Lemons For Everyone

2008-05-01T10:02:00.001-07:00

Mat got a new cycling kit, and while I don't usually love a logo, I would love to wear this one.

2008-05-01T09:58:00.001-07:00

Superdelegate DNC chairman under Bill Clinton switches to Obama

2008-05-01T09:58:00.000-07:00

Superdelegate DNC chairman under Bill Clinton switches to Obama

2008-04-10T11:18:00.001-07:00

yesterday was crazy. the only reason we got to see the torch is because we brought our bikes, and mat has been training for a triathlon, and I have been just riding my mountain bike a whole lot. We rode at puke-level for huge stretches of time up the streets of San Francisco, up all those hills and in crazy traffic with helicopters buzzing overhead and people running, literally running in the streets to try and find the torch. they changed the route to avoid the huge throngs of people with fists raised. to show a pretty picture to the world.

2008-04-10T09:41:00.001-07:00

I made the paper.

2008-04-10T09:00:00.000-07:00

Gunilla Lindberg, vice president of the IOC, likened some of the more vociferous protesters to terrorists and said they had emboldened committee members to keep the relay going.

"We will never give into violence," she said. "These are not the friendly demonstrators for a free Tibet but professional demonstrators, the ones who show up at G8 conferences to be seen and fight."

-- New York Times article on olympic torch protests

Untrue. At least of San Francisco. I saw people of all ages, Buddhist monks, a Franciscan monk, children, elderly, families. Regular people. Here in San Francisco I have seen the types of protesters that she is referring to at many events. I know who she's talking about. And I saw none of them. The people taking to the streets for the past three days are regular people who are outraged at China's human rights violations.

China does not deserve to have the olympic games, and they certainly do not have any right to parade their bloody torch through the ravaged lands of Tibet to flaunt their newest victory in the faces of those from whom they have taken everything.

2008-04-08T17:42:00.000-07:00

The olympic torch is here. The torch relay goes through the city of San Francisco tomorrow, and we are the only city in the entire country that it goes through. People have come from all over the country to demonstrate and protest and perform civil disobedience at the relay tomorrow. I went to the protest today. We stood out and blocked Geary street, a very busy street that is one of the main streets connecting San Francisco's downtown with the more residential areas. We stood in the street in front of the Chinese consul with Tibetan flags. There were speakers, one shed tears, there was anger, prayers were chanted, and the Tibetan national anthem was sung by those who knew it in the crowd, and most did. It was moving to me to be able to stand with them.

We marched, with a police escort, down Geary street and through the tenderloin, back to United Nations Plaza,stopped traffic, helicopters overhead. The wind was crazy, and people with flags held them high, and they flapped loudly. The sun shined through the bright yellow on the flag. We chanted there under the word "Truth" painted onto a building overlooking the plaza.

2007-02-23T19:24:00.000-08:00

A Voice Crying Out in the Wilderness

Our hummingbird is sick. I call him Hum-Hum.

Mat hung up a hummingbird feeder outside our bedroom window when my back was hurt. I used to lie flat on the bed for hours a day, reading the newspaper, doing the crossword, reading books, talking on the phone, I know it sounds like a lot of people's idea of a perfect day off, but the day off lasted for almost a year and a half. I didn't sit down for 10 months. But that was then. Now I am riding my bike, swimming, learning to rock climb, hiking, and I have even gone ice climbing and snow skiing. I am back in the game.

The whole time I was laid up, I watched my hummingbird feeder. The tiny birds started coming right away, and they were so close to me that I would laugh hysterically. They are so full of spunky personality. Their tiny feet! With their tiny claws! The feet wrap around the little perch on the feeder, and they look around really fast, their heads moving so quickly. When they fly, you can't even see their wings, and when the window is open you can hear the vruuuum vibrating sound that they make. One particular bird made the feeder his. This bird i call Hum-Hum. I know him from the few others that sneak around when he is out making hummingbird love or fighting. He is spunky, full of himself. The feeder, which I imagine in his tiny hummingbird brain, is a giant hovering flower always full of delicious delicious nectar, is his. He chases the others away with extra loud vruuuuming and fantastic aerial gestures of dominance and pecking with his tiny beak. He allows me to stand right next to him, window all the way open, and he will continue to eat out of his flower. I can see his tiny white hummingbird tongue flick in and out of his pointy hummingbird beak.

I have watched Hum-Hum for almost two years now.

A few weeks ago, I noticed that he was just sitting on his perch a lot. Just sitting there, not eating. He has always chilled on his flower for lengths of time, but never for this long. He has been just sitting, resting. I have never known him to rest. A few days ago, I saw him looking terrible. His feathers are all puffed out around his body, kind of in a disheveled way, and he is leaning forward and breathing heavily. He looks around in a panic to see if any other hummingbirds are going to attack him as he eats from his flower, the flower that he once so mightily defended. There is a new tiny, younger hummingbird coming around.

He is either sick or in decline. Mat called Wild Care to see what we should do, and they suggested capturing him and bringing him in to them. They can try to cure him if it is a disease. I have given this a lot of thought. He is my buddy.

But he is wild and free and always has been. And because he is my buddy, I do not want to capture him. A hummingbird's life span is pretty short, and if this is just the end of his life, I do not want to trap him and have him poked and prodded and spending his last days, scared, and in a cage. A caged bird. A caged hummingbird, I can't imagine a sadder thing.

He helped me through a bad spot in my life, and now I will help him by just making sure that his flower has food in it. I didn't see him today. That is a first. I usually see him every day. I am running scenarios in my mind. The best one that Mat thought of was that perhaps Hum-Hum is a lady, and she is carrying eggs in her body. I hope that that is true. Maybe it is. Or maybe he is better, and the spunky, spirited hummingbird I have been seeing today is really him. Maybe he just had a cold like I do right now. I hope so. Or maybe Hum-Hum will become the dinner of a beautiful hawk, a tragic end to my friend, but at least he would die playing his part in the give and take of life in the natural world. It is a cruel place. As a naturalist, though, I believe that it is only my place to observe it and let it play out the way that it is meant to.

Hum-Hum. He is my little buddy till the end.

2006-10-03T19:27:00.000-07:00

and next, on my cheap trick blog is an email that I started writing to Tim, and then just really got in to. I don't know if I would feel sad if an email that a friend wrote to me ended up as a blog entry or if I would be impressed, but I think that all of you whose emails will end up on this blog should feel happy, because it is you who inspire me. You inspire me when just writing to an empty blogoshpere doesn't and hasn't for almost a year.

I hope this works.

So, to Tim tonight I wrote:

"we went first to the Trinity Alps in northern Cali (I worked on a ranch there one summer in between high school and college - yes I got caught swimming in the lake at night and snuck off the grounds with some other girls and two hunky young Oregon cowboys and they bought beer, and I had a sip, and we counted shooting stars all in a red Jeep Wrangler). It is where I fell in love with California, with the West. It is the reason that I am here right here right now watching Mat cook dinner and drinking a great cheap Cali Riesling. We stayed in this precious little town called Weaverville the first night and got our packs ready and talked to a ranger and took off the next morning off on a one night backpacking trip.

Only there was a huge forest fire in the area (HUGE), and it was gorgeous, but very smoky and hazy where we had planned on going, so we kept on driving until it was clear. then we found a ranger station, filled out a permit, looked at a map and decided to hike up and camp beside Big Bear Lake, the largest alpine lake in the Alps and at elevation about 6500 feet. It was a hard hard hard hike, and at the top we were able to see Mt Shasta! I hiked to the top of Mt. Shasta one of those summers on that ranch, and I love her like a bohemian sister living in a red velvet covered apartment in Arcata, California that I never had. I love this mountain. So we could hike and then look south and see her.

we came out of the woods onto slanted granite slabs, surrounded by high craggy granite walls on three sides, Mt. Shasta to the south. We walked around on these gorgeous rocks and popped out onto Big Bear Lake. It was breathtaking. Look at Mat's Flickr pictures, but as you know pics cannot do anything like that justice.

and we had it to ourselves!! We were the only ones there. the "season" is over up there just because it's gotten a little cold! We stayed warm, looked at the stars, and slept through the night warm (after waking up in the middle of the night and jumping out of the tent and pulling the rain fly onto the top half which we had left exposed so we could look at the stars as we fell asleep -- our tent is just see through mesh withouth the rain fly on it.).

I got up early early early in the morning (facilitated by the fact that we were in our sleeping bags at 8:30), and it was cold, but not bad at all. I got out of the tent and scrambled around all around the southern and eastern shores of the lake, all on the rocks and stared at the lake and at the granite walls as they slowly got lit up by the sun - white rock, yellow sun, the most gorgeous light you can imagine, reflecting off of a giant bright blue Alpine lake, the craggy craggy walls just looking surreal with the brilliant blue sky in the background.

It was amazing. Words cannot ever ever explain what it felt like to trod and sleep and scramble on that land.

That's how the first few days were! and there's so much more because we were gone for a week and a half, and the whole trip was like that. we went to Crater Lake, the Rogue River Gorge and Rogue River Valley in southern Oregon and Redwood national park and Humboldt County, the city of Arcata (oh my God I cannot believe it exists, the perfect, old-fashioned small town in a gorgeous place, the land that time forgot - I never wanted to leave).

2006-10-01T14:57:00.000-07:00

I often write really good things in emails to people, but I never blog anymore, so maybe I will just start taking excerpts out of those emails and posting them on this blog. I am lazy.

From an email to my brother this afternoon talking about a road trip we just got back from. We threw some maps and our backpacks and tent and sleeping bags into the car and drove to the Trinity Alps in California (where I fell in love with the west while living and working on a ranch in the mountains up there close to Etna years and years ago) and went backpacking (my pack was ultra ultra light and my back did fine), slept by an alpine lake at about 6500 feet elevation, had the whole thing to ourselves, lake surrounded by tall jagged granite slabs on three sides and with a view of Mt. Shasta (whose summit I have dragged my body up to in the past, a northern cali fourteener, she is beautiful and breathtaking), spent a night in Ashland, Oregon, drove to Crater Lake and camped for two nights (one night in a snow storm) and hiked to the tallest peak there, Mt. Scott, only about a little shy of 9000 feet and walked down to the water itself and looked up all around us at the surreal setting, spent a night in an extremely rustic cabin at another little mountain lake, backpacked in the Rogue River Gorge area in southern Oregon and slept by a raging river, hiked miles and miles of ancient redwood forest in Redwood National Park, touched trees that were over 1500 years old and walked along the Humboldt county shore. I wrote this to Lee today, and it is how I feel--

"It felt really good to just be on the road. I swear I feel like I am destined to be a traveler. A vagabond, nomad. I am happiest when all that I have is what is carried on my back or shoved into my trunk. Maps. Campsites. I feel like it's all I need. We met a guy who is just a traveler, lives out of his ancient Toyota Corolla. He has nothing but is very rich. He made us cowboy coffee and shared his beers - everything he has - around his campfire and our campfire. Living in Crater Lake for a while, will move on out to somewhere else when he has had enough of that. I envy him. Really. With all my things and stuff and obligations and people to call and write and clothes to wash and bills to pay and dust to sweep up. I just want to be back in southeast asia, Rawanda, Uganda, somewhere in the desert, stoking my fire in the predawn cold and thinking only of what I will put in my body, put on my body, or lay my body under at night."

2006-05-08T16:43:00.000-07:00

Welcome Insurance Company Lawyers!!!

The lawyer who is representing the insurance company in my worker's comp case apparently knows how to do a google search of my name, and he can look at pictures of me on Flickr.

My life is laid out here online, and you can look at all of it because I have nothing to hide. Having trouble finding some way to deny medical care and disability payments to a nurse who makes a living out of taking care of sick children and who has hardly left her apartment for the past year while recovering from this back injury?

Yes, I went to Lotta's Fountain, and it was awesome. Then I rested for 2-3 hours and went for a very slow walk in the presidio. Yes, I have started to ride the bus from time to time in the past two months (I can count the times on one hand). And Yes, we went to Tiburon for Valentine's day. We spent most of the two days we were there lying down in the hotel room! And yes, I have had Dengue Fever, and being a healthcare professional, I know without a doubt that it cannot and does not have anything to do with this back pain. And Yes, we walked two blocks to the neighborhood bar on Cinco de Mayo and had a drink and Dancing? I have not danced in a year, thanks for asking, though. We labeled our living room with a tiny label that says "Ballroom" because we are funny, and we like the game Clue, and my friend took a picture of it. Obviously, if I am putting these things about my life online, I have nothing to hide.

And Yes, I am the one who asked my doctors if I could go back to work when I felt that I was ready. Me. I asked them if they would LET me.

Have fun looking at all of my stuff. You won't find that I have done anything wrong.

2006-04-14T16:03:00.000-07:00

I sat in the church this morning alone and stared at a large, wooden crucifix. The sun had yet to rise above the fog line, and it was still dark and cold. The lights were dim, and some candles burned beside the wooden carved body in the middle of the altar. I wore all black and the pearls that my grandparents gave me. I stared at that crucifix, and it was as though I were staring up at Jesus on the cross. As though I stood there holding a vigil for Him so that He would not be alone.

He is so human to me. So real. He was only a few years older than me when He died, and I felt his human-ness this early morning as I fought off sleep in the silent church. The small chapel, usually so richly decorated with the acoutrements of high church, now stripped bare of all luxury to observe this Holy week, creaked at times, as it settled into this sad day. Good Friday. The culmination of the time in history when God came down to Earth to show us what it is to truly "be Human."

He came to teach them to love and to save their lives, and they nailed Him to a tree because He didn't follow the rules of the church. They spit in His face and wrapped Him in a purple robe, placed a crown of thorns on His head and mocked the Man who had come to give His life so that they might live. They beat Him to the point where He was unrecognizable and made Him carry His own instrument of death. And He never said a word, like a sheep standing mute before its slaughterer. They acted like animals, and He - God - acted human.

We act like animals, all of us. I have lost the perspective of what it is to be human. Lent reminds me. In a world where it is so easy to join the pack of animals, it is a constant challenge to
Stay Human.

2006-03-24T10:40:00.000-08:00

Mark Morford is right on with his column this morning. It is a must read.

Three years! of war and a really disgusting, nauseous feeling in the pit of your stomach. Do the people who continue to support George Bush know what a horrible situation it is over there now? No, because, like Cheney, every one of their giant television sets has to be turned to Fox News all day. So they don't regret putting him in power, and they'd do it again, holding their Bibles tightly to their chests, they would continue to blindly support the devil himself as long as he SAYS that he is a Christian and as long as he hates gay people and he won't raise your taxes and he'll intelligently, under the radar so that it isn't obvious, continue to keep his foot on the necks of the black people in this country and perpetuate the large, oppressed underclass that we have here in the USA.

Last night we watched the Colbert Report. Stephen Colbert had this guy on there, Dan Senor, who is the former coalition spokesperson and now a frequent cheerleader rah-rahing the war on Fox News. This man is a rose-colored glasses wearing LIER who will say ANYTHING to support the administration and the war. Anything. This guy actually sat there and joked about Iraq, about how you could take the kids and the wife there on vacation because it really is safe there in all but four provinces! Oh, those four provinces are "a little messy" but otherwise take the family! It's great! A little messy.

That is what the people over there at Fox News want this country to hear and believe. That is what they want us all to think. They say that the "liberal media" only shows the "bad things" about the war. "Those liberal journalists don't get off of their hotel balconies to show the school openings and the people voting and the hospital openings!" Those journalists can't show those things because when they try and travel within the country, that sovereign nation that we invaded on false pretenses and that country that we have RUINED, that one!, they can't travel anywhere in that country to show these little feel-good things to make the fat, greedy, gluttonous, blood-thirsty Americans back at home feel better so that they can eat more fried chicken and take more Pepcid AC because they can't get to them! When they try to go and cover some story like that, bombs go off on the road, people get killed all around them and IT's TOO DANGEROUS to go anywhere!

So instead of the IMAGINED danger and fear that Fox News spews every day out to their ignorant American simpleton viewers, Iraquis face real danger every day. They can't go anywhere in their country without putting their very lives at stake. So there are your positive human interest stories. The media is negative about the war because the war is a DISASTER and there is no other way to put it. We have gone in there, into a country where families were just like our families. There are babies born there, children gather around grandparents there, people get married, people write poetry, people travel and go on vacations, and go to college, the Iraquis are not animals as Fox would have you believe. They were not, and they are not. And they are just like you and me except that they happen to sit on a shit-ton of oil that our acid-reflux having, big and tall shopping, self-congratulating populace wanted.

We are the fat kid on the playground who pushes the little skinny kid down and takes their beef jerky.

2006-02-15T09:48:00.000-08:00

Last weekend, Mat and I got away to Tiburon. Tiburon is a very short drive from here, and I rode in the back of the truck, lying down on my thermarest with my leg wedge (a ramp-like pillow that takes all the pressure off of your lower back). Not exactly the most glamorous way to pull up at a nice swank hotel. Not very lady like at'all. But that's the way I roll, yall.

We left. We crossed the bridge. We had a change of scenery. Mat didn't have to cook and clean (although once I caught him making the bed out of habit). We ate in a restaurant (at the bar so that I could stand up) for the first time in 8 months. I sat down in a chair for 10 minutes one day. That's huge. We strolled around. I rested a lot.

There were times when I did not think I would get here. And here is definitely still pretty terrible compared to normal people. I still get frustrated with the pace of recovery and not being able to do what I want to do. I really want to hike. I want to be out in the middle of nowhere, having gotten there on my own two feet, and sit down in silence under a tree looking out across a sweeping vista. It is my carrot, suspended in front of me towards which i strive.

But Tiburon tasted delicious. A first taste of freedom in the form of a sparkling bay with sea lions barking and cormorants floating. Night time walks under the full moon, looking back over at our adorable, twinkling city. Watching the sun rise with only the gulls as company. And falling asleep under a different roof with a log ablaze in our fireplace.

2006-02-07T11:54:00.000-08:00

I love this Four Things thing. I keep changing some of my things, and I have finally completed it by coming up with four people to tag. That was the hardest part!

I am glad to be posting again, glad to be slowly getting my life back again. I can be up and around now for about 2 to 3 hours at a time before I have to lie down and rest. I can walk 15 blocks at a time now! So I can walk to the panhandle now. It has given me a whole new world to explore as I walk through the noble trees, tall and full of songbirds, and I just stop and stare around me, seeing it all for the first time again. I can't stop walking up to the trees and touching them, leaning against them, feeling their old stable energy. I think about the tree tatooed on my back.

The tree of life. I am calling on it now to strengthen my back like the trunk of the trees in the park. They withstand so much. Wind, fog, age. I imagine the trees in the park inspiring my spine, exchanging information with the tree on my skin.

The tree of life is about eternity, life, power, and I visualize the mark in ink on my back, seeping through my skin, winding its way in and out of the crunchy, knotted places in my back, retraining my spine to take back its stance of power and strength.

2006-02-01T10:58:00.000-08:00

Four Things

My friend Andre "tagged"me. I am not 100% sure of exactly how this works, but here goes. I will get started on it.

Four Jobs I've Had (not in any particular order) - updated

1. Aid at an inpatient drug and alcohol rehab : I would give the patients their medicines and take their vital signs and talk to them and report to the next shift on how everyone was doing. My favorite part of the job was loading everyone up in this big white van and driving them to Narcotics Anonymous and Alcoholics Anonymous classes. I got to hold hands with everyone and stand in circles and smoke a lot of menthol cigarettes out on the front porch. A recovering heroine addict once told me that his favorite way to write a poem was to spin around in circles for a long time and then sit down and write down the first things that came to mind. Those are the kinds of things we liked to do.

2. Nursing Assistant : Maybe the darkest days of my life. I would come home and cry. I had to give adults baths and change their diapers, and I vowed to take care of myself so that I would never end up like that.

3. Cook at a summer camp: I went to this summer adventure camp up in Northern California for two weeks as a camper, and when it was time for me to leave, I had so fallen in love with the smell of Northern California that I couldn't leave. It just smells amazing way up there in the far north in the mountains, and the sky is big, and the stars are better than movies at night, and swimming in the lake when you're not supposed to is just so fantastically naughty underneath all those stars. I just could not leave. My mom and dad sent out a few more changes of clothes, I borrowed some from some of my fellow cooks, and I got up before dawn every morning to run and watch the sunrise with deer and their babies. I made a cauldron of oatmeal every morning and then assembled lunch and then I was free for the rest of the day to rock climb and hike and just sit and breathe and look at the huge animals (all the animals are bigger, the squirrels are as big as dogs, the jack rabbits as big as a deer, the deer the size of a moose. In the evening, we would move these giant irrigation pipes around in the fields as the sun went down, and then at night we would count the shooting stars and one night we went swimming in the lake and got caught and so we had to literally create a flag football field, cutting grass and raking and leveling a field, as our punishment. It was when I got my first taste of Northern California mountains, and they will never ever leave my blood.

4. Registered Nurse in a Pediatric Intensive Care Unit : This is my current job. I love it. It is high stress, but very exciting and stimulating and a day is never the same as the last one. I work with people who dance for the kids and sing to them and we are like a family.

Four Movies I can watch Over and Over

1. The Royal Tenenbaums - over and over and over and over and over.

2. The original Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (with Gene
Wilder) - in fact I love it so much that I have not been able to see the new version, even if it does have Johnny Depp in it.

3. Mommie Dearest - I love how crazy Faye Dunaway looks when she has on her mud mask, when she cuts Christina's hair off, the way she buckles Christopher into his bed with some little harness, the night that she chops all of her roses down hysterically screaming, "Box office poison!" And when she finds some of Christina's clothes hanging on wire hangers, "No more wire hangers. Ever!"

4. Top Hat and any other Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movie - I love these movies and how they all used to hang out in their black tie formal clothes every night and I love how much booze they all drink. All day. Someone will come in from being out somewhere, and someone else will always pour them a drink from their big crystal decanter of booze. And everyone smoked.

Four Places I've Lived

1. Bowling Green, Kentucky - born and raised, beautiful town, ideal childhood setting, friendly community, and we used to never lock our doors

2. Tuscaloosa, Alabama - drunk for five years, wild college

3. Etna, California - mountain idyll ranch where I smelled like tanning skin and warming pine bark (see #3 in jobs)

4. San Francisco - the city made for me

Four TV Shows I Love

1. Desperate Housewives - I love the clothes, the make-up, the hair, the wisteria of the lane. I love everything about this show. I love Bree, I love Gabrielle. I do not like any of the kids, but who can stand child actors. I love the story line, and I get excited on Sunday afternoon because I can't wait to watch it. It is Melrose and 90210 for 30 year olds.

2. Survivor - I WILL be on this show. Oh yes. I will. And I will win, too. Because I can be a competitor. And I will not feel one bit badly about playing the mind game.

3. The Amazing Race - Mat and I were almost on this. We were interviewed for it here in San Francisco after we made our video and sent it in, and they asked us a lot of questions like "What was your last fight about?" I think I heard a big scratch of a pen as they crossed us off the list when we couldn't remember when our last fight even was. Again, we WILL be on it. And we will win. We have studied it, along with Survivor. The $1 million award is, as Mat put it, "our retirement plan."

4. The Daily Show & The Corbert Report - we watch these every night, literally. When John Stewart is on vacation I am sad. He is the only way I can tolerate the news of the day. He makes it all OK.

Four Places I've Vacationed

1. 6 months in Southeast Asia with just our what we could carry on our backs. I opened my soul, found myself, and caught Dengue Fever. It is where I have felt the most like myself, the most me.

2. Ireland - I backpacked across the Dingle peninsula, eating berries along the way. It was breathtaking and comforting down to the bones.

3. French Polynesia - It was my honeymoon, and we spent half of it on a tiny island called Vahine. There were only 9 cabins on it. It melted my muscles, and I oozed around in the sun and flowery coconut tropics.

4. The Big Island, Hawaii - I went with my parents and so got to stay in a super posh resort, and we trespassed on some land (by rec. of the bartender) and found a huge waterfall in the middle of nowhere. I saw a giant beautiful ray swimming in the ocean at night.

Four of My Favorite Dishes:

1. Thai curries - any color, but especially green, red, or Panang

2. greens - winter greens like collards and kale, the way that Mat makes them and sushi rice

3. Mat's breakfast - homemade hashbrowns, soy sausage, two eggs fried yolks runny, toast OR my mom's soft boiled eggs and toast

4. a pad thai that costs 5 baht on the streets of Bangkok (never had another one like it) with a lot of prikh nam plah on it (that's fish sauce with chopped up raw Thai peppers) with a Chang Beer (it has formaldehyde in it, yes!)

Four Sites I Visit Daily :

There are no such sites because I am not on my computer very much, and definitely not daily. BUT some of my favorite sites are

1. Emptyage

2. Beakdip

3. Cute Overload !!!!!

4. Gaggaccticca County

Four Places I would rather be right now:

1. On my grandmother's farm, called Edgewater Farm because it's on a river in Kentucky. It is completely quiet, and you can go there and sit and not hear anything at all except for birds and if you stay long enough you will see lots of deer and wild turkeys.

2. Yosemite, in the backcountry, in the intense high elevation sun and cobalt sky with insane rock features that look like holograms, and the air hums with energy.

3. On a high peak lookout somewhere with my brother, eating cans of tuna, listening to Jerry on our I-pod with the little portable speakers, looking out across a valley and doing yoga poses, feeling the thrum and the sun, and hearing the wind spirits whip through the trees.

4. Muang Ngoi, Laos (sorry Mat, I know you put that, too, but it is the most absolutely perfect place we have ever ever been)

Four People I am Tagging

1. Jeff

2. Matthew

3. Aimee

4. Katherine -- come on, dig out that old blog that you used to have, bunny rabbit. I tag you. You're it. I can't remember the address, so I can't link to it. Leave the address in a comment, will ya?

2006-01-28T10:11:00.000-08:00

My creative life has been extremely stagnant with my back injury. I am starting to finally see some improvement after eight months of constant pain that was not getting any better. With a let-up in the pain has come a small trickle of ideas and a desire to write again.

I have been writing some very short scenes that I see in my head as I have studied the Bible. I have been reading the Bible a lot over the past eight months. It is what is inspiring me these days. It is what I want to write about.

I know that most of you who read this blog hate Christianity. So many people do now as our country gets more and more polarized. But maybe what you hate is actually the current administration's insistence on breaking the very necessary rule of seperation of church and state, their seeming determination to create a fundamentalist Christian theocracy, and the "religious right's" interpretation of Christianity, if you will. Or perhaps you were raised in a church that focused only on what a filthy sinner you are and crushed you with guilt every Sunday. At times, I think that in the minds of many people in this nation, Christianity gives them a perceived right to be bigotted, close-minded, and full of hate, judgement, intolerance, and war in the name of Jesus.

However, from what I have studied and read in the Bible and in Christ's actual words, there was no one more progressive in His thinking. He was the first and the true progressive, who spoke out against the establishment of strict rule and law, urged people to stop focusing on the law and love each other, to forgive each other, to not shore up treasures on the earth, and to give to the poor, and to love Him. He said that true religion is not speaking loudly about what you believe. True religion is taking care of "the widowed and the orphaned".

That is how I can be to the extreme far left of the political spectrum and still follow Jesus with all of my being. Contrary to what today's most vocal Christian groups bellow, Christianity has at its base, a bleeding heart.

I put these scenes on my blog not to try and change anyone's mind about religion. I put them up here because I believe that the words and the imagery from the Bible are beautiful, and I feel inspired by them. So read with a mind open to the words without feeling any aggression or judgement or insistence that my way is the only way that's right.

my brain's vision of John 5:1-18

There was a pool near the sheep gate. Lame and sick people would lie there, staring at the water, waiting for it to stir. It was believed to be moved by the spirit. It took away disease. The very lame could not get up to dunk themselves in , and everyone else would run to the water, and there they would be, just watching.

Jesus asked a man lying there on his mat, "Do you want to be made well?" The air was still and sandy, the man's lips dry and cracked. The water stood still and was the color of an aquamarine. A fly landed on the man's knee as the pool began to stir.

The crowd stepped over the lame man. A woman's skirt dragged over his shin. Jesus stared at the lame man as he rubbed his emaciated thigh. "Do you want to be made well?" The man sniffed, visibly attempted to gain his composure as a tear escaped from his eye. He answered, "I can't get to the pool in time."

Jesus said to him, "Stand up, take your mat, and walk." The man looked at Jesus, feeling as though he were being cruel. A long, hot moment passed. There were zealous shouts coming from the pool. The lame man bent one knee. He bent the other knee and rolled onto his side. He pushed on the sandy ground with his hands, and his body came up to sitting, the vertabrae cracked into place, the spasms ceased, the muscles lengthened, his spine straightened without pain for the first time in years. Blood pumped where it had before only dripped, flushing out the layers of grit and the hot, burning fluid that had collected near his spine. Necrotic black tissue became pink.

He stood, cautiously, testing, listening, waiting, for the crippling pain that never did come. He looked at Jesus, but He was gone. The man was surrounded by the crowd of moving bodies, waiting for the next stirring of the pool's waters. The lame man took up his mat. And he walked.

This is what I see in my head as I read the beautiful words of Hebrews 10:11-25:

The tired priest stood over the fire, sacrificing again the same doves, the same bull as yesterday. He took the goat from the farmer and tried not to look too long into his eyes full of desperation. The eyes that pleaded with the priest to cleanse him once and for all of his terrilbe crime. The priest sighed, stared into the pit of fire with its charred bodies of animals; the smoke watered his eyes and rimmed them with red. He was powerless to take away their sins. He turned around to receive the lamb from the next in line.

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Christ materialized in the distance, walking toward His father's throne. All the company of heaven sang praises, two angels tended to His wounds, wrapped Him in a robe. He slowly approached His father, and "He sat down at the right hand of God," "perfecting for all time those who are sanctified". With a single offering of His own body and blood, He had done what no priest could ever do.
The Holy Spirit spoke to the realms, both heavenly and earthly. He spoke as a wind blowing through willow trees, "This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days: I will put my laws in their hearts, and I will write them on their minds, I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more."

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The priest extinguished the fires and took the dove from the tax collector and set it free. "Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin."

2005-09-05T23:50:00.000-07:00

Do I watch too much CNN or not enough?

Last Saturday Mat had it on all day. Sunday too. A huge hurricane coming towards New Orleans. Everyone out. This is the storm that we have all been fearing. This is serious. I went to bed wondering if New Orleans would be gone when I woke up on Monday morning.

I got up early, and Mat was already up. Already watching. Is New Orleans gone? It wasn't as bad as they thought it was going to be. I made some comment about sensational cable news, something like "I knew they were just trying to make everyone scared". They exaggerated so that we would keep watching. But then I did keep watching, and the levee broke and it all turned really bad really fast. I didn't realize the gravity of what I was watching until one of the reporters broke down in tears describing riding in a boat through the neighborhoods of New Orleans and hearing people knocking and screaming from their attics as the night grew pitch darker. All of a sudden, I looked at Aaron Brown, and I truly internalized what was happening at that very moment over in New Orleans. It chilled me, and I couldn't turn off the television because even if you turned it off, the people suffering right that instant did not leave.

When I turn it off I feel like I have abandoned my post; I have left those people out there all alone without thinking about them, without knowing that they exist, knowing that they are alive and that they are wondering how much longer they will be. Sensing that they are out there brings me paralyzing unrest and despair. I scream. I cry and call my congresswomen and email the White House. Towards the end of a long, sustained day of coverage and time spent in the Situation Room, pictures of chaos and hellish suffering, my soul feels like moths fluttering around inside of my body.

All of it is so gruesome. So terrifying. It takes all of the worst nightmares that you could ever imagine and rolls them all into an endlessly spiraling black hole. All of it is terrible. Being trapped in your attic. Slowly losing breathing room. Knocking and screaming and hearing helicopters flying overhead, knowing that they can't hear you Letting go of your husband's hand when you can't hold on any longer, when it's no longer physically possible and losing him forever.

Being trapped in a house full of water with a diabetic father who has no more insulin. Drinking the last sip of water left in your sinking house in the 98 degree daytime. A house full of children wandering about with their dead mother lying on her bed in the back room, her oxygen tank depleted. Alligators in the water, dying dogs tangled in electrical wires, is this real?

Being plucked from your roof and taken to the Convention Center, being told to wait there for a bus to come and get you and take you away and finding dark rooms full of feces and dead bodies and no water and no food. No respite from the heat and all the while helicopters flying overhead as the sun goes down and you wait in the dark to see if it is you who will be raped at gunpoint tonight. No one in charge. Screaming crowd. Dying babies with sunken eyes and old people seizing on the ground.

Am I watching too much TV? Can one watch too much TV at this point when there are people living through these horrors? I have to know. I have to feel it. I have to see it, because in some way that makes me feel like I am there with them.

I see you. I know what is happening to you. Someone knows. We all know. We see. We are with you.

2005-08-30T19:27:00.000-07:00

Right now people are suffering and dying and suffocating in their attics. I can't stay away from the TV, even though I hate it. The people need to know that we are with them. That the whole country and the whole world is with them right now.

Here are the links to the Red Cross and to the Salvation Army.

It is all too horrible to even believe.

2005-08-26T10:25:00.000-07:00

I have been taking part in a discussion over at my buddy Lonnie's weblog, Lonbud.com, you can get to it over in my sidebar. It's called I Just Have to Say. Excellent thought going on over there almost every day. But more on the Pat Robertson thing, I thought about this this morning:

There was a lot of God-encouraged violence in the Old Testament while He was helping Israel to escape from Egypt and become set up as a free people in a new land. But that was before the new covenant of Jesus Christ's body and blood. And That is what the new testament is about, the Christianity of following Jesus and His teachings. The Bible can be interpreted to say whatever you want it to say on a lot of points. Murder is not one of those. It is very clear on Murder. And it is very clear on Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself. The loud Christian voices of today sometimes interpret the Bible so that their God says what they want Him to say. That is the scary thing about ever claiming to know the will of God. How could a human know without a doubt what the will of God is? We can't. So like one of the other commentors said, you pray to your God and you do what you believe to be right and what you believe to be God's will for you and you accept with humility your limited understanding of all things holy, and you don't force your idea of the will of God onto other people as law written in stone. Unless, like Thou Shalt Not Kill, it was one of the ten laws that were in fact written in stone.

2005-08-25T13:54:00.000-07:00

Oh Pat Robertson.

As a very liberal Christian, I am once again dismayed by the fact that the only "Christian" voices that scream out at us from the media are angry and bitter and self-rightesous and surely wrong. I go to a church full of people, who BECAUSE of their love for Christ and his teachings, feed the homeless, protect the orphaned and widowed, pray for peace in all lands, respect the rights of others and would never ever call for something as against the very basic and rudimentary "Thou Shalt Not Kill" that we all know to be true and sage advice from our God. While I am also taught not to judge others and try very hard not to, it gets harder and harder to adhere to that when our so called "religious leaders" are calling for the killing of another human being, another of God's creations whom He loves.

2005-08-13T21:39:00.000-07:00

God help them.

After a drought and the worst locust invasion in 15 years, there are an estimated 3.6 million people facing a severe hunger crisis in Niger right this minute. HUNGER STALKS NIGER / World Slow To Respond After Drought And Locusts Ruin Crops was on the front page of our paper today, and the pictures took my breath away. A one year old the size of a 5 month old, a living skeleton with arms the diameter of a pencil and a fully visible ribcage. My stomach was full of sushi, and a bag of tortilla chips sat nearby. Oh God, what can we do?

We can donate money to Unicef, Oxfam, Doctors Without Borders, International Red Cross. There are links to all of these agencies' websites in the Chronicle story. It doesn't take much to help a lot of children there. The United Nations estimates that there are 200,000 children suffering from malnutrition in Niger right now. Can you even imagine? Were you ever hungry as a child? I wasn't. I ate snacks all day and then would sit at the dinner table pouting because my mom and dad would *make* me take four bites of everything before I could get up and play with my brother. Can you imagine what it would be like to be a child and not be able to stand up much less jump, run, swim, do cartwheels, spin around in circles, roll down hills? To be so weak that you just ignored the flies that were congregating on your open eyeballs? Can you imagine being a mother and never hearing your child laugh? It cuts me to the heart. It hurts to think about it.

At a Doctors Without Borders medical center set up in the city of Maradi, hundreds of mothers sleep outside every night, holding their lethargic children, waiting for them to be seen, and praying that the doctors will admit them into their care. And the malaria season hasn't even begun yet.

"The response has been slow from the international community." The U.N. World Food Programme has put out a plea for $81 million and has received $26 million. We have a responsiblity here.

Send some love to the children of Niger.

2005-07-12T09:11:00.000-07:00

Boycott of ExxonMobil starting today

12 of the nation's largest and most powerful environmental groups and public interest advocacy organizations are launching a boycott of the oil giant today with press conferences and organized protest. Sierra Club, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, Defenders of Wildlife are a few of those involved. You can take action here.

And check out Mat's global warming page. It will take your breath away. It is shocking and oh so disturbing to see all of the news on global warming that is coming from all corners of the earth every day. This is happening NOW. This is affecting us TODAY.

Here in California, the plankton are vanishing from our seas. It was on the front page this morning. Plankton are the building blocks that START the marine food web. No plankton = no food for many seabirds and predatory fish. The seabirds are DYING. The water is too HOT for the plankton to survive. Double-crested cormorant nesting is down by 50% here. Those beautiful, regal birds, the cormorant cannot survive in this collapsing food web.

In Oregon they do salmon surveys every spring and summer. They usually catch several hundred salmon in the spring. This year they caught eight. They usually get several thousand salmon in the summer. This year it was 80. This is likely due to the warm water in the ocean. Read the full story here.

We have got to do something about this. Our president went to the G-8 summit and basically poo-pooed any plans to reverse this acopalyptic situation. He had a chance to meet with the 8 most powerful men in the world (besides Karl Rove and Dick Cheney and the CEO's of all oil companies) and come up with a plan to reverse this crisis that is not IMPENDING it is here. This is unacceptable. He is killing us. Our planet cannot sustain the way that we are living. We have to hit these people in the ONLY way that will make them listen, and that is to affect their bottom line.

This boycott is a good START.

2005-07-01T11:10:00.000-07:00

We bob in the pool. Nine of us. Adults. Learning to use our bodies again. Some of us are broken by injury temporarily; we are fit, used to doing much more. Some of us are being forced out of our sedentary lifestyles, tired out by tiny movements in the water. We are all relearning.

Faces are pensive. Some are gritted teeth and closed eyes. Some humbled. All attentive, listening. Does this hurt? We walk. Forwards, backwards. Silently next to each other, slowly moving in the water. You can see only heads and shoulders bobbing, falling into our pool routines.

We are here because it hurts too much to walk on land. We learn to suck in our stomachs. Our vertebrae find new space between them in the 94 degree water that seeps chlorine into my skin, impregnating it so that later I will lie on my stomach, ice on my back, my nose pressed into my arm inhaling swim team practice as a child. When I dove like a seabird and swam like a dolphin.

2005-06-08T09:31:00.000-07:00

There's a party over here, yall...

A raging party. A raging pity party. Come on over, it's a blast.

**14 days ago!!*** I hurt my back at work. I done throwed my back out. And now I can't do shit. I lay flat on the floor all day with my knees elevated by a pillow and it hurts. I stand up and stare out the windows and study the house plants, and it hurts. >>Although, thanks to staring out the windows, yesterday I saw a major crow battle high up in the air involoving one crow who was carrying a huge bundle of sticks revolving 180 degrees as she was flying to kick up at the attacking birds, just flying along on her back.<< I CAN'T SIT DOWN. As i write this, i am kneeling in front of my computer on a pillow.

Now, I ask you isn't there something wrong here? Aren't you supposed to be better after TWO WEEKS!!! I had been training vigorously for the John Muir Trail, running up to 8 miles at a pop and loving every step of it, bounding along on the trails in the park, feeling so strong and tan and sweaty, heaven. And now I am a pile of muscle atrophy on the floor. Does anyone have any experience, tips, advice you can give me?

As I lay and stare at the clock to figure out when I can take my next muscle relaxer, I ponder. What happened. The very day that I did this I talked to one of the doctors that I work with as we ate lunch about how I am so impatient with sick adults and that is why I am so glad that I work in peds. I talked about how when adults are sick, they feel sorry for themselves and dwell on the illness or injury and are therefore sicker longer. Kids want to fight from the second they fall ill. I talked obnoxiously about how I could never have the patience to take care of them, etc. And then I hurt my back. And I cannot do anything for myself. And haven't been able to for two weeks.

I felt so strong from all of my training as I sat there and spoke cruelly about the various downfalls of sick people. I was reveling in my wellness as I judged those who do not have it. I take it all back now and am appreciative of this lesson taught. I will never take for granted the health of my body. I will wake up each morning thrilled that nothing hurts or that I can go up and down the stairs. I will.

And I am indebted to Mat forever for putting up with my cry-baby, drama queen two-week long pity party. Yep, it's time to get some Red Bull, cause this party's going all night.