Inner Monologue » reflection

Liverpool, part 2

Jenny Wilde — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 21:42:53 +0000

The next day’s agenda was…another tourist escapade! We went on the Yellow Duckmarine tour! I can hear your inward groan, but I have to say, I learned an awful lot about the city on that tour. Sure, there was a cheese factor, but mostly it was great. For example, did you know that Liverpool has the largest cathedral in the UK? And the largest Anglican cathedral in the world? Did you know that Lime Street Station was the first passenger railway station in Great Britain? Did you know that Hope Street is the only street in Europe that has a cathedral at either end (Anglican and Catholic)? Did you know that Liverpool is home to the Super Lamb Banana? I thought not. It turns out 3 days isn’t really enough time to see Liverpool; I guess we’ll have to go back.

We all live in a Yellow Duckmarine...

Constance also told us (rather belatedly) that we had to send some muffins, or failing that, muffin mix, to her friend Susan back home. This is because of their warped version of the song “All My Loving” that they’ve changed to “All My Muffins.” You know, “all my muffins, I will send to you-ou.” Hence the need to post muffins.
Hmm.
We found some day-glo muffins at the 99p store (also picked up some umbrellas…) and we wandered around Liverpool One looking for a post office. Eventually, muffins and packing materials had been acquired and the muffins were sent. Except that Constance forgot to write down Susan’s address before we left on the trip. We grudgingly went into a Starbucks because they were supposed to have wi-fi and we needed to look up the address. As it happened, the wi-fi was so slow as to be impossible to use so that was a waste. Instead, we used the time to package the muffins and ingest some sugar. We eventually guessed at the address and, it turns out, we were off by only one number. Susan did get the package all the same (and ate the day-glo muffins), so all was well.

I swear, my life often feels like a series of near-misses with catastrophe. As if I’m constantly warding off crisis by the skin of my teeth. I know sending muffins to a friend back home doesn’t sound like it could go that terribly wrong, but you must remember I am a parent of a teenager. Everything takes on epic proportions when you’re 14. Even so, it feels like my life is high maintenance. I’m not really sure what that says about my life, because I don’t think I, personally, am all that high maintenance (others may disagree, I don’t know). Somehow, though, my life is forever in flux, teetering on the brink of…something. I’m pretty sure I have influence over that, but I just live the only way I can, the only way I know how, the way I feel compelled to live it. On the other hand, boring would be far worse than forever in flux. I think.

So, after the muffin escapade, we headed back to the hotel (in the pouring rain) with a brief stop at the Cornish Pasty Company (mmm, pasties). Duncan was set on using the hotel swimming pool so Constance and I took a stroll over to St. John’s Memorial Garden. It’s a “memorial garden” instead of a park because it used to be a cemetery, and by calling it a memorial garden they can leave all the dead bodies in the ground. If it were a park, they’d have to disinter everyone and move them. Too expensive, so…memorial garden it is!

Frolicking in the garden of the dead

We ordered room service on our last night, seeing as how we were bushed and the rain was coming down furiously. The food was ok, not going out was wonderful.

There are two kinds of weather in Britain: rain, and looks like it might. - Asterix

The next morning we packed up and walked back over to Lime Street Station. So much left to see and no time to see it! The Tate Liverpool, the cathedrals, the International Slavery Museum (oh yes, Liverpool was a major depot of the slave trade), Croxteth Hall, the list goes on…

Alas, our stay had come to an end and we sat in the station waiting for our train to Edinburgh, from thence by bus to Stow. While we were waiting, there was an announcement of a delayed train “due to a fatality.” Funny, I don’t think they usually tell you that part back at home.

So long, Liverpool. I underestimated you... Sorry.

Next up: Scotland!

Scotland, ho!

Jenny Wilde — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 07:25:12 +0000

Departure day arrived and we headed off to the airport, after picking up the friend who would borrow our car while we were away.

Other than spilling a large quantity of very hot coffee in my lap, the SF airport was an uneventful place for us. There was one incident with a haughty Starbucks employee who declared that they didn’t take punch cards because, “This is the airport!” Well, of course! What was I thinking?!

Anyway, we boarded our little plane to Calgary and tried to settle in to the journey. Coming in to the Calgary airport (YYC) was pretty miserable (for me, in any case) because of severe turbulence as we negotiated the mountain winds in our flying shoebox. I haven’t felt that queasy on an airplane in quite some time.

The Calgary airport is homey, but weird. It’s got this whole “space cowboy” thing going on; literally. I mean, there is an actual museum/exhibit thing that is even called Space Cowboy.
We didn’t go in.

The greeters and information folks wear red vests and big white cowboy hats. I’m not kidding. I wanted to take a picture but was too embarrassed to ask. Some of the automatic glass doors had wooden saloon-style doors painted on them. Yes, really. There was an elaborate display celebrating the majestic moose and we were seduced by the sounds of a large indoor waterfall. Giant models of space shuttles and spacemen hung from the ceiling in a variety of spots. It was kind of strange.

I did check out the “interfaith” chapel, just for kicks. By interfaith, I guess they meant “a variety of Christian denominations.” Oh well.
It was a funny sort of chapel, the tablecloth had cowboy boots on it:

Real homey, don't you think?

A model of the space shuttle was hanging right over the altar, to peculiar effect.

Direct flight to heaven?

Our layover was only four hours, enough time to eat and look around the airport a little, but not enough time to really see or do anything. It had looked pretty out the airplane windows on our approach…
We decided we would have to come back to see Calgary proper at some point.

So near, and yet so far.

Next we began our epic plane and train journey to Liverpool. This second leg of the flight was nine hours, lasting through the night, with our arrival to be roughly 11am the next day. Here’s the crazy part: the further east we flew, the later it got, right? Except that since we were flying above the line of darkness (yes, we were!), it was still broad daylight at 2:00 in the morning.

Always knew I was ahead of the curve.

I shit you not. We were consistently just ahead of the bell curve of darkness. Put that in your pipe and smoke it!

It inspired me to write the following poem (ahem):
Flying north of night,
Skirting the darkness.
It follows us in our journey,
Remaining always a step behind.
Hours jump ahead
But we move through them
Irreverently.
Time has no hold here.
We create our own wake,
Never looking back.

Upon landing at London Heathrow, we began the next leg of the journey: 5 hours or so on various trains. Destination: Liverpool! Because Constance wouldn’t permit us to be remotely nearby without making a stop in Liverpool (a remarkably cool town, by the way, but that’s for the next post…).

I had done my homework and I knew we’d need to get the Heathrow Connect (cheaper than the Express) to Paddington. At that point we would acquire a Family and Friends Railcard and use the attendant discount to buy National Rail tickets for cheaper. Thence, the Tube (London Underground) to Euston Station and the National Rail to Lime Street Station, Liverpool. All well and good. There did happen to be works on the Tube line we needed to take though, so we had to take the Bakerloo line to Oxford Circus and then transfer to the Victoria line to Euston. Also, can’t actually purchase the Railcards at Paddington; have to get them at Euston. The website never mentioned that!
Anyway, no great shakes, right? Except you have to add 2 very tired children and 1 very tired husband (well, and a tired me), 3 large suitcases, 4 carry-on size bags, and a purse into the mix. Let’s just say it was quite a negotiation. We ultimately prevailed and made it to Lime St. Station intact with no loss of luggage (Duncan left a blanket on the plane, but it wasn’t his favorite “blankie,” thank goodness). Fortunately, our hotel was a mere 3 blocks away at One Queen Square, even if we did end up going rather further around because we didn’t know it was a mere 3 blocks away. What can I say? Making sense of a map is difficult when you’re tired.

By the way, mind the gap.

They mean it.

To be continued….!

Into the Void

Jenny Wilde — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 06:52:24 +0000

Now what…(?)
I mean, ok, I’m done with school. This is a very good thing; I know it and feel it deeply, profoundly. My desire to go on to grad school has abated for the moment, but I do still want the MFA.

Why?

Because.

I really can’t give a better reason, I just want it because I’ve always wanted it. Because.

So, that’s all fine and everything.
I’m feeling remarkably tired these days even though I have far less to do. I think it’s a factor of my slowing down: now I’m actually noticing how tired I am because I’m stopping to smell the roses (or coffee), and stuff. No more onward and upward for me. Time for a nap. Or many.

I’m trying to get back to cooking. It’s something I’ve always enjoyed and I still do (once I manage to overcome my inclination to do absolutely nothing for several months). I also enjoy eating food cooked from scratch; I used to be quite a purist about that sort of thing before frozen organic vegetables packaged in plastic bags became a staple in my household. (sigh)

To that end, tonight I decided to be resourceful and make some rice pudding from leftover cooked brown rice. Yes, brown rice (!). Already a red warning light is going off in your head, I can tell. No one makes rice pudding with brown rice! It won’t be, well, mushy enough! It was slightly overcooked actually and I decided to go for it. I also just hate to waste and since the microwave died it’s not very convenient to reheat anything (that’s a whole other ongoing misadventure in my kitchen life).

Anyway, rice pudding it was going to be. Only one recipe in Joy of Cooking but it seemed alright; the Joy of Cooking is always a good place to start. The recipe seemed to be more of a baked custard recipe than a pudding recipe but that’s ok with me, I like custard too. I substituted freshly squeezed grapefruit juice and grapefruit zest for the lemon juice and zest and skipped lining the pan with cake crumbs, both because I didn’t have any and because I’d never heard of such a thing when it comes to rice pudding. Oh, and I cooked it in a water bath because that’s what you do with baked custards. Other than the aforementioned minor alterations, I followed the recipe exactly. All the proportions were just as specified.

Looks yummy, no?

It is yummy, though a bit more ricey than puddingy. The kids were suspicious.

Not a light dessert.

Actually, eating it reminds me of the raisins and rice my mom used to make for breakfast sometimes: leftover rice heated in a pan with milk, butter, raisins, and maybe honey. Good solid comfort food, and not too bad for you as long as you kept the butter to a relative minimum (hard for me, I love butter).

Tomorrow: banana bread and, here’s hoping, plum jam. Got to get that started before all those luscious plums go bad.

What does cooking have to do with art, you might reasonably ask, now that I’ve racked up so much debt getting my fancy art degree? A fine question.

One could argue that everything is art, but I won’t get into that.

Chop wood carry water, you know…

Of friendship, love, and community.Of change, the infinite, and Netflix.

Jenny Wilde — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 18:09:59 +0000

You know, little things.

I have fallen off the blog bandwagon, and hard. I don’t know why but I’ve had a positive aversion to posting lately (lately, as in the last three whole months).

Anyway, I was one of the tribe who went to Pantheacon and I’m not sure what I can add to the already wonderful and brilliant descriptions and reflections on the experience. Honestly I think I’m still processing it all.

I’m still having weird and intense (though good) dreams about my covenmates every night and every time I take a nap; they are so intense that it makes me wonder if the people in them are having the same dreams…

I learned that I love my tribe so much it’s kinda indescribable, that it’s actually pretty damn ok to be the Tower, and that I look good in a corset (who doesn’t, really?). I learned that the rituals and performances my group did were some of the best in the entire Con.

The Devil and The Tower

I learned that I’m wiser and more dangerous than I give myself credit for. I’m not sure, but I think those are both good things.

I also learned that those PCon organizers weren’t kidding when they said you should eat at least 2 meals and get at least 6 hours sleep every day (I learned that one the hard way, I got a terrible, miserable cold the week after PCon), but it was fun anyway so who really cares?

And, not least of all, I learned, by missing a week of school because I was so sick, that my coven community is far more important than my school community because my school is full of shit 90% of the time (see, Thora, we totally agree about pretentious artist crap) and that I really don’t care about my degree anymore except that I’m planning on using financial aid to get to Italy this summer and I only have a year to go and I don’t want to be a quitter.

The result of all this epiphany is that I haven’t watched any of my Netflix movies in over a month and have certainly paid several times over to have simply bought them by now.

Ah well.

Keith Olbermann has earned my respect

Jenny Wilde — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 06:12:05 +0000

Because there is still other work to do, too

Jenny Wilde — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 17:36:50 +0000

Photograph by Jim Richardson

A starry night gleams above Owachomo Bridge in Utah’s Natural Bridges National Monument—named the first Dark Sky Park by the International Dark-Sky Association (IDA). “Here you see something forgotten,” says ranger Scott Ryan, “and reconnect with the sky.”

Our Vanishing Night

Most city skies have become virtually empty of stars.

By Verlyn Klinkenborg

If humans were truly at home under the light of the moon and stars, we would go in darkness happily, the midnight world as visible to us as it is to the vast number of nocturnal species on this planet. Instead, we are diurnal creatures, with eyes adapted to living in the sun’s light. This is a basic evolutionary fact, even though most of us don’t think of ourselves as diurnal beings any more than we think of ourselves as primates or mammals or Earthlings. Yet it’s the only way to explain what we’ve done to the night: We’ve engineered it to receive us by filling it with light.

This kind of engineering is no different than damming a river. Its benefits come with consequences—called light pollution—whose effects scientists are only now beginning to study. Light pollution is largely the result of bad lighting design, which allows artificial light to shine outward and upward into the sky, where it’s not wanted, instead of focusing it downward, where it is. Ill-designed lighting washes out the darkness of night and radically alters the light levels—and light rhythms—to which many forms of life, including ourselves, have adapted. Wherever human light spills into the natural world, some aspect of life—migration, reproduction, feeding—is affected.

For most of human history, the phrase “light pollution” would have made no sense. Imagine walking toward London on a moonlit night around 1800, when it was Earth’s most populous city. Nearly a million people lived there, making do, as they always had, with candles and rushlights and torches and lanterns. Only a few houses were lit by gas, and there would be no public gaslights in the streets or squares for another seven years. From a few miles away, you would have been as likely to smell London as to see its dim collective glow.

Now most of humanity lives under intersecting domes of reflected, refracted light, of scattering rays from overlit cities and suburbs, from light-flooded highways and factories. Nearly all of nighttime Europe is a nebula of light, as is most of the United States and all of Japan. In the south Atlantic the glow from a single fishing fleet—squid fishermen luring their prey with metal halide lamps—can be seen from space, burning brighter, in fact, than Buenos Aires or Rio de Janeiro.

In most cities the sky looks as though it has been emptied of stars, leaving behind a vacant haze that mirrors our fear of the dark and resembles the urban glow of dystopian science fiction. We’ve grown so used to this pervasive orange haze that the original glory of an unlit night—dark enough for the planet Venus to throw shadows on Earth—is wholly beyond our experience, beyond memory almost. And yet above the city’s pale ceiling lies the rest of the universe, utterly undiminished by the light we waste—a bright shoal of stars and planets and galaxies, shining in seemingly infinite darkness.

We’ve lit up the night as if it were an unoccupied country, when nothing could be further from the truth. Among mammals alone, the number of nocturnal species is astonishing. Light is a powerful biological force, and on many species it acts as a magnet, a process being studied by researchers such as Travis Longcore and Catherine Rich, co-founders of the Los Angeles-based Urban Wildlands Group. The effect is so powerful that scientists speak of songbirds and seabirds being “captured” by searchlights on land or by the light from gas flares on marine oil platforms, circling and circling in the thousands until they drop. Migrating at night, birds are apt to collide with brightly lit tall buildings; immature birds on their first journey suffer disproportionately.

Insects, of course, cluster around streetlights, and feeding at those insect clusters is now ingrained in the lives of many bat species. In some Swiss valleys the European lesser horseshoe bat began to vanish after streetlights were installed, perhaps because those valleys were suddenly filled with light-feeding pipistrelle bats. Other nocturnal mammals—including desert rodents, fruit bats, opossums, and badgers—forage more cautiously under the permanent full moon of light pollution because they’ve become easier targets for predators.

Some birds—blackbirds and nightingales, among others—sing at unnatural hours in the presence of artificial light. Scientists have determined that long artificial days—and artificially short nights—induce early breeding in a wide range of birds. And because a longer day allows for longer feeding, it can also affect migration schedules. One population of Bewick’s swans wintering in England put on fat more rapidly than usual, priming them to begin their Siberian migration early. The problem, of course, is that migration, like most other aspects of bird behavior, is a precisely timed biological behavior. Leaving early may mean arriving too soon for nesting conditions to be right.

Nesting sea turtles, which show a natural predisposition for dark beaches, find fewer and fewer of them to nest on. Their hatchlings, which gravitate toward the brighter, more reflective sea horizon, find themselves confused by artificial lighting behind the beach. In Florida alone, hatchling losses number in the hundreds of thousands every year. Frogs and toads living near brightly lit highways suffer nocturnal light levels that are as much as a million times brighter than normal, throwing nearly every aspect of their behavior out of joint, including their nighttime breeding choruses.

Of all the pollutions we face, light pollution is perhaps the most easily remedied. Simple changes in lighting design and installation yield immediate changes in the amount of light spilled into the atmosphere and, often, immediate energy savings.

It was once thought that light pollution only affected astronomers, who need to see the night sky in all its glorious clarity. And, in fact, some of the earliest civic efforts to control light pollution—in Flagstaff, Arizona, half a century ago—were made to protect the view from Lowell Observatory, which sits high above that city. Flagstaff has tightened its regulations since then, and in 2001 it was declared the first International Dark Sky City. By now the effort to control light pollution has spread around the globe. More and more cities and even entire countries, such as the Czech Republic, have committed themselves to reducing unwanted glare.

Unlike astronomers, most of us may not need an undiminished view of the night sky for our work, but like most other creatures we do need darkness. Darkness is as essential to our biological welfare, to our internal clockwork, as light itself. The regular oscillation of waking and sleep in our lives—one of our circadian rhythms—is nothing less than a biological expression of the regular oscillation of light on Earth. So fundamental are these rhythms to our being that altering them is like altering gravity.

For the past century or so, we’ve been performing an open-ended experiment on ourselves, extending the day, shortening the night, and short-circuiting the human body’s sensitive response to light. The consequences of our bright new world are more readily perceptible in less adaptable creatures living in the peripheral glow of our prosperity. But for humans, too, light pollution may take a biological toll. At least one new study has suggested a direct correlation between higher rates of breast cancer in women and the nighttime brightness of their neighborhoods.

In the end, humans are no less trapped by light pollution than the frogs in a pond near a brightly lit highway. Living in a glare of our own making, we have cut ourselves off from our evolutionary and cultural patrimony—the light of the stars and the rhythms of day and night. In a very real sense, light pollution causes us to lose sight of our true place in the universe, to forget the scale of our being, which is best measured against the dimensions of a deep night with the Milky Way—the edge of our galaxy—arching overhead.

Because there is still hope

Jenny Wilde — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 17:31:48 +0000

Enzyme Therapy for Autism

By Karen Defelice, Natural Solutions magazine

The pounding went on all day and all night. My son was a chronic head-banger from early on. Our efforts to help him resolve this and other debilitating problems, such as extreme sensory sensitivities and socialization difficulties, led us down many roads. Enzymes provided one of the key paths.

In the past five years, enzyme therapy has emerged as one of the most successful treatments for autism-related conditions, based on a new understanding about how closely the digestive, nervous, and immune systems function together and on how to use specific enzymes. Since taking them, my older son, who was diagnosed with an autism spectrum condition (ASC), no longer bangs his head on the floor 10 to 14 hours a day. He now interacts with others around him and communicates well. His sleep and sensory problems have also improved. The rest of us took enzymes as well, and my younger son’s reflux and bowel problems faded away and my chronic migraines disappeared.

My family isn’t the only one to experience these outcomes. After tracking results for more than five years, I’ve found that 90 to 93 percent of people with ASC see improvements after trying a good-quality enzyme product. Benefits appear in a wide range of behavior, language, cognitive, and physical issues, and older children and adults experience these benefits as much as younger kids.

Food Intolerances and Allergies
Autistic children often suffer from numerous kinds of food intolerances and digestive problems. My son was so sensitive to dairy, he would begin banging his head hard on the floor about three hours after eating it. While this reaction occurred with other foods and stimuli, we knew that dairy was a specific trigger. To resolve it we found a product containing several proteases including one known as DPP IV, which breaks down dairy and gluten proteins.

Unlike many drug therapies, enzymes are a quick and relatively inexpensive option to try, with a high probability for success. You will usually see results within the first four weeks, and often with just one bottle. While we found success by focusing on specific enzymes, some ACS children respond equally well to a broad-spectrum enzyme product that focuses on the digestion of carbohydrates and fats in addition to proteins. As you plan out a course of enzyme therapy, think in terms of categories: Children who have trouble digesting proteins need proteases; amylases break down carbohydrates; problems with candida yeast respond well to fiber digesting enzymes; and those with dairy intolerance benefit from lactase and DPP IV enzymes. Ascertain which category applies best to your child’s particular problem and then choose among the enzyme products within this category. Most families with children who have developmental delays tend to get best results using one of the broad-spectrum products at all meals along with one of the strong protease products.

The Bug Connection
Many children with autism related conditions also suffer from candida yeast or bacterial overgrowth in the gut. To resolve the problem try yeast-targeting products with high levels of fiber-digesting enzymes (like cellulases) to break down the outer walls of yeast cells. The product should also contain a high level of proteases to help clear out pathogenic yeast and reduce any die-off reactions. Consider combining a yeast-controlling herbal supplement such as grapefruit seed extract or oregano with the enzymes for a synergistic effect.

Underlying persistent viral infections also seem prevalent in autistic children, and when these are addressed, the children show some permanent improvements in language, socialization, behavior, and cognitive ability. Several autism specialists are turning to Valtrex, a prescription antiviral medication that provides good results. Another alternative, ViraStop, is a specialty blend of enzymes used between meals at high therapeutic doses (12 to 15 capsules per day). Two preliminary investigations using ViraStop resulted in a program that has delivered excellent results. Combining this with other supplements that have antiviral properties, such as olive leaf extract, vitamin C, or monolaurin, increases its effectiveness against viruses.

While the exact mechanisms of enzyme therapy remain obscure in the case of autism, it clearly works on underlying causes, not just symptoms. Even though not all my son’s sensory problems have disappeared, he has became much more social, his grades have improved, and his general anxiety has gone away. Now when people ask me how my son is, I’m thankful I’m able to say, truthfully, “He’s fine!”

Because there is still beauty

Jenny Wilde — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 17:24:44 +0000

The two galaxies are oriented so that they appear to mark the number 10. The left-most galaxy, or the “one” in this image, is relatively undisturbed apart from a smooth ring of starlight. It appears nearly on edge to our line of sight. The right-most galaxy, resembling a zero, exhibits a clumpy, blue ring of intense star formation.

The blue ring was most probably formed after the galaxy on the left passed through the galaxy on the right. Just as a pebble thrown into a pond creates an outwardly moving circular wave, a propagating density wave was generated at the point of impact and spread outward. As this density wave collided with material in the target galaxy that was moving inward due to the gravitational pull of the two galaxies, shocks and dense gas were produced, stimulating star formation.

The galaxy pair was photographed on October 27-28, 2008. Arp 147 lies in the constellation Cetus, more than 400 million light-years from Earth.

(from NASA’s Image of the Day Gallery)

Such a mixed bag

Jenny Wilde — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 06:00:15 +0000

Yes, almost every single thing I wanted to happen with this election happened:

President-Elect Obama

Yes on 1A (high-speed rail)

Yes on 2 (humane treatment of farm animals)

No on 4 (forcible parental notification and waiting period for teen abortion)

No on 7 and 10 (poorly conceived and manipulative “energy-reform” propositions)

Yes on WW (restoration of state parks)

BUT (and it’s a BIG one),

Proposition 8 passed.

It passed.

I’d like to wail and wonder, “How could this happen?,” but, sadly, I know far too well how this could happen. Of course, it was soundly rejected by my home base, the Bay Area, and pretty much all up and down the California coast.

There are plenty of conservative, religious zealots in the Central Valley, though, and they think everyone should be forced to conform to their religious beliefs.

What about freedom of religion, you ask? Pshaw! Who needs it!

How about the separation of church and state? Sacrilege!

Why, don’t we live in a god-fearing christian country? Didn’t we add “under god” to our pledge of allegiance in the 1950s? Doesn’t it say “in god we trust” on our money? Don’t we still have a born-again christian for president for 3 more months?

I feel so, ugh, I don’t know…elated grim hopeful disgusted joyful depressed.

Some very dear friends of mine have been told they don’t count as much as Mark and I do because of their private, personal, completely loving and non-harmful to anyone, love lives.

Parents at Duncan’s school who volunteer in the PTA and act as room parents and willingly perform their civic duty have been told they are not deserving of the same rights that I have.

Friends, relatives, classmates, and many more people I don’t know, have been told they aren’t good enough to marry the ones they love.

Mark wisely pointed out that civil rights aren’t won in elections, they’re won in court.

That’s true, and lawsuits have already been filed.

Those couples who were married before the ban passed have been assured they would be “grandfathered in” and their marriages will still count.

The folks at No on Prop 8 have said that all the votes still haven’t been counted yet and there’s still hope. I want to believe them, but I fear it’s wishful thinking on their part. I guess time will tell.

So there you have it. The people have both renewed my faith and let me down.

That is, my peeps here in the Bay haven’t let me down, but narrow-minded people in other parts of the state and their fear and intolerance have betrayed us all.

When you start taking away civil rights, by constitutional revision no less, you head down a very slippery slope. Where does it end?

Let’s hope it’ll end very soon in the California Supreme Court.

But, YAY! Obama, still, you know?

There is still hope.

A fairly typical morning

Jenny Wilde — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 16:13:33 +0000

It was a morning like many before it and as many would be in the future.

Two children awoke to the urging of their mother; bleary eyes and messy heads slowly rose from their pillows.

“But I’m still tired,” one whined. “I refuse to believe it’s morning,” the other complained.

The mother insisted that, though the children were tired, morning it was and school would not be denied.

Dressing and the preparation and consumption of breakfast were uneventful. Lunches were made with some creativity born of desperate lack of funds and sheer boredom.

Teeth and hair were brushed, homework was checked, and then a dramatic discovery was made!

One item of homework was yet undone!

Hurriedly the older child ran to the mother’s computer to find a biography of Edgar Allen Poe and a copy of his poem “The Raven”. Once found, they were rapidly printed, and disaster was averted. (The mother had had experience with this sort of mishap before and now was used to allowing time for last-minute homework finishing activities.)

As time was nearing All Hallow’s Eve, a pumpkin was placed lovingly in a tote bag for the older child to take to school. (The younger child would be having an in-class party today, which this family’s funds did not help pay for since the funds were simply not there.)

Another last-minute bit of drama! Utensils were required for the older child to carve her pumpkin at school and none had been readied! A great rushing and rummaging commenced and, the specified items having been cobbled together, disaster was once again averted.

The children and the mother stumbled down the stairs, trying not to trip over kittens. They managed to exit the apartment while preventing the curious kittens from doing likewise. The matriarch of the cat family looked on disdainfully from the sofa.

Children and mother were ensconced in their conveyance, seatbelts were fastened, and driving began, with all necessary items being accounted for.

Casually, the mother inquired as to whether the older child had remembered her keys since the mother would be at school until evening. The older child’s face betrayed a feeling of dread and she angrily admitted she had forgotten them. A great gnashing of teeth (the mother’s) and spewing of venimous rage (the older child’s) filled the vehicle. (The younger child wisely remained quiet and waited for the storm to abate).

The mother remarked that she couldn’t give the older child her own keys, lest she, too, be unable to enter the family domicile. The older child was greatly agrieved. The mother racked her brain for a solution since time would not permit the retrieval of said child’s keys before the school bell should ring.

The mother had an epiphany as a solution was revealed to her: the older child would be dropped off at school (in a decidedly foul mood) and the mother and younger child would rush home. Once there, the mother would quickly fetch the forgotten keys and charge the younger child with their safe-keeping. He would then have them at the ready when the older child picked him up from school and this final disaster of the morning would be circumvented.

The mother, having completed the aforementioned crisis-management, then drove the younger child to school, depositing him at his classroom a mere three or four minutes late.

The mother returned to the car and drove home in an unhurried manner. Once parked under the carport of the apartment building in which she and her family dwelt, she sat for a moment in the car. She took a deep breath and mentally prepared herself for the chores and responsibilities yet to come during the day and nostalgically recalled peaceful summer mornings when alarm clocks and school lunches were unknown to the family.

She reflected that she was grateful the husband and father of the brood used his credit card to restock the household stores of coffee and half & half.

All would be well and life would continue, dramatically and peacefully, lovingly and angrily, dully and creatively, for those were the threads of the tapestry of her life.