Dressed up for war

The front page of the Old Navy advertisement section was a picture of three multiculturally diverse children about 9 years old. Frozen by the camera in cheery dance moves, all three anxious back-to-schoolers wore camoflauge. Hands on their hips, smiles on their faces, their pants were festooned with either blue, green, or yes, pink camoflauge and one student, the girl in pink, even waved an American flag in one hand. Their new backpacks were camoflauge and their shoes, normal in color, eerily resembled army boots.


Two days ago an angry American Muslim shot 5 people (all women) and killed another at a Jewish fundraising center in downtown Seattle. We happened to be on our way through the city to another destination, but had to reroute our trip because the cars were backed up for miles along 4th avenue after the police closed off 2nd and 3rd avenues. We made it to our event and then, on the way home about 3 hours later, we drove back through town, down 2nd avenue, but we only got so far before we saw the flashing lights of a road blockade. A block before the road closed, we turned to take an alternate road home, past a trendy bar/nightclub where hundreds of 20-somethings stood outside the bar sipping their cocktails, laughing, flirting, and playfully nudging each other.


Yesterday, the US "urged" Israel to agree to a bombing halt for 48 hours after an Israeli missle "accidentally" killed over 50 Lebanonese civilians, most of them childen.

I wonder if they were out buying camoflauge back-to-school clothes?

I am angry, too. As angry perhaps, as the man who shot those women though I would never hurt or shoot anyone, let alone own a gun. My anger is more internal though when we drove passed the drunken nightclubbers a block from the shooting, I wanted to scream from my car what idiots they were, how staying perpetually drunk was exactly what this administration was hoping for from the American constituency -- unclear, foggy-minded, and therefore loyal by apathy.

But I didn't say anything. Instead, I just boiled, slowly, with anger.

When Ann showed me the cover of the Old Navy ad she said, tongue in cheek, "Do you think war has affected us?"

Not enough, apparently. Not enough.

I Do

When Ann and I got married in Portland (when it was still a legal possibility), we stood, hands joined in the night club the Basic Rights folks of Oregon had set up for the rush of wedding ceremonies. We could choose from a variety of religious and non-religious officials, so we walked through the nightclub searching for just the right person.

We didn't choose the Buddhist nun with her incense and flowing skirts or the Catholic priestess (or so she said) with her stiff white color and her clutched leather bible. We didn't choose the young man dressed in gothic attire, his eyes and clothes equally black. We didn't choose the Methodist minister, bland and milky.

But we did choose a tall red-head who sat quietly at her station reading a book of Mary Oliver poems. That was the clincher for me. If I could have lunch with anyone in the world, I'd choose Mary Oliver...as well as Lily Tomlin, Desmond Tutu, Terry Tempest Williams, and Emma Thompson.

Shay was the woman's name and she asked us questions about the kind of ceremony we'd like to have. Simple, without mention of God, about commitment and patience, we said. I chose a Mary Oliver poem for her to read out loud and Ann and I held our vows in our sweaty hands and exchanged rings while Shay said words I can't even remember.

I was the first to say "I do" and then Shay repeated the phrases again and turned to Ann for her "I do"...but it never came. I looked at Ann who was looking at me with a smile exuding from her body, our friends who served as witnesses stared at Ann, their mouths a bit ajar, and the air filled with a suspensful tension. I leaned over to Ann and cleared my throat until she said, "Oh, yeah, I do!"

We all laughed and I let out a sigh of relief. From there we took ourselves out to dinner, gathering together with two other friends who'd married earlier in the week.

Yesterday, the Washington State Supreme Court ruled to uphold the Defense of Marriage Act making it difficult if not impossible for Washington State to legalize gay marriages.

I am both disappointed and resigned. I know Ann and I are married, committed, and life partners and that we don't need sanction from the state to validate our partnership.

Still.

I also know that I never thought I'd be so close to gay marriage as a possibility in my life time. 20 years ago, 10 year ago it never even crossed my mind. And now, the debate is raging, the battle continuing. That's more than I ever thought would happen.

Still.

I'm not angry, though I do find myself using words like ignorant and narrow-minded when I talk about the decision.

Still.

I am happy, though, that Ann and I have the funny "I do" moment in the nightclub filled with light and spiritual diversity. Someday, I hope, someday it will be a possibility. I never dreamed that that would be a hope of mine for the future.

And then, the other night, we had dinner with our dear neighbor, Dely, who invited two young people to the party -- Joseph and Kirby, both theology majors at Seattle University. Joseph, a beautiful Samoan gay man and his roommate, Kirby, and equally beautiful bi-racial young woman shared their visions of the future, their definition of "faith" and it's inclusiveness, and their view of the current political struggles. I had hope after listening to them. They were articulate, compassionate, and questioning. They were clearly forging a path for themselves that was anything but ignorant and narrow-minded.

I asked Joseph, late into the evening, if he believed gay marriage would be realized in his lifetime. His response seemed only fitting and one I recalled yesterday after reading the Supreme Court disappointment in the newspaper..."I do," he said with the greatest of confidence.

And I believed him.

Scorcher

I'm not sure how many days in a row it's been above 90, but it's been too many days in a row. I'm sweating 24/7, like a pig (as they say), like a waterfall, like a downpour. My back is in a constant state of moisture, the back of my head dark with wetness.

I'm not going to say I hate heat, but I am close to it after this week (it must be a week at least of this temperature breaking weather). The heat has literally made me ill. I can't sleep or when I sleep, it's fitful and sweaty and when I wake, I'm nauseated and a bit dizzy and head to toe sticky. It's not a big deal, just uncomfortable and not very motivating.

Still, through it all we've continued to work on the old part of the house. The living room is done, just a few more pieces of furniture and rug to purchase and we can call it good. Since I'm not sleeping, we get up early (I force Ann to wake with a homemade latte) and continue to paint the spare bedroom/soon-to-be TV room. It's the last room, Ann keeps claiming, but there's still the old bathroom that will eventually need to get redone (Winter break, Ann tells me, let's not tackle it until December) and the new fence to stain, all 100 feet of it...both sides.

I think the paint fumes in this heat are worse, too. Part of my nausea, I think.

But I'm only going to paint the fence when it's cooler. It's too hot to do much of anything except read, lie by the fan and solve Sudoku puzzles, or eat chilled watermelon and drink icy lemonade...only because of my queasiness, none of the eating part sounds very good...so it's cold water for me...but even that feels a bit ill-making.

Okay, truth be told, I'm a whiner when it comes to heat. To think we traveled back to Iowa every summer when I was a kid and lived in this kind of heat. And there were mosquitoes too. Was I miserable then? I'll have to ask my parents. What I remember is that we went to the city pool and spent the day there, swimming, eating candy, and drinking root beer. I remember being hot at night and itchy from all the bug bites, but now, as I steam in this current scorcher, I don't remember being this miserable when I was 6 or 7.

I probably was, though. I never adapted. Hence, I am a Pacific Northwesterner in my heart of hearts (though I was born in Iowa). Ann grew up in Wisconsin and her solution to the heat is to lie in the tub filled with cold bath water. She says people in the Midwest do it all the time. That and change their clothes a lot. And they move slowly. I often tease her because she has a tendency to talk without really moving her mouth much. She says that's because she grew up where it was so cold in the winter, you didn't want to expose too much moisture to the elements or you could end up frozen in mid-sentence. I thought, with this heat, her mouth should be performing gymnastics, but still she mumbles a bit and moves her lips very little. When I confronted her about this contradiction, she said that moving one's lips takes energy and makes you sweat, therefore she continues to conserve energy lest she fall over from heat exhaustion in the summer and frozen lip syndrome in the winter.

She says that the heat out here is nothing like the heat out there because of the humidity factor, but I'm not out there, I'm out here and it seems pretty darn hot and significantly humid to me.

She also says, "No bug bites here, quit whining." Okay, I agree with that, but still, it's too damn hot...it's even made my blogging limp...and soggy.

My mother's shadow

It happens slowly, at first, like a leaf changing from green to the burn of yellow, the taste of autumn on an exposed memory. Out of the corner of my eye, my hands transformed years ago, veiny and slender. The shadow of my mother holding a stone white mixing bowl cradled in her grip like Atlas balancing the world. I've practiced for years, mastering the bowl in one hand, the spatula in the other
scraping the doughy corners of my life into one flat pan, a heated oven waiting to give rise. I've accepted this transformation, this trick of dark mirrors against
a skin of light.

But now, in the dust of summer's early sun, I look down, coffee pot in one hand, a dishtowel in the other, and I see the hint of her body once again in my own. My ankles, tapered and knobby, the blue slippers, supportive and masculine, the veins rivered and raised...legs strong and thin. Barbara Stanwyck in the kitchen.

My lover sees it too. We laugh, the morning news dark against the windowpane. We eat our breakfast on the porch and count the crows in the cherry tree. My hands fiddle with the corners of my toast and I tap my slender foot gently against the side of my shadow life.

Faith

I have never been a religious person. Since most of the religious folk I've run into (with some wonderful exceptions) find my orientation abhorent and sinful, I've avoided contact as much as possible. This, I suppose, has made me ignorant of the faithful, those who believe in something unexplainable like a God or even a Son of God for that matter.

But these past three weeks, as I've sat in my class on Life Sciences (a fancy term for biology), I've come to realize I am more faithful than I give myself credit. And in these unintentional lessons on faith, I have been reminded why I did not become a scientist or a science teacher.

I love nature. I love being outdoors. I love hiking in the mountains, swimming in the lake, and camping by a river. I love sweating in hot desert air, feeling the sun on my forehead while paddling a kayak along the inlets of Puget Sound, and tasting the winter of a snowy trail while skiing. Nature is, for me, a wonder and a mystery. In terms of beauty, nothing compares. No human artwork or creation is as marvelous as the broad leaf of a tree, the scent of wet moss, or the majesty of a mountain against a blue sky.

The animal world is as mysterious and beautiful to me as well and I've almost driven my car into a bush or a tree craning my neck to see a hawk or an eagle, a cougar cutting across the road or an elk munching along a wilderness path.

For the past three weeks, our class has unraveled some of these mysteries. We've sat in a hot classroom dissecting plants, harvesting and then torturing fruit flies, and visiting with scientists who are working on their PhD's in plant DNA, attempting to crack the code so more corn can grow with less effort.

I've felt odd in this class not just because I am a history teacher whose interest in science is amateurish, but also because the need to understand the mysteries of the natural world are an insult to my faith in nature.

There, I've said it. I have faith. Just like those God-fearing Christians, I have faith in something I don't completely understand nor feel the need to fully grasp. I have faith that the sun will rise, that rain will come, that plants will grow, that the earth will spin. I have faith that, despite our human limitations and stupidity, the earth will be here long after we attempt to destroy it. I have faith that we are not the ultimate species, that dolphins and whales, gorillas and cockroaches have more savvy and wisdom than all my university education.

So, when we sat in class and listened to the PhD candidate talk about his research in chloroplast DNA, the question that came to mind was, "So what?" Not afraid to make a fool of myself, I asked him that very question. He smiled and went into a lengthy discussion about all the ramifications of his research. In the end, he could do any number of things if he cracked the code of chloroplast DNA from producing more corn to curing deadly viruses.

And then it struck me that not only had he lost his faith in nature, but he was trying to outwit it by creating MORE food for our already overpopulated earth to eat and kill more viruses so we could LIVE longer and therefore eat more food and reproduce more. He did not trust that corn was corn, coded with its very own and incredibly unique set of mysteries that were just wonderful all on their own.

Sure, I know people are dying of starvation and disease. I know I have it good. I know I am in good health and have plenty to eat because I was born in the US to middle class parents who paid for my education and expected me to make something of my life and not go off and fight a war or have to work to feed the family. Not that other parents don't have similar expectations, but I was born with resources, with cultural capital and I know this has afforded me some privileges that most in the world do not have.

Still...aren't there too many of us? Isn't that one of the BIGGEST problems in the world? 6 billion and counting? Not only are there too many of us, we seem to have exempted ourselves from the very laws of nature we're trying to understand. If corn only grows so fast, what does that tell us? That we can only eat so much corn? If we get sick and die from a virus, what does that tell us? Population control? Perhaps the virus is nature's way of trying to equal things out a bit?

I sat in this class and remembered all those other science classes I had to take in high school and college. Dissecting the frog to see how it worked inside only to find out and then throw the poor thing away. The astronomy class where the professor told us about all the theories around black holes and white dwarf stars and how astronomer's "think" it might be this way, but it could be a whole other way and if they were wrong, oops, that threw off everything they believed, but by god they are still going to believe it because they have to understand EVERYTHING.

It's not that I don't think science isn't interesting. I found it fascinating to look at everything with my jeweler's loop, to talk about the great flood that transformed Eastern Washington, to smash open rocks and find leaf fossils, to paddle the canoe out in the middle of the lake and watch the beavers build their dams. But I didn't feel like I had to understand it all, to collect the butterflies in the herb garden and stab them into a little box, or slice open the stem of an exotic plant to I could press it into my lab book.

I just wanted to observe, to watch the flow of the natural world around me, to look closely and say, "Wow, isn't that cool?" and have faith that it was exactly as it should be.

And if it wasn't...I suppose that is where I begin to chase my tail because most of what isn't the way it should be is either an act of nature or an act of humans -- the former I can accept, the latter makes me ill and frustrated because then, to make it "all better" we mess around with it more, bending the laws of nature back against the way we originally bent them to see if we can fix the problems we created and in the end, we just mess it up even more.

Which leads me to question, does WILDERNESS still exist? Is any thing or any where still truly wild? If not, what does mean for my faith in all things natural?

I suppose that is the true test of my faith...to believe that nature will right herself without my having to worry about it all.

Still, I think about this all the time, what am I willing to give up to save her?

Now there's a thought to sleep on...

Oh to be Lucky!

Lucky, the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel (long name for such a small dog) has met some of our other canine friends. This is Lucky with our dear doggie pal, Ben, an enormous and beautiful long-haired German Shepard who was the sweetest gentleman to the nervous spaniel.

Lucky has made herself quite at home, lounging in the sun and sleeping on one of Chester's old dog beds, a flea on a cloud.



While it's nice to have a dog in the house, we know we are still in grief over our beloved Chester. No one can replace him and until we are over feeling like no other dog can compare, we will spend our time dog sitting just to get our canine fixes -- soft kisses, doggie dreams (woof woof), and the sound of doggie paws on the new wood floors (don't worry, no scratches!).

Time. The medicine of the sad.

But Lucky is great fun and watching her with Ben (and then with the neighbor's dog, Lulu...pictures soon) has made us laugh and remember Mr. Pajama Pants with great fondness (aka, Chester).

An Education

This is one of my esteemed professors for my summer course in biology. This picture looks a bit unfriendly, but at the end of her lengthy explanation on tree coring, a smile cracked across her face, followed by a pithy comment that I can't quite remember today. We spent 14 hours together yesterday, all 20 of us packed into cars and vans for a long and circuitous romp through the Cascades and into the beyonds of Eastern Washington.

Our first stop was for tree coring, stream surveying, and lichen data collecting. While each of my three professors is knowledgeable and interesting, Ola here is perhaps the most entertaining. She is very much like Professor Trelawny from Harry Potter, the mysterious and oddball divination professor (as played by Emma Thompson in the movie version). By the end of the trip, I was entertaining my van with my Ola imitations, though I have yet to master the blend of New Zealand and British accent she's cultivated over the years.

We visited many sites, including the "stonehenge" of the state...(that's Ola way up in the lead...)



...to the desert catcus just outside Vantage...



The best part of the long journey was the swim in the Columbia River, though I have no photo as I was stroking my way to the cool spots of the river before most of the others had emerged from their vehicles...Ola at my side. She's no spring chicken, nor does she talk about her age much, but we all figured she was in her mid-70's and more energetic than a flea on a hot skillet.

Meanwhile, Ann and I continue to paint the windows and the trim. Today's task is to paint the third, yes third and final, coat on everything. Then we can begin the less strenuous job of painting the walls. Painting the trim and windows requires so much more bending over and cranking of the neck, or, as the next picture illustrates, reaching high up to the window 14 feet above us.



To add to our circus, we've taken on the job of dog sitting Lucky, a King Charles Spaniel just shy of two years old. Luckily (pun slightly intended), with the heat of this day, Lucky has found her place on a cushion on top of the couch, perched in slumber in the middle of our painting mess...can you find her?



Ah, there she is...



What a life, eh? From Ola to Lucky, it's been quite an education in the last 48 hours.

Now, back to painting...two windows to go!

Works of Fire and Other Rainbows

I've never been one to celebrate the fourth. I don't like loud noises much and I don't like fire waved around on the end of small sticks of dynamite (also known as fire crackers).

But it's been fairly quiet at our house for a change. The first day of independence we spent in this house was four years ago when Ann and I first got together. We sat at her bedroom window and watched the biggest display of illegal fireworks I'd ever seen. Since then, we've made it a point to be out of the 'hood on the fourth, for Chester's sake.

Yes, Chester's sake...One year ago this evening, Chester had his first seizure. We were heading back from our marathon drive to Michigan, staying at our friends' cabin on the Wenatchee River. We were sleeping in the loft out in the "Taj-ma Shed" and Chester was in his bed below us. It's an awful memory, so I'm not going to fully recall it though tonight, the missing him is strong.



But the recent drug activity in our neighborhood, the drive by shooting two weeks ago have made the police a strong presence on our block. Sure, there are still fireworks, but this year they aren't right in front of our house, precariously aimed at our roof.

Every time we hear a BOOM or a fizzling crackle, we're thankful Chester is in a quieter place. He hated fireworks, more than I do. He'd crawl on top of us in bed or on the couch and shake, a worried look in his eyes, his heart racing like a kite on a windy day.

We've decided, though, that Chester is still here. We woke to rain this morning, a welcome relief from the hot, dusty days of late. Then the lightning and thunder started, magnetic spears across the sky. Chester hated thunder as much as he hated fireworks, but when the rainbow broke across the eastern sky, we knew he was sending us a message, that he'd gotten all of his doggy pals together (Sasha and the other Sasha and Shelby and Dakota and many more...) to whack their tails together as they romped across the sky.

Meanwhile, we caulked and sanded the windows and then spent the rest of the day priming the trim and windows. We finished the living room, which is no small feat and tomorrow, Ann will prime all the rest of the trim and the three remaining windows.



Here's Ann caulking a tight corner of the study (she's now a caulking expert) and here's me painting the primer on one of the four LARGE living room windows...



You can't see my face, but I am not in a good mood. I knew menopause was going to be interesting, but I guess I never put two and two together...no more blood, but I get EVERYTHING else...the moodiness, the cramps, the back ache, the bloated belly and sore and swollen breasts.

Frankly, I'd rather have the blood.

But Ann was patient with me today, and just let me stew in my own menopausal fluids (or lack thereof), and once I saw the rainbow reminding me of Chester, I was in a much better mood.

The living room is now all primed and ready for its first coat of trim paint.

Tomorrow I go back to my science class. Yesterday's class was a bit more interesting as we set things on fire, boiled leaves, and tested for starch.







It's hard to believe tomorrow will only be Wednesday, but I'm thankful summer is moving at a slow pace...so far.

The BOOM BOOM BOOMs and SNAPs and POPs and BANG BANG BANGs are all building to a frenzy. I miss Chester horribly, but I'm so glad he is not here to experience the warfare of the 'hood.

Tomorrow will be quieter. I'm thankful I took a quiet hour this afternoon for a nap. I doubt I'll be sleeping much tonight, though I'm certain, when I do nod off to sleep, my dreams will be filled with rainbows and other works of fire.

Bullshit and Testosterone

So last night we went to a Mariner's baseball game. This is not something we'd normally do, but our artist friend up the street gave us 4 tickets for free. She doesn't normally go to the games either, but her husband, a big, burly firefighter buys season tickets every year and sits second row up, just past third base. Very close. Very, very close. Everyone around us had baseball mits to catch the foul balls that came whipping down the third base line like the space shuttle after and errant lift off.

Anyway, we went with our friends, Jeanne and Lisa, and the four of us sat and ate peanuts and drank our $4 bottles of water and kept our eyes on the batter so we knew when the space shuttle baseballs were headed our direction. Behind us sat testosterone and his bullshitting friends. Like any manly baseball fan, their vocabulary was limited:

Testosterone: Dude, I know, ain't worth crap on the team.

Bullshit One: Shit, I know, totally stupid.

Turns out, they all didn't really know each other. So they finally got around to this question.

Testosterone: Man, in Philly the crowd would like be screaming their asses off to get this team moving (the M's were losing).

Bullshit One: You not from around here?

T: No, man, I'm from Philly.

Bullshit Two: Cool, dude, what brings you out here?

T: Work mostly. My girlfriend is from here though we broke up and she's back in Philly.

BS 1: Now, I'm confused.

At this point, the beer man comes around and they each get a round, though testosterone gets a lemonade...go figure.

BS 2: What kinda work ya do?

T: I'm a writer. I own a publishing company.

BS 1 and 2: Cool dude.

T: What about ya'll?

BS 1: ...(I didn't really hear this one because a ball was hit our direction and a guy in the section over reached out to get it and fell into the field.)

T: What about you, man?

BS 2: I'm a psychologist and a musician.

T: Cool, dude, what kind of music?

BS 2: Blues mostly. Been doing it for 30 years.

At this point I decide to fake stretch and look around at the writer with a limited vocabulary and the psychologist blues man.

So, I can believe the one guy is possibly a publisher, though I doubt a writer with his way with words, but the other guy...a psychologist? I'm not sure if my doubts about his profession came from his horrible toupee, the thick gold chain dangling on his semi-hairy chest exposed by the plunging neckline of his polyester shirt or the yellow cotton shorts he had on that looked like the same shorts the boys in my old junior high used to wear for gym class or the obnoxiously large diamond-encrusted ring on his hand that I assume spelled out the initials of his name. He looked to be in his late 50's, as if he'd lived his life in the dark recesses of a bar (playing the blues, no doubt), and as if beer were his beverage of choice.

I was trying to picture his client pool. Characters from the Sopranos kept popping into my head. Not the powerful mafia guys, but the wanna-bes.

Does he play the blues because he's a psychologist, I wondered? How much of what he was claiming was truth, WAS TRUTH?

The Mariners lost, in the end, much to the dismay of Philly and the Shrink. We most likely won't go to another M's game for a number of years if ever again. Doesn't matter, we got enough bullshit and testosterone to last us a lifetime...dude.