I’m writing the scene between Viola and the Devil and it’s so intense I can only write a line or two before I want to jump up and scrub the floor or run around the block something. I don’t know how real writers do it. It makes me feel jumpy and itchy. When C has played music for a couple of hours he looks beatific, blessed-out, radiant. When I’ve been writing for a few hours I look like I just killed someone and came right from the scene of the crime without bothering to shower. Thank God I have to go do a big Thanksgiving shop; that will ground me.

Saturday night I went with Marci to see the last show of The Monk, a play that was adapted from a lurid novel of the same name by Matthew Lewis. The play, (and the novel) are full of captive pregnant nuns, deals with the devil, religious visions, betrayals, gloomy crypts that are full of rotting corpses, convents and castles, ravished maidens, and a corrupt priest at the center of it all. Stuart Bousel directed and as always I was amazed by his ability to get pitch perfect performances out of his actors, and to be so creative with scenery, lighting and costumes on the tiniest of budgets.

I know Stuart would like to be able to put on some lavish production someday and I wish that for him—he deserves it—but I like the simplicity and creativity that are born of necessity. The actresses were wearing taffeta bridesmaid dresses which had been expertly altered, so that each fit perfectly. Topped with nun’s veils they were provocative and charming. The pacing was quick, crisp and clean, the actors spat out their lines with conviction and the staging was stylized in some scenes, more natural in others, always making maximal use of the tiny space.

It was a pain in the butt to get into the city, especially for Marci who had to drive and park, but there’s something so exciting about going to see live theatre as opposed to curling up at home watching Netflix (even though I’m grateful for that too.) We watched the actors give performances that were as good or better than anything we might see on screen, and knew they were paid next to nothing to do this play, that they had to hold day jobs in addition to a rigorous rehearsal schedule.

The playwright/adapter, Nirmala Nataraj, was taking tickets at the door. She and Stuart told me the big sprawling epic had taken several years and many drafts to adapt. This novel has been in print continuously since it was first published in 1796 when its author was just 19 years old. Stephen King cites it as the reason he became a writer. I’d never heard of it before.

Maybe when I was younger I might have been jealous of them all for having found such vibrant creative community in each other. Certainly I wish I’d had a No Nude Men theatre company to be part of when I was thirty. I wish I’d started writing plays twenty years before I did. In many ways I am making up for lost time. And that’s okay. Thank God I’ve been given this time to retrace my steps, pick up some of the lost stitches. Matthew Lewis was dead in his early forties from a disease that would be curable today. He made good use of his short time.

These days I smile to see the great work the younger generation is creating. Then I go home to wrestle with my own project.

Last night's Wing It! concert was extraordinarily deep, poignant and joyous, with themes of death and loss in several of the stories, an incredible fake Italian opera by Beth, and at the very end, a surprise proposal. As Theron and Elizabeth danced a duet, Elizabeth vocalizing a wordless chant, and Theron wrapping her in a long red cloth, he began to sing, "I have a question..." She continued chanting. Again, he sang, "A question I've been wanting to ask for a while..." He fished a ring out of his pocket and put it on her finger. "Will you marry me?"

She was so overcome she lifted him up--E is amazingly strong, she can even lift Leo--and whirled him through the air, then he lifted her as the room exploded. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I could see by the look on Elizabeth's face that she hadn't expected this at all, had no clue in fact, that he had been plotting. In doing it publicly he allowed all of us to share the moment. So much of their lives and destiny together is tied up with this work, this shared mission, inseparable from it.

I also got to hold a gorgeous 7-month-old baby last night, a warm fragrant bundle snuggled against my chest. Delicious.

After the show a bunch of us went to VIBE, a new lesbian bar across the street where we danced for a while. It was full of younger hipper gay people, mostly black, but there were a few other middle-aged folks besides us. It was enthusiastic and friendly and the music was LOUD and throbbing hip hop. It was fun dancing with my Wing It! friends, not performing, just shaking it the way people do on weekend nights, even though I felt not-young, not-hip, white, and like an audiologist's daughter, which is what I am, i.e. somewhat of a wuss when it comes to bone-shakingly loud music. On the other hand there's times and places to get your bones shook up, and this seemed like the night for it.

Last night we went to dinner at the home of C’s favorite colleague and his wife. We walked into their apartment and a lovely familiar voice filled the room, singing I Could Drink A Case of You. I couldn’t figure out how they had gotten a copy of Carla’s Extraordinary Renditions, the CD which has this song on it. But it was the radio, KCSM Jazz station. This couple has a great sound system and her voice was crystalline and gorgeous, surrounding and lifting us like wings.

I don’t write about writing in here very often because writing involves a lot of sitting still and sipping tea or coffee and putting down some words and then changing them, and then restoring them back to the original. I forget who it was who said watching a writer work is like watching paint dry, but that’s how it is.

I always love movies about writers. Remember Jane Fonda as Lillian Hellman in Julia, throwing the typewriter out the window? It’s a completely unbelievable scenario, but fun to watch, and the actress looks much cuter than the real Lillian Hellman ever did. You can see the screenwriters struggling animate what is, at heart, an internal process. But I have been writing during this period of almost no teaching work, and this is the update.

I’ve had two more essays accepted; one by The Sun, called Baggage: A Love Story, about the process of two middle-aged people making room for each other (Dede the cat has a starring role.) And another essay, On the Court, to MORE Magazine, about playing tennis as a metaphor for relationship. I am really proud of the On the Court essay, I think it’s one of the best-written things I’ve done. I used David Sedaris’ essay Journey Into Night from the New Yorker as a model for describing an ordinary environment, and paid more attention than usual to place descriptions.

The Sun also accepted another poem, “Greedy,” and Hanging Loose has taken my long poem “Sustain,” so that’s all good. The poetry manuscript is out at a couple of places and I know it’s a finalist in at least one contest, but it’s been a finalist several times before without hitting the jackpot, so we’ll see..

I signed a contract with an agent to market a book of my essays! Twenty years worth of essays, mostly published in The Sun, but a few in other places. She said (and I agree) that I’ll need to write some connective material, to link them. And there’s the task of re-editing the works. I have two new essays, one about Carla, and one about the women’s self-defense classes I’ve been taking that need a few more drafts. The women’s self-defense essay is just about done, the Carla piece needs a lot more work.

And I’m in the middle of a new play, a play I’ve been trying to write for a couple of years. I started it in spring of ’07, when C and I had first started dating—originally we thought we’d try writing a musical together. That idea hasn’t been shelved and the scenes I wrote have languished in my computer for the past eighteen months.

I’m rewriting it now, not as a musical, but as a straight play, and the characters are coming to life. It’s an exciting and unnerving process—unnerving, because I really don’t know what happens next. I don’t know the secret of one character’s parentage, I’m not sure if a marriage I’m writing about will endure or not, I’m not even sure if a certain character might not be the Devil in disguise. People are saying unexpected things, and I’m holding back the development of two key characters until a little later in the play when they can have their revelations.

As I write I’m so grateful to John Patrick Shanley for being my teacher these past few months—I’ve read and absorbed every word of his plays. He’s given me a lot of permission to let everyone speak from the gut, to let things be more emotionally real. Plus I think I’ve absorbed a lot of structure, not through analyzing it but through experiencing it, which is how I learn best.

What I’ve been reading: 13 by Shanley (plays); Dirty Sexy Play and other plays by Shanley; Moonstruck and other screenplays by Shanley, Psychopathia Sexualis by Shanley, Doubt by Shanley, Defiance by Shanley, etc. I’ve also read August: Osage County by Tracey Letts, which is a great play that won the Pulitzer. I’ve got a volume of Sarah Ruehl’s plays next to my bed which I’ll start on next. I’ve also got The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz, which I haven’t cracked open yet.

C and I arm-wrestle each week to see who gets to read The New Yorker first. This week there’s a great short story by Edwige Danticat about Haiti. I’m still struggling to read Anne Carson’s Autobiography of Red—I know it’s a significant and beautiful poetry collection, but it’s hard for me to crack. I’ve just bought Matthew Dickson’s Great American Poem.

We finally watched The Kite Runner, which was wonderful, and I asked C to order Scarface from Netflix because JP Shanley (aka God) said the screenplay influenced him as he was writing Moonstruck. Specifically he said (in the introduction to Moonstruck) that he felt Oliver Stone really loved all the characters he wrote for Scarface.

I thought Al Pacino’s performance was amazing—I lived in Miami for a year following the Mariel boatlift, and he looked, dressed, and sounded like a real Cuban refugee. He must have done meticulous research. But I couldn’t see the great love for the characters that Shanley was talking about. They are all a bunch of more or less miserable people, dope fiends, dealers, gangsters—and they all end up dead. The last act is a siege of Al Pacino’s drug kingpin palace—there’s a memorable scene of him nose-down in a mountain of cocaine, and then the last scene where he is shot and topples off the balcony into his ornate swimming pool, the water darkening to blood-red around him.

Ten girls in various states of excitement, nerves and giggles. Ten girls between the ages of fourteen and twenty, taking a private teen class in self-defense. This time I was lucky enough to be an assistant. I was nervous myself: afraid I would mess up somehow, forget something crucial (the video camera!), also afraid, honestly, that it would be tedious.

The hours flew by. Now that I know the basic strikes, it was all a lot less mysterious to me, but no less interesting. Interesting to watch the girls hit softly at first, and then with more and more strength as the male suited instructor upped the ante by giving them more resistance in the staged muggings. He evoked their ferocity and it came out, all at once for some, more slowly and tentatively for others.

Since it was teens, there was a whole section on date rape and dating violence. As I sat silently in the circle and listened to the instructors list off the various characteristics of rape and sexual assault as well as the more ubiquitous boudary trespasses, I thought "Shit! My boundaries have been crossed so many times I can't count them all." From age fifteen on, it was like I had a big target on my chest. Literally on my chest. I've had drunken men-- complete strangers--lunge at my breasts and grab them. I've had men grind their pelvises into me on subways and at parties. When I was a teenager the guy who cut my hair used to press his erections into my arm as it rested on the side of the chair. I blushed and was silent. I didn't know I could call him on it. I never told anyone.

I looked around the circle and wondered if these girls had begun experiencing those things yet. I always felt it was my fault for being big and voluptuous and not disguising my body adequately. Who would I have been if I could have truly understood that I could walk proudly in my body in the world? These girls have so much more education about these things than we did. Yet I saw some of them hunched over their breasts in the same way I was, disconnected from their breath and bodies.

It was great being on the other side of the mat, having the perspective of an assistant. When I was a student I was so hung up on doing the kicks and strikes perfectly. Turns out it doesn't matter that much. Yes, it's nice when someone has great technique and can really land a strike with precision and force. But the real deal is spirit--something you can't teach, only evoke. The spirit of ferocity, of willingness to fight for yourself, of rage and creativity, of courage. One of the male instructors had a T-shirt that read "Courage expands with use."

i struggle with this issue about being perfect. In self-defense class, in Wing It!, in being on Carla's caregiving team, in all my relationships, in teaching, and of course in writing. Funny, because I don't look like a perfectionist. But scratch the surface and there it is.

Mark Twain said the difference between the right word and the almost-right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug. Working on a poem I'll put something through a thousand drafts (only to have Ruth write, "I liked your earlier draft better.") Allen Ginsberg wrote many many crappy poems. Walt Whitman had great spirit yet he was sometimes verbose and tedious.

In singing there is the harmonious note, and there is the one that is off-key. Some singers are perfect, and then there are those, like Bob Dylan, who aren't but have that something else--spirit. The desire to be excellent to be perfect wars within me with the desire to rebbel and also just this off-key thing which is not rebellion but the particular way I do things.

Anyway, the girls. I can't talk about them in too much detail because of confidentiality agreements, but they ranged from tiny and skinny to big, from a very young 14 to a very mature 20, from girls who were comfortable in their bodies to girls who were soft and plump and looked as if they hardly moved off the couch. All kinds of girls. They go to a small school and all know each other, and it was sweet to see them during breaks, sitting on each others' laps, leaning against each other, sharing gummy bears and energy bars.

I got the feeling that I could do this, teach this stuff, someday. I don't know. My teacher, Nicole, was so excellent, such a yogi, precise and energetic, a perfect fighter, that I walked away from class thinking, "I could never do that." but seeing other teachers now, with different styles, I realize that there's more than one way to do it. I could find my own style. For now, I'm happy to assist. I feel good thinking that there are ten more girls in the world who have the basics of how to defent themselves.

I'll start with last Thursday night, a week ago, two days after the elction. Coke and I were co-teaching our class, Interplay Writing, or whatever it's called. But of course everyone was still stunned/giddy from the election.

Coke, who has an MSW said she felt the country had been under a cloud from Bush's mental illness for the last eight years.

"Mental illness?" I said. "Nixon was mentally ill. He was paranoid. Bush is the guy who won elections because so many people felt like they'd like to have a beer with him. He's affable and clueless."

"Delusional," she said. "Sometimes delusional people can be quite affable."

A student who is a clinical psychologist agreed. "He's delusional." This opened a window in my brain and I wanted to ask more. What about Cheney? evil or delusional? Karl Rove? Sarah Palin? Condoleeza Rice? I wanted to know everyone's diagnosis. But the class is not there to dissect the psychologies of politicians, it's for people to move and marry their word-making to their bodywisdom.

But just that little snippet allowed me to feel some compassion for Bush, which I've been feeling lately anyway. The thought that he might have done what he did sincerely not seeing reality because he's mentally il had never occured to me before.

When I was little and used to scream "I hate you!" at my brother or say it about another kid on the playground, my mother would always admonish me, "Don't say hate. You can't hate anyone except Hitler." In my little five-year-old mind, the two were synonymous, Hate and Hitler; and they both began with H!

Now, I notice that when I drop my hatred of Bush for a second, my self-judgement and self-hatred also soften and release. I benefit. I can feel it physically.

Of course it's easier to feel sorry for the poor bastard when he's down and being kicked.

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I admit I went into a bridal shoppe with Marci. I publicly confess that I tried on a fake-gem-encrusted white satin strapless gown with a big stiff sequinned girdle-y thing, while the reed-thin shopgirl held it closed against my waist (it was the wrong size) to show me what it would look like. I admit I was wearing gym socks, and that the effect was less than camera-ready BUT that my waist and hoips looked great held into this contraption because it was so highly structured. At that price it ought to be--it cost somewhere around a mortgage payment. I will never ever wear a white satin wedding gown, but now I can say that I did try one on. Next stop: vintage clothing stores where I will be looking for a 50s style Marilyn Monroe type frock, hopefully in emerald green or something...

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I also took my Little Sister (and her real, biological big sister) to Chuck E. Cheese. My only excuses for this excursion is that she had been begging for it for weeks, I had never been to Chuck E. Cheese before and didn't know what it was. It's Vegas for kids. Pinballs whistles bells lights flashing and total non-stop stimulation. Perfect place for a kid with ADD.

And of course it's a rip-off. You pay 20.00 for a dinky not-very-good medium pizza and two drinks, and then the kids start begging for tokens to put into the machines. You're trapped. You're a caught fish in a barrel of neon. You're an American sucker.

I flat-out refused to go there, earning me the title of Meanest Big Sister Ever I'm sure. I just know with her that it's never enough. You buy one thing and then she wants another. She collected enough tickets to get a couple of cheap-o made-in-China plastic thingys at the counter where you can redeem such things, and of course it broke in the car ten minutes later.

Which led me to reflect on her bottomless hunger for stuff, stimulation, candy, toys (and despite being poor, their house is stuffed to the gills with clkothing and toys, so much stuff that she can't even get to it. Stuff is easy to come by in America.)

She's no different from me. Tuesday night I went to a clothing swap with my friend Marci and half a dozen of her girlfriends. We had all cleaned our closets. I brought four shopping bags full of old clothes, clothes that I had spent hours shopping for, at Ross, on-line, at the Goodwill, wherever. Some were skinny pants that no longer fit. Some were things I'd ordered which never worked, and which I never wore and never will. Four bags.

It was great fun--soon there were six women in their underwear in the living room, stripping off sweaters and passing them around. I scored a great pair of Michael Kors jeans--thank you, Marci--a red cashmere designer sweater, and a great pair of high-heeled black ankle boots. I saw clothes that never fit me properly go home with other women, looking much better on them than they had on me.

The part of me that's like my little sister is that, like her, I attempt to fill in the void through the endless acquisition of stuff. After the clothing swap I got inspired and went through my closet again, being even more ruthless and thorough. I gleaned four more bags of cast-ffs which went to the Goodwill. Let the record show that I now have a neatly organized closet full of clothes I can wear and access. Good for me. But the process of weeding out made me confront just how much time I had spent in these stores and on-line (and how much money!) buying pretty things that gave me a momentary thrill but no lasting satisfaction and which ended up cluttering my closet and my life.

It's hard for me to find a happy medium between some of the Puritan values I imbibed growing up, and the incredibly wasteful spend-a-thon that is American culture right now. Where';s the balance between self-deprivation and mindless consumption?

What makes me happiest are experiences, not things. People. Movement. Moments. Before my birthday everyone was asking me what I wanted for a gift. The best gift was going back to Massachusetts and having my nephew Eli park his bony little butt on my lap and squirm around, oblivious to my bladder and kidneys, until he found just the right position for himself. The biggest gifts I want right now are things only I can give myself: exercise. Meaningful work. Sweet time with kids (not at Chuck E. Cheese!) Opening my heart.

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Wednesday there was a meeting with the Driving Miss Craisy crew and Peggy Flynn, an angel/facilitator/caregiver-support person. We met for a couple of hours without Carla and then for about an hour or two with her. Peggy is ruddy, white-haired, kind, and direct, a self-described "Irish Matriarch" who spent fifteen years in the trnches during the AIDS epidemic in San Francisco. One of the life-changing things I learned from her is that people suffering from the nervous system disorder/diseases--MS, ALS, Parkinson's--sometimes get jumpy or anxious simply because their nerves are misfiring. Aside from all the very real things there are to be anxious about with a fatal illness, there is a component that's like PMS or menopause, a purely physical surge of emotion which isn't aleways directly related to what seems to be causing it.

She also said that caregivers and people close to the person with MS or ALS may experience a sympathetic nervous response--because we're all attuned like strings on a guitar; when one string goes out of whack, our strings get jangled as well. She said that groups like ours, although composed of separate individuals are also like one big organism--like a family--and we share energetic patterns.

About our group, she remarked on the high degree of perfectionism and anxiety she noticed among us--also the intensity of feeling, the sensitivity--sometimes super, or over-sensitivity to the slightest nuance of feeling--and the love. She said most groups of long-term caregivers do not have this intensity of love for the person they are caring for. Carla being Carla it all makes sense; everyone falls in love with her instantly, doctors, nurses, people on the street--because she loves people freely and deeply and has a much wider-capacity than usual for attracting and feeling and giving love. It's probably her biggest talent--even more than her talent for singing, acting, writing, teaching, directing--this love thing.

She's also a perfectionist, of course, even now--she's trying to be the best ALS patient ever--and we're all trying to be the best caregivers ever. There are a lot worse things you could say about someone than that they are always striving for excellence, but the other side of that coin is that it's stressful and exhausting always to be trying so hard. I could understand better, listening to Peggy parse it out, why hired caregivers with a degree of detachment, might provide a welcome respite from all the intensity and mutuality and primal feminine caring that goes on all the time between carla and her friends.

I plead guilty myself to perfectionism--underneath my laid-back hippie exterior, I can be as tightly-wound as the next girl. I have to remember to ground myself, keep feet on the floor, keep breathing and remembering that I actually can manage the physical world, including whatever details I can do for Carla, just fine. The anxiety about my supposed incompetence that I absorbed growing up came more from my mother's illness than from anything else. It wasn't that we were incompetent, it's just that her nerves were misfiring which made her irritable and twitchy.

Peggy's insight was so helpful to me; I always blamed my mother for being so controlling, but it may have been just that we were too connected and my nervous system received too many of her stress signals. And women are like this--we connect on a whole-body level with each other. Put a few of us in a house together for a month and our hormones synch up; we all start menstruating at the same time. We'[re all giant puddles of water laced with finely detailed electrical conducting systems.

I wouldn't trade being a woman for anything, but male friendships more restful. And sometimes you need a rest.

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Last night C and I watched The Kite Runner--finally. I had been afraid to watch it because I knew it would be intense, and it was--but it was also just what the doctor ordered--literally.

Peggy had said about our hyper-vigilant deeply loving overcontrolled group of perfectionists, "If you were Irish you could all get drunk together--and that might not be a bad idea. Why don't you watch a sad movie together, and all have a good cry."

That might be difficult to organize, given how many of us there are, but watching Kite Runner and thinking of the suffering of the poeple in Afghanistan--and people all over the world--allowed me to release at the end. Nothing dramatic. I just leaned into C's warm body, and felt the emotion move through me, qyuietly. It was very quiet. A warm rush of tears, and deep breaths. There is a lot of suffering in the world. We are living incredibly privileged lives, and there is suffering, but when you can move into the heart, it is warm and soft in there.

My friend E called at 11:00 p.m. I could hardly hear her over the blaring of car horns and the sounds of people screaming with joy.

"Oh my God, oh my God, oh God, you should see this! It's like--people are dancing in the street! They're sitting on their cars and dancing and cheering and crying and hugging each other! I've never seen anything like it! It's just this--outpouring..." and then I couldn't hear her anymore.

C and I were just going to bed. We'd had a little gathering here, a few friends, and watched the returns together. When Ohio was announced and we knew the number of electoral votes would put him over the top, the tears started to flow. We broke out the champagne and then watched, cheering and crying, as the win became a mandate, became a kind of landslide. Could it be? Was it really? The cameras cut to pictures of Jesse Jackson weeping and pressing his finger gently to his lips as though with that small gesture he was comforting generations of souls who did not live to see this day but were seeing it now through him.

Two days later, and we're still processing. It's hard to take in that in our lifetimes we have lived through a miracle. I wish we had been in the streets that night. E said it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and I believe her. It's so many things at once. Not only having a leader of integrity, someone we can respectin the White House, not only this beautiful Black family, but the sheer fact that it was done. They said it couldn't be done and we did it. Anything is now possible, for anyone--and that means me too. And you. Everyone.

At the same time I remember that it was E who called me when the California Supreme Court decision came out to allow gay marriage. Her voice overflowing with emotion, she announced, "Ali, I'm normal! The Supreme Court says so! My love is as valid as anyone else's!"

"You were always valid," I said. "With or without any Supreme Court ruling. But normal--I'm not so sure." We laughed. Who would want to be "normal," I thought. Now that the right to marry has been taken away--again--I'm looking at normal in a new light. Normal means just having the simple rights to lead your own life, including your love life, in as ordinary a way as anyone else. Ordinary can be holy.

Normal means that while C and I plan our wedding and talk about the guest list and the musicians and the vows and I start obsessing over finding the right dress--(off-white or flame-red or emerald green? Cover the flabby upper arms with lace sleeves or commit to nine months of daily long swims? How much cleavage?) While I get to occupy my mind with these burning questions, my friends should be able to be similarly taken up with thinking about whatever obsesses them instead of spending precious energy fighting for a basic civil right. Normal means you get to think about whatever you like.

My friends Randy and Michael joke that they've been married more times than anyone else--to each other. While any drunken pair of heterosexuals can make it legal in Vegas with the person they just met at the bar, these two have renovated a house, and seen each other through some stressful passages over seven years. I've lost count by now, but they've married in Canada, they got married in SF when it was legal for a minute back in '04, They had a non-legally binding big wedding in Berkeley, they married here in Oakland a couple of months ago. And I think they may have done it in Massachusetts and/or Vermont or New York. I wonder if I would have the stamina to put my heart out all those times in front of witnesses, knowing that these forces were arrayed to knock it down.

When a lesbian couple got married in my synagogue this past September, Rabbi David joked, "Another Kehilla couple rushing to the altar." These women have been together 25 years, raised a son together, buried parents, endured job changes and illnesses, maintained a stable home, been part of a spiritual community, and all the rest of it. The only thing they hadn't done is see their union legalized. Then they did. Now they see it taken away.

I refuse to see Prop 8 passing as anything more than a temporary setback. I am SURE we will restore justice, through the courts, through federal legislation ultimately, and mostly through just changing people's minds, allowing them to see what's been right in front of them all along--gay people shopping at the supermarket, gay people walking their dogs, dropping their kids off at school, going to work, having coffee. Gay people walking around the lake, driving cars, falling in love, having all the usual struggles to make it work, living their lives. How this affects anyone else's "traditional marriage" is beyond me.

No rain. Bright skies. C got up first, and then I stumbled downstairs. It was still dark out. The kitchen clock read 5:53 a.m. Our poll opened at 7:00 and we wanted to vote together before C had to leave for work. A quick shower for him. A quick half cup of cold coffee and an energy bar for me. Sunrose as we walked to the polling place, an elementary school near our house.

When I was a little girl, I used to watch the election returns with my father. The Boston Globe ran a map on its front page, with the different states and their electoral votes. You could pencil them in yourself as the results rolled in.

The first election I voted in was 1976, when Jimmy Carter was the Democratic nominee. I had reservations voting for him because he was a born-again Christian, but it turned out to be the best vote I ever cast. Until now.

The line was already forming when we got to the school steps at 7 a.m. Most of the other folks in line with us were African Americans. If I was feeling tremulous and thrilled and disbelieving that we had actually gotten to this moment, how much more so were they? C was anxious: was I sure this was the right place? He couldn't find our street number on the list. I kept telling him I had voted here for the past several elections. The line inched forward, and then the poll-workers got their tables set up and we entered the warm building.

A couple of mix-ups--one guy was in the wrong line, or something. he was very upset about it. They kept offering him an absentee ballot, and he didn't want it, he wanted a real ballot but he didn't want to have to wait in line all over again. An older black lady ahead of me wore a red knitted cap with a pom-pom on it, and leaned on her daughter's shoulder. "I'm just going to lean on you," she said to her daughter. Then, "I'm going to call up Mary and tell her she needs to put on her shoes and come down and vote."

The older black people were the most poignant to me. After having lived through so much, to see the day when a young black man is on the verge of being elected president--

Then it was my turn. Thank goodness they have paper ballots this year. I inked in for Obama and Barbara lee and then started in on the propositions. I had a cheat sheet in my pocket, which was just as well, as I can't read the fine print on those things anyway. I handed it to the man who put it into the machine and watched him turn the crank while my number flashed: 14. I was the 14th voter at that polling place today. I'd bet the percentage of people voting for obama in our neighborhood is somewhere around 95 percent.

C was still at his little booth and I saw a flash when he took a picture of his ballot. On our way out, we paused on the steps to take another picture, when the enormity of what is happening hit him in the face and he suddenly burst into tears. It was a surprise to him. We took our picture at the bottom of the steps. My hair is a mess, his nose is red--and we are so in awe of being here, now, in this time, along with everyone else.

Then it was work for him and Home Depot for me, and now to the grocery store to buy some snacks for tonight when we'll have a few friends over to watch the returns with us. This is a night to gather the tribes. This is a night to kneel down, cry, exult, breathe deeply, be altogether reverent, hopeful, and tremulous.

A friend, Laurie Adams, who was my roommate in Malawi last year, has taken a few weeks out of her life to go volunteer in Colorado for the Obama campaign. Her group letter was so inspiring and humbling that I asked her permission to reprint it here.

Hi all,

As some of you know, I arrived here in Littleton, CO last week to volunteer for the Obama campaign through election day. As I sit in the home of my host family this morning, preparing for a day at the Obama headquarters down the street, it felt important to share some of this remarkable experience with my friends, and to ask for your prayers/ good thoughts/intentions for this country as we head into the final days before the election. I am both hopeful and afraid, and I would appreciate knowing that I am surrounded by all of you, bringing your calm, loving, peaceful energy into this crazy time. I also know that many of you have been contributing in so many ways, and that these experiences are among many shared by friends and family.

If you don’t already know, this election campaign is being run on the energy of thousands and thousands of volunteers (1400 from Texas alone are dispersed throughout the US right now); these volunteers are both local and national and represent every kind of diversity you can imagine – veterans, Republicans, Independents, straight, gay, African Americans, Latinos, and everything else in between, 18 yr olds, 20 somethings and 80 somethings, kids with their parents and parents who’ve left their kids with spouses. All of this is true even in very suburban Littleton. There is a woman in our office from Texas who has left her two little girls twice for weeks at a time to volunteer in Pennsylvania and now here. There is a woman in her 60’s here from Liverpool, England. There is a man here from Littleton whose wife died 5 months ago who had not left his house until he decided to volunteer with this campaign. He arrives each day in his wheel chair
and makes hours of phone calls. On Sunday I took him, wheel chair in tow, to the Obama rally in Denver. We were 20 ft behind Obama with a crowd of 100,000 +. I have met a lot of people who are for the first time in their lives not voting Republican, or they are voting differently from their family for the first time.

I’ve heard a lot of us say how we believe and feel that we are not simply working on a campaign to get someone elected, but that we are working to ensure that civil society endures in the US, for a the possibility of a future on this planet, or using the words of Joanna Macy, working for the “Great Turning” – a time of returning to life, with each other, with the earth. We know that electing Obama is the next necessary step. When I was traveling here, I kept getting teary, and I felt like I was joining a corp of patriots, living out a civic duty to help in a small way sustain democracy in the US – not because our elections are a great representation of democracy, but because people organizing to share information, house by house, to make sure we vote and our votes count, is. As my friend Sue here said, if the military families can sacrifice for years on end, then the least we can do is show up for a few weeks.

Obama has already demonstrated without a doubt that he has the capacity to inspire and bring a diverse people together for a common cause who have learned to work efficiently and effectively as grassroots organizers. It is clear now that this is one of the most powerful potential outcomes of his leadership in a world where we are all going to have to get on board 100% to continue to live on this planet in a decent, peaceable and sustainable way.

The last half of his message to us on Sunday focused on this. Obama’s energy was amazing Sunday -- he is a beautiful man whose presence and smile are real and full of life. Two young men behind me said admiringly, as he jogged up the stage , “He’s the fuckin’ MAN!” I totally agree. And I was very grateful for all the secret service who were in front, above, and around us, trying to keep him safe.

I am writing this to you now because, in the midst of one of the most vicious political weeks I’ve experienced, I hope everyone can still feel a little of what this election should be about, and is about, among the people who are working for and voting for an Obama/Biden ticket. Out here in highly Republican Jefferson County, it is easy for me to feel overwhelmed at this point by the cynicism and negativity, the racism, and lies that are informing a lot of people’s decisions.

People’s yard signs get stolen each night, a woman told me to “go away . . . he is an evil, evil man.” College educated people admit, “but what if he really does have ties to Al Qaida?” I don’t know what it feels like other places, but I’m afraid that things are getting overwhelmingly bitter and mean (and potentially dangerous). And so I am also asking you to take some time each day for the next 6 days to offer a prayer or some silent intention, a chant, a
song, or whatever you have, for this country, for this world, and for everyone to stay SANE, to stay calm, to have open hearts and courage. I want to feel the power of caring love is stronger out there than the power of fear and self-interest. Please.

Thank you,
Laurie

Thank you to all the commenters who wrote in about regretting not having children. Words of wisdom. I appreciate them.

We are both obsessed with the upcoming election. I've got a new word for it: historical intimacy. It means the intimacy you derive from living through an important historical moment with someone. people from the sixties have that with each other. war veterans. even me and my fellow VISTAs who remember the situation in Miami after the Mariel boatlift from Cuba.

In our case, every day we pore over electoral college maps of the country which show the way states will likely vote. We cheer over the states switching from red to pink to light blue to dark blue. If sheer intensity of will could do it, then Obama would be elected right in our kitchen.

Every day the local gas stations drop their prices. I put off filling up my tank for as long as possible, because I know that by next week the price will be lower. Every day the radio says the stock market has dropped another 500 points.

Right now I am procrastinating helping out the painter whom we've hired to help us with the in-law. She and I sanded all day yesterday, with hand-held electric sanders, inadvenrtantly kicking up a huge dust-storm to rival the '29 Depression, and today there are muscles in my back which I didn't even know I had, aching and paining me. I know I should go down there and lay in some primer--all I really want though, is to take a long soak in a hot tub and then crawl back to bed.

These are C's hands on the bass he built himself, from a kit, playing at the party.



My friend Marci and I dancing at my 50th. She's the gorgeous brunette on the left.






Above are pictures from my birthday party, about which more later.

The next few days after the trip home I cried as the glow wore off. I miss my nephews and nieces. I miss everyone of course, but the kids grow so fast. Noah is almost as tall as I am, and he's "beginning to smell himself," as G puts it. An exactly perfect description for a thirteen and a half year old. My biggest regret in life is not having had children, but there was never a time when it felt possible. My first husband Alan was sick for years before we divorced, and we were struggling so much in our relationship then it would have been insane to get pregnant. And afterwards there was no responsible man showing up to partner with me, and the jobs I held had no benefits and did not pay particularly well.

I tried to make up for it be being auntie to the neighborhood kids, by taking in a teenager for a year, and now by being a Big Sister. It's not the same. It's not at all the same. But it is what it is. At fifty, it's the biggest thing I have to accept.

"Why don't you write about it?" C suggested at the kitchen table. I almost bit his head off. "Write about it? I can't!" Because there's everything and nothing to say. I was lucky enough to be of a generation of women who had a choice, and I took my choice and it hurts. I don't know that it was the wrong choice--when I look at how hard my sister works to be a good mother, how much brute endless labor is involved, day in and day out, no real breaks, I know that the other side of the coin is that I was always afraid. Afraid I wouldn't be able to put in the amount of work it really takes and would be consumed with guilt. This is not a job you can do half-assed (although plenty of people do.) But I would rather live with the regret of not having had children than with the regret of having had them and not done right by them.

Carla says "It's not the worst thing in the world not to have had children." I know she is always honest with me, and means it, and I also know that she would say that having had Maclen is the best thing she ever did, her proudest accomplishment, her greatest joy.

I think most women instinctively understand that it's an impossible equation. If you have had kids it's impossible to think of them not being here, or to reckon who you might have been or what you would have done without them. If you haven't had kids it's kind of the same thing. The path not taken always remains a mystery. I hope there's reincarnation so that I will get another chance at that crossroads. Meanwhile I know I am awash in blessings: good health, good family and friends, good partner, good life. And there may be a reason I was meant to be childless in this life.

C gave me a wonderful bicycle for my birthday--just what I wanted--simple enough to be ridden by a wobbly person who hasn't been up on a bike in decades, with a big cushy seat for my big cushy behind. We packed his new bike and mine into the car and went down to Alameda, which is relatively flat and less trafficky, and wepracticed. I didn't fall off or veer into a car, even though I was scared I might. Rding into the sunset (literally!) was beautiful.

We spent the first part of the weekend cleaning and shopping, and had a great party here for my fiftieth. Nothing overly fancy--I made chicken mole, baked a bunch of potatoes and had salad and cake. Other guests brought food, presents, music. The house was full of jazz, C on his bass, and piano, other friends sitting in on piano, organ, sax, flute and drums. I read a couple of poems at the mic, and there was some singing. I love to gather the tribes, watch them interact, and meet each other. New friendships forming. I was so happy! What wonderful people I am blessed to know!

I don't feel fifty--I don't know what fifty is supposed to feel like. This chronology thing is bogus. Some days I'm eighteen, other days I'm ninety and I'm sure that's true for everyone else as well. But I'm here! And there's so much love, more than I can even take in, and so much beauty.

The rest of the trip was pure joy, though. I went to synagogue with Emily on Yom Kippor--a sweet snmall Renewal or Reconstructionist congregation. I'd forgotten to bring white clothes and as we settled in I noticed something and nudged Emily.

"I'm the only woman here wearing make-up. Is that forbidden on Yom Kippor? Did I screw up?"

She whispered back. "No, it's just Vermont. Anyway, you're not the only one." She indicated a large older woman several rows away with a wig that was slightly askew and some bright red lipstick that didn't look quite right smeared across her pale lips.

"Yes, but that woman has cancer," I hissed.

"That woman used to be a man."

"Oh, great. So, it's me and a transsexual wearing make-up on Yom Kippor!" Emily giggled. We picked up our books and started singing, the same songs we sing at Kehilla. We were hungry, but it was okay. Lucy, aged four, managed to stay in the room for the first hour of the service, and then she was off, exploring the building. I followed her around, traipsing up and down the wooden stairs, exploring the back corners.

She didn't last much after noon, so we left and took her to a playground, and then followed her across a muddy field, that led to a pond where there were frogs. We lay on our backs and looked at clouds, and went down to the water's edge and tested the temperature (cool,) and looked at the turning leaves and she climbed a tree. Towards evening Emily and I were feeling raggedy--Em broke her fast a little early with some bread, I had been nibbling cheese and crackers since noon.

The next day I went to Eli's third grade classroom and did a poetry lesson with the kids. His teacher could not have been a day over twenty-two and she looked sixteen. She was very nice and the kids jumped right in. Eli's father David came to watch and took me out for coffee afterwards. We had a nice talk and then he guided me in his car to Mt. Grace and left me there. "You have to climb two fences to get to the trail," he said. "But it's worth it."

I climbed the two fences and set off up the trail. It was a clear warm perfect October day. I don't know how to describe a New England fall without resorting to cliches. Words are inadequate. You walk under a cathedral of color and light. It is a leaf-littered, golden kaleidoscope.

I started to sweat as I climbed about forty-five minutes to the top, where there was a small fire tower. I climbed that too, and looked out. All around me the red green orange yellow Berkshires, an undulant sea of color. I couldn't help but sing the Shema. I sang it several times, louder and louder, then began spontaneously blessing every member of my family, all my loved ones.

I blessed the region, and the people of the region. I had such a strong sense of place. Even though I've lived in Oakland for almost nineteen years now, and city streets feel like home, I will always have attachment to this land, these colors, even the gruff New England accents and the sharp sting of cold weather when it comes. But this day was unseasonably warm and I blessed and I blessed as much as I had breath for, ending with myself.

Then, after some time, I walked back down. Walking up, I had passed two chocolate brown horses grazing freely, very close to the path. They were so big they scared me a little. On the way back one of them came up to me and snuffled me. He snigged my hands, my arms, my face with his huge nostrils and gigantic mouth. I looked at his hooves--one kick from one of them could have killed me. I stood still and let him smell me, and then I cautiously raised a hand and tried to stroke his long velvet nose. He jerked his head away. I was sorry I had nothing for him--no carrot, no apple.

I got back to my rental car safely, and then went to Harvard Square where I had lived for seven years back when I was in my twenties. I visited that house, 27 Dana St., and even rang the bell, but no one was there. I saw by the names on the door that the landlords, the Trachtmans, were still there. I walked down to the Grolier poetry bookstore, which is managed by a new person, and browsed and chatted with him, and left a copy of my book--my lone copy--there, on consignment.

As I was heading back to my car, I passed a cafe and there was my first poetry mentor, Bill Corbett, sitting, having dinner with friends. His face hadn't changed, it really hadn't, in thirty years. I did several independent studies with him where we used to walk all over Boston, snow or sunshine, to visit his friends' art galleries and talk about poetry. I often ate dinner with his family; Beverly, his wife and his two daughters, Marni and Arden. Under his guidance I read all the New York poets, John Ashbery (whom I didn't really get, and still don't to tell the truth) James Schuyler whom I loved, Frank O'Hara, Bernadette Mayer, Lewis Warsh. Bill loves art and painting, so I saw a lot of art then too.

We didn't have time to really catch up--he handed me a chapbook of some poems of his and I hurried off to the airport to pick up my darling C. He got off the plane with a headache, just as I had--what's up with planes these days? Is there less oxygen on them or what? We drove back to Dad's--Aggie behaving more and more erratically--until I had to do the last leg by memory.

The next day was pure Heaven, because the whole family met up for lunch at a Japanese restaurant. It was just the way life should be, the grown-ups laughing and talking and relaxing, the kids playing with each other, and coming around to sit on different people's laps for cuddling or rough-housing. This is how I would want to live always. Extended family. Children. Adults who are deeply connected sharing the work of looking after them. Generations. Community.

It's not all idyllic, of course. There are plenty of disagreements and all the usual tensions in our family. You can't get a group of strong willed opinionated people and subject them to the usual and unusual traumas of life--divorce, a bad economy, remarriages, and in our case our mother's prolonged illness and death--and not have people with some sensitive scars. But there was a lovely feeling of cohesiveness, and the kids reveled in it, you could just see it in the ease in which they ran around laughing. They know in their little bodies when they are safe and surrounded by people who really care about them.

We walked to a nearby playground afterwards and I loved watching C play soccer with my nephews while the girls climbed on the swings and the adults pushed them and chatted and kept an eye out.

And then, too quickly, it was over, and C and I were on the plane, me with a heavy bag full of mind-improving literature, which of course I ignored in favor of watching Project Runway for hours on end until we reached home.

I did not stick my head in a big bowl of Harry Potter. I did something better. I flew home to New England where the trees are turning red, orange, yellow, copper. I hung out with my favorite older man in the world, my father, whose sweetness is like the sky in October, delft-blue and spacious, and who never met a carbohydrate he didn't like.

We ate breakfast at Mad Martha's, a wonderful hole-in-the-wall diner in Newburyport, walked on the beach where we scattered my mother's ashes seven years ago, went clothes shopping at a consignment store and bought me a sexy slinky midnight blue blouse with a bit of decolletage, and in a bookstore where I bought books for the nephews and nieces.

Boston in October can be anything; this week it's been balmy, clear skies, warm temperatures. I basked in being an indulged daughter--how many more years will I be able to enjoy this great status. Some people don't get it at all. My Little Sister has never really had it in her short seven year old life.

We drove to Watertown to see the little red brick houses where our family lived from 1960 until 1965. I remember riding my tricycle busily around the tiny development, visiting neighbors. I was a chatty social little curly-head.

I remember pushing a baby buggy and eating a tiny box of Sunmaid raisins.

I remember digging a hole in my sandbox that I planned would go all the way to China. I was quite earnest about the architecture of the voyage--I would take my aprents and my baby brother and sister; we would travel through this tunnel and pop out on the other side of the world. How would we keep upright on the earth when we were upside down? maybe magnets attached to the bottoms of our feet. When we wanted to go home, we'd just go back through the tunnel, same way we came.

It was a tiny place we lived in--two small bedrooms. God knows how my mother fit two children's beds and a baby crib into one of them. You could stand in the middle of the room and touch both walls with your fingers.

Things were different then. One car per family. Dad and I both noticed more parking spaces that had been made since we left, now that every family has two cars. I wondered about the interior of the homes. Are they still as small as they were? I wished we could go up to the door and knock and ask to look around but my father didn't want to.

And I couldn't find the sandbox. It's probably been ploughed under, long ago, to make room for all the new parking. I couldn't find the swingset where I used to shimmy up the long poles. But we did stumble on something new--a pool! A good-sized outdorr pool that someone had put in. Of course it's all closed over now. No more swimming until May.

Then we visited my stepmother who was babysitting for Chris and Moire, my stepbrother and his wife, and their new baby Liam, who is gorgeous and talkative, although his language is incomprehensive to everyone but him. It's just three-month-old babble babble babble--but quite a lot of it.

Then I got in my rental car with my Dad's borrowed GPS thing-y to go visit my sister in Western Mass--and here my troubles began.

Dad loves his GPS--whom he has named Aggie, short for Agnes, because she has a soothing feminine voice. She understands him. When he makes a wrong move she doesn't yell or criticise, she just says "Recalculating," and then continues to give directions. In his mind Aggie can do no wrong.

Let me tell you something: Aggie is evil. Aggie is possessed. Aggie should star in the next Steven King novel.

Or maybe Aggie just doesn't like me. Maybe she doesn't like women. Maybe she's jealous.

At any rate, the directions called for me to go around a rotary with about a dozen roads leading into and out of it and get off at "the third exit." I panicked, slightly, because how do you count third? Do you mean third exit or just third road? It was dark by now and I have no night vision. None. I am Mister Magoo (now that really dates me) driving through a New England back roads rotary, constructed out of meandering cow paths three centuries old and I am lost. I take the wrong exit. No problem. Aggie says "Recalculating." Naively, I trust her. Surely Aggie will not lead me astray. Surely my father wouldn't let her.

Aggie tells me to go right, then left, then right again. I do what she says. I am traveling over back roads, unfamiliar roads, in the dark, but I think I will somehow magically end up on Route 2 going West again. I still have over an hour's drive to reach my sister's house and the kids are waiting impatiently for me to get there. After half an hour of this I find myself back at 36 Duff St., my ancestral home. In Watertown. I don't want to be in watertown. I want to be halfway down Rte 2 by now, on my way to Emily's house.

I call her, and re-punch in her address and start back. This time I get all the way down Rte 2 and start feeling insecure, when Aggie telepathically icks up my vibes and starts acting up again. She has me turn around and wants me to drive 32 miles back East, but I won't have it. I wrestle control from this evil machine, pull over and punch in Emily's address again, grimly. I can't get a signal out here, there's not much moonlight and the road is unlit. I can hardly see a thing.

On my way through Emily's town, an hour and a half late, I get a speeding ticket, for going 51 in a 35 mile an hour zone. The icing on the cake. By the time I crash through her door I am a nervous wreck.

...to be continued...

I am so tired I can barely lift my fingers to type this. We have confessed to each other that we both feel stuck around the in-law. I've been scraping away womanfully and the more I do the more there is to do. Meanwhile my brain has turned into a bucket of paint shavings. White paint shavings.

The good news is we are not fighting, blaming or accusing each other for this mess. Simply acknowledging it. We will hire someone and get it done. Meanwhile every time I go near the newspaper, the TV or the radio, all I hear about is the economy falling apart.

At the gym the other night I got on the treadmill. There was a phalanx of TV sets lined up in front of the machines, tuned to several different channels. It was like a bad-news arcade. Everywhere you looked--and there was noplace else to look--banks closing and houses being foreclosed, and grim-looking suits were on screen.

I think I'm going to go on strike from reality for a day or two. Buy or borrow the seventh Harry Potter and read it straight through.

Mercury is retrograde, and I'm scraping paint. Specifically: I'm scraping the paint that I applied so zealously two weeks ago. Why am I scraping it all off? Because it's the wrong paint. It's latex paint instead of oil-based. I was really industrious getting it all on there--covered quite a bit of the kitchen. Now every inch of that work has to be undone.

It's humbling. I'm sure it's a good spiritual exercise. I can just imagine some senior monk giving it as an assignment to a novice monk in Nepal. "Here, paint this room. When you're done, scrape all the paint off. Repeat as needed until you have no ego left."

Last night I put out tons of the trash we had out back for a Big Trash pick-up. I mean there was a toilet back there, (and FYI, those things are HEAVY!) there was a sink, and various other big things. I used the dolly and bent my knees and went slowly and did it all by myself. C was off picking up the new toilet and doing other necessary errands. He was suitably impressed when he got home. I was tired and cranky. This task feels never-ending. It's Sisyphean. And invisible.

I'm living very much like a monk. Well, a monk who's having sex and going to jazz concerts and eating chocolate chip cookies and watching police procedurals. Okay, scratch that monk metaphor.

I went with G to hear Carla perform Friday night at Anna's Jazz island. She had had a bad fall earlier that day and had an ice pack on her shoulder, but she seemed to gain strength and ease through singing. It is something to see, the struggle of the life force to find a path, like a green shoot coming out of sheer rock. And the triumph of training and will--I was going to say triumph of the will, but it's not the will to power, it's the will to beauty. Her singing was beautiful, and the band was so tight and easy behind her. G whispered to me that he liked this concert even better than the one at Yoshi's back in March and I whispered back that we were sitting just five feet away from her and the band.

"I think she should do these small intimate venues," he said. "It just magnifies everything."

I wore my brown velveteen dress, and whenever anyone complimented me, I felt compelled to blurt out, "It's from Target! It only cost ten dollars!" (True: it was on clearance.) I have to learn how to accept a compliment graciously.

Monday night, C and I went to Kehilla for Rosh Hashana. It felt so nice to walk there with him, (we parked half a mile away: my fault,) dark of the moon, a nice evening, both of us dressed in our best clothes. He wore the green and silver tallit I had given him for Chanukah draped around his shoulders. Bethie sang at services, and Shulamit--it was very beautiful.

This is supposed to be the time of teshuvah--reflecting, reconsidering, reevaluating our past year. How fitting that it falls on Mercury Retrograde. What I would like from this next year is the freedom that comes from discipline. Not playing endless websudoku games at my computer. Not indulging in things that make me feel bad afterwards. Personal freedome from bad habits and soft addictions. And for the world: President Obama. That's all. Please God.

I talked with my sister--I'm going to see her next week, when I go back East for my Dad's birthday. She told me she had a little aunt-Alison-read-a-thon with her daughter Lucy. They hauled out the storybooks I wrote and illustrated for Noah, for Eli, and for her, and read them all, one after another. That made me feel so good! Then my nephew Eli got on the phone.

"What are you doing?" he asked with his best telephone conversation skills.

"Scraping paint," I told him.

"That sounds boring!" Uh-huh.

I'm going to visit his classroom and do a little poetry lesson with the students--we talked about that, and about him coming our here for the wedding.

"Oh, if I come to California, I'll have ten pages to write in my journal!" he exclaimed.

I keep getting emails from a group called Impeach Bush. I think impeaching is too good for him. I think Bush should be condemned to scraping every speck of paint off the entire White House. By hand. And then repainting it and doing it over.

My friend's 50th birthday ritual went off beautifully, with a couple dozen friends and family rolling seeds into little clay balls. The clay is supposed to protect the seeds from being eaten by birds, also to weigh them down so that they sink into the earth rather than get blown into the ocean. We were down by the port of Oakland, in the sun and wind, singing, rolling, eating...it really was a ritual, meaning a certain amount of work, of pilgrimage to get there. Three million seeds. Three million. It took hours and hours to roll them all. And none of us knew how it would come together, including the birthday girl.

I was honored to be a Seed Singer along with Bethie and Hadas; we took up our places in the center of the earth spiral and sang our hearts out. Hebrew songs, Beatles tunes, and Michael Row the Boat Ashore. We leaned in close to each other to hear the notes, our voices were surprisingly strong and the wind did not drown us out.

The sun appeared, disappeared, reappeared. I kept putting on and taking off my sweater. We watched a huge freight ship from China unloading goods with a crane. Probably cheap clothes made in factories by slave labor. Now that the U.S. banks have been bailed out using more loan money from the Chinese, how long before the cheap goods made with slave labor are heading the other way?

The next day I picked up my Little Sister--we made chocolate chip cookies. She baked a gigantic one for C, on the theory that he's the man. When we had washed my car the other week, she insisted on washing his as well, paying special attention to the rims of his tires. "When you wash a man's car, you got to wash the rims," she instructed me.

I'm in the midst of doing job applications for Poetry out Loud, and for a program teaching drama to kids in Berkeley. Some of my CPITS schools are running low on PTA mondy--budgeting is grim everywhere. I'm also thinking of other jobs I could do. I loved working at SF General back in the nineties, being an HIV test counselor.

"Would you like to go back to school and get a social work degree?" C asks. Well, no, because it would take 3 years and then, I think, three thousand hours of clinical internship. But maybe a certificate in Addiction Studies from Berkeley. I like working with addicts and I can relate; I have a compulsive personality myself, although I tend to get more addicted to behaviors and/or people than to substances.

If anyone out there sees a job possibility for me, please pass it along! My resume is posted at www.alisonluterman.blogspot.com.

Meanwhile, C and I continue our work on the house, which has functioned as a catalyst to bring up all our issues. I'm glad. It's best we get as much as possible out on the table before we're married. It's fair to say that we know ourselves and each other a whole lot better than we did before we began this renovation project; that the learning has not always been easy, but I believe that wisdom sets you free, ultimately. It's the getting of wisdome that is hard. Sort of like getting into shape--it feels great to be in shape, but getting there is exhausting. Or like what Tony Kushner said when asked if he liked to write: "I like having written."

I'm still reading John Patrick Shanley plays and loving him more with each new play. He speaks so honestly and directly from his own wounded psyche right into the wounded psyche of America. His plays are full of men and women who sometimes hurt each other, but do not destroy themselves or each other. the pain is in service to a greater knowing, a greater growth. He does not leave the viewer/reader in despair and total darkness--he acknowledges the darkness and says, Listen to it. I love him.

This last week I stretched myself several times. On Monday, quite literally, I stretched Carla, which was great fun, then ran to Wing It! practice, then went out to the port of Oakland with my friend to prepare a spiral path of wildflowers for her 50th birthday celebration--hoeing, chopping, shoveling dirt with a former rock star 9really!) turned park ranger; then I went and taught my evening class at Writing Salon, god knows how.

On Wednesday I painted most of the kitchen of the in-law--at least all the detail work, moldings, cabinets, windowsills, ceiling-corners. When I fell into bed that night a muscle in my biceps would not stop twitching. In fact it twitched for days.

Thursday C discovered that I had accidentally painted the windows shut and he was understandably upset. A little further investigation revealed that they could be slit open with a razor blade and not too much effort, so peace was restored. But today we noticed that some of the paint I put up is now peeling--it's hi-gloss paint and not sticking to the surface. So it may all have to be undone and redone.

Friday I took a friend to the hospital to get her cast changed, and then met G and Carla for dinner and we rode into the city together to see In Remembrance Of. We had a great time, laughing and teasing and talking politics. The oldest Interplayer was at the show--I forget her name--she is in her 80s. It was her generation whose oral histories I had used to make the poems. Afterwards she practically ran across the floor to tell me she loved it, and how important the anti-war rant at the end was.

I spent most of the show with a baby in my arms--Soyinka's god-daughter, whom she babysits a lot, and who knows me and trusts me enough to go to me, which is always a thrill. I even got to change her diaper.

Saturday I took my Little Sister to see a movie which she told me she had already seen--after I had plunked down the money for two tickets, a large buttered popcorn and a hot dog for her. We ended up only staying about halfway through, and then splitting to go inside toy stores along College Ave. She wanted everything she saw. I told her she could have one small thing. I give her presents every time I see her, I had a checkers set waiting for her at home, and we're not supposed to make this big sister thing about materialism. She was literally tortured by the array of temptations in front of her--all those toys and dolls, and face-paint, and costumes, and bicycles, and and and...

"Why are they torturing me?" she cried dramatically, spreading her arms.

Later that evening after I had dropped her off and was wandering in the video store I saw a family with two little kids, cruising the aisles. The little girl was whining and begging for everything she saw. I said to the Dad that this made me feel better about my little sister. He was a young good-looking black man with gold chains around his neck. He said wearily "That's what kids do."

My Little Sister comes from such a place of deprivation and want and we live in a land of so much stuff. Yet she also has stuff--plenty of it--I know because I've given her lots already. And her granny pulled out all the stops on her birthday--she got way more presents than I ever did at her age--silver lame sandals, a pink princess backpack, a fake cell phone, toys, etc...

When is enough ever enough? for any of us?

Today I read an interesting article in the Times Magazine section about bi-polar children. I don't think my little sister is bi-polar, but she is ADHD and very irritable sometimes. We're all just a bunch of chemicals. I wonder how much better it might have been if, instead of a movie and a walk past all the shops on College Ave., I had just taken her up to the hills to hike and watch the eagles? That's what I used to do with the neighborhood kids, ten years ago, when I had no money. We would just get in my car and drive to Tilden Park, visit the Little Farm, Jewel Lake, the playground...

Have the times gotten so much more materialistic in these past ten years or is it just that I'm older, and more solvent, and live on the other side of town now, farther away from Tilden?

All the giving of last week rendered me super-sensitive and touchy, sort of like an over-extended mother who feels taken for granted. It feels satisfying and right to give of myself, so what is the problem? What do I expect in return? I think it is just simple connection and presence. Not great gushing thanks or anything, but just being seen. I was snappish with my friend for pulling out a cell phone to talk to her other friends while I was driving her home from the doctor. It made me feel like I didn't count--that I was just a chauffeur. But part of that is cultural--I am fifty Cell phones were not a part of my growing up. Now they're everywhere, like a cancer, and I find them intrusive and obnoxious, but clearly I'm swimming against the tide.

As I'm writing this I can hear C downstairs, practicing bass and pianao. Some of my moodiness and irritability splashed on him this week-and he had work stress which he brought home--but we've worked through it all now, and are just glad to be home together, reading the paper and drinking coffee and passing the power tools back and forth. I learned how to change the sandpaper on the electric sander. In a minute I'll go downstairs and start a big salad.

A friend suggested an excellent Palin antidote--donate some money to Planned Parenthood in Sarah Palin's name. Have them send the acknowledgement card to Sarah Palin c/o the McCain campaign. Hopefully these donations will pile up and we'll be supporting a good cause. It's the most positive suggestion I've heard yet--and I've thought of my share of negative ones.

Wow! That Sarah Palin post garnered a lot of comments! Okay, I need to read The Shock Doctrine and become even more terrified and traumatized about American politics than I am already. Obviously.

In the interests of spreading valuable information around, I'm copying and pasting an email that came across my desk to this blog. It's probably preaching to the choir (i.e. most people who read this blog are already in the choir.) But I'm thinking the information contained therein and the personal context of it may prove useful as an organizing tool to someone. If so, be my guest. I think the woman who wrote it is very brave, and articulate.

After this I promise we will get back to exciting adventures in wedding-planning, love in middle age, turning fifty, home-remodeling, Little Sister learning and playing, writing and procrastinating writing, poetry, theatre, spirituality, kvetching, and Carla.

"Date: Mon, 8 Sep 2008 08:53:03

ABOUT SARAH PALIN

I am a resident of Wasilla, Alaska. I have known Sarah since 1992. Everyone here knows Sarah, so it is nothing special to say we are on a first-name basis. Our children have attended the same schools. Her father was my child's favorite substitute teacher. I also am on a first name basis with her parents and mother-in-law. I attended more City Council meetings during her administration than about 99% of the residents of the city.

She is enormously popular; in every way she’s like the most popular girl in middle school. Even men who think she is a poor choice and won't vote for her can't quit smiling when talking about her because she is a "babe".

It is astonishing and almost scary how well she can keep a secret. She kept her most recent pregnancy a secret from her children and parents for seven months.

She is "pro-life". She recently gave birth to a baby with Down syndrome. There is no cover-up involved, here; Trig is her baby.

She is energetic and hardworking. She regularly worked out at the gym.

She is savvy. She doesn't take positions; she just "puts things out there" and if they prove to be popular, then she takes credit.

Her husband works a union job, 2 -- 0n the North Slope for BP and is a champion snowmobile racer. Todd Palin’s kind of job is highly sought-after because of the schedule and high pay. He arranges his work schedule so he can fish for salmon in Bristol Bay for a month or so in summer, but by no stretch of the imagination is fishing their major source of income. Nor has her life-style ever been anything like that of native Alaskans.

Sarah and her whole family are avid hunters.

She's smart.

Her experience is as mayor of a city with a population of about 5,000 (at the time), and less than 2 years as governor of a state with about 670,000 residents.

During her mayoral administration most actual work of running this small city was turned over to an administrator. She had been pushed to hire this administrator by party power-brokers after she had gotten herself into some trouble over precipitous firings which had given rise to a recall campaign.

Sarah campaigned in Wasilla as a “fiscal conservative”. During her 6 years as Mayor, she increased general government expenditures by over 33%. During those same 6 years the amount of taxes collected by the City increased by 38%. This was during a period of low inflation (1996-2002). She reduced progressive property taxes and increased a regressive sales tax which taxed even food. The tax cuts that she promoted benefited large corporate property owners way more than they benefited residents.

The huge increases in tax revenues during her mayoral administration weren’t enough to fund everything on her wish list though, borrowed money was needed, too. She inherited a city with zero debt, but left it with indebtedness of over $22 million. What did Mayor Palin encourage the voters to borrow money for? Was it the infrastructure that she said she supported? The sewage treatment plant that the city lacked? or a new library? No. $1m for a park. $15m-plus for construction of a multi-use sports complex which she rushed through to build on a piece of property that the City didn’t even have clear title to, that was still in litigation 7 yrs later--to the delight of the lawyers involved! The sports complex itself is a nice addition to the community but a huge money pit, not the profit-generator she claimed it would be.

She also supported bonds for $5.5m for road projects that could have been done in 5-7yrs without any borrowing.

While Mayor, City Hall was extensively remodeled and her office redecorated more than once. These are small numbers, but Wasilla is a very small city.

As an oil producer, the high price of oil has created a budget surplus in Alaska. Rather than invest this surplus in technology that will make us energy independent and increase efficiency, as Governor she proposed distribution of this surplus to every individual in the state.

In this time of record state revenues and budget surpluses, she recommended that the state borrow/bond for road projects, even while she proposed distribution of surplus state revenues: spend today's surplus, borrow for needs.

She’s not very tolerant of divergent opinions or open to outside ideas or compromise. As Mayor, she fought ideas that weren’t generated by her or her staff. Ideas weren’t evaluated on their merits, but on the basis of who proposed them.

While Sarah was Mayor of Wasilla she tried to fire our highly respected City Librarian because the Librarian refused to consider removing from the library some books that Sarah wanted removed. City residents rallied to the defense of the City Librarian and against Palin's attempt at out-and-out censorship, so Palin backed down and withdrew her termination letter. People who fought her attempt to oust the Librarian are on her enemies list to this day.

Sarah complained about the “old boy’s club” when she first ran for Mayor, so what did she bring Wasilla? A new set of "old boys". Palin fired most of the experienced staff she inherited. At the City and as Governor she hired or elevated new, inexperienced, obscure people, creating a staff totally dependent on her for their jobs and eternally grateful and fiercely loyal—loyal to the point of abusing their power to further her personal agenda, as she has acknowledged.
It happened in the case of pressuring the State’s top cop (see below).

As Mayor, Sarah fired Wasilla’s Police Chief because he “intimidated” her, she told the press. As Governor, her recent firing of Alaska's top cop has the ring of familiarity about it. He served at her pleasure and she had every legal right to fire him, but it's pretty clear that an important factor in her decision to fire him was because he wouldn't fire her sister's ex-husband, a State Trooper. Under investigation for abuse of power, she has had to admit that more than 2 dozen contacts were made between her staff and family to the person that she later fired, pressuring him to fire her ex-brother-in-law. She tried to replace the man she fired with a man who she knew had been reprimanded for sexual harassment; when this caused a public furor, she withdrew her support.

She has bitten the hand of every person who extended theirs to her in help. The City Council person who personally escorted her around town introducing her to voters when she first ran for Wasilla City Council became one of her first targets when she was later elected Mayor. She abruptly fired her loyal City Administrator; even people who didn’t like the guy were stunned by this ruthlessness. Fear of retribution has kept all of these people from saying anything publicly about her.

When then-Governor Murkowski was handing out political plums, Sarah got the best, Chair of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission: one of the few jobs not in Juneau and one of the best paid. She had no background in oil & gas issues. Within months of scoring this great job which paid $122,400/yr, she was criticizing her pay as too high in the press. I was told that she hated that job: the commute, the structured hours, the work. Sarah became aware that a member of this Commission (who was also the State Chair of the Republican Party) engaged in unethical behavior on the job. In a gutsy move which some undoubtedly cautioned her could be political suicide, Sarah solved all her problems in one fell swoop: got out of the job she hated and garnered gobs of media attention as the patron saint of ethics and as a gutsy fighter against the “old boys’ club” when she dramatically quit, exposing this man’s ethics violations (for which he was fined).

As Mayor, she had her hand stuck out as far as anyone for pork from Senator Ted Stevens. Lately, she has castigated his pork-barrel politics and publicly humiliated him. She only opposed the “bridge to nowhere” after it became clear that it would be unwise not to.

As Governor, she gave the Legislature no direction and budget guidelines, then made a big grandstand display of line-item vetoing projects, calling them pork. Public outcry and further legislative action restored most of these projects--which had been vetoed simply because she was not aware of their importance--but with the unobservant she had gained a reputation as “anti-pork”.

She is solidly Republican: no political maverick. The State party leaders hate her because she has bit them in the back and humiliated them. Other members of the party object to her self-description as a fiscal conservative.

Around Wasilla there are people who went to high school with Sarah. They call her “Sarah Barracuda” because of her unbridled ambition and predatory ruthlessness. Before she became so powerful, very ugly stories circulated around town about shenanigans she pulled to be made point guard on the high school basketball team. When Sarah's mother-in-law, a highly respected member of the community and experienced manager, ran for Mayor, Sarah refused to endorse her.

As Governor, she stepped outside of the box and put together of package of legislation known as “AGIA” that forced the oil companies to march to the beat of her drum.

Like most Alaskans, she favors drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. She has questioned if the loss of sea ice is linked to global warming. She campaigned “as a private citizen” against a state initiative that would have either...
a) protected salmon streams from pollution from mines, or
b) tied up in the courts all mining in the state (depending on who you listen to).

She has pushed the State’s lawsuit against the Dept. of the Interior’s decision to list polar bears as threatened species.

McCain is the oldest person to ever run for President; Sarah will be a heartbeat away from being President.

There has to be literally millions of Americans who are more knowledgeable and experienced than she.

However, there’s a lot of people who have underestimated her and are regretting it.

CLAIM VS FACT

§ “Hockey mom”: true for a few years

§ “PTA mom”: true years ago when her first-born was in elementary school, not since

§ “NRA supporter”: absolutely true

§ social conservative: mixed. Opposes gay marriage, BUT vetoed a bill that would have denied benefits to employees in same-sex relationships (said she did this because it was unconstitutional).

§ pro-creationism: mixed. Supports it, BUT did nothing as Governor to promote it.

§ “Pro-life”: mixed. Knowingly gave birth to a Down’s syndrome baby BUT declined to call a legislative session on pro-life legislation.

§ “Experienced”: Some high schools have more students than Wasilla has residents. Many cities have more residents than the state of Alaska. No legislative experience other than City Council. Little hands-on supervisory or managerial experience; needed help of a city administrator to run town of about 5,000.

§ political maverick: not at all

§ gutsy: absolutely!

§ open & transparent: ??? Good at keeping secrets. Not good at explaining actions.

§ has a developed philosophy of public policy: no

§ ”a Greenie”: no. Turned Wasilla into a wasteland of big box stores and disconnected parking lots. Is pro-drilling off-shore and in ANWR.

§ fiscal conservative: not by my definition!

§ pro-infrastructure: No. Promoted a sports complex and park in a city without a sewage treatment plant or storm drainage system. Built streets to early 20th century standards.

§ pro-tax relief: Lowered taxes for businesses, increased tax burden on residents

§ pro-small government: No. Oversaw greatest expansion of city government in Wasilla’s history.

§ pro-labor/pro-union. No. Just because her husband works in a union doesn’t make her pro-labor. I have seen nothing to support any claim that she is pro-labor/pro-union.

WHY AM I WRITING THIS?

First, I have long believed in the importance of being an informed voter. I am a voter registrar. For 10 years I put on student voting programs in the schools. If you google my name (Anne Kilkenny + Alaska), you will find references to my participation in local government, education, and PTA/parent organizations.

Secondly, I've always operated in the belief that "Bad things happen when good people stay silent". Few people know as much as I do because few have gone to as many City Council meetings.

Third, I am just a housewife. I don't have a job she can bump me out of. I don't belong to any organization that she can hurt. But, I am no fool; she is immensely popular here, and it is likely that this will cost me somehow in the future: that’s life.

Fourth, she has hated me since back in 1996, when I was one of the 100 or so people who rallied to support the City Librarian against Sarah's attempt at censorship.

Fifth, I looked around and realized that everybody else was afraid to say anything because they were somehow vulnerable.

CAVEATS

I am not a statistician. I developed the numbers for the increase in spending & taxation 2 years ago (when Palin was running for Governor) from information supplied to me by the Finance Director of the City of Wasilla, and I can't recall exactly what I adjusted for: did I adjust for inflation? For population increases? Right now, it is impossible for a private person to get any info out of City Hall--they are swamped. So I can't verify my numbers.

You may have noticed that there are various numbers circulating for the population of Wasilla, ranging from my "about 5,000", up to 9,000. The day Palin’s selection was announced a city official told me that the current population is about 7,000. The official 2000 census count was 5,460. I have used about 5,000 because Palin was Mayor from 1996 to 2002, and the city was growing rapidly in the mid-90’s.

Anne Kilkenny

annekilkenny@hotmail.com
August 31, 2008"
=

I heard that Sarah Palin belongs to a church which believes you can "Pray away the gay," i.e. pray for someone and they will change their sexual orientation. I know Jon Stewart and his team are probably having a field day with this, even as I type (Note to Jon: if you have a job vacancy, I'm available,) but the possibilities are just too delicious.

"Pray away the gray!" A cheaper, non-toxic way to color your hair!

Or--my personal favorite--"Pray Sarah Palin Gay."

Everyone reading this blog please join me in a moment of fervent prayer that Sarah Palin wakes up to her true lesbian identity. I say this not out of selfish lust--Angelina knows where she can find me--but out of love and fear for this great country of ours. With all respect to my lesbian sisters who will have to deal with her in community (and they may be the only ones who can,) I think Sarah Palin turning gay may be our last best hope for survival.

Everyone, please, close your eyes.

We were like a little faux family Friday night, C and I and my little sister and her real big sister as we went to see Elizabeth's show, In remembrance Of...at St. Gregory of Nyssa Church, 500 DeHaro St., San Francisco (starting time is 8:00 p.m., tix are 20.00, or 10 for students, but you can get them for half of that on goldstar.)

Acting on Carla's recommendation, I had bought some simple toys and crafts to keep M (little sister) entertained, and to my astonishment, they worked like a charm. Colorful pipe cleaners, a plastic doll with cut out clothes, and she was happy as a clam in her shiny silver sandals. True, we had to visit the bathroom about three or four times, and she asked a lot of questions about a moth on the floor in the middle of the performance, but quietly. Her older sister, age 12, was a dream.

We played "I spy, with my little eye..." over the bridge, which was jammed up, and I could feel C relaxing and enjoying himself despite all the traffic. The show was great, beautiful music, and the dancers danced their hearts out. My highlight was Elizabeth's rendition of the anti-war rant at the end, but there were many stand-out moments. Impossible to say how it would have been for folks who did not know the poems beforehand, but everyone seemed to like it, and both girls said they had a great time.

The rest of the weekend: scraping and painting. And writing. I have 3,800 words on the Carla piece, but it is far from finished. I'm just almost through the first draft.

I have one word for Sarah Palin: hypocrite. Make that two words: fucking hypocrite.

Look, I'm a hairy-legged feminist with more lesbian friends than straight ones. I believe that women can do anything men can do and better and faster, and without making a fuss about it. I work for a woman boss. My sister is a single mother who accomplishes more in one day than most men do in a week.

But.

Sarah Palin is trivializing parenthood by her attitude: have kids by all means, but after you've got them there's no need for follow-up, even if they have Down's Syndrome or are a pregnant teen.

I'm not a parent. And maybe that's the crux. Maybe I'm jealous. Part of why I never had kids was because I was overwhelmed when I thought of how big a responsibility it is. Why then, do people who have kids irresponsibly, who make such dumb-ass decisions to run for office when their families are in crisis get to be lauded as symbols for goodness, motherhood and apple pie?

Look, I want a woman President. I hope I live long enough to see that day. But I don't want a right-wing nut job woman president with a four-month old. I've had friends and family members with four month olds. It's not prime time for anyone, okay? This is not a judgement on women's abilities. The four month old gets older, everyone starts getting to sleep through the night, and executive function returns, even better than before.

But if you're going to have a baby at age 44, and if you're going to choose to bear a Downs Syndrome child and if you're going to work against letting teenagers have birth control and instead promote "abstinence" and then your 17 year old gets pregnant...well maybe, just maybe, it's time to focus a little on the home front.

What really burns me is the way Hillary Clinton got punished by the right-wing media when she thoughtlessly said she wasn't going to be home baking cookies in the White House during Bill's first run for office. Hello? Chelsea was already a teenager by then, doing fine in school, and seems to be making her way in the world very well, thank you.

Sarah Palin on the other hand knows all the right things to say: "I'm just a hockey mom, gee whiz," but is anyone looking at her actions? She and her husband are encouraging (pressuring? forcing?) their daughter to marry a self-described "redneck" boy, who declares that all he wants to do is drink beer and hang with his buddies. And she gets points for being Mother of the Year?

I dreamed last night I was screaming "Hypocrite!! Hypocrite!!" into my pillow. Maybe I was.

All right I'm done with my political ranting. Here is the blog I wrote last night while waiting for C to get done with his shower (he takes hours in the bathroom, I have no idea what he does in there.)

I’m in love again—move over Tony Kushner. My new god is the playwright John Patrick Shanley, who wrote “Doubt,” this year’s Pulitzer Prize winning play. I read that one and thought it excellent; now I’m reading 13 by Shanley, a book of thirteen of his plays, mostly one-acts, and I want to eat the book.

Everyone! Go out and see or read a John Patrick Shanley play! It’s better than Prozac!

Carla said she loved a short little one-act called “The Red Coat.” I liked it fine, but my favorite so far is “Women of Manhattan.” I can’t believe how well he understands women—how can he so accurately record private women’s conversations that he could have no way of witnessing. I feel like he put a bug inside my brain and taped all my most intimate feelings and thoughts, then rendered them as art more articulately than I could myself.

I also met with Phil today, after a series of emails which I called “Jews R Us.” We met with Suz, and he invited her into Wing It! which makes two of us in there now. We said and listened to a lot, and the conversation is ongoing.

C is next to me in bed reading as I write this Wednesday night. “Are you blogging about what a great boyfriend I am?” he teases. Actually, for once I’m not, but for the record he still is. We’re lying here in our hot room with just a sheet on; a breeze is coming in through the windows and we can hear all the sounds of the street. I’m gonna make him stop what he’s doing so he can read more Hamlet with me.