Cats
Dogs
Birds
Little furry creatures
Deer and bobcats
Twigs
Trees
Snow, ice, slush, even dirty yucky piles of frozen snow and slush—cold, glorious cold, shimmering with light
Full moons, slivers of moons, new moons
People who read my blog
Words, without which there would be no blog, no books, no writing, no speaking—In the beginning was the word
Computers that work, without which there would be no blogs, no internet, no moveon.org, probably no Obama, definitely no email
Clean laundry, order in the home, everything in its place and a place for everything
Christmas cards, holiday greetings, holiday videos, holiday songs, Christmas trees, Christmas ornaments—carefully unwrapping them, taking them from the box, hanging them on the tree, remembering who gave them to me when, and telling the stories of the ornaments to loved ones now, and remembering, remembering all that love
Miakara singing “Ave Maria”—so clear and pure and fearless
My Grandma Cecil’s house and every Christmas I ever spent with her, her cooking, the lake outside her window, the fire in the fireplace, the smell of pines, the vast expanse of lawn and pine trees and lake stretching out beyond the cedar-framed panes of her windows, walls of windows looking out upon woods, deer and squirrels coming to feed at her backdoor, my grandpa putting firewood on the fire and playing with his grandkids, laughing and joking with us and telling us stories about how he dropped a crop-duster right down in a tiny field—I miss her
All of my grandparents, parents, brothers, and sisters, who have given me such a rich life
Stacks of student essays to grade—they were thinking and feeling and writing, some extraordinarily well, and they were willing to turn their work over to me to evaluate for a grade—amazing!
Bears—they teach us how to hibernate—the heavy bear goes with me, as the poet says—I feel the bear in me curling up for my long winter’s nap—how does that square with starting a new year? Oh yes, settling in for the long haul
Time off to dream, to sleep, to write, to play
A quiet, peaceful, light-filled place to write
The peace, peace, peace of my morning meditations
Friends, lovely, warm, and loving friends
Let us all laugh and play today and sleep deeply tonight!
Monday, December 28, 2009
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Between Christmas and New Year’s
The miraculous birth has happened, but the new year has not begun. We are in between, waiting for all to become clear. One friend of mine received news of cancer. He is waiting. Another friend reports that from her work with Body-Mind Centering, she is beginning to feel herself initiate movement from her center, her core, and let it radiate out to the periphery, instead of moving first from the periphery and dragging her core along. She is becoming connected and sensing the birth of a whole new way of being in the world. I am exhausted and a bit in shock at what is being born and seeking in all ways I can to hibernate, drawing everything in to conserve my energy for the new adventures I sense about to begin.
The minister on Christmas Day said our challenge is to settle in with the new life, the new birth, and to live, even knowing that this new life will too pass away, will pass through torture, dissolution, and death. To settle with the new and live. I like that.
Blessings to us all as we settle in for the new year and new life to come.
The minister on Christmas Day said our challenge is to settle in with the new life, the new birth, and to live, even knowing that this new life will too pass away, will pass through torture, dissolution, and death. To settle with the new and live. I like that.
Blessings to us all as we settle in for the new year and new life to come.
Sunday, November 29, 2009
An Update on Hunting Wild Boar in Texas
My sister who lives in Midland, Texas, called me after reading the previous post about wild boar to say that she personally knows many hunters in West Texas who love to hunt wild boar, that it’s their favorite animal to hunt, and that they do indeed eat the meat and also donate it to food banks. Whew! I am genuinely relieved and happy to hear it. That’s more like the Texas I know. I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me to ask her in the first place before I went off half-cocked based on a story I read in The Atlantic Monthly (http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200911/texas-hog).
Talk about being detached from the source.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how much we live in niches and how little we make the connections that would greatly increase understanding. For instance, the writer and his editors for the Atlantic article either had not read Pollan or had not made the connection between Pollan and the situation in Texas, nor had they talked to enough hunters in West Texas. (Or they simply chose to spin the story the way they did even knowing these factors.) To compound matters, I didn’t think to ask my Texas relatives what they knew about the situation. I just didn’t make the connection. It might also very well be that the sources for the Atlantic article haven’t connected with the hunters my sister knows either. It’s a big state, and maybe all these players don’t know one another. Maybe there are multiple stories, and it just depends on who you talk to.
Here’s to a more complete picture! May we all make the connections that increase understanding and knowledge. And next time, I will ask my sister before I make any sweeping statements about Texas.
Talk about being detached from the source.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how much we live in niches and how little we make the connections that would greatly increase understanding. For instance, the writer and his editors for the Atlantic article either had not read Pollan or had not made the connection between Pollan and the situation in Texas, nor had they talked to enough hunters in West Texas. (Or they simply chose to spin the story the way they did even knowing these factors.) To compound matters, I didn’t think to ask my Texas relatives what they knew about the situation. I just didn’t make the connection. It might also very well be that the sources for the Atlantic article haven’t connected with the hunters my sister knows either. It’s a big state, and maybe all these players don’t know one another. Maybe there are multiple stories, and it just depends on who you talk to.
Here’s to a more complete picture! May we all make the connections that increase understanding and knowledge. And next time, I will ask my sister before I make any sweeping statements about Texas.
Friday, November 27, 2009
Wild Boar
My name means “courageous like a wild boar,” which is funny because right now I’m obsessed over the fact that Texas—the home of my birth—is overrun with wild boar. According to the November issue of The Atlantic Monthly (http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200911/texas-hog), Texas is experiencing a surge of wild boar in suburban neighborhoods, where they are decidedly out of place. But instead of mobilizing all those Texas hunters to hunt, kill, dress, and eat the wild boar, like one might expect from such a macho, gun-toting state as Texas, the state government is trying to figure out ways to poison and sterilize them. In other words, instead of seeing the boar as an inexpensive and handy food source, these officials are destroying them for no gain.
When will we ever learn that every problem is an opportunity? There are plenty of hungry people in Texas and plenty of wild boar and plenty of hunters. Let’s put them together.
I just finished reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan, in which he concludes his investigation of our options in the American food system by preparing what he calls “the perfect meal,” whose main course is wild boar. He, a Jewish boy from New York with no hunting or gun experience whatsoever, learns to hunt wild boar successfully. He finds it a spiritually, emotionally, and intellectually uplifting experience that attunes him to the life cycles of nature and properly directs human aggression and killing instincts, while also allowing the boar to assert its nature and be a valuable part of the chain of life. He also finds the meat quite tasty. The whole experience of hunting, killing, dressing, cooking, and eating wild boar is the culmination of his exploration of the four basic options for obtaining food today: industrial food systems, industrial-organic mega-companies, small truly organic farms, and hunting and gathering our own food.
Meanwhile back in Texas, where the wild boar roam free, lots of financially strapped people are eating McDonalds or Whataburger and filling up on foods loaded with high fructose corn syrup. People in desperate need of real food and real nutrition, who are strapped for cash and probably bored out of their minds with “Dancing with the Stars” and Happy Meals, working mind-numbing, repetitive, cog-in-the-machine type jobs, don’t know there’s this whole other world of possibilities out there. Let’s train ‘em to hunt wild boar and process and prepare the meat, so they can eat. If it were only so simple…
Pollan says the hunter-gatherer model is no longer viable because we have too many people and too few resources, but here in this instance, we have the opposite situation: too many resources and too few people who know what to do with them, and no way to mobilize people to take advantage of the opportunity.
Why haven’t people in Texas figured out a solution that takes advantage of the abundant meat source themselves? Why are they struggling with manifestly over-the-top ideas like gunning hogs down from planes? What are they doing with the carcasses? Have we really become so detached from reality that we don’t even know a cheap and nutritious food source when we see one? Why would we throw away this opportunity?
The real obstacle here is one of detachment from the elemental nature of life. We drive cars to and fro, buying food in stores where it’s wrapped in plastic, with no consciousness of where our food came from or what it is and what it took to produce it and where we fit in the cycle of life.
Sitting here in New York City, writing this, I’m not about to go hunt wild boar myself, and it’s easy for me to criticize, but I’ve been to Texas and seen the freeways and suburbs stretching far and wide, so I know what the problem is, and I feel the conundrum, and it has woken up the wild boar in me. May we all wake up and smell the bacon. Teach us to know food when we see it, and stop overcomplicating life and take advantage of the bounty we are given.
Happy Thanksgiving, and welcome to the season of light!
When will we ever learn that every problem is an opportunity? There are plenty of hungry people in Texas and plenty of wild boar and plenty of hunters. Let’s put them together.
I just finished reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan, in which he concludes his investigation of our options in the American food system by preparing what he calls “the perfect meal,” whose main course is wild boar. He, a Jewish boy from New York with no hunting or gun experience whatsoever, learns to hunt wild boar successfully. He finds it a spiritually, emotionally, and intellectually uplifting experience that attunes him to the life cycles of nature and properly directs human aggression and killing instincts, while also allowing the boar to assert its nature and be a valuable part of the chain of life. He also finds the meat quite tasty. The whole experience of hunting, killing, dressing, cooking, and eating wild boar is the culmination of his exploration of the four basic options for obtaining food today: industrial food systems, industrial-organic mega-companies, small truly organic farms, and hunting and gathering our own food.
Meanwhile back in Texas, where the wild boar roam free, lots of financially strapped people are eating McDonalds or Whataburger and filling up on foods loaded with high fructose corn syrup. People in desperate need of real food and real nutrition, who are strapped for cash and probably bored out of their minds with “Dancing with the Stars” and Happy Meals, working mind-numbing, repetitive, cog-in-the-machine type jobs, don’t know there’s this whole other world of possibilities out there. Let’s train ‘em to hunt wild boar and process and prepare the meat, so they can eat. If it were only so simple…
Pollan says the hunter-gatherer model is no longer viable because we have too many people and too few resources, but here in this instance, we have the opposite situation: too many resources and too few people who know what to do with them, and no way to mobilize people to take advantage of the opportunity.
Why haven’t people in Texas figured out a solution that takes advantage of the abundant meat source themselves? Why are they struggling with manifestly over-the-top ideas like gunning hogs down from planes? What are they doing with the carcasses? Have we really become so detached from reality that we don’t even know a cheap and nutritious food source when we see one? Why would we throw away this opportunity?
The real obstacle here is one of detachment from the elemental nature of life. We drive cars to and fro, buying food in stores where it’s wrapped in plastic, with no consciousness of where our food came from or what it is and what it took to produce it and where we fit in the cycle of life.
Sitting here in New York City, writing this, I’m not about to go hunt wild boar myself, and it’s easy for me to criticize, but I’ve been to Texas and seen the freeways and suburbs stretching far and wide, so I know what the problem is, and I feel the conundrum, and it has woken up the wild boar in me. May we all wake up and smell the bacon. Teach us to know food when we see it, and stop overcomplicating life and take advantage of the bounty we are given.
Happy Thanksgiving, and welcome to the season of light!
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Yes, it is about race
I know I'm a little late to respond to the issue of whether Joe Wilson's uncivil outburst was motivated by racism in addition to belligerence, stupidity, hatred, and frustration, but still, come on, a white man, slouching in his seat and glaring at a black man and yelling at him and calling him a liar? Even if I weren't a white woman from the deep south who knows that everything in the south is about race and that it colors every issue and interaction between men and women and animals and people of any race in the south, I would know racism was at least partly responsible for his behavior.
What's really disingenuous is the way people deny it. But that's part of the southern way too--"Oh whatever do you mean child? I wasn't being hateful." Fluttering eyelashes, the whole southern belle thing. And southern men never admit a thing. Never admit you're wrong. Never tell the truth to a woman, or a black man, or anyone else, because the people who deserve to know the truth--other white men of your class and standing in the community--already know it. It's a code. Everyone knows it's a code. Bless Jimmy Carter for blowing the code and telling the truth.
Southern culture is based on lies. Lies that some people are better than others, that the color of skin determines how human someone is and their value, and that it is not only okay to enslave and mistreat people but actually somehow ordained by God. These lies have not been rooted out; they've just been covered over, avoided, and denied.
I received an email from a relative today--a fine Christian woman, as they say, perpetuating the lie that what Joe Wilson did was not motivated by racism. The title was "How to Tell If You're a Racist." It was being sent around from one white person to another as a joke about how blacks and liberals think everything is racist. White people from the south who think it's funny to joke about being a racist, sending it around like a virus on the Internet. How sick!
Where is the Christian outrage at the lack of civility? Why didn't the people perpetuating this email spend their energy healing the wounds of racism instead of denying that they still exist?
What most amazed me is that this completely unprovoked and unjustified attack on Obama received so much press when the really great thing about that speech happened minutes before:
Obama standing tall and calm stated simply about one of the persistent stories spread about healthcare: "It's a lie." He looked right at those Republicans who had been spreading the lies and spoke civilly to their faces and said, "It's a lie." He spoke the truth, and that's a beautiful thing. The president of our country at last speaking the truth. No more lies.
For a beautiful book about the relationship between white Southern Christianity and racism in this country and about the pervasive effects of racism on our whole culture, read Wendell Berry's The Hidden Wound.
And to make my own contribution to healing the past, here's a story from my past: "Playing with Big Bertha's Daughter."
“You go out in that yard and play with her this minute, or I’ll give you a spanking!”
The maid’s daughter. The black maid’s daughter. Big Bertha’s daughter. With her hair in pigtails. Me play with her on the Main Street of Zachary, Louisiana? I was acutely embarrassed. All the cool kids would see me and think I was friends with her, that I was playing with her by choice. They would make fun of me. They would look down on me. They wouldn’t talk to me, or invite me over to play with them. They would call me a “nigger lover” behind my back, the worst thing you could be in that town, other than poor white trash, and my mom made me play with them too. I was the preacher’s daughter. People looked up to us. I had to set an example. Play with the poor white kids, the poor black kids. Jesus loved the sick and the lame. We were all God’s children. But didn’t she know this would scar me for life? I would never be popular now, or cool. Boys wouldn’t like me. I wouldn’t get to go on dates, or go dancing, or wear cool clothes. And everyone would think I was holier than thou, a goody two shoes. My life was over, and I was just 6 years old. I didn’t know that in the past other white kids had played with the maid’s daughters, or the slave’s daughters, that it was part of the heritage of the south. That world didn’t exist anymore, and all I knew was that I’d never seen any white girls play with any black girls ever, and I had enough problems fitting in without this too.
I don’t remember her much at all. Just a little black girl with pig tails wearing hand-me-down clothes and terrified to speak. A blank, dark face, looking at me like, “What now?” She was just as scared of me, just as embarrassed. She didn’t want to be there either, playing on Main Street with her mother’s boss’s daughter, a privileged white kid. It was like she was on display. She wasn’t a charity case. She hated it too. She must’ve fought with her mother as much as I had.
What had possessed them? Maybe Bertha had to bring her to work that day, and my mom being the cheerful, helpful preacher’s wife, said, “No problem. Bring her. Eberly will play with her.” Probably visions of Gone with the Wind and the glorious southern past dancing around in the back of her mind somewhere, and on top of that an opportunity to show how Christian and unprejudiced she was.
That was a very big deal, then, in the mid 60s. They hadn’t integrated the schools, yet, but there was talk of it, and it would happen soon, in a few years, and the whole thing was to show others that white and black kids could play together, to not give in to the rampant racism of the town.
Why couldn’t we just play in the house, I wanted to know. Because Bertha was cleaning in the house, and why, Eberly, you know you like to play outside and why would you want to play in the house? That sweet sickly smile and voice. I know she knows, and she knows I know what the problem is, but she’s pretending she doesn’t. “My child, whatever do you mean?” That old Southern Belle schtick, pretending there’s no problem and that I’m not justified in my complaints at all, when she knows good and well that she would’ve reacted the same way.
A little sympathy would’ve gone a long way to helping me rise to the occasion, but I didn’t get it,
and I didn’t rise. I fell.
I think I was mean to her. She never came back. I’m sure I was mean to her. I’m sure I felt very guilty. I must’ve said something cruel, like, “I don’t want to play with you. I’m only here because my mom is making me.” She was probably mean to me too. “What makes you think I’d want to play with you anyway, you stupid white girl? I don’t need you.”
I disappointed my parents. My mother was angry at me. She looked at me with disgust. She was ashamed of me.
For years, I felt this heavy weight of guilt and sadness in my stomach, until it became an unconscious, persistent feeling of embarrassment and guilt, vulnerability.
I wish I could make it up to her now.
Big Bertha’s daughter, wherever you are, I am sorry. I am sorry that I didn’t make you feel welcome, that I wasn’t warm and generous, and that I didn’t treat you like a friend. I’m sorry I made you feel bad. I wish I could take it all back. I wish I had acted just like my mother wanted me to act. I wish I had acted like myself, as if I were happy to play with you and get to know you and I didn’t care who in the world saw me. I wish I had been proud to be with you because you are just as important and valuable as me. I wish I had been curious. I wish we had played happily and un-self-consciously in my front yard, and I had showed you all my treasures. I wish we had become friends. I wish I had discovered something new. I wish I had been confident, humble, and kind. I am sorry.
How are you now? I hope you know that you were better than I treated you, and that you didn’t deserve to be unwelcomed. I hope you feel your own worth, and you didn’t let some little piss-ant, stubborn, egotistical white kid get the best of you. But if you did, I hope you forgave yourself, and you don’t let it eat at your soul anymore. I hope you feel confident and strong, and that you are proud of your mother and compassionate in your understanding of her.
I am sorry.
What's really disingenuous is the way people deny it. But that's part of the southern way too--"Oh whatever do you mean child? I wasn't being hateful." Fluttering eyelashes, the whole southern belle thing. And southern men never admit a thing. Never admit you're wrong. Never tell the truth to a woman, or a black man, or anyone else, because the people who deserve to know the truth--other white men of your class and standing in the community--already know it. It's a code. Everyone knows it's a code. Bless Jimmy Carter for blowing the code and telling the truth.
Southern culture is based on lies. Lies that some people are better than others, that the color of skin determines how human someone is and their value, and that it is not only okay to enslave and mistreat people but actually somehow ordained by God. These lies have not been rooted out; they've just been covered over, avoided, and denied.
I received an email from a relative today--a fine Christian woman, as they say, perpetuating the lie that what Joe Wilson did was not motivated by racism. The title was "How to Tell If You're a Racist." It was being sent around from one white person to another as a joke about how blacks and liberals think everything is racist. White people from the south who think it's funny to joke about being a racist, sending it around like a virus on the Internet. How sick!
Where is the Christian outrage at the lack of civility? Why didn't the people perpetuating this email spend their energy healing the wounds of racism instead of denying that they still exist?
What most amazed me is that this completely unprovoked and unjustified attack on Obama received so much press when the really great thing about that speech happened minutes before:
Obama standing tall and calm stated simply about one of the persistent stories spread about healthcare: "It's a lie." He looked right at those Republicans who had been spreading the lies and spoke civilly to their faces and said, "It's a lie." He spoke the truth, and that's a beautiful thing. The president of our country at last speaking the truth. No more lies.
For a beautiful book about the relationship between white Southern Christianity and racism in this country and about the pervasive effects of racism on our whole culture, read Wendell Berry's The Hidden Wound.
And to make my own contribution to healing the past, here's a story from my past: "Playing with Big Bertha's Daughter."
“You go out in that yard and play with her this minute, or I’ll give you a spanking!”
The maid’s daughter. The black maid’s daughter. Big Bertha’s daughter. With her hair in pigtails. Me play with her on the Main Street of Zachary, Louisiana? I was acutely embarrassed. All the cool kids would see me and think I was friends with her, that I was playing with her by choice. They would make fun of me. They would look down on me. They wouldn’t talk to me, or invite me over to play with them. They would call me a “nigger lover” behind my back, the worst thing you could be in that town, other than poor white trash, and my mom made me play with them too. I was the preacher’s daughter. People looked up to us. I had to set an example. Play with the poor white kids, the poor black kids. Jesus loved the sick and the lame. We were all God’s children. But didn’t she know this would scar me for life? I would never be popular now, or cool. Boys wouldn’t like me. I wouldn’t get to go on dates, or go dancing, or wear cool clothes. And everyone would think I was holier than thou, a goody two shoes. My life was over, and I was just 6 years old. I didn’t know that in the past other white kids had played with the maid’s daughters, or the slave’s daughters, that it was part of the heritage of the south. That world didn’t exist anymore, and all I knew was that I’d never seen any white girls play with any black girls ever, and I had enough problems fitting in without this too.
I don’t remember her much at all. Just a little black girl with pig tails wearing hand-me-down clothes and terrified to speak. A blank, dark face, looking at me like, “What now?” She was just as scared of me, just as embarrassed. She didn’t want to be there either, playing on Main Street with her mother’s boss’s daughter, a privileged white kid. It was like she was on display. She wasn’t a charity case. She hated it too. She must’ve fought with her mother as much as I had.
What had possessed them? Maybe Bertha had to bring her to work that day, and my mom being the cheerful, helpful preacher’s wife, said, “No problem. Bring her. Eberly will play with her.” Probably visions of Gone with the Wind and the glorious southern past dancing around in the back of her mind somewhere, and on top of that an opportunity to show how Christian and unprejudiced she was.
That was a very big deal, then, in the mid 60s. They hadn’t integrated the schools, yet, but there was talk of it, and it would happen soon, in a few years, and the whole thing was to show others that white and black kids could play together, to not give in to the rampant racism of the town.
Why couldn’t we just play in the house, I wanted to know. Because Bertha was cleaning in the house, and why, Eberly, you know you like to play outside and why would you want to play in the house? That sweet sickly smile and voice. I know she knows, and she knows I know what the problem is, but she’s pretending she doesn’t. “My child, whatever do you mean?” That old Southern Belle schtick, pretending there’s no problem and that I’m not justified in my complaints at all, when she knows good and well that she would’ve reacted the same way.
A little sympathy would’ve gone a long way to helping me rise to the occasion, but I didn’t get it,
and I didn’t rise. I fell.
I think I was mean to her. She never came back. I’m sure I was mean to her. I’m sure I felt very guilty. I must’ve said something cruel, like, “I don’t want to play with you. I’m only here because my mom is making me.” She was probably mean to me too. “What makes you think I’d want to play with you anyway, you stupid white girl? I don’t need you.”
I disappointed my parents. My mother was angry at me. She looked at me with disgust. She was ashamed of me.
For years, I felt this heavy weight of guilt and sadness in my stomach, until it became an unconscious, persistent feeling of embarrassment and guilt, vulnerability.
I wish I could make it up to her now.
Big Bertha’s daughter, wherever you are, I am sorry. I am sorry that I didn’t make you feel welcome, that I wasn’t warm and generous, and that I didn’t treat you like a friend. I’m sorry I made you feel bad. I wish I could take it all back. I wish I had acted just like my mother wanted me to act. I wish I had acted like myself, as if I were happy to play with you and get to know you and I didn’t care who in the world saw me. I wish I had been proud to be with you because you are just as important and valuable as me. I wish I had been curious. I wish we had played happily and un-self-consciously in my front yard, and I had showed you all my treasures. I wish we had become friends. I wish I had discovered something new. I wish I had been confident, humble, and kind. I am sorry.
How are you now? I hope you know that you were better than I treated you, and that you didn’t deserve to be unwelcomed. I hope you feel your own worth, and you didn’t let some little piss-ant, stubborn, egotistical white kid get the best of you. But if you did, I hope you forgave yourself, and you don’t let it eat at your soul anymore. I hope you feel confident and strong, and that you are proud of your mother and compassionate in your understanding of her.
I am sorry.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Thank you, Barry!
I've just set up my first blog, thanks to the support and encouragement of my friend Barry, whose own blog is an inspiring model. It's easier to get started than to put it on a list of things to do like I've been doing for the past few years.
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