--and I had to check out Wikipedia to find out more:

New Spain (Spanish: Nueva España) was a colonial territory of the Spanish Empire, in the New World north of the Isthmus of Panama. It was established following the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire in 1521, and following additional conquests, it was made a viceroyalty in 1535. The first of four viceroyalties Spain created in the Americas, it comprised Mexico, Central America, much of the Southwestern and Central United States, and Spanish Florida as well as the Philippines, Guam, Mariana and Caroline Islands.

After 1535 the colony was governed by the Viceroy of New Spain, an appointed minister of the King of Spain, who ruled as monarch over the colony. The capital of New Spain was Mexico City.

New Spain lost parts of its territory to other European powers and independence, but the core area remained under Spanish control until 1821, when it achieved independence as the Mexican Empire— when the latter dissolved, it became modern Mexico and Central America

I woke up this morning thinking about Victoria's Dream-sickle painting--which then reminded me of driving to and from Perry (where my grandparents lived) every week, 30 miles away.  If Bob and I could stay awake for the who-o-o-le long 20-minutes to Hawkinsville on a Sunday night, we could get a Dream-sickle or a chocolate-all-the-way-through at a service station there.  (They weren't called gas stations, but service stations, and that they were.  You sat in your car while a man came out and filled 'er up and washed your windshield.)

A Dream-sickle was half orange sherbet, half vanilla ice cream.  I wonder what they are called in Panama, Victoria?  Or Mexico?  Or Southside San Antonio?

What we called snow cones in Georgia are called raspas here in San Antonio--but these are more delicious.  The ice is shaved, for one thing, and the liquid is fruitier in the best places.  A mango raspa is SO good!

The Dairy Queen was our first fast-food place in Cochran, years before McDonalds.  That's when mass-produced signs started taking over.  Before that, every store had its own sign, usually handmade or with letters cut from wood.

What a contrast to the advertising that fills my inbox every morning: "Hurry!"  "Only one more day!" "Don't miss a thing!" I heard on NPR yesterday that there are actually little cameras in the stores that can detect whether we are smiling or not when we look at a particular brand of diapers or lotion or whatever--then (if you have the app), they will instantly send you a discount coupon for the product that made you smile!

Before meeting Phoebe at the gym, I think I'll go back to bed and dream of sickles.

Later today, I'll find out from Victoria what food truck made those amazing fruit/vegetable/candy foods last night and I'll let you know....

Victoria Suescum's Art Show at Blue Star

Today was such a fun day!

I had a delicious lunch with Kate and Charlotte at Thai Dee, a Valentines treat from Kate. Basil noodles, soup and egg rolls  with two of your best friends--that's a star on top of the heart.

After my nap and package-opening, I went to Victoria's art show at the Blue Star.  Her paintings are like the signage you see in Mexico and other Latin American countries, hand-painted, no two alike. Such a delightful contrast to the mass-produced signs we see every day, such stories embedded and imagined in them!

(Victoria is from Panama and has always been fascinated by signs painted on wood--advertising corn on the cob, snow cones, ice cream, fruit cups, hair salons, and other businesses.)   I love her work, and these are some of my favorites:

The food was too pretty to eat until I couldn't resist any longer.  It was made by a local food truck and combined cucumbers, pineapple, strawberries and candies, with some kind of yummy sauce over it all.  Who'd have thought of combining gummy candies with fruits and vegetables?  Brilliant!

One of the really special features of the night were Tarot readings using cards Victoria had made of her paintings!  I had mine read by my friend Mary Bequet and it was  inspiring and validating to hear what my three cards had to say.  The tower suggests the past year: many things falling apart.  The justice card represents my present--a time of fairness and balance.  And the final card, the queen, suggests my future.  Mary said it better!

I want to buy a set of these cards--a beautiful way to have Victoria's paintings in miniature right in my hands.

What a lovely way to celebrate Valentines Day, with two of my favorite people on the planet, Victoria and Mary!

Victoria and Mary

On the way home, I stopped by Pam and Alison's and delivered a stack of overalls, a gift to Alison from Mike--and had a glass of wine and got my fork in Pam's pasta, then came home and had some leftover Thai Basil noodles.

P.S. for San Antonio folks:

Remember that On and Off Fredricksburg is happening this weekend--a walkabout arts and crafts show including work by Alison and other local artists.  It's always a fun and colorful show.  Pam's going with Carlene and me, and anyone else is welcome to join us if you like.

Five boxes and a trunk

Yesterday four boxes arrived from Mike--things I'd bought at flea markets along the way on our October trip.  Thirteen states and many memories came spilling out of those boxes when I opened them in Texas!

He spent more to mail them than I'd spent buying them, and each one is a treasure.  A cookie jar from a Pennsylvania flea market on my birthday, seven Mason jars from Maryland, little wooden cats, a green tea pot I'd bought for a dollar on my freezing cold birthday, a painted Mexican chair for a child....  Opening them was like a belated birthday party, me all healed from my fall down the stairs.

Today Box Five arrived, dishes and bowls and overalls for Alison who makes aprons out of them. There were three broken dishes, but still enough to make a super-cool setting of these Italian folk-art dishes I'd forgotten I'd even bought!  I'll use the broken dishes as part of a mosaic.

There are always a few broken things in life, and I figure it's up to me to make something new out of what can be salvaged.

Ironically, the last item in Box Five was a yellow sugar bowl.  (The cream pitcher was either broken or was absent when I bought them in New York.)  When I was choosing wedding gifts fifty years ago, it was a sugar bowl I bought first.  It seemed strangely full circle to end my opening of boxes with a sugar bowl from a man who's genuinely sweet to the core--though he'd hate hearing me say that of him; he'd say I'm blowing his bad boy cover!

Tomorrow one more package will arrive, the best of the trip's finds--a beautiful 1800s trunk I bought with birthday money from Carlene.  I'm all set to decoupage the inside as I did a trunk of Mike's a couple of years ago.

Mike wrote on the valentine card what he always says to me, even now that we are "broken up," the words engraved on his mailbox:  "Mike loves Linda Forever 2007." Once (in the years between our Chapter One and Chapter Two) Carlene and I stopped in Hartwell to say hello to Mike as we were driving back to Georgia from Virginia.  I couldn't resist getting out of the car, even though he wasn't home, and checking to see if the engraving was still there--and it was!

After we met in September of 2007, and after I'd taken a solo road trip to New England, I stopped  to see him on my way home to Texas. He had made welcoming signs all along a stretch of Highway 29 leading to his house, one word on each sign like the old Burma Shave signs. The next morning, he served a beautiful breakfast on the sun porch, along with two mini Reeses and a Diet Coke, flowers, candles, and eggs served on china. Who can resist a man who makes breakfast like that?

I moved in with him that November and stayed until May!

We've been through some rocky times this past year, but the words on his mailbox, he says, will outlast them, just like the countless permanent and beautiful things he's built for me and bought me.  The remodeled casita, the happy deck, a stained glass lamp on the porch, painted walls, so much more. "No matter who what when where," he says, "even if I never see you again, you're my only valentine, the love of my life."

In ways that only the two of us can understand, it's mutual; it's karma; it's a great big beating set of hearts, in spite of ourselves.  I don't know how to engrave (and don't have a mailbox) so I'll just set it in words right here: Linda loves Mike forever, 2017.

My Soul Sister

My daughter (Day Leary) won't mind; I'm posting an email she sent me that made me smile.

Back story:  I had told Day about something that upset me a few days ago, then added that I was heading to the gym for my qigong class, then to make something out of an old guitar.  She wrote:

Your resilience and immediate thought to take care of you by exercising and being creative are inspiring to me… we ain’t just mom and daughter.  We’re soul sisters.

Go sweat your ass off.

That happens to be one of my favorite valentines ever!

I'm not actually likely to sweat my ass off, but what I'm doing in qigong can be accomplished with any size ass.

What these martial arts moves do is ground you in your own energy so that nothing can throw you off for long--you're like the Weeble-Wobbles of my childhood: You wobble but you don't fall down.   You walk into a room and sense negative energy, but you don't let it get all over you. Someone hurts you and you think: "That's about him (or her), not me."  You make a fool out of yourself, but then you get on up and move on.  Stuff like that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLQ0mAKVPmM

So while my 45-year-old daughter is so immersed in mothering, teaching and chairing the English department that she's not likely to read this, I just want to say Daisy is one of my shiniest valentines ever, has been for 45 years.  And if you do read it, Day, I just want to say I LOVE YOU TO THE MOON AND BACK, SOUL SISTER!

Everyone is a Story

The prompt I'm sending everyone in writing group this month is inspired by this beautiful video from one of the creators of Human Postcards.

http://gratefulness.org/resource/everyone-is-a-story-human-postcards-portraits/

How about interviewing a stranger on the street?  Or your mama--as I'm going to do when mine comes on Friday?  Or a child?  Your spouse or best friend?

My writing groups are going to interview people, then bring the actual video or audio tape OR whatever they choose to write about it.

Another site to know about if you want to record, save, and archive your interviews is Story Corps. https://storycorps.org

You can download the free app--then use it to record interviews and conversations on your phone.

All That We Share

Pam has filled up my inbox with inspiration this morning!

http://gratefulness.org/resource/all-that-we-share/

Aimless Love

This poem by Billy Collins comes to me via Pam--from a website called Gratefulness.org.

I love Billy Collins' poetry--and this one is my new favorite Valentine's Day poem:

                                        Aimless Love

This morning as I walked along the lakeshore,
I fell in love with a wren
and later in the day with a mouse
the cat had dropped under the dining room table.

In the shadows of an autumn evening,
I fell for a seamstress
still at her machine in the tailor’s window,
and later for a bowl of broth,
steam rising like smoke from a naval battle.

This is the best kind of love, I thought,
without recompense, without gifts,
or unkind words, without suspicion,
or silence on the telephone.

The love of the chestnut,
the jazz cap and one hand on the wheel.

No lust, no slam of the door –
the love of the miniature orange tree,
the clean white shirt, the hot evening shower,
the highway that cuts across Florida.

No waiting, no huffiness, or rancor –
just a twinge every now and then

for the wren who had built her nest
on a low branch overhanging the water
and for the dead mouse,
still dressed in its light brown suit.

But my heart is always propped up
in a field on its tripod,
ready for the next arrow.

After I carried the mouse by the tail
to a pile of leaves in the woods,
I found myself standing at the bathroom sink
gazing down affectionately at the soap,

so patient and soluble,
so at home in its pale green soap dish.
I could feel myself falling again
as I felt its turning in my wet hands
and caught the scent of lavender and stone.

Happy Valentine's Day, Everybody!

Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.

It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift.

-Mary Oliver


Yesterday five of us writers met over flowers, presents and pink-iced Valentine's cake, all gifts from Sharon.  The Saturday Topo Chicas and the Sunday Writers are merging, and it's going to be a terrific group.  We wrote about Valentine's Day for one thing.

Sharon, the bringer of flowers and cake and presents

We remembered our days of decorating boxes with feathers and glitter and paint, then counting up our valentines from classmates at the end of the day, always hoping that one certain boy in the class would do more than sign his name on the card.  Sometimes we got lucky and he wrote "Love."

I'm remembering all my valentines through the years, starting with first grade boyfriend Jim McCoy.   We made sugar and butter sandwiches on white bread in his kitchen, but we never kissed.

Then there was Mike Parker--the boy I danced with to "I Want To Hold Your Hand" and all the other Beatles songs, the new boy in town who was killer handsome. Unlike Jim--who stayed babyface and sweet always, Mike was a bad boy sort of boyfriend who sent me notes in algebra class and  said "I love you, Beautiful!" whole sentence with an exclamation point at the end. (I can still see his handwriting.)

At 18, I married the man who'd been my valentine all through high school.  Some years he'd stop at the grocery store and pick up a straggly bunch of carnations on Valentine's Day, but mostly not.

We had us one weird marriage--more like a an awkward alliance of two strangers, punctuated with--what else can I call it?--meanness. We could go weeks without speaking a word to each other.  Who were those people? I wonder now.  And why did it take me 28 years to leave? When I see him now--which I do from time to time--it's like seeing someone I knew just a little bit once upon a time.

I'm looking around me tonight at my life and seeing that out of that box of darkness came some of the best gifts of my life.  Day and Will, for starters--and now their children, my precious grandchildren, forever valentines. And San Antonio--incredibly wonderful friends, beautiful city.  What a life of freedom and joy this is!

Some people may take happy for granted, but on Valentines week, I'm grateful to every love and friendship, even a few disasters, that brought me to this place.

Full Moon Friday

I picked up Elena from Pre-K and we had a wonderful swim--imagine, in February!--at Lorraine's.

Thanks to Qigong this morning, I had plenty of energy and the heated pool felt terrific!

After a swim, we had dinner at Bee's, then spent over an hour at Jo Ann's Fabrics--one of Elena's favorite stores.

Janie from Zimbabwe (with a beautiful British accent) taught Elena how to sew on a machine, and we came home with it.  It's a simple self-threading machine with several embroidery stitches and we're going to have so much fun sewing together.

She also bought some yarn and, Nana, she wants you to teach her to crochet when you come next week!  She's making a blanket for her stuffed and real animals. Papi brought them a poodle puppy, bringing the grand total of canines at their house to three--Conway, Skippy, and now Charlie.

Inspiration

I gave myself a present--hiring a personal trainer for six weeks.  It's not about losing weight; it's about being grounded, strong and happy.

And it's working. Today I feel all those things in spades. Renae, my trainer, is teaching me qigong--exactly what I needed and I'd never have imagined myself doing anything related to martial arts.

I'm happily unplugging cable TV.  I've watched enough MSNBC to last the rest of my life, and it gets me all tangled up in the world of politics, a distraction from these beautiful days that no politician can take away.

I want to avoid talking about politics.  It makes me anxious and fearful.  I'll choose things I can do something about but not focus on the negatives.

After my workout, I sat in the car and talked to Phoebe, my new friend and six-doors-away neighbor.  She inspires me, too.  She has macular degeneration and she's only 44--but she's one of the most positive people I've ever met.When she found that she was losing her eyesight, she took a trip around the world and saw all the things she'd always wanted to see.

I'm sure I'll get more inspiration later today when I pick up Elena--who's so excited about coming she wanted to skip school today.

But first--a nap!

Mr. Church

I started watching this movie (Amazon) about midnight, and it's worth staying up til 2 in the morning for!

Mr. Church is hired to cook for a single mother and her daughter for six months.  Anything further would be a spoiler, but I loved it!

Homecoming

At NIA, we dance to "Going Home," the first track on  Cohen's album, Old Ideas:

Going home
Without my burden
Going home
Behind the curtain
Going home
Without this costume
That I wore....

***

"Home" is at the core of human longings--a place of peace, love, and belonging.

For some, home is an imagined afterlife.  "This world is not my home, I'm just a passing through...."   Enslaved and mistreated people must hope that the next world is better than this one.

Imagine the slaves in our country who longed for their homeland. They worked back-breakingly in cotton fields, were beaten, and their babies sold to strangers. They never asked to come here; those who survived the trip arrived in the belly of ships, in chains.  Yet they sang, dreaming of home, their music the seeds of the blues.

Swing Low, Sweet Chariot....Coming For to Carry Me Home....

Imagine all the men, women and children today, living in shelters and refugee camps, longing for their homeland before wars ripped them apart.  Imagine young girls sold into prostitution--by their own parents in some cultures. Imagine soldiers fighting wars in strange lands and prisoners whose incarcerations are too long and who are sometimes not even given fair trials.  Everyone longs for a place of peace and freedom.

***

Simon and Garfunkel's version of home in "Homeward Bound"---

Home where my thought's escaping,
Home where my music's playing,
Home where my love lies waiting
Silently for me.

***

In Frost's poem, "The Death of the Hired Man," Silas says, "Home is where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in."

***

Thomas Wolfe's novel, You Can't Go Home Again, started with a line borrowed from a writer friend, "You know, Tom, you can't go home again."

At the end, Webber says: "You can't go back home to your family, back home to your childhood ... back home to a young man's dreams of glory and of fame ... back home to places in the country, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time – back home to the escapes of Time and Memory."

***

The original Trip To Bountiful is about a woman who wants to return one last time to her hometown of Bountiful.  When she escapes her son and daughter-in-law's control and goes there, it's no longer the Bountiful of her memory.  The house is empty and dilapidated, and no one who made it home is still alive.

***

My move to San Antonio was not a choice, but a consequence of my then-husband's military assignment.  The plan was to live here four years, then return home. A thousand miles from home in Georgia, I got teary every time I heard "Georgia on my Mind."

Ten years ago, when I moved in with Mike in Georgia, I figured he was my reward for doing time in a humorless marriage.  We didn't actually plan it out; we were just having so much fun we rolled into it like we did everything else.

But Georgia, of all places?  After forty years in Texas, I finally got a chance to live there again, something I used to dream of doing.  How ironic, how perfect! I thought--seeing ahead only as far on the night road as I could see with low-beam headlights.

Suffice it to say, it wasn't what it might have been decades before.  Sandwiched between leaving and return were forty years, and my daddy--who'd often said "I'll buy you a house if you move here,"--was no longer there.  My house, writing groups,  Texas friends, and Will were all in San Antonio. My Georgia homecoming welcoming committee--except for Betty, Mike and Carlene--was absent.

In the end, I discovered for myself that I, for one, can't go home again--not Georgia, except to visit.

Georgia is the home of my childhood, beautiful kudzu, sweet tea, peach tree, red-clay, orange and gold leaves in fall Georgia. It's still a poignant and beautiful movie with a soundtrack and a cast of characters that roll over and over in my mind. But when I drove back to Texas in 2007, (after breaking up with Mike the first time), I knew for sure that San Antonio was home for the rest of this lifetime.

Qigong

Pronounced "chi-gong," this new practice I'm learning is a blend Chinese philosophy, medicine, and martial arts.  I'm so enjoying learning it--a flowing set of movements designed to get through the clunkier emotions (fear, worry, grief, etc) and to get to "joy, courage, and confidence."

After doing this for an hour, I feel quite courageous, joyous, and confident!

My teacher told me that her husband is in a nursing home, very ill--but she's focusing on the 29 wonderful years they have had together.  "He's taught me so much," she says. In their way of thinking, we choose how we'll die.  At first, she was angry that he'd chosen a way that causes him so much pain, but she's worked through that to a sense of peace about it. "We've all learned a lot by the way he's choosing to die," she said, "Things we wouldn't have learned if he'd done it another way."

Some people radiate joy, and she's one who does.  The practice of qigong is her way of not letting circumstances or other people dictate what she feels.  It's a way of grounding yourself in your own energy.

I'm inspired!  I found myself thinking--like Sally in the movie (Harry Met Sally) --"I'll have what she's having."

Screaming

Yesterday Janet O. and I had a spontaneous two-hour Thai lunch.  Our temperaments, our politics, and our sensibilities are very similar. We're both conflict-averse, outwardly mild, and slow to anger (at least in the expression thereof).  As we talked, we were angry together, but not at each other.

Afterwards, she invited me to attend a political event, but I was too emptied out from screaming the night before to join a group.

"I have never screamed at anyone in my  life until this year," I told her.  "Not even my children when they were little. I'm not a yeller."

Saturday night I'd had a three-hour phone conversation with Mike in which I screamed, cried, ranted and said mean things--along with some rational and kind things.  It was one of the most healing, cleansing, liberating three hours of my life.

What made it healing, cleansing and liberating was that he (this crazy man, this on-again, off-again mensch)  stayed with me for three hours and listened to every word, every scream, encouraging me to let it all out. He didn't interrupt or say "now, now, calm down," not once.

A year ago, we'd experienced something that devastated us both. For a while we stumbled along the bumpy pot-holed road together, but we ultimately found ourselves at a fork in the road.  He went one way, I went the other.  For months, I've been trying to figure out what happened, walking around in a daze of sadness. On Saturday night, we both finally heard and understood the other's point of view.

As a man, he can't help wanting to fight back when things from the outside hurt him; as this woman that I am, I get a deer-in-the-headlights look on my face and go silent--except for talking about it with my friends and family.  Maybe it's fair to say that men and women have different styles of dealing with conflict?

After I was done screaming, he said, "You're the love of my life.  I love you more than breathing, always will."  That kind of generosity was breathtaking! Anything is better than bottled rage, but it takes a long time to find someone who can "love you more than breathing" even if you yell so loud  the neighbors can hear it.

Twenty years ago, a therapist tried to get me to bash pillows with a baseball bat and scream.  I couldn't do it.  I had nothing against those innocent pillows.

Besides, I've always been scared of anger, afraid that the other person would just chalk me up as a nutcase and leave.  To have someone hold my hands across the miles and listen, without defensiveness or telling me how I "should" feel and still love me?  That was huge!

Who knows where this road will take us?  We're both too battered to know right now, but we love and respect each other, always will.

The soundtrack of our story, however, may be a verse of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah:  "Love is not a victory march, it's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah."

***

Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.

It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift.

-Mary Oliver

Waking up

When asked why her fiction contains so many grotesque characters, Flannery O'Connor said, "To the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost blind you draw large and startling figures."

That line comes to mind every time I see Trump.  Did somebody send him to wake us all up?

From the outset of his campaign, this paternalistic, bullying man has shocked me out of my complacency.   A "large and startling figure," he's a caricature of every patronizing authority figure I've ever known, a reminder of what it felt like, once upon a time, to be disempowered and treated like a child.

When he held up his hand and said, "Don't worry about the tough calls I have to make, I'll take care of it, you don't need to know," every cell of my psyche went into a rage.  Are we back in the days of "Father Knows Best" or what?

Don't tell me what to worry about! I will never trust you to tell us what matters, you whose "prayer" at last week's "prayer breakfast" had to do with some ridiculous reality show.  If I hear you talk about the size of your parts, or your crowds, or your claim that "God stopped the rain" for your pathetic inaugural speech,  I'm going to throw all my kombucha bottles at my TV screen and smash it.  

Trump's brand of narcissism,  along with smallness of vocabulary and heart, along with "alternate facts" and outright lies, could destroy us all if we don't talk back, throw bottles, make signs, and speak back to warped power.  It's not okay for men to decide what women do with their own bodies and minds.

Thank goodness for the scores of writers and people who are saying the same things, way more brilliantly than I am.  Thank goodness for those who resist having the truth framed and finessed by a power monger.  Thank goodness for the thousands of women marching against injustice for themselves and their sisters and brothers on Mother Earth, women who are willing to "crack the world open" with truth.

And yet, had the election gone the other way, would we have woken up?  Or would we have continued to trust the political machine to "take care of things" and tell us "the truth"?  I probably would have continued in complacency and silence.  I'm happy that countless people are speaking back to power in the wrong hands, no matter the size of those hands.

Among my many teachers in the world are Leonard Cohen, Flannery O'Connor, Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, David Whyte, Mary Oliver....The list could fill pages.  David Whyte said, "Anyone or anything that doesn't bring you to life is too small for you."

The stakes are too high to stay small.  The stakes are too high to stay silent. Too high to look the other way, cover our eyes, or pretend that what we're hearing is not outrageous.  A man who disparages immigrants, women, disabled people, and anyone else who "doesn't like him" is way too small to be at the helm of a country.

A Republican congressman who lost his election is speaking out against Trump.  "Why don't your Republican colleagues speak out like you?" an interviewer asked him.  "Because," he said, "They know that Trump can destroy their careers with one Tweet."

In an article in The Sun this month, Krista Bremer wrote, "I am done trusting someone else to get things done.  There is no one wise or compassionate enough to restore my sense of security.  All I can offer now in the face of uncertainty are my attempts to pay attention, to resist complacency, and to find ways to give more and love better."

Subversiveness in the Classroom

I read a book many years ago that shaped my teaching philosophy.  Teaching As A Subversive Activity by Neil Postman tapped into my rebel core.

Among the five classes I was teaching that year at Horace Mann Middle School was one extraordinary class of super-bright 7th graders.  Susie and Brandon, Elisa and John, Lupe and Jorge.  I can still see that class in my mind's eye and can remember many of their names.

It was one of those classes I didn't think of as little kids.  They used to ask me what I was reading and I'd read them paragraphs, even from Teaching as a Subversive Activity.

One of his points was this:  Every thing we do is an answer to an unspoken question.

Another was this:  Teachers should let students see the relevance of what they are learning.

So as I was imbibing that philosophy, I was sharing it with Susie and Brandon and Elisa and all the rest of them.  From that date onward, I never gave them an assignment that one of them didn't pipe up with "What's this assignment going to teach us, Mam?" or "How is this going to make us better writers?"

They made me accountable as a teacher. We all  learned to ask different kinds of questions.  As Postman said, the kinds of questions we ask determine what we learn.

"Befriending...Feelings"

In The Metaphors We Live By--a book by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, the linguist-writers give thousands of examples of metaphors that reflect how we (who use those metaphors every day without even thinking about them) grow to think and feel about whatever we're talking about.  This has always interested me and even more so now that we have publicly-admitted "alternative facts" to confuse our thinking even more.

A metaphor is never an exact way of saying that one thing is like another thing, but they are poetic ways to express likenesses and enrich our way of seeing.  After generations of using the same metaphors, however, they are often assumed to be true without our stopping to think: Is this thing really like this other thing?

For English-major types like me, and for anyone interested in how language shapes and reflects our culture, this book is fascinating.  It makes you notice what you're saying and question assumptions about truth.

Arguing, for example, is a process by which people share conflicting points of view.  We could think of  arguments as a conversational dance, but we don't. Our inherited metaphors in this culture are all war-related:

Your claims are indefensible
He attacked every weak point in my argument.
Her criticisms were right on target.
I demolished his argument.
You disagree?  Okay, shoot!
If you use that strategy, he'll wipe you out.
He shot down all my arguments.

Time is money is another.

You're wasting my time.
This gadget will save you hours.
I don't have the time to give you.
I've invested a lot of time in her.
I lost a lot of time when I got sick.
He's living on borrowed time.

The subject is huge--I'm giving it short shrift--but it's fascinating to look at what we're saying through the lens of metaphor.

When a friend wrote me an email yesterday about "befriending the spectrum of feelings," I thought--yes that would change my life!  To see feelings as worthy of friendship, even the "negative" ones I'd rather hide in the closet, is hugely liberating.

Imagine!  Being friends with not only Happy-Face emotions but sadness, heartbreak, remorse, regret, anger, and anxiety--there's an idea that can change any life.  Imagine saying, "Depression and I had conversation today" or "Grief came to visit this afternoon" or "I'm hanging out with Anger until I can figure out what she has to say."

Befriending is a powerful metaphor! It suggests taking care of, listening to, and being real.