She’s here. So far, so good. I mean, really, I can’t complain. We stayed up talking until almost 3 am my time, but it’s okay. She’s pretty slow moving because of the foot thing, so I’m not sure how much we’ll be able to get done together. IOW, going to the grocery could take a hell of a long time.

M. has developed a very kind and loving view of the situation, so I’m happy about that.

And on a different topic, we have more exciting news in the world of [insert sounds of doom here] Franque’s health. I’m fine, I’m fine. But I have fibroids and a cyst. I imagine those will have to come out (there were associated symptoms -oh, okay, I’ll say it: pain- that got me to the doc in the first place), so maybe the timing of my mother’s “visit” will be helpful. In terms of post-surgery stuff. (Don’t you LOVE how I have myself needing to recover from surgery? How I see myself needing the constant care of my MOMMY? God, such a drama queen!)

To add just a dash of excitement to the fibroid/cyst splendor, some tests my doc ordered last week “show evidence of early menopause.” Aah, nothin’ says autumn like a hot flash, eh?

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Tags: mother, fibroid, cyst, menopause

Smithsonian opens virtual African American museum - Yahoo! News

Snippet:

“The dream to build it really had started and stopped and stalled,” [Lonnie] Bunch [the museum’s first director] said in a telephone interview. “A lot of people
really questioned ‘Is this going to happen?’ This is one of the ways we can make it real.”

“He will use the site — http://nmaahc.si.edu/ — to promote museum exhibitions that will travel around the country over the next few years, solicit advice on planning the museum and seek donations to help raise money toward construction of the $500 million building on the Washington mall.

“The museum’s first project to explore using the Web to add to its collection is a program called the Memory Book, which asks users to write in or submit digital audio recordings with recollections of significant experiences in their lives.”

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Tags: Smithsonian, African American Museum, “Memory Book

Just kidding!

But M-Day is on Thursday. She arrives at 11 pm. I’ve done all the housework a girl can do and still walk upright, so I’m hoping the days of her nit-picking are long gone. (Of course, as a guest in my home, you’d think that complaining or nit-picking of any kind wouldn’t happen, but I think that she complained and nit-picked her way out of her last arrangement.)

I had two days off -Monday and today- and I’m anything but rested. I have had some good workouts, though, so that’s good.

There are a few therapists I need to call. As we get closer to M-Day, I feel the growing need to have one on retainer. Just in case of an emotional emergency. Here are some of the issues my mother and I have had in the past, just to give you a hint at what I’m dealing with:

• I can’t have been depressed as a “tween” and then a teen - she’d have known. Forget that I was bulimic, suicidal and actually sent myself to therapy as a youngin’. Secretly with my babysitting money. Yes.
• Or I’m not  Latina or Hispanic, whatever you prefer. Why? I haven’t suffered enough. Um, HULLO! I coulda gone with Jewish (or at least Sephardic) but she’d have to have been the Jewish one. Since it was on my dad’s side, it doesn’t count. It’s the only identity I have, in terms of cultural context.
• My father, even though they’ve been divorced for MANY years (more than a few decades) -and not to mention that he’s DEAD- is the root of all evil. He got what he deserved (lonely, painful death), but then again, he deserved WORSE!

There’s more, but I’m so weary from cleaning that I can’t think of anything else.

Now watch… she’ll be a little princess. And then you will shame me, as I [may then] deserve.

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Tags: M-day, mom, emotional malaise

Long ago and far away, I worked in a record store. One of my regulars was a young lady who was just about blind from very severe diabetes. She couldn’t see dark lettering on a dark background, for example.One day she came into the store to visit and the record -LP, that’s “long playing record” for you whipper-snappers- that was playing was Rickie Lee Jones. So long ago does this story take place that I cannot remember the album.

In any case, the first letter of each of Rickie’s names was in a dark color. So my friend stood at the counter, squinting back to where the album cover was on display, and finally said, “Who the HELL is ‘Icky Ee Ones?!”Aah, yes. One of my favorites, Ickie Ee Ones.

You know, also long ago and far away, such women as Rickie Lee gave me permission of a sort to carry on as I did. I don’t blame them, that’s not what I’m saying. If I’d been alive when Billie Holiday was all the rage, I’d have had a nice excuse to shoot smack. Instead, if was gallons and gallons of booze.

So let that be a lesson to you!

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Tags: RickieLee Jones, music, youth

I can’t stay up too late because I have to get up at 5:30 in the morning.Again. Yes, again. It’s my new thing, you see, getting up at 5:30 and exercising. Well, exercising while the sprinklers are on the lawn. MmHmm. We got different parts of the lawn reseeded and those parts have to be watered twice a day. So since M. is outta town, guess who does it? You guessed it, moi. I figured if I had to get up early to do the damn watering I might as well exercise too. And then, you see, it’s done for the day. (Not the watering - that has to be done again in the evening - the exercising is done.)

It’s only 9:52 pm and I have that weird haunty feeling… zombie brainishness. I must sleep now.

Now.

Now.

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Music for tonight’s post. (Don’t watch the video if, like me, you find images of September 11th to be way too painful.)

The flag outside my building was flying at half-mast today. Nobody on campus really talked about 9/11, just in passing here and there. I think it would have been different if I was still in Washington, DC - more talk, more emotion. Here in Ohio, as it was in Charleston, WV, I think it must have felt somewhat distant. Not to say, of course, that people in those places didn’t feel the tremendous fear and sadness that people in the places that were hit did… but it does seem to be different.

Anything-But-Bacon told us last year that she went to see the 9/11 movie (whatever that was, in theatres, something awful). She said she went “to honor the people who died.” I exploded in one of my idiotic reactions (note to self: respond, don’t react) asking how in the hell 9/11 victims were honored by paying $8 to see a fabrication of an event… She didn’t -couldn’t- reply. I compared that movie to Mel Gibson’s “Silence of the Christ” (or was it “Passion of the Lambs”?) in terms of filmmakers using poetic license to the extreme for the sake of exploiting an event. That didn’t win me any fans.

Why do I try to change people’s minds?
Why do I think I’m right?
Besides the very obvious answer that I AM.

So anyway, here we are, six years later. After fleeing WashDC the month after the attacks (to the biscuity comfort of West-by-God-Virginia) I still cried about it. Saw the Michael Moore film and had such a reaction that I thought maybe I had PTSD. (Really.) Ask Baby Judas, he’ll tell you - it was noticeable in the theatre. I wrote an essay about September 11 and what it was like for me - and I won an award for that essay.I’d give up awards of all kinds if I could have the power to take that day back.To keep people from the horrific choices they had to make and for all the choices they were KEPT from making. The memories of that day and its aftermath bring home the fragility of life… it is fleeting, tender -though sometimes so very hard.

So cry for the losses, but keep living your life. Live it full, with joy and abundance of spirit. Love is easier than hate - it feels better, aids digestion and if what goes around really does come around, by gosh, wouldn’t you rather it be love?

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I just bought the airplaine ticket. One way from LAX to Ohio. A pitstop in Las Vegas. One can only hope her dance potential will be discovered and she’ll be whisked off to lead a life of glamor and showgirl excitement.

But that’s very, very unlikely.

As unlikely as a successful Britney Spears comeback performance.
Indeed.

It will be fine.
It will be okay.
All will be well.

[Rinse and repeat as needed]

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A snippet from http://tinyurl.com/39kywd:

“LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Socialite Paris Hilton has filed a lawsuit against Hallmark Cards, claiming it used her likeness without permission on a greeting card entitled “Paris’s First Day as a Waitress.”

Kansas City-based Hallmark Cards said the card was part of a satirical series that parodied celebrities and politicians.

“According to the lawsuit, Hilton’s face is superimposed over a cartoon of a waitress serving food to a patron with the dialogue “Don’t touch that, it’s hot. What’s hot? That’s hot.”

“It says the card was selling in the United States for $2.49.

“The suit says that Hallmark failed to obtain approval from the hotel heiress for using her image and had damaged her rights to privacy and publicity.”

Uh, yeah. Ridiculous, huh?

Let’s review something together, shall we? This is Paris Hilton. That’s right, Paris Hilton is suing because her RIGHTS TO PRIVACY AND PUBLICITY were damaged. MmHmm. This from the gal whose sex vid is still in high demand on the ‘net. Who doesn’t walk but rather poses her way through life. Utterly ridiculous!

I was wondering, though -ridiculousness aside- as a celebrity, are Hilton’s rights being trampled by Hallmark? A quick review of my media law book tells me that she just might have a case. The key here is that her likeness was used in parody - and that’s where I think she could have something. (Well, her attorneys could have something - I find it nearly impossible to believe that Hilton has the sense of an ant, frankly.) Still, if I were the Hallmark attorney, I would argue that Hilton’s life is a pardoy of itself, therefore erasing the lines between reality and fiction.

And then finally, the whole thing is just so dumb that I say, as perhaps Paris herself might, “WhatEVER!”

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It’s the end of an aria.

From the Washington Post (via The Associated Press), Thursday, September 6, 2007; 12:48 AM:

ROME — Luciano Pavarotti, whose vibrant high C’s and ebullient showmanship made him one the most beloved tenors, has died, his manager told The Associated Press. He was 71.

Pavarotti had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer last year and underwent further treatment in August 2007.

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testing flocks’s blog tool…

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Big news, yes. But did they have to put it this way?

Alberto Gonzales, the nation’s first Hispanic attorney general, announced his resignation Monday, driven from office after a wrenching standoff with congressional critics over his honesty and competence.

For some reason, that just frosts my ass. They wouldn’t said “the nation’s 27th white attorney general,” I don’t think. My mind probably goes too quickly to the buttheads whose thought processes would be fueled by such a statement, and add a continuation like, “SEE? I told you Hispanics shouldn’t hold such positions!”

I’m trying to be sunnily optimistic and such, but maybe not hard enough. Maybe I look too quickly to the racist crowd, anticipating nonsense of some kind.

Still… Dubya’s circle is sure shrinking, isn’t it?

Here’s a snip of the story, from US Attorney General Gonzales resigns - Yahoo! News:

“Gonzales, whom Bush once considered for appointment to the Supreme Court, is the fourth top-ranking administration official to leave since November 2006, following Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, who had a high-ranking Pentagon job before going to the World Bank as its president, and top political and policy adviser Karl Rove.”Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., reacted to the announcement by saying the Justice Department under Gonzales had “suffered a severe crisis of leadership that allowed our justice system to be corrupted by political influence.” ‘

Oh, the cry that escaped my mouth when I read that headline, just moments ago. I love Grace Paley. Anytime I get to write a list of favorite books, Paley’s “The Little Disturbances of Man” is at the top of the list. A book of short stories, it came into my mitts just when I needed it.

My mother and I saw Grace Paley read from another book (I’m embarrassed to say I forget which, now) at the Folger Shakespeare in Washington, DC. She was alive - brilliant, humble, articulate, clever, human. And a writer. Everything I wanted to be. Grace Paley is someone I have admired.

So I’ll give you a few snips below, plus a link to a story on Democracy Now.

A full snip (and therefore not truly a snip, but what can you do?):

“The acclaimed American poet, short story writer, and anti-war activist Grace Paley has died. She was 84 years old and died Wednesday in her home in Vermont.

“A native of the Bronx, Grace Paley was the former state poet laureate in both New York and Vermont. She also received numerous prizes for her work including the Lannan Literary Award, a National Book Award, and a Senior Fellowship recognizing her lifetime contribution to literature from the National Endowment for the Arts.

“Since the 1960s Paley was very active in the anti-war, feminist, and anti-nuclear movements. She helped found the Greenwich Village Peace Center in 1961. Eight years later she went on a peace mission to Hanoi. In 1974 she attended the World Peace Conference in Moscow.

“In 1980, she helped organize the Women’s Pentagon Action. And in 1985 Paley visited Nicaragua and El Salvador, after having campaigned against the U.S. government’s policies toward these countries. She was also one of “The White House Eleven,” who were arrested in 1978 for unfurling an anti-nuclear banner on the White House lawn.

“Just over four years ago, at the start of the war on Iraq, we interviewed Grace Paley. In February, 2003, the First Lady had cancelled a White House poetry symposium honoring Emily Dickinson, Langston Hughes and Walt Whitman. Laura Bush had feared the invited poets might invoke poems critical of invading Iraq.”

Here’s a little bit more on her: http://www.reaaward.org/html/grace_paley.html

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Tags: GracePaley, “short story, writer