Laid at my Steps

Ask and it will come. Literally! knocking at my front steps.

Since Ui-Seng's birth, Frantz and I have pegged our little daughter for a life of performance. With a natural charisma, a command of her audience, a thoughtful awareness of people, and unassuming beauty, (I know! I am her mother!) she seemed destined for a life on the stage in front of bright lights.


Well, of course, then they grow up and begin to assert their own opinion. Ui-Seng does NOT WANT to be a big star on TV, performing in front of lots of people. NO! She refuses. And insists her role remains behind the scenes: writer, director, supporter of her more spotlight loving peers. In their current peer-inspired class production of Elementary School Musical, she is preparing the script and writing the lyrics to the songs.

So much for her destiny on the receiving end of the camera....

Last night, Suzie, a neighbor we have known for much of the eight years we have been in Baltimore knocked on our door unexpectedly. Suzie's daughter, Cleo, is completing her junior year at Baltimore School for the Arts. We have watched her grow up since 6th grade. She has been active in local theater since we met her, a participant in the School for the Arts TWIGS Theater program. The Fells Point Corner Theater is one of the local neighborhood theaters Cleo has been involved with forever, and tonight, they were in desperate need for children to cast in their Christmas Pageant.

"Can you come around to the theater and check it out?!"

We threw on our coats and headed to the theater, literally 5 houses away from ours, the kids whispering to me through gritted teeth, "we are NOT auditioning for this play." Neverthless, we visited and were invited to come WATCH their rehearsal on Thursday.

"The part is theirs if they will take it."

We will see what will happen on Thursday, although Evains has already been enticed at the prospect of playing a naughty boy who does not know how to behave in church and disrupts service with his little friend.

Me? I believe destiny knocks when we surrender our will to control it.

Groundswell

In an early debate, Clinton, Edwards, and Obama were asked who MLK would support in the current campaign. While Clinton and Edwards made the case for why they themselves would be the candidate of choice, Obama presciently stated MLK would support none of them, rather be involved in creating a groundswell of pressure on whoever the winning candidate would be.

In his early years, Obama started building on the ground, the footprint of which can be seen in the structure of his campaign "to get elected"! (I wonder if Palin understands now what "community organizing" is? ok. Perhaps not yet. We'll give her four years of folks sitting around kitchen tables strategizing her future campaigns to finally "get it." Then again, maybe not!) His swift rise to the top of the power bubble leaves Obama in a unique position of being closer to the ground than any other president in a long time.... And with an awareness that now he must be pushed by the ebbs and flows, whether they are the forces of multinationals, corporate lobbyists, the Bilderberg Group, or ....the people on the ground.

The body has a way of injecting adrenaline into a wound to numb the body from feeling pain. On June 4, 2008, Obama addressed AIPAC and slashed the first deep wound into my political and humanitarian psyche. Quickly the adrenaline rushed in. Over the course of this campaign, more and more adrenalyn pumped into me through the huge corporate presence and private "blue dog parties" at the democratic national convention, his support of FISA, his rhetoric of aggression and war during the debates, nuclear power, more drilling, "clean" coal (what?!?!), and more recently, support of the bailout bill. Today, Barack Hussein Obama selected Rahm Israel Emanuel to be his Chief of Staff.

OUCH!!! OUCH! ouch. ouch... ok. I'm numb again.

I am happy we have President Obama!! I just can't seem to feel the joy with all this numbing adrenalyn pulsing through my body.

I believe in the realm of his possibility. I believe in the righteousness of his heart. When Obama was on the ground, he built relationships with Palestinian and Arab leaders in his Chicago community. I, too, feel the pressure of Israel and feel at a loss as to how to compromise this pressure with my passion that Israel is an illegitimate state built on the direct genocidal elimination of a people evicted from their homeland. Aaha! ...perhaps now I see the deep bond between Israel and the US!

>breathe<

However, all sides need to come to the table with the heart of forgiveness and allowance to move forward together with justice in peace. Since his days on the ground, since the days of his AIPAC speech, Obama has not visited a mosque, been very careful about images associated around him that may infer anything "moslem," associated himself with more and more staunch advocates of Israel while distancing himself from Palestinian academics and leaders, and continued to engage in the rhetoric of the Israel lobby ...all in response to "pressure." Understandably, all voices deserve to be heard, but at the expense of those who will piss them off if they happen to be powerful? Obama's marginalization of the Arab American community needs to be mended. But we need a GROUNDSWELL of pressure to back him up on this. Here is my first point of groundswell...

Violence

Beginning writing about WUFI, the World United Formosans for Independence has regurgitated my thinking about the "underground," and "building a movement." What huge ideas! It takes gargantuan personal commitment to "go underground" for an ideology. And it still boggles me to wrap my mind around the concept of "building a movement." Let's consult my T-Shirt from Project South:


Well! I guess that settles it! What does it take to build a movement? Consciousness * Vision * Strategy

In honor of Bill Ayer's prominent role in today's Obama campaign, I turn my attention to the 2002 documentary, The Weather Underground, by Sam Green and Bill Siegel, for mental fuel.

The Weather Underground emerged amidst a real social movement gripping the American population in the 60's heading into the 70's through 1980. This was a combined upheaval, shedding the yokes of social constructs regarding race, class, gender, war, and at its core: violence.

Violence as defined as oppression of humans through the bonds of racism and slavery. Violence as defined as oppression of women through the restrictive economic and social confines of the suburban housewife. Violence as defined through our history of genocidal strategy that serves as the roots of our nation. Violence as defined most directly through the waging of war in southeast Asia and more recently in the Middle East. More than any other principle, violence has accompanied human history, struggle, and, in particular, the American experience.

The Vietnam War, a graphic incarnation of our nation's legacy of violence, spoke urgently to the young folks who committed themselves to the Weather Underground; a radical splinter group subscribing to the philosophy that violent offenders can only understand the language of violence, thus negating the effectiveness of the "peace" movement. Garnering their name from Bob Dylan's Subterranean Homesick Blues, the Weathermen employed violent means to respond to the violence being imposed in the name of the U.S., creating the need for a mass underground network of weathermen.

"You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows"
-Bob Dylan, Lover of Words.

WUFI has been cited in the April 1980 CIA Report on International Terrorism in 1979, as a group claiming responsibility for International Terorrist Attacks, 1968-1979. The allure and romanticism of revolutionary violence spanned a myriad of movements during this explosive period, the prominent ones including the The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense and Che Guevara's "successful" Cuban revolution. The depth of anger, frustration, and fury driving the young souls who engaged in violent resistance burned bright during this time.

But is it effective? Does revolutionary violence launch its perpetrators towards their desired goal, if peace and harmony are their ideal? Where institutional violent aggression begets the rage that drives grassroots violent resistance, what happens to the ideal? As Ms. Virginia, from the Orleans Street Library put it, "We threw the baby out with the bath water."

Therein lies the ultimate clash of good and evil. A theme of many of my favorite great odysseys from George Lucas' "Dark Side of the Force" in Star Wars, the "Good and Bad" split Captain Kirk from Episode 5 of Star Trek Season 1, to the "Four Elements" of my new obsession, Avatar. All of which have had a profound impact on my own psyche.

In Book 1: Water, Chapter 16: the Deserter, Aang, the Avatar, Master of All Four Elements whose job is to restore balance to the world, battles Fire Nation's Admiral Zhao's awesome aggressive fire force using Air Nation's tactic of duck and run. Aang, who never strikes an offense, eventually wins the battle because Zhao has inadvertantly set fire to his own entire fleet attempting to strike Aang who fleetfoots across the ships.

This is the foundation of the yin and the yang. It has always been difficult to grasp that the dark side must be present to the light side. If good is good, then bad must be bad! ....right? ....and therefore, eliminated. disappeared. ...right?

Futility

On Saturday, Dejan and I spent a gorgeous day in downtown DC touring solar homes. It was cool to see urban homes implement solar electric and solar hot water systems. All the sites I had toured to this point have been "little house in the wild" type of projects. Cool, but not quite the same as the ones we saw this day. Thanks to Dejan, urban landscape designer, who specifically requested this. We came home to the Fells Point Fun Festival where I am able to do my annual shopping direct from artisans. This year, I bought the winter's supply of African shea butter soap, a winter coat, and a small, but beautifully handcrafted drum for Evains.

It was a beautiful fall day. I capped it off that night by riding my bike to the Charles Theatre to see Battle in Seattle, a film by Stuart Townsend paying homage to the events surrounding the 1999 WTO Meetings in Seattle. It DID come to Baltimore!

The film was mediocrely written and produced. The story is much too big to reduce to a one and a half hour film. It felt thin and crispy. I can imagine for those who were there, it will feel sadly inadequate.

Little did I expect, however, I was swept in the days after with a tremendous scourge of futility that weighed on me. This scourge erupts from the deepest abyss of my gut. It arouses a sorrow, a sadness, that I cannot fathom or get my grips around. The powers that dictate the direction of this world deliver us towards destruction and the efforts of the little people are erased with a wink and a nod. And I think it is this sense of powerlessness that my friends who have taken their lives battle with. I, on the other hand, am consumed with an anger matching the futility. The frustration is too much for my little spirit to balance. I become explosive.

It's a bitch to carry....
Battle in Seattle

Connections

He walked right up and began to direct questions at me. Interrupted from reading, I was defensive about men approaching me and his entitlement to ask me questions put me off. I was less than receptive. But his intention was firm and did not flinch at my wall of resistance. He merely “expected” an answer. As we learn in teacher crash course, if you expect it, they (expectations) will be met.

“Where do you live?” He asked with no uncertainty.
“Why do you want to know?” I retorted back.
“I just want to know if you live around here.” He replied undeterred.
“I live on that boat over there, the second from the left.” He offered. “I just moved into it May 2 because of my desire to minimize my carbon footprint.”

He was melting my resistance. I was piqued. Who is he? What does he want?

That‘s the thing about soul messengers. They don’t want anything. They don’t even know why they’re talking to me. At least that’s how it seems. They just talk as if it’s the most natural thing. And the topics never need preface. They just flow in a stream of consciousness. Coming from no beginning and fading into no ending. Somehow, the message is always exactly what I need to hear at that moment in time.

I thought of other soul messengers who have blipped into my life so far: The UXO detonator at Aberdeen who popped his head over my cubicle wall as I was transitioning into the first few weeks of my first job. He invited me to dinner that night for a similar interchange; Conversations that began before we met and continued into the smoke of the future; Insights of things and people he could not have known around me. UXO detonators are paid so well because of the risk of being blown up, he only worked three months out of the year. The rest of the year he spent kayaking and camping our nation’s waterways.

Joe, the left handed entomologist from Georgia, coming through DC at the end of my exploratory year at the National Science Foundation, just before a huge shift as I traveled to Taiwan. After a day-long meeting about non-chemical pest management systems, he also invited me out to dinner for soul searching conversation.

Julius King, who dropped his job at the Pentagon one day to live on the streets: “It was something I knew I had to do.” Emerging into my life at Funk’s, the vegan coffeshop one block down on Eastern Avenue, again at a distressed emotional transition moment in my life. Waving me down on Eastern Avenue during a downpour from the open window of his car, “Hey! Hey, I just wanted to say hi.” Who are you? What do you want?

They all seem to have a similar vibe to them; something free, unattached, yet balanced and weathered about their lives. They come in and then, blink! Out without a trace. All in the same way: with a presumption and entitlement to be there. To engage. To speak. Do you know me?

Tom Maze, West Virginia native, PhD in English, Masters in psychology, gifted with a love of literature and universal ideas, will weather the winter this year in Baltimore in his 45 foot sailboat until he can get his office mobile. Then he will run his company while sailing around the world. He offers out of the blue to guide my writing. Who says angels aren’t looking after me?

Another soul come to deliver a message. Another connection for a reason. But I know exactly why. I know my reasons. And I am only eternally grateful to the guides and angels. To the universe.

Thank You.

Tent Revival! I gets religion.

Oh, Yes! Amen! And Hallelujah!

Today, I attended a downhome urban tent revival - complete with a drenching downpour! The Baltimore Book Festival took place in Mt. Vernon and was small enough to be manageable. I continue to find reasons why Baltimore is the place to be for me. The best part is always that it is bikable!

Amidst drenching downpours, I eschew umbrellas by subscribing to the belief of "the space in between." After an entire night and morning of solid rainfall, I left my house at 11:42 am and biked the 20 minutes from Fells Point to Mt. Vernon mostly dry. While finding a nice lamp post to tether my bike, the drizzle began again. Navigating my way to the literary salon, it began to do some real rain, but now I'm under the tent! It works every time: "The space in between."

I've been "gettin' my education" with Ron Suskind, so had to check him out when he came downhome local. He was invited through the One Maryland, One Book Council on Humanities to talk about A Hope in the Unseen. He gave a stirring account of his personal journey learning what it means to be human. Followed immediately by Amy Goodman who was down from New York to talk about the right to a free press. Using her past news reports, experience at the DNC and RNC (getting arrested!), and stories from her book "Standing Up to the Madness," Ms. Goodman organized her presentation like a well-crafted news report.

What was impressive and inspiring is the crowd of people who jammed the tent for these two documentarians imploring us with stories of crossing divides and creating social change by standing up in dissent. It did feel like an urban tent revival with audience callouts and response to impassioned pleas by the presenters. And like a true revival, everyone was drawn to their feet by the end. These are folks who knew what (who) they came out for. Dare I call us, "groupies?!" During the sessions, Mother Nature chose the moment to release her deluges, creating a sense of otherwordliness under that tent...

Being a book festival, the authors were very accessible, hanging around for a few hours afterwards, shooting the breeze with all of us groupies. Incognito, I think Cedric Jennings was hanging out next to Ron Suskind... No one acknowledged this, but I'm guessing this was so. I was not going to be the one to cry wolf. Let it not be ME to be the one to blow his cover. I'm excited my new bookmark for my book "One Percent Doctrine" has Ron Suskind's email written on it (by his (left) hand) with the promise of further correspondence! I'm going to draw him a map for his book! Amy Goodman is left handed too! Coincidence.

Asking for another "space in between" I made it back home only slightly damp. Another great day biking around my city.

Surf

On my netflix account, I was warned the following films would not be available after October 2. So I'd better get cracking and watch them now while it's available.

The first two nascent films for Bruce Brown, Slippery when wet (1958), and Endless Summer (1966) were the first beginnings of a filmmaker dynasty; Now going on three generations of surfer filmmakers. Slippery When Wet, the first endeavor, had a budget of $5000, which included airfare to Hawaii for 5 surfer guys, $250 for the songtrack from a musician friend, and the purchase of all of his film equipment!

My impressions? I like the storytelling of Bruce Brown. Travel the world and surf? Live on a shoestring. Boys who know how to play in a big way. Real life always butts in. Sigh.
Endless Summer

Edge of America

Add this to my cache of teacher/coach flicks. Let's keep our eye to the truth of our country's origins. I like the term, "The Edge of America" referring to "Indian" communities. It injects a good dose of humble pie to any sense of "entitlement" we may harbor.

Daniel Junges' film, Chiefs, is made the way a documentary should be made. Homegrown in Wyoming, he grew up a spectator on the sidelines of the Chiefs singular mindedness around their basketball team. Curious and eager to tell their story, he goes home to do just that.

The Edge of America is a fictional reconstruction of reality in Utah. A real mishmash of race in this country. Perhaps a relevant reminder in our current day and age.

"You tell me why I'm pissed off."
"Because you're a black man in America."
"That's right. I'm good and pissed off."
"Well, get over it! You're talking to Indian People here. Get over it! Get on with it! Or get the hell out!"

Scenes from My Waterfront

I was so inspired when Ron Suskind got up out of his "Director's Chair" and exclaimed, "I need to walk. You know, when I write, I'm always walking around. Getting my ideas and then scrambling back to my desk to write it down before I forget!" I relate to this!

The walk along the waterfront serves many functions. It destresses, relaxes, and purifies the mind. This helps the mind to think, the spirit to regenerate, and the body to unwind.

Saturday, September 20 was the Ocean Conservancy's International Coastal Cleanup day and lo and behold! There was an event scheduled in my hood: The Living Classrooms Foundation sponsored an event.

The same old realizations continue to prove themselves. Back in my Civil Engineering student days, we dissected trash so we could design waste management systems. We learned that certain things remain in landfills forever.... We had NO WAY to manage this waste. What are they? Plastics, styrofoam, and aluminum. Life never strays very far from the basics. What did we fish out of the water this day? Let's see...

Be kind to our waste stream. Eschew the use of these materials. Aluminum can be efficiently recycled, so that's ok as long as you DIVERT them from the waste stream. NO PLASTIC BAGS!!! Bring your own when you shop. Bring reusables with you when you go out to eat or drink. Is this strange to ask? You tell me where these materials will end up if we continue to generate them?

Here are shots taken from my waterfront walk. Muse. Regeneration. Relaxation.


Who wouldn't be inspired!

Stop-Loss

Beautiful Young Statues wrestle with their demons. God Bless America.

Ma Rainey's Black Bottom

To grease my writing chops and curtail my consumption of easy video and passive entertainment, I have instituted a requirement for myself! For each film (play) I consume, I am required ("momma takes charge!") to write some thoughts and reflection. To satisfy my continued appetite for film and books, I scramble to catch up...


On a gorgeous autumnal Saturday night, after grapefruit gelato from Pitango, I swing by The Waterfront Hotel, swiftly becoming a venue nurturing local music talent, to catch Nelly's Echo for one hour before waltzing across the square to the Vagabond Players where I viewed Ma Rainey's Black Bottom by August Wilson. Where else, but in Fells Point?

Always a treat to have live entertainment, I travelled back to 1920s Chicago, and was hit by all the ways things have not changed in America. Perhaps nothing ever really changes. Is this the beginning of dynamics I see in my City? My nation? Our World? Or was the beginning well before even Levee, Toledo, and Ma Rainey scuffled. Good storytelling taps into the human spirit in all of its struggle and beauty. All of its shortcomings and its strengths. It sometimes seems like the same thing happening over and over again. Sometimes, it feels so endless! Sometimes it feels so dependable. Sometimes it feels so full of joy!

I am entering the zone. Stories are being written in the air around me as I walk, as I think, swim, drive, bike. It is now my challenge to capture them and give them voice.

For the Love of WORDS - Part II & Part III

Part II
Last spring, I began to gauge the age of when I began my love affair with books. I remember persistently marching through the multi-book fictional worlds of Betsy, Tacy, and Tibb (Maud Hart Lovelace); Carolyn Haywood's pre-adolescents; Walter Brooks' animals on the Bean Farm, most notably, Freddy the Detective; Beverly Cleary's Beezus and Ramona; John Fitzgerald's Great Brain; Harriet the Spy (Louise Fitzhugh) and her friend Janie, the scientist who decided at her pre-adolescent age that she never wanted to have kids, so made it her lifelong goal to discover how to rid women of the requisite need to menstruate; and every girls' essential, Judy Blume.

...and begin to worry that my children, age 7 and 8, do not read as I did. The education system, with its debacles of teaching and learning theories, seemed largely deficit in the implementation, even outside of Baltimore City. In my mind, education comes from a desire within, and reading is the vehicle through which one achieves the goal. "Succesful" education is arrived at when a child retains a thirst for question and reads to find the answer. Do my children pass the reading litmus test?

I began with mandatory trips to the library, where we would select books that were never read. With the onset of our runaround lives, video, tv, and computers: quiet time with books just got squeezed out of the schedule. I knew that modeling desired behavior was an important way to teach. Unfortunately, being addicted to reading like I am, this had already been done to a fault for their entire lives, still without the desired result. There was no engagement with them as I sat removed from them, absorbed in my own word world.

I also read somewhere (!) that while children should read at their level, being read to at higher levels also promotes literacy. OK. Valerie's persistent efforts at encouraging literacy by gifting books (remained untouched in bookshelves from year to year) yielded the entire set of Harry Potter books. Thanks to the movies for this one, my kids were engaged in the marketing of it, and the moving pictured version of it. I can't engage them in reading on their own, but I can engage them in me reading to them. I'll start with that!

They LOVED being read to. What a joy! I was even able to use this reading time as leverage for correcting behavior! ("If you don't stop right now, no Harry Potter tonight!") It's still not what I hoped, and I was a bit worried that they were not willing to read on their own - not how I remember myself devouring books.

We completed Book One and was rewarded with viewing the film. Book Two came and went followed by viewing of the film. Book Three was completed at the end of the summer and we just viewed the film a few weeks ago. At this point, we were able to engage in comparison and contrast between the book and the film. How valuable! One of my favorite pasttimes. We just began book Four two weeks ago, but still without any concerted effort towards independent reading after 8 months.

I had begun instituting further restriction on library book choices - while they could choose any two books they wanted (often still picture books, comic books, and how-to diagram books!), the third library book had to be approved by me per my prescribed reading level. Lenient the first few times, I kept tightening my standards, pushing them towards levels I was hoping for. But where is the value of this if the books are not being read!

It was time for drastic measures. No more of this "do what you want" business. We had been setting up the CCC on our refrigerator: Command Control Central. Using overhead markers (from my teacher supplies), we were writing our things to do on our refrigerator. I took my marker, created a block, and carefully placed it on the CCC: "Reading Night"

Time for "momma" to take charge!

Tonight is reading night! No Harry Potter until you read, silently to yourself, for 15 minutes.

"I don't want to!" "I want YOU to read." "Mommy, can we read Harry Potter?"

It took about ten minutes of determined insistence ("Yes, I will read Harry Potter ...after you read for 15 minutes silently to yourself") before the three of us settled into our respective books. Can you match the book with the reader?

Readers:Evains, UiSeng, Mommy
Books:The Korean Cinderella, One Percent Doctrine, Ms. Small is Off the Wall

...But to my surprise, I emerged ten minutes later from the secret room under the White House where I was meeting with George Tenet, Dick Cheney, Condi Rice, and Georgie to find perfect silence, except for the sound of pages turning. Let it not be ME to be the one to break this silence. Both Evains and UiSeng finished their book in this sustained 40 plus minutes of reading! Not content with purely "technical" reading, I even quizzed UiSeng with comprehension questions before rewarding them with Harry Potter.

This past week, UiSeng brought her current book "Not So Weird Emma" with her to school every day - so she could read it in holes of time - just like I did/do! - and brought it with her for the weekend to poppy's house. I think they've caught the bug! Finally.

Part III
One Maryland One Book selected Ron Suskind's "A Hope in the Unseen" as the book that "everyone" in Maryland is supposed to read together and scheduled book discussions at public libraries around the state. The Orleans Street Branch gifted me a copy of the book "if I would come to the discussion." I looked the librarian in the eye and told her I would come at 10 am. After seeing the schedule, I saw that there was a second discussion at Southeast Anchor Branch at 1pm followed by a screening of the film "The Great Debaters" Looks like it would be a library day. Luckily, it was also a great day for riding my bike around the city.

No one showed up at any of the discussions, but I had a wonderful discussion with Virginia at the Orleans Street library. Indigenous to the neighborhood, she shared with me her story of her family upbringing and her odyssey to attend college in 60's america. In the course of our discussion, she added several books to my formerly vacant backpack: The Pact, The Bond, And Still we Rise. Thank you, Virginia!

Southeast anchor was pretty lame. No one showed up, but the organizers didn't seem to care much about the discussion. They just wanted to push play on the DVD player and watch the movie. I don't blame the young men. I think their attachment to looking successful prevented from engaging fully in the content. Our discussion (me and the two young men working it) centered mostly around why this was a poorly planned event, why no one came, how can we get more people interested, how the book was too high-level for kids, ....!

Me and three people in a huge fancy room in the library basement greatly enjoyed Oprah and Denzel's film, though! The Great Debaters accentuates the phrase "The pen is mightier than the sword." I want to caution, though, that words are a double edged sword, with the power to strike down, but also with the potential to be meaningless blather. I hold this caution near, as we engage in this political season.

I am beginning a period where words gain a life of their own. Here is my training ground and my paying respect to the power of words.

"Debate is combat. But your weapons are words."

The Great Debaters

Universal Peace - Universal Life

Misty Upham and Melissa Leo star in a film by a woman, about women. Not a sissy or girly film, there, nevertheless , were marked womanness' in the testosterone challenged story. Perhaps it is the steely toughness that describes a mother in protection of her cubs that rivals a macho challenge anyday; A challenge which often lacks depth of commitment. Enhanced by a universal transcendance as protector, not just of your own cubs, but a shared protection of every mother's cubs.

The two women risk life and limb and capture to recover the cub of one of their charges; a Pakistani woman being smuggled across the Canada-US border. In the finale, Leo's caucasian privilege and anti-Mohawk sentiment is trumped by her shared protectiveness of her own children and what can be healed by and for Upham's character.

I'm not saying men are incapable of transcending boundaries and conflict nor that every woman magically possesses this ability. I do believe that there is a powerful force found in this universal motherhood that can be tapped by men and women alike in our quest for peace in our post-apocalyptic world. In the womanly spirit of Israeli and Palestinian women's peace efforts: Women in Black.

Frozen River

The RNC - Pre-emptive ACTION

So, the RNC has a ten million dollar contract with the City of St. Paul for lawsuits. A pre-emptive understanding that they will violate the civil rights of folks who will sue the city to the tune of 10 million dollars!

More ominous than variegated violence against compliant or confrontational (oh no! the angry left!) protesters marching within or outside unreasonable permit restrictions is the pre-emptive targeting of the press. This occurred on August 30, the Sunday BEFORE the convention.

The Cheney-Rumsfeld neo-con administration has embraced the idea of pre-emptive action! Ron Suskind does a wonderfully engaging job of documenting this process in his book: The One Percent Doctrine. And it has been implemented with a vengeance.

The DNC - Happy Things

Happy things that make Rolla happy. The small sparks that truly restore hope to her soul.

Iraq Veterans Against the War march on the DNC in Denver. In good faith, these loyal Americans deliver a letter addressed to Senator Obama. A moment of collective joy as Obama's man comes out to meet them.... ...followed by the crush of empty promises. ...But hope never dies!

This is what democracy looks like!!

(No, not the police in riot gear! That's what fascism looks like. The veterans...)

Note: That's Ron Kovic from Born on the Fourth of July (1989), for those of you old enough to remember!?!

Chaos

MANDATORY Viewing for EVERY American:

Charles Ferguson, Brookings Institute Senior Fellow, after a long career including a math degree, founding and selling a startup IT company, three published techie books, ...and from Cal SF... in 2005 discovers a void in the documenting of US Iraq Policy, so forms his own company to do just that!

No End in Sight

Jazon Mraz

Ui-Seng is standing on a ledge. The two of us are peering through the open window at DuClaw's - our typical method of catching live music at Fells Point bars on summer evenings - tonight, a singer on his acoustic guitar hooked to an amp singing about the Baltimore Skyline.

"Is that an electric guitar?" UiSeng wonders at the set up.
"Did you write that song," I ask the performer.
"No. I wish I wrote that song. That was written by Jason Mraz. He's from Mechanicsburg, Virginia."

Prompting me to google Jason "Moraz" stumbling onto his hit "I'm Yours," a veritable anthem to the on-the-road affair! Like the performer at DuClaws, I wish I had written that song... I have lived it! Reminiscent of aimless days wandering, where life is distilled to its basic elements. It is in this space that love rears up in its purest form. For a moment (3:41 minutes - the length of the song), I, re-live those moments.

I'm Yours

LOVE

Tonight the weather in Baltimore is perfect. I took a walk along the waterfront this evening, reminiscent of the manifold footsteps I'd already taken along it, especially in recent months.

I just returned from 23 days on the road and have spent the past three days re-integrating myself. While travelling, I decried the dysfunction and dirt of my adopted hometown of almost 9 years, and drank in the physical beauty, healthy sense of community, wholeness of personal relationships, found in the small towns and communities we passed through.

I am revisited tonight with the realization that I love Baltimore.

Nina defines love as the feeling that exists naturally between human beings, unsullied by greed, fear, pain, jealousy and other such marvels.

On Monday, I went sailing with the Hood Kidz (See note: TenderBridge). Arriving one hour late, I was just in time to help ground, put away, and take down the sails of the boats. The boys were unruly, difficult to "collect", constantly poking at any chink of weakness in each other, and I inadvertantly donated about $40 in cash, prey to hood kidz who were able to reach slender arms through a crack in my car window to unlock the door while I was helping to store the boats they had left out after using them. Welcome home!

Today, I went sailing with a different set of kids, this time from Perkins Homes, a public housing neighborhood just west and north of Fells Point. It was like night and day. The kids were kids. They helped each other, they comforted each other when they were afraid, they responded to our requests, they put away all the boats and did not play until given the go ahead that all was clean. Noel Acton, the man behind the TenderBridge, described it wonderfully in an email (read at bottom of this post). Public housing kids live in poverty, but these kids had some adult who was able to navigate the beaurocratic red tape and secure a home through the public support system. Mr. Noel relayed that when he went to pick them up today, they were all waiting together as a group, ready to go. The kids from Monday are literally collected singly from the streets just north and east of Patterson Park - a dilapidated, neglected, decaying neighborhood littered with more abandoned buildings than inhabited ones. In another way to look at it, "no one cares." We immediately feel the difference in these barometers, these children.

The only difference is LOVE. The LOVE that makes or breaks a child. Makes or breaks a human being. I confided to Mr. Noel about my inadvertant donation that I was not aware I made until I was home on Monday. (Me: All my cash is gone! Lady: Where did it go? Me: That's a very interesting question!) Just before we left today, he said that on Monday we would round up the usual suspects. I was under the presumption that if you play with wolves, you are going to get bit, and he could see that in my reaction. But he said, "I don't want them to think that it's ok to do it."

Here lies my realization. This is why I love Baltimore City. A city of people like Mr. Noel who take such ownership over the deficits in our society.

It's not that folks from my travels don't care. Surrounded by love, they are too far removed to feel the urgency of decay. This is why I live here. My city.

And me, I'm finally learning to sail!

--------------------------------
Noel Acton wrote an insightful email to us. I share it here.

Hi everyone -

Sailing is off to a great start with our usual kids from the area north of Patterson Park, and this year we added some kids from the Perkins Public Housing Project for the Thursday crew. Two of the kids in the Monday group are refugees from Congo who I felt the program would help them socialize in the community easier. It turned out that they are pretty well socialized. The difference between them and our usual cohort is astounding. While they were born in the Congo and English is their second if not third language they are far ahead of the other kids in education, vocabulary, language skills, knowledge, social skills, and motivation. The primary reason is these two have both a functioning mother and father. It really pointed out to me how deprived our hood kids are and how much they have missed in life. While they are generally some of the most deprived and at-risk kids in the city there are still some even worse off that I feel no matter how much we do our efforts will not help.

One of the reasons the time we spend with our kids is so helpful for them is that they have such limited exposure to a world outside the hood and to caring sensible adults. My approach is that each kid is going to be a little better off in life for each positive experience we can provide them. While we would like to think we can help them see themselves being successful in life, it may come down to just providing them a memory of someone believing in them. Perhaps it will be when they are locked up in jail and saying to themselves "Mr. Noel told me I can do better than this with my life."

Sometimes things can be discouraging, but then one of the kids will do something that will really show you how much of a difference you have made in their lives. The other important thing our volunteers do is make the larger community aware of the difficulties our kids face every day of their lives. Thank you all for your interest and support for the kids.

Mr. Noel
Director
The TenderBridge

Adirondacks

We take the ferry across Lake Champlain to the Adirondacks, NY State!

This time, we leave at 4 pm and Evains is awake for the ride!

And set up camp at Poke-O-Moonshine, the high peaks region of the Adirondacks. Mosquitos were OUT in vengeance. We went on a quest for insect repellent and firewood and had a campfire tonight.

We awoke in the morning to a hike UP the 1 mile vertical trail up to the high peaks from our campsite.

A break along the way...

OOH! But was it worth it!

...and blueberries?!




Happy blueberry faces on the way down.

We had been driving and moving around EVERY NIGHT so I promised we would settle in one spot for two nights. This spot turned out to be Moffitt Beach in the Southern Adirondacks. We arrived and set up just in time for a walk along the beach under the full moonlight...

The next day, we went rafting on the Sacadanga River. It was great to get in a river, as lake water was starting to feel kind of like warm bath water.

...then stopped at the playground in Spectator, NY, the town next to the Moffit Beach campground and scored pit food signaled by pit smoke.

Final morning out of the Adirondacks! Our farewell at our breakfast place.

Burlington

Escape from the funky-ness of Montreal, but also from the haze of cigarette smoke which seemed ubiquitous. Why is it that culturally, funkiness and smoking happen to go hand in hand? Nature (clean air!) and fuddiness...
...We take a deep, clean, breath as we enter Burlington, Vermont and visit Michael, Valerie, and family.

They live on the skirts of Lake Champlain, and the ENTIRE FAMILY, Valerie, Madeline (5), Henry (5), Isaac (2), Ui-Seng (8), and Evains (7) traveled by bike from their home to the lake for a quick swim before dinner. Choosing to live green....

This is the front porch of the Front Porch Forum (see my links)