Sunday Link Love

The good:
I have long had a fascination with anything Hawaiian, and although Hansen's Disease is most certainly not of Hawaiian origin, what happened on Molokai is both mind-bendingly horrifying and intriguing.
My favorite books are a combination of books; for me the read was nearly a life-changing event.
'Molokai'; fictional characters and story in a historically accurate setting, beautifully written by Allan Brennert. After reading Molokai, I then read, 'The Colony', written by John Tayman; a non-fiction piece spanning a century of historical documentation and following the stories of the residents of Kalaupapa.

I am very happy to report that Father Damien de Veuster will be canonized by the Catholic Church on October 11, 2009, becoming Saint Damien.

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The Bad:
Speaking of large families with public notoriety (and no I am not talking about Octomom), I clicked on this video yesterday. You know - it says 'gift of song' and I am a music teacher, if not full of cynicism I can appreciate a good gift of song along with the best of them.
But this clip just made me squirmingly uncomfortable.
The small dark children are obviously being forced to sit there, feign cheerfulness (fail), and endure the impromptu Sunday school concert by the shining white faces.
And it makes me wonder about the producers....what were they thinking? The kids just do whatever the glory of their dad tells them to do, but the producers had a choice here to air it or cut it.
Wow.

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The Ugly:
I don't write too much about political issues on this blog; not because I don't have very strong opinions, but because there are far more eloquent bloggers on these topics and I do not wish to embarrass myself with the repetition of my favorite superlatives and the use of inappropriate language which I resort to far too often when the subject arises.

But I think it's safe to say that you understand what I am talking about when I express my extreme frustration about the misuse of funds in a corporate world - a very special fantasy world in which bankers and CEOs are rewarded for there mere existence with very special money which has been reserved for very special them - as the economy crumbles around us and most of the humans serfs are scraping by and trying to eek out an existence in a bleak future.
Our president is sick of it as well.
At least one third of my friends are out of work.
Which is why I cannot stomach the deluded news that Morgan Stanley and Citigroup will be paying out THREE BILLION dollars to their brokers, just to stay on. Oh hey - your salary isn't enough to stay here and work? No problem, we will give you money just to pledge your faith in us - because we wouldn't want to stir up an investor scare, now would we?
You know, the motivation behind this just brings to mind what Michele Bachman complained about last week, and perhaps what we should all really be focusing on here, the real problem: "we're running out of rich people in this country."

We Have A Fear of Big Cats In This Family

We have been lucky enough to stay at a very generous friend's cliff house on the north Sonoma coast - it is the perfect getaway for a weekend, and we spend our time soaking in the oversize hot tub, playing games with the kids (no TV or wi-fi!) and hiking when weather permits.

This weekend marked our second visit up there, and I loved being there as much in stormy weather as I did in our 80 degrees heatwave a few weeks ago.
The drive, however, is freakishly scary in a wind and hail storm, so we waited the storm out an extra day and played vacation house for a long weekend.

In one of the storm respites, we managed to get the kids to walk up the road to what we call 'Fairyland', a very large natural cave system created by windblown cypress trees on the edge of a cliff. Apparently, since our last visit to the Fairyland, Bubbles created his own version of what those caves really hold.




He ran into the darkness of a cave and came running back, dramatically shouting, "Oh NO! Lions! LIONS! Dere's a LION!! In da CAVE! Gonna GETCHYOU!! RUN RUN RUN!!"
I played along with him for a few minutes, then he kept talking about it and worked himself into a froth and started panicking for real. Of course, all I could do was giggle and videotape his terror.

Here, he warns me about the Lion coming out of the cave and how it is going to eat my pictures (my camera). Luckily (or, disappointingly, depending how you look at it), only Supergirl and Daddy emerged from the cave. I have no idea where he gets it, and I am quite sure it has nothing to do with my fear of San Francisco tigers.

Anthropologetic

Well, it's a sad thing for me to announce, but this recession depression has gotten the best of us, and we have to move back to Grammie's farm.

It's tragic, because we can't fit too much in the truck, and we'll have to get rid of most of our belongings. We did buy a lot of crap absolutely necessary indulgences while caught up in the California housing and credit boom re-mortgaging out our home, and most of it will have to go. But we will make do, and somehow make our new digs look like home again.

I mean sure, we'll have to sleep in the slaughter house dairy barn, but since the dust storms, the milk done all dried up and the cows is all gone to live with Grampie Up There.



We sure do like our privacy, so the kids have their own bedroom out on Grammie's front porch. It's been months since any drop of rain has fallen, so we'll hang that tarp when we come to it.



If y'all want to come visit, we've set up a lovely guest room in the ol' chicken coop (only $250/night for friends and family!)(we gotta buy our crack grits, you know).



We didn't have any room for the tricycles or learnin' books, but I couldn't bear to get rid of my $5000 couch, so we did manage to squeeze it into our quilt-filled pick-up truck when we left the state.

(Whaddya mean there aren't any toys? See those papier mache birds? If those kids so much as drool on them they are dead meat. Toys!)









(Disclaimer of reality: Every photo here is lifted from the most recent Anthropol*gie catalog. Their art director is apparently giving us a vision of things to come...)

Look What I Found!

My baby!






(And to think that someone made fun of me for taking this picture way back when....)

Got My Head In His Cloud Again

I recently found a huge file of photos of Elijah. I had either forgotten about them or convinced myself that they didn't exist....who knows.
I can hardly describe what finding these has felt like....a gift...a peace....a stirring....a mindfuck...another unwanted but polite visit from Grief....

A mother.
I was his mother too....wispy shadows swirling...his life flickered by....his scent hangs on my shoulders.....my head in his cloud.



The gifts are in the flickers; each one gifts me a memory....we had some fun with that baby:







Missing him doesn't quite cut it on these days.

Art By Children; Installment ...#3?

I let Bubbles go outside with three animals in his hand.
Thirty minutes later, this is what I found:

(Sorry if it's blurry; I was laughing pretty hard for 9:00 am!)

Seriously. I am not the artist.
I might or might not have included some props to make it way more kinky.

Sunday Link Love

Guess what? I also write here, now. A brand new parents of special needs consortium, of sorts. As a matter of fact, I wrote there today.

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I have seen anatomically correct dolls before, but this one made me gasp.

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Last week's waxing story just begged for another....Thanks, Linda.

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Jenijen has been putting the squeeze on me to attend Bacon Camp. I am almost her bitch.

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This condom commercial proves why commercials in the US suck.
This one is just highly embarrassing. You've been warned.

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This video of Jennifer Lin, pianist extraordinaire, when she was playing at the TED conference, blew my mind. Especially interesting from about 17:00 in....

How Much Mercury Is The FDA's RDA?

Here's some FOOD for thought.

1. How much mercury would you feed your child before you decided it was enough?
2. How much mercury is safe for your child to consume?

The answers are,

1. Zero.
2. Zero.

Archer Daniels Midland, poisoners of your kitchen and body, have decided to challenge scientific facts and feed mercury to the general public, via High Fructose Corn Syrup.
And you thought it just created Diabetes!!

No, now you can poison the entire family with a lunchbox full of 'juice' and 'fruit' gummies. Toss in a little Jello and you've got a delicious buffet of brain cell and pancreas killers!

Why isn't anyone talking about this? Only Huffpo? Why isn't this being picked up by any other news sources? And why is Huffpo pretending that they don't know who makes the HFCS?

ADM makes it, that's who.

And the FDA - do not for a minute think that they are protecting you.
They know all about it.

Sunday Monday Link Love

I love to laugh, and these have kept me laughing for days:

Joe Cocker's lyrics demystified!!

Why I will never ever try a self-waxing kit.

And if you haven't seen this already, make sure you hang in there til about the 4 minute mark:

Kindergarten Lessons

My kindergarten teacher was Mrs. Masters. She was about 106 years old and she was...rather burned out I think. I had been warned by my three older siblings, that this was not a woman who I would want to cross. If you made her mad, then you would surely be sent to the principal's office, where, it was rumored a well known fact that a paddle with nails would be waiting for your bottom. I was only four, but I was nobody's fool.
I made it through the first few months unnoticed, which was the best possible situation for a student in her class. The two-story indoor wooden climbing structure kept me busy, and I cannot to this day forget the feel and texture of my silky quilted aqua-colored napping blankie. The toys with which we provided were ample and aesthetically sound, and the clever children kept themselves occupied for the majority of the three hour school day.
I learned how to stand in line and raise my hand, sing when I was asked, trace and cut with scissors, and how to find the bathroom on my own.
I didn't put enough glitter on my Halloween pumpkin to be showcased or featured - as evidenced by Heather Holt's own dazzling masterpiece, but by Thanksgiving, the art project was all mine:

My traced-hand rainbow-feathered turkey ruled the center spot on the show-off board; I was cruising.
Then came the Santa project.
You know the one.


I aced the cottonballs on the hat and on the beard. And then came the eyes. I had a strip of black paper, out of which I was supposed to cut Santa's two eyes.
I cut out one; it was perfect, so I set it aside.
I cut another; it was also perfect, so I set it next to my first perfect one.

Oh no.
They did not match up.
They were not the same size.
I had two nearly perfect eyes; each one small and black and nearly circular. But they were not the same size.


My parents happened to have a prominently-placed Modigliani print in the house which severely disturbed me because of her uneven eyes. I mean, come on, look:


Slightly disconcerting to see at breakfast every day from the age of three, perhaps?

(Yes, it really was in the breakfast room.)



So it was, for some reason, important to me that my two little black construction paper Santa eyes, did, in fact - match.

I tried again. One eye, cut carefully with blunt-end scissors and most likely a protruding and thoughtful -or desperate- tongue...and then another eye, which was also perfect and lovely in its own right...but not matching even one of the others.
This continued until I had at least 7 un-matching little black eyes.

I was tired, my chubby fists had just turned five years old, and my guard was down from Mrs. M. I had, in a small phrase, 'had it'.
In an unprecedented fit of frustrated aggravation, I threw my scissors down on the table. Hard. Threw them down.

And oh.
Oh.
Uh-oh.
I was in trouble.

Mrs. Masters saw it. She heard it. She came for me.
I was doomed to leave the group of the good children.
She came for me and I knew what was coming: I had seen it many times before.

She came at me from behind; I looked over my right shoulder just in time to notice her grabbing for my right ear. Which I instantly felt.
"WHAT IS THIS?" She shrieked, pointing accusingly at the thrown scissors.
"I-I-I---can't do it." I cried, snotty-faced and pointing at my discarded mismatched black eyes.
"They don't match!"
"WE! DO! NOT! THROW! SCISSORS!" She bellowed at me, as she waved the blunt-end scissors in my face.
"The eyes!" I pleaded, "I wanted to make them the same, but, but...buh..."
I sputtered...I was afraid that I would pee my pants if I went on...
"We DO NOT THROW SCISSORS!!!!!" She repeated, as I shivered.
She had never let go of my ear, but now she lifted, she yanked. I was standing, and she was dragging, dragging me by my ear towards the door. I was shamed. I was a Bad Kid.
Out to the hallway I was led by my right ear and an irate and decrepit teacher, and there I was left. At the mercy of the nail-filled, paddle-wielding principal. Which everyone knew to be true. Especially those of us with older siblings. Because, why would they lie to us about something that serious, right?

I was momentarily grateful when she released my ear (and with it, the rest of my body) with a flourish into the hallway and slammed the door between us.
I was alone in the hallway.
I was at one end of the hall. At the other end, was the ominous and fabled principal's office.
I had been in school for three months. I had just turned five.
And I was in trouble. Big Trouble.
I thought about the scissors. And the eyes. And I was truly sorry. But I didn't know how to get back into the room. I waited.
I waited some more.
I waited.

Then I heard footsteps. They sounded Big, and they were coming from the opposite end of the building. You know - the office end.
On my left was a drinking fountain, protruding from the wall. One at which I had obediently lined up approximately 134 times. Under it was a hollow ceramic sink and some pipes. And I? I was a shrimp.
I scanned the interior of the ceramic drinking fountain, surveyed the heavy steps coming towards me and then I made a leap.
Up. Into the underside of the fountain. And I fit.
I pushed my feet against the pipe and wedged myself into the cold and bumpy ceramic innards. I could see nothing but the tan and grey tiles below. I tried to pull my feet up higher as I heard the footsteps coming unmistakably toward me....and then they slowed....oh-yes-they-did....they slowed down until I finally un-scrunched my eyes and looked down to see the two black loafers which belonged to the principal. They stopped in front of the drinking fountain. I was trying to pull my dangling tights-clad legs up into the piping, but it was too late. I had been noticed.
Tap tap tap....he knocked on the top of the ceramic.
I hiccuped
Tap tap tap..."Who goes there?" He demanded.
He leaned over to see who was under there, and I felt it coming - I couldn't stop it - it rose up, made its way out of my mouth, and I vomited. Straight down onto the shoes.

He carefully pulled me out of the pipes, avoiding the puddle beneath me, and walked me by the hand, across the hall to the nurse's office. She gave him some towels to clean his shoes and told me to lie down on the green leatherette chaise. I curled up, scrunched my eyes shut again and waited.

My mother came to collect me and my stomach flu vanished as quickly as it had arrived.

One year later, I had the good fortune of having the nicest first grade teacher in the world. When Mrs. Trowbridge showed us all how to fold the paper over before cutting if we wanted two matching anythings, I was amazed at what I could create.
And I was pissed at Mrs. Masters.
I mean, how hard would it have been?