As a quilter, I’ve developed quite a fabric stash. That is I’ve got a lot of fabric stashed away for future projects. I have it divided into different kinds of fabric. Probably the largest category is “Reproductions.” I particularly collect and use fabrics that reproduce fabrics from before 1900. I even belong to a group where we exchange blocks and make quilts from the AnteBellum era to the late 1800’s. Some of the fabrics in that part of my stash are “eh.” I have them because they are useful and make good partners with others, etc. But some have become good friends. Some I love. I know that sounds silly, but I’ve really grown quite attached to them. And therein lies the problem. The evil fabric manufacturers only run fabrics for a season at best. So when you purchase fabric, you get it and then … it’s gone. Well, I’m down to the last bits and shreds of one of my favorites. And the problem was I have nothing that I’ve made with this fabric in it. I’ve given it all away. Then yesterday, completely by chance, I walked into a store that never has sales. And they were having a clearance sale. And … there was my friend. On sale! For HALF price. So I indulged and bought a whole yard. We’ve been reunited, my friend and I. This time I’ll be sure to make something for myself with this fabric. But I’m sure that I’ll end up giving most of it away.
I have to confess. I made a bet last night and I lost. LightHusband and I were shopping in a SuperTarget and I found the nirvana section: organizational products!! I found … a “junk drawer organizer.” I was very thrilled. But, I said, “I think it’s too wide for our drawers.” “No,” said he, “Our drawers are standard width. It will fit.” “I still think it’s too wide.” (aside: I should have known when to quit because, well, I’m spacially challenged) Says him, “I’ll bet you six dollars and forty-nine cents it will fit.” “You’re on.” I giggled … because that was the price of the precious item. LightHusband was clearly displeased at the propect of organizing the junk drawer. Afterall, in his world that would take all the fun out of it. In my world that means you can find things when you need them.
So this morning I opened it up and discovered that … it fit. So I owe LightHusband $6.49 (+tax??). AND discovered that what I thought was just advertising was in fact a labelling system so that you can put labels in the bottom of each little cubby so that everyone will know what goes where. Can you just believe it?!!! I’m in organizational heaven. LightHusband thinks I’m nuts.
But I just opened the door to my fabric closet (full of tidily organized tubs of fabric and projects all lined up on their shelves) and said to him, “My closet … Organized.” and went to his office closet and said, “Your closet … Not so much.” He said, with his chin in the air, “I don’t have a closet. I have a dumpster.” Well then, I rest my case. At least one person in this house is organized.
Now if I can just pass this on to the LightChildren … hmmmm ….
I had another session with my counselor yesterday. I haven’t spoken much about those sessions because they’re private and I’m trying to process a lot of what goes on there. But I really like her, which is a good thing and I feel as though I’m “making progress,” whatever that means.
Yesterday I said something that I’m still trying to figure out. It was this, “If I drew a picture of myself, I wouldn’t have a mouth. I don’t feel like anyone listens to me and I don’t feel like I have anything to say.” We talked about that for a quite a while and agreed that I need to think about it and try to figure it out. Because obviously (with this blog – which she reads) I do have a lot to say and I say it well and people do listen. But the statement came from somewhere … there is some part of me that has lost it’s voice.
Then this evening, I read this article about Perfect Girls. It’s about the “third wave” of feminism and how our culture has created an unhealthy subculture for young women in which they must be perfect in order to be acceptable. I’m not sure how much of the article’s premise I buy into. But I do know this, I remember that in my 30’s I looked around one day and realized that I’d been told a big fat lie.
If the article is about the third wave of feminism, I guess I’m the second wave. I came of age in late 1970’s when Annie Hall fashions were all the rage. You had to dress like a man in order to make it in a man’s world. My mother and my teachers and the culture around me told my friends and me that we could do anything we wanted to AND be mothers too. In fact, we should do that in order to be good women. Successful women rose to the top of their careers AND had children … they just popped ’em out in the board room instead of the potato patch. The less time off you took, the more manly (oops … I mean womanly) you were. Of course, some women looked at that scenario and decided to not have children. And many put off childbearing for several years. But most hard core feministas will still tell you that a “real” woman is only fulfilled in having children AND working too. That all of our problems may be solved if only there were an adequate federal childcare policy.
So I dutifully went to college even though I had no idea what I wanted to be when I grew up. I got a degree in something that I still have no use for even though when I was really honest with myself and in my heart of hearts I wanted to be an artist. But a real woman cannot be an artist. Because that is not a career. A career is being a lawyer or a politician or a somebody-who-wears-a-suit-with-stockings-everyday. In the last letter I wrote to my beloved grandfather before he died, I promised him that I would go to law school and become an international lawyer. I never even sat for the LSAT’s. One broken promise to myself after another, trying to measure up and be a real woman. Trying to be acceptable under these new rules which made things so much harder for women under the guise of making us freer.
I haven’t yet found that part of my voice which is lost. But I will. I know it’s buried somewhere under the lies I’ve believed. I’ll find it soon.
We went walking again this morning. Today we chose a different neighborhood. We’ve been staying in a neighborhood of older homes built in the early 1960’s. Today we went a little further afield into a neighborhood built in the mid to late 1980’s. And we saw some horrors. LightHusband observed that they looked as if the architectural features had been subjected to some mutating forces. Windows that were too long and too close together. But my personal favorite were the “widows walks” with no entrance in the middle of suburbia and no access to the sea.
I hail from seafaring folk in early Massaschusetts and early Maine who used the real widows walks much to their chagrin. To see them used so lightly and as an architectural “feature” seemed both funny and disrespectful all at the same time. My widowed, many greats grandmothers wouldn’t think it was funny at all. Or …. maybe they would. Maybe they would double up with laughter to think that the rails they had spent many days and nights walking with worry and fear were now a costly architectural “feature” on a home many, many miles from the sea.
And then I got a picture in my mind’s eye of someone up on top of these suburban homes, scanning the horizon for their husband’s car amidst the sea of cars on I-66. Maybe it’s not anachronistic at all …
I’m sure this joke has made it’s rounds of the internet many times over and you’ve all seen it before. But I just saw it today and it sure tickled my funny-bone! So I thought I’d share:
A man was stumbling through the woods totally drunk when he came upon a preacher baptizing people in the river.
He proceeded to walk into the water and subsequently bumped into the preacher. The preacher turned around and was almost overcome by the smell of alcohol, whereupon he asked the drunk, “Are you ready to find Jesus ?” The drunk answered, “Yes, I am.” So the preacher grabbed him and dunked him in the water.
He pulled him up and asked the drunk, “Brother, have you found Jesus?” The drunk replied, “No, I haven’t found Jesus”! The preacher shocked at the answer, dunked him into the water again for a little longer this time.
He again pulled him out of the water and asked, “Have you found Jesus, my brother?” The drunk again answered, “No, I haven’t found Jesus.”
By this time the preacher was at his wits end and dunked the drunk in the water again — but this time helds him down for about 30 seconds and when he began kicking his arms and legs he pulled him up.
The preacher again asks the drunk, “For the love of God have you found Jesus?” The drunk wiped his eyes and caught his breath and said to the preacher, “Are you sure this is where he fell in?
One of my favorite movies of all time is Braveheart. We saw it when it first came out and LightGirl was a tiny baby. It was (I think) our first “date” after she was born. We left her with a family we trusted and respected and went to the theater to see this movie. To be really honest, I was going to see Mel Gibson with long hair in a kilt (three of my favorite things all in one place). Come to think of it, the family we left her with had a daughter who was 12 at the time. Wow … time flies when you’re living. I remember when we came out of the theater it felt like we had time traveled and nothing seemed right. The movie had seemed so real that we felt that we were somehow in the wrong time and place. The car seemed strange. I can remember the feeling and still can’t describe it very well, but it was profound.
The next thing we did (being us) was go to Barnes & Noble and pick up a few books on Scottish-English history and discovered that very little in movie was correct. Well, it was correct, it was just out of chronological order. There really was a William Wallace and he lived and died doing the things that he was depicted as doing, just not during the time that he was shown in the movie. Oh well. And yes, Edward the Longshanks really was that nasty, etc. My favorite line from the movie still comes from the Irishman Steven as they’re preparing for one of the battles and he turned to William and said … well … I’m trying to keep profanity off my blog. If you know the movie well enough, you’ll know the line.
The main message of the movie (at least in the world according to me) is that you have a choice in this world. You can either be safe or you can be free. And actually it is when you choose freedom that you become safe. But when you choose safety, you are never actually safe from evil. It’s counter-intuitive. But choosing safety means that those who peddle fear and hold power get to use it more and more. I’m thinking here of the rights of prima nocte as well as the many other tools that Edward I had at his disposal to keep in subjects under control. But the more the Highlanders chose freedom and to live their own lives the safer they actually became.
Yes, I get that it’s just a movie and Mel (and the producers had some say in how things ended). But Jesus had somethings to say about this too. Things like: if you try to save your life, you’ll lose it, but if you give it away, you’ll find it.
So, yesterday I snarkily ended one of my comments with something like “people who are smarter than I think that this country is in trouble too. But only time will tell.” And today I was out browsing the news and found several news items relating to a speech given at Georgetown University on March 9 by none other than retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. There are no transcripts published of the speech on-line (at least that I could find). I purchased a transcript of Nina Totenburg’s (from NPR) report about the speech. And here’s the link to an editorial from the Boston Globe about it. If you’d like to see Nina Totenburg’s report, you can go to NPR and purchase a copy of it (for about $4.00). But suffice it to say that I’ve hardly ever agreed with Sandra Day O’Connor on anything, so I was somewhat taken aback to find what strange bedfellows I now have.
The Army used to have as an advertising slogan, “Freedom isn’t free.” That’s true. It’s not. Safety isn’t safe either. And apathy isn’t getting us anywhere. Despite what some may think we are living in dangerous times. We are wandering on the knife edge of loosing our freedom. It is only our freedom which keeps us truly safe from tyranny and evil … both without and within.
It’s worth taking a few minutes to remind yourself of what we do have and why it’s worth defending … even with a phone call or letter to your Representative or Senator. Here’s a link to the Bill of Rights. This has been gutted by the Patriot Act …. when the CIA and/or the FBI can get a hold of your reading list from the local library without warrants; that constitutes unreasonable search and seizure. It’s a slippery slope. The government has already been caught illegally wiretapping it’s own citizens. We are torturing prisoners.
In the wake of 9/11 we were told to choose safety. But I ask you … are we really safe?
In other lighter news, I faced down both my parents last night and won a Scrabble challenge even though I wasn’t playing in the game. Even though the game was from the night before. Everyone who had been playing the game decided (WITHOUT looking it up) that the word “yeti” (for abominable snowman) was capitalized. I said, “No, it’s a creature. It’s mythological to be sure, but like all creatures it should not be capitalized.” All three players (LightParents … who think they’re so smart and usually are … and LightHusband) all said, “Oh, no, Yeti must be capitalized. It’s a proper noun.”
So LightHusband hauled out our granddaddy of all dictionaries The Oxford Unabridged Dictionary. It’s all in one volume and you have to use a special magnifying glass to see the words. But when we found yeti …. let it be known here first. I …. was …. right!!!!
HAH!
LightParents should know when to listen to me.
Update: What?! An update already? Yes … because I don’t think any of you saw this link to this article yesterday. Read this article. As you read, know this … Jim Douglas is the current governor of Vermont, he is a very right wing Republican. Patrick Leahy is a long term first Representative and now US Senator and is a Democrat. Marselis Parsons has been the anchorman on the only local news worth watching in the state since I can remember and is very conservative. … Now read on for today’s post.
Update 2: Here’s a link to the **frighteningly** “unbalanced” piece written by US Senator Patrick Leahy. It was pulled because no one had written an opposing point of view. Hmmm … would that be something like “Down With the Freedom of Information” … who is going to write that?
In a comment on my earlier post my BrickFriend made the following point:
I hardly believe that one cannot be critical of the Administration. There is not a day, it seems, upon which at least two very critical editorials are NOT printed in the WAPost or NYT. I hope and believe that things are not quite as bad as you fear. We will see.
I’ll grant him that. Editorials are printed. My point was that a fine and long standing (in point of fact, the longest standing) bureau chief for the Associated Press wire service was let go in a dispute over a column written by a U.S. Senator from his own state that was critical of the administration. Newspapers receiving that column were free to use or not use that column in any manner they saw fit.
Another tiny factoid, Chris Graff’s (the bureau chief) son was the first blogger ever to be invited to participate in a White House press briefing. That happened last March (2005) … but that’s an aside.
Now I’m going to use my BrickFriend’s favorite technique and take us straight to the Nazi’s. Let’s take a look at the Nazi rise to power. It didn’t happen overnight. In fact, Hitler spent a year in jail before he really came into his own. That’s when he wrote Mein Kampf. Visit this website for a nicely put together timeline of how things went down in Germany between the two world wars. It’s a quick read and will give you an idea of what I’m talking about.
I don’t think that our present administration is anything like Nazi Germany (at least I hope not). My problem is that they have no problems abrogating powers to themselves that are not contained in the Constitution. And having Congress enshrine it in law (see the Patriot Act). It’s not that I’m some rabid left-winger who can’t stand to live under a right-wing administration. I lived happily under 12 years of Reagan and GHWBush and never felt the level of distrust that I feel now. No matter what crazy whacked policies they tried to take this country on, I always knew that they and their administrations knew and would uphold the Constitution. This administration uses the Constitution as toilet paper.
No my problem is that evil does not start out looking evil. It begins looking rational. And when people like me say something is wrong, most people say “calm down, it’s really not so bad.” By the time most of the rest of you realize it really is evil, it’s too late. I’ll just end with a (now) well known quote by Hermann Goering from his jail cell in 1946:
“Why, of course, the people don’t want war,” Goering shrugged. “Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship.”
“There is one difference,” I pointed out. “In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars.”
“Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.”
Okay, I hope none of you out there is named Janet … this isn’t aimed at you. Some of you might remember that line from SNL of the early 80’s (and thus I’m dating myself).
But, look at this article. It’s from my hometown newspaper. The head of Vermont’s AP bureau was fired (or did he “resign”?) over a column he ran last week. What was so controversial about this column you might ask? Well, it was a column written by our Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) criticizing the administration’s secretive policies vis a vis the press. A column written by a Senator for heaven’s sake … now Senators are being censored.
Update: Check out this article for more details Update 2: Just thought I’d mention that we (my parents and I) originally learned about this in an article in the print version of yesterday’s NYTimes. But I can’t access that because I don’t subscribe to it. But if you want to you can browse it and find the article yourself.
Now first of all the column got pulled before it hit the national wire.
Then, Chris Graff got fired … or maybe he resigned. In any case, he’s gone from 25+ years as AP bureau chief. He’s the only bureau chief I can remember.
That all spells censorship to me …
So … what exactly is left of our democracy that we’re trying so hard to “spread like a flower” throughout the Middle East?
**We don’t have a verifiable voting system.
**We don’t have a free press.
**We do have rampant jerrymandering.
**The system of checks and balances among the three branches of the federal government is in tatters.
We’d better hope for some good strong candidates in 2008 or our ship is well and truly sunk.
We’re all sick. All four of us. I should have known something was up when I couldn’t get warm yesterday. I should have known something was wrong when LightGirl and LightBoy refused dinner (what?! not eat … my children never miss a meal). So we included in our farewells some episodes of reverse peristalsis from both of my children. These episodes continued long into the night. LightHusband and I both now have this dread stomach illness … but (to put it delicately) in it’s “other” form. All are running slight fevers and are achy and crabby. I’m in bed to avoid the yelling television.
UGH … it’s all I can say.