37days My weekly newsletter on living intentionally.
Haiku Book Review My summaries of books I've read recently, written in Haiku. Why not?
movable type My thoughts about diversity, stereotypes, prejudice, inclusion, culture....
The Circle Project Helping organizations explore diversity and inclusion issues through theatre and story. This is the work I have waited my whole life to do.
Mr Brilliant Blogs!
Ptak Science Books Mr Brilliant is one smart man. Hence the name. And he blogs now about all manner of fascinating stuff! Run, go, get brilliant, won't you?
And so I was delighted to be introduced to the work of Ruth Kaiser who is on a mission to help people find smiles in their days. She's collecting photos from folks all over the world who are finding smiles. These photos are all from her. Go, look at her site. I imagine you'll find yourself smiling, as I did. Submit your own photos there.
Perfect lasagne (vegetarian, not vegan). From one of my favorite food blogs. Perfect. Every. Time. And most importantly: EASY. QUICK. You know what makes it perfect? The nutmeg. And the eating part.
I don't get what the big deal is. I put my pants on like this every morning.
I'm speaking at a fantastic, unique, virtual retreat hosted by Jennifer Louden the weekend of February 12-14 (I'll open the retreat at 5pm Pacific/8pm Eastern on Friday, February 12th, with a session called Step into Magic: Reclaiming the extraordinary in each gracefully simple, amazingly mundane, and fantastically ordinary day. You can stay in your pajamas for a whole weekend and participate from where you are. Registration provides you with access to the recordings if you can't be there live. Come! Get renewed with a whole host of incredible sessions--all from your living room. The price goes up $50 tomorrow, so take a look now and join us!
I don't really do snow. Ask my family. It snows, I stay inside by a DeLonghi portable heater with tiny handwarmers stuck inside the twittens Laurie Foley knitted for me, my neck swathed in the wool/silk blend scarf knitted for me by Aurora Fox. I don't like to be cold. My limbs are cold-prone. I'M A COLD WEATHER WIMP. I am a fan of the apres-ski, not the ski.
There. I said it.
Given that aversion to cold, and particularly to blizzard-type cold, where cold=wet and cold, it might come as some significant surprise that last Friday night IN THE MIDDLE OF A BLIZZARD with impassable roads, I made Emma hike downtown with me to see poet/activist Andrea Gibson perform. (Please note, all readers in blizzard-prone states and countries: This is what passes for a blizzard in North Carolina). Emma wanted to stay home watching M*A*S*H reruns, but finally bundled up to join me on the excellent adventure.
But I couldn't. Just as with the tiny ninjas, I just knew I had to show up, go, hear.
So Emma and I walked through empty downtown streets, looking for a place to have dinner. Chai Pani had just closed. We headed toward Lexington Avenue. Everything seemed closed down. All dark. Then lights shone in a restaurant called Table. We walked in, shaking snow from our heads.
Warmed olives, a salad, gnocchi with kale, and conversation with your seventeen-year-old as an adult, not a child. Ah, the poignancy of that moment.
"We'd better go," I said, finally.
"I don't really like for people to sit and read poetry to me, Mama," Emma said. "Don't worry," I answered. "She won't be sitting and reading poetry to us."
And so we bundled back up and went out into the snow. We walked in the middle of the street because there were no cars out. Snow was over our boots. Up and down hills, to the small gallery where Andrea Gibson would perform.
Because of the storm, there were only 24 of us in the audience. What an intimate gathering, all the more special for that, the solidarity of making it there.
We walked in and sat on the back row, a wooden church pew. I looked over and saw the poet herself sitting beside us. She was tiny. I suddenly couldn't breathe; I couldn't look over at her. I sat very still.
At a little after 8pm, she was introduced, and she started. For an hour and a half, we listened and laughed and acknowledged and heard. She is a force to be reckoned with, this tiny strong bold woman. A force.
We were there with her, the intrepid 24. Like poet-seeking missiles, we were there.
Her words are searing, passionate, fully formed out of desire and need and understanding. As her website says, Andrea Gibson is not gentle with her truths. They take prisoners, those words. They shock and thrill and surprise and embed themselves in you. This is what poetry is. This is what poetry can be.
She is a human being with a point of view and with a way of speaking that moves me. It was breathtaking. For me and for Emma. I felt changed by being there, fundamentally altered. There was a fantastic energy in the room. Electric air.
And then it was over. Emma had been sketching at times during it, capturing it in images. She closed her sketchbook, looked at me, and smiled.
I bought some of the poet's books and CDs afterward for friends, and was struck a bit mute by my proximity to her. What do you say to someone whose work so moves you, energizes you, makes you think? I could only think to say this: "Hi, my name is Patti. And this is my daughter, Emma. Thank you for your voice in the world." I didn't add the part about hiking barefoot uphill both ways for miles in a blizzard to get there, but I think she knew.
I asked if we could take a photo with her. Then Emma and I had a most extra-ordinary, enlivened walk home. I felt lighter, expansive.
Here's to a poetry that grabs us, shakes us, enlivens us.
Her voice is big. It is transforming. Is yours? Is mine?
There are many of her poems I love. This is one I've posted on 37days before, and here again. I felt too shy to ask her to perform it that evening, and wish I had.
Today is the 50th anniversary of the moment when people just like you and I said "enough."
They sat. And because they sat, we live the lives we are living now.
"Fifty years ago, on Feb. 1, four black college students sat down at a
whites-only Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, N.C. The 'Greensboro Four,' along with friends and supporters, returned to the
counter every day for six months until the lunch counter was
desegregated." -NPR
Those students were Ezell A. Blair, Jr. (now Jibreel Khazan), Franklin E. McCain, Joseph A. McNeil, and David L. Richmond.
Here's to sitting. Here's to taking action. Here's to figuring out, today, what injustice you care enough about to sit for it, to speak out for it, to do what needs to be done to end it. Here's to sitting.
Those four black college students didn't sit once, write a check to assuage their need to help, and then go home to their safe homes. No, they kept sitting. Every day for six months until the lunch counter was desegregated.
We need to keep sitting. It's too easy to get all worked up about something, write a post about it, retweet a mention of it, send a check, and cross it off our list. We need to be in this for the long haul.
Thank you to all those who have come before me--like these four young men--with voices and actions that have effected positive change for all of us. I can only hope to add my name to that number with the things I speak up for and about. And may you, too.
It seems incomprehensible today, in 2010, to remember "whites only" rules.
It will seem incomprehensible in 2060, that we ever thought it right to limit the rights of our brothers and sisters who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, or intersex.
Mindfulness. Mindful of others. Mindful of injustice and hate and judgment. Let's sit for someone who hasn't a seat. Let's.
The State of the Union Address.
I'm reminded each time how easy it is to criticize and how much harder
it is to help. Cynicism is a negative intention. This is as true now as
it was during the Bush administration. I'm trying to hold myself to my
own standard on this one. It's too easy to be snarky.
An important man. May he rest in peace. With thanks for his work in the world.
What have you done for Haiti? (Thanks to Kathryn Ruth Schuth)
"The contradiction between time’s relentless linearity and the
irregular, swooping arcs of my heart and mind is a theme of my life."
I warn you. Sit down before you open this link. I warned you, didn't I? Smile.
A final thought :: "Peace can only last where human rights are respected, where people are fed, and where individuals and nations are free." -Dalai Lama (Thanks to Maxine Rothman)
Another final thought :: "If you have a better idea, let our President know!" -Nancy MacDonald
[image of Mr Brilliant his own beautiful self with a portrait of him drawn by Frances Tess Birdy Jones Uccello Ptak]
The headlines are begging for your help. Thousands needing homes, food. But here, your own children, like inexpert stilt-walkers, flirt too often with obstacles in the street. It’s no wonder you keep eyes glued to them. The demands of love, or a job, the hard winter reining you in - it takes all your muscle to keep your own life upright. And though you know what you have is fortune compared to the great rift that earthquake left, and the aftershocks continuing to destroy so much, somehow that same fortune paralyzes, obstructs you with a heavy, gloomy guilt. But no one expects you to save the world, no matter what you plan. Sometimes the best thing we can do is to love everything we can.
Let's imagine it's still Thursday. Yesterday was a day of canceled flights and mechanical failures and missed connections and airport food and fun, so here's Thinking Thursday just a tad late.
I love many of these. The rawness of the edges and the colors make me very happy.
soul :: my heart and yours
I spoke at a wonderful church in Elgin, Illinois, this past Sunday. You can listen to the podcast of my talk here. (And here's a link to a powerful earlier podcast from that same church, by Dan Hislip, "A Response to Poverty.") (Thanks to Beth Cooper-Zobott for inviting me to be there).
Simplicity is my new mantra. Tomatoes, an onion, a stick of butter (or Earth Balance).
I want and need. Smile. Here's to unicorns and ditches. ("Johnny Depp’s a unicorn—a really glamorous, one-of-a-kind eccentric. He
wears great man jewelry. He doesn’t shy away from color. He’s always
peeking through his amazing hair. It doesn’t matter if Johnny Depp’s
lying in a ditch—he’s always going to look incredible.”) [Thanks to the 50+ people who have emailed me about this!]
A final thought :: We move on so quickly, don't we? A murder, a death, a tsunami, 9/11. And now Haiti. Don't forget Haiti. Maintain the focus, help however you can.
It was as if someone had changed the channel from placid vista into television static. For a second, all I saw was blindness, a sudden jumble that erased the swaying trees, the ski trails slick from that day’s chairlift offspring. Even the guideposts of the highway were gone. I realize I could be talking about anything - the shatter of any unsuspecting scene - last weeks’ earthquake crumbling Port-au-Prince, a family’s rapid cracking, a body’s unsanctioned failure. In the middle of each chaos, I clung only to these words: you, me, us.
Here is my post on Facebook this morning: The people in Haiti love their children and parents and partners and lives just as we do. Lean toward them. Help in any way you can. Inaction is an action. Do something.
Six Ways You Can Help in Haiti : the author includes this note: Text "HAITI" to "90999" to donate $10 to the Red Cross - I believe in the Red Cross and have served on its National Diversity Council as well as on the board of the local chapter. Many people want to give clothing or goods, but in my experience with relief efforts, as well-meaning as we are, these items bog down the system and ultimately make things harder. Give your unneeded clothing to your local Goodwill and give monetary donations to the Red Cross.
I am grateful on this day that I am not Pat Robertson or Rush Limbaugh, both of whom have publicly blamed the earthquake in Haiti on the Haitian's "pact with the devil," and worse. To feel such animosity toward other human beings, and such arrogance, I cannot imagine. I believe fully in freedom of speech, but not in the wholesale marketing of hate. However, my pushing against Pat Robertson and Rush Limbaugh at this time only diminishes my ability to lean toward the Haitians who so desperately need help. I am reminded of my frustration at our country's administration in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and the same sentiments--and priorities--must arise now:
"So here is my vow: I am not going to
spend mental or physical energy blaming people for this unconscionable
and undeniably incompetent response to this tragedy. No, not yet. No,
to do that now does not honor those men and women and children who have
yet to eat or drink, it does not honor those dead human beings with
real lives and families who loved them and had to leave them floating
in the floodwaters, a desperate and incomplete goodbye to the real and
true and precious loves of their life. I cannot sit here with my cup of
coffee and tasty scone and place blame on people who are desperately
trying to help in the best way they can. No, I will save all that fury
and helplessness and second-guessing for later. I will only offer
constructive suggestions now until the last person is buried and the
last person has been fed and showered and found. The more I ask
authorities to respond to my allegations of blame, the less focused
they are on the families still drowning by inches in their attics, and
the more distance I can create between my own self and this tragedy. We
are all accountable for this."
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