Friending and other Facebook Phenomena

I was a reluctant newcomer to FACEBOOK back in the day, August 8, 2008. 8/8/08 -- that was not intentional, but what the bleep? One day, I realized I had over 100 friends. Somehow, that was shocking. It's been a long time since I've been "Annie Social" (in seminary). I think I've become more of an introvert over time.

One day, I looked at that list of friends and realized I was not really friends with that many people. We go to church together, we went to school together, we met at a party, or someone thought we would have a lot in common.

One day, I realized I was using FB to process too much of my inner life to have that many acquaintances looking on. I also realized I could not really say I wanted to be friends with some people who perhaps were students at some distant past time, or maybe we had known each other in college, before I knew I was a Lesbian, and this would be juicy gossip to pass around the old circle of friends. Maybe we knew each other from times past that I had left not just geographically, but also spiritually, emotionally, and the like. Some ground is just too full of roots and stones to keep breaking your plow over again.

So, I unfriended a lot of people one day. I figured maybe if someone I unfriended really wanted to be considered friends, they would miss me and get in touch. And, happy to say, one person did that.

I've had some contact from long ago acquaintances who wanted to "friend" me. I feel ambivalent about it, so I just don't respond. There's something kind of rude about blocking someone outright. Maybe if I let the invitation linger, there might be some additional correspondence later on with some additional self-disclosure, explaining more about why being friends with me would be a good or helpful or just pleasantly friendly thing to do.

Sometimes I think I learned to be too guarded in the past. For so many years, as I was coming into awareness of who I was in terms of loving a woman, and deciding how political I wanted to be about that (very much, as it turns out), I wanted control over access to my private world. Turns out, others made their incursions. I've written much earlier here about how that worked, with being outed, with people passing along rumors and lies along with some of the truth, with people of faith turning out to be extremely cruel and stupid. Yea, verily, don't cast your pearls before swine.

A time came when I relinquished that control. But, in the Facebook world, with people showing up again after eras of life have come and gone -- and with the present being so full of what it simply IS every day -- matters that once were private, like coming out, are now passé to me yet shocking to others. Now, I find that same old pearl-casting is falling into the wrong trough.

Maybe I'm too self-conscious to be comfortable on Facebook. Or, rather, maybe it's that I want too much to have my life integrated and consolidated through all of these eras and changes. I want so much for it to have a story line, a narrative, a point.

Maybe everyone goes through radical changes and interruptions in their previously settled senses of what is normal. Surely, I'm not the only one who has allowed the messy, the unexpected, the shock of death, the coming home to self that is being gay, the snags and hooks of certainty that are embedded in a certain way of having faith, and the senses of essential self and essential desires to find meaning and purpose in ways that continue to bring unexpected and unconventional quasi-, parti-, non-, semi-resolution over time. And, I really hope that essential self and those essential desires will hit home with some, to have that feeling of settling down in easy chairs by the fire to catch up and be with each other, authentically.

Apparently, many people want the same. And, I really love the here-and-now information sharing that simply moves us all, even the trivial "I'm up now and blowing my nose" posts that say we're all just getting on with our days. Somehow, that number of friends keeps creeping up over 100. Not sure today, maybe around 125? I'm just going to let it be what it is.

See, I loved and love many of these old friends who keep showing up in my inbox, my request box. I wish to say, come on in, see what has been happening all these years. See what there is to see. Stay, if you like. Move on with me. See what Love has brought to me over the years. See what Living has taken, too. Be sad with me. Rage against the injustice with me. Celebrate the whole with me. I'll try to be as forgiving as I want you to be with me. There is no time to linger, it all changes so fast.

Surviving Adolescence: Literature, Reading, Words

Teen Survival

Books and horses helped me to survive my teen years. Horses are still my totem animal, my symbolic world of strength, threat of death, survival, and confidence. Horses are another story, impossible to convey in prose. Maybe poetry, or poetry that will become songs, but not here, not yet.

Besides horses, I survived adolescence because of literature. The first people I encountered outside my own family who influenced my taste in literature were the Dearmans. I dated Bill, a twin, a musician (trumpet), a smart boy, an agnostic, and a tortured soul (spinal curvature, brace). We sat on a piano bench behind the band room and I noticed immediately that he smelled good. He always seemed to smell good. It was a combination of his deodorant, something spicy in his aftershave, and the fact that he showered a lot. Maybe that brace was hot and smelly. I miss that boy. I miss that girl, some, but that’s just the mist of nostalgia.

I might also credit my ninth grade English teacher, Mrs. Peterson, Rita, and her husband, Don, one wicked-smart couple. That’s another story for another day, because so many elements of mastery, self-confidence, and self-understanding are in my halo of good feeling and memory of them. They had to go and ruin that halo by becoming really true post-Moral Majority evangelicals, which in my mind makes the halo into something kitschy and two-dimensional, like a stage prop you don’t want to get too close to because then you’ll ruin your illusion. Before that, however, they were just young, smart, edgy, and they helped me move forward in my self-differentiation in very significant ways. I thank them, over and over. Wow, what a ham-bake this paragraph is turning out to be. I think I’ll get back to the Dearmans.

The Dearmans senior were a couple of erudite taste. In my memory, Mrs. Dearman – Ella -- never missed worship at the First Methodist Church. Mrs. Dearman always recognized the pieces I played on her piano. That could have come from having so many kids and insisting on piano lessons for each of them. That would have meant a lot of Chopin études over the years. Ella smoked like a chimney, and talked whild she exhaled her smoke. She always seemed to be interested in what I had to say about things. And, Mr. Dearman – Commodore – seriously, although most called him C. C. (Commodore Columbus Dearman – who names a baby that?) – walked around the yard with, in a plastic cup, white wine in his top shirt pocket. In a dry county. He was taciturn yet readily critical, in a kind of Bostonian Brahmin Southern Accent, of most things coming out of his sons’ mouths, and he generally ignored me. He is the first person I ever knew not on a farm with a garden but no pigs who had a compost pile. He experimented with this compost pile by placing some raw chicken in aluminum foil into the center of the pile. The heat of the composting process cooked the chicken. Bill and I agreed he was some kind of nerd, although that word did not yet have wide use. I think C. C., who never went to church, walked around half-toasted on his white wine a lot of the time. They even cooked with white wine. They had a special dish, prepared by C. C., for special occasions, called Chicken Supreme. It was very special to be invited over when that was being served. I think Bill’s graduation was such an occasion. So was the evening after Tony Dunnivant died in his motorcycle accident and I mentioned it at the table, and Bob, Bill’s twin, burst up from his seat and slammed out of the house. I found it hard to swallow my Chicken Supreme after that.

Commodore, as his wife called him, began a fallout shelter in the backyard in the 60s, but he never finished it. He worked somehow with the government or the military or something mysterious (to me) in Huntsville, that capitol of top secrets, that Pentagon of North Alabama, for which my hometown served as a bedroom community.

Much to my surprise, I ended up living and having the most significant of my early serious adult experiences in the town that was Ella Dearman’s childhood home. She had a cantankerous old mother-figure/stepmother/someone, a stout yet very small and spry, and did I say: old woman who was very smart and sharp: Clara Weathersby. I visited Clara's home in high school with Bill and his sister Sally and her husband Ed. To tell the truth, I was kind of scared of Clara. She loved to argue and debate, and she got me cornered at least once on that visit. Only much later in my life would I learn how to hold my own in a hot debate, and I hope one day beyond time, I can tangle with Clara again, since I could probably enjoy it now. So, anyway, Clara was a devout Methodist and managed single-handedly to defy the Mississippi Conference cabinet, and keep open and supplied with a pastor a little church on the west side of Hattiesburg, MS. Clara was formidable. Only after she died did they finally close that church. Or, maybe they did it when she became so feeble that they merged her little one-woman congregation into the West Lake United Methodist Church.

Anyway, back to Ella and CC and my literary development: I spotted a book on the shelf (they had many shelves of books), A. E. Hotchner’s Papa Hemingway, maybe in the tenth grade. I wanted to be erudite, too, so I took this book home and read it quickly. I knew Hemingway was important to my erudition because I saw the Spencer Tracy film of The Old Man and the Sea, and there had to be some kind of gravitas and smarts in having such a tragic fish story made so famous, I mean, other than Moby Dick, which is, of course, one of the ultimate tragic fish stories besides Jonah's. My dad read Hemingway. My dad read a lot of good literature. I think he should have had a better education, but he had what he had. And, my Mom, with her college education, had a good liberal arts background. She also read well. I think I had to get out of the house and see some other shelves in order to go back home to my parents and my grandmother and suspect, somewhere around my junior year of high school, that some good titles waited on their shelves.

I read Hemingway. Somerset Maugham. Evelyn Waugh. Oh, yes, I took my Evelyn Waugh novel to my high school English teacher, thinking that she would be impressed. Not only do I think she never read the novel, but she also never returned it to me. She was so beautiful, new, fresh, a homecoming queen in my childhood. I know now that I had a crush on her and wanted her to be impressed with my adult taste in literature. It was easy, therefore, to skip my senior year of high school English, take it the previous summer at Lee High School in Huntsville with Gail Baugh, and get on with moving out of high school and home, on to college at Athens College, which was threatened to be closed by the UMC since the merger with the EUBs, and the decision of the denomination in the Southeast to really begin taking integration seriously. There were too many colleges to keep afloat what with integration and preservation of the historic black colleges and those schools with more cachet, like Birmingham Southern and Huntingdon, and Montevallo. I got to talk to a state senator and a state representative at the college at a luncheon mixer with alumni, students, and legislators, to explain how that college had been such a significant presence in my life. And it was, truly. My first rock concert, where Black Oak Arkansas played, and the opening band exploded one of those huge glass lab jars, ten gallons big, with a tiny opening at the top, probably a lot like plastic water cooler jars now. I saved a piece of the jar, kept it for years. The lead singer said, “Bummer, man” and kept playing. We could not have been more terrified and impressed with the coolness of that. It was probably better than sex would have been at that age, but I really did not have the comparison in mind at the time. It would probably have been even cooler if I had been stoned like a lot of my friends were, but, I swear to you, I tried really hard to smoke pot all those years and some combination of fear, conscience, and a deep parental omniscience transference kept me from smoking pot.

The college survived. Not the sweet old liberal arts college with Methodist minister scholars, who raised their smart kids along with us regular civilians in the First United Methodist Church, and sent them to smart colleges like Birmingham Southern and Harvard and Yale, at least to Alabama. But, the State of Alabama made sweet old Athens College first into Athens State College, the upper two years of the baccalaureate to complete the county’s junior college, John C. Calhoun Junior College, the first two years or associates degrees. I guess they got a doctorate of education or business or nursing, one of the trades of higher education in poor southern state community college systems. The signs on the interstate now have rectangles in newer shade of green and reflective white, with “university” placed over the “college.” For us natives, however, who still live there or who return from time to time will always simply call it, The College. They have the Olde Tyme Fiddlers’ Convention every October over at “The College” with the backdrop of the four columns of Founders Hall, the four apostles, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

To this day, I have never smoked pot. Sometimes I think I missed out on something important, sometimes I think I was spared a lot of heartache, like my brothers’ fates, one dead, one in the grip of addiction. I never even got to go to Raney’s at the State Line (TN) with people who went drinking and driving on the weekends after football games, or Saturday nights, or all the time in the summers. By the time I could drive and could to there myself, Jesus was the center of my life and I could not go, or did not go. My abstinence held pretty much until after high school. I mean, how can a girl in a dry county, with Jesus at the center of her life drink beer, especially when the one time she does, and tells her dad about it, he breaks down and cries? Wow, that kind of disillusionment is really hard to take. These days, why I think I can enjoy my whiskey and beer and wine and not fall into the abyss, I don’t know, maybe because I somehow do not have that gene. But, I missed out on the whole chemical hook that got my brothers. Maybe it will get me later, when I’m old and need more drugs. Maybe I’ll sooner die.

See, the whole problem with me and authority is really all about parental omniscience and x-ray vision, and believing my dad when he said he would not bail me out of jail if I got arrested for drugs. Drugs were very new in my youth. Only the most marginal of people did drugs before Vietnam and Watergate – poor white trash, and black people who lived in the country and frequented the joint at Dogwood Flat. Eventually, no one would be without drugs in the family, not the minister or the chief of police or the school superintendent or the college president, not even the preacher at the Church of Christ. But, Dad had no idea what he was talking about. He bailed my brothers out time after time, and in his desperate love lost their respect, and mine. He let them take him for all he was worth. Every penny. I kept going in my inward struggle, going for many years toward conformity with an edge of rebellion, overcompensating, seeking healing in Jesus, pre-Moral Majority evangelicalism and Jesus movement psychology and spirituality. Fortunately, I was a good reader. I could explore the edges of my duality in literature. I’m so grateful to literature and reading. Here I sit, writing my heart out about reading and literature.

Even as early as fifth or sixth grade, I pulled For Whom the Bell Tolls from the shelf in the library, before the new high school was built, before shifting around schools in the changing political dynamics of our town, even before learning how to change classes, use a locker, and have time for a drink of water and the bathroom. The librarian, Mrs. Wathen, whom I later began to call Sheila -- because I grew up and was college roommate with Virginia, and young adults get to call their childhood adult figures by their first names; it’s a rite of passage – Sheila told me that book was over my head. Not only on the shelf, over my head, where I was working as some kind of reward for boredom as a library assistant at my school, making all the spines and the Dewey Decimal System lined up perfectly with the edge of the shelf, but over my head intellectually and developmentally. To this day, I line my books up by pulling all the spines to the edge, then taking a book out and with its spine, on its side, slide all the spines together to a common even distance from the edge. Wow. Books can really get into your head. That denial by Mrs. Wathen was all the challenge I needed. I told my Mom about it, and she gently suggested that I could try the book, and see how I liked it.


Mrs. Wathen’s type of challenge and my growing loss of respect for my father provided a rich bed of rebellion and general lack of respect for authority. I honestly believed the administrators at my school were stupid, except my history teacher/guidance counselor/Sunday School teacher, Mrs. Elizabeth Brett. I lived a double life of wanting to be good, a good girl, and wanting to be smart, which was subliminally related to being bad, out of line, out of my place, and somehow different.

My grandmother had For Whom the Bell Tolls at her house, so in my many summer days and weekends at her house, I read the book, anyway. And, I read Rachel Carson's Silent Spring (a good basis for a budding environmentally conscious young adult who has an Earth Day sticker on her guitar case), Darwin’s The Voyage of the Beagle, and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, and Taylor Caldwell, and Leon Uris, and Robert Ruark, the one who wrote The Winds of War and War and Remembrance, a powerful film for a young adult to see, all that WASP/Jewish clash of sensibilities, the antagonism and ambivalence that emerges in late teen years, making it necessary to begin both loathing and enjoying one’s social location, especially if it is white and middle class. I hated school enough to miss out on the Honor Society and good scholarships, but I took for granted that I would go to college and do pretty much what I wanted. I just didn’t really know what that was. Teach school in Athens, Alabama? Become a large animal veterinarian? Mostly, I majored in hating the Establishment, but really needing to please the same Establishment. Vietnam was too close yet, but eventually, it became literary stuff, and I can look back and sort out all of that social/cultural/personal chaos. It seems that these great upheavals of culture need years of unconscious ferment before good literature can emerge. What is that about?

Being a good reader always helped me through the awkwardness of my teen years. I knew I was different in a way that would not serve me well in life as I knew it then, so I cultivated the dual personae of inwardly nursing curiosity and outwardly wanting desperately to conform.

So, why did I go to college at UNA? Why not Birmingham Southern like other smart people in my class with good Methodist leanings? Who knows. But, my hero there had a very interesting intersection with the Petersons, The College, my growing interest in playing the guitar, and he was a really smart guy from the sticks: Bill Foster. Now, I wanted to impress Dr. Foster. I did not do so well in his Shakespeare class. I know now that I am an emotional learner, and I needed to talk and process all those plays and sonnets. But, the processing came after the pop-quizzes. That did not stop me from majoring in English. Being required to read a lot was like pizza to me, a treat and almost daily sustenance on campus when I had the money.

Thanks to Mr. Kingsbury, who recently passed away, and that pompous writer who shouted me down about his beloved England in creative writing, who told me I probably would not be able to write until after age 30, and Mr. Strickland. Lindsay. I was in over my head with the beat poets, but I will never forget the very proper and precise Lindsay Strickland. I understand him so much more now, and it’s not just the aging that I understand. I get him, his apparent solitary life, his quiet, almost secretive existence. Some kind of duality going on there, too, I think. Dr. Albert Sydney Johnston -- am I remembering his name correctly? the same as the Civil War General? -- another wee sissy, but kind of interesting to a student from a dry county who never met a queer she wasn't absolutely fascintated with -- who would come to class totally wasted, drunk as a skunk, lean on the podium and expound wistfully on whatever topic in poetry, with his very interesting old-South accent a bit like an Oxbridgian don, with a little listing and waver in his step, move toward the windows, weave back to the podium; or, just not show up at all.

Classics, “great literature” and creative writing – the hunger and appreciation of these have always sustained me. Thanks to my family, friends, and my education for giving me some structure. Please send me more and more suggestions for my list. My nightstand is piled high, and I will build more and more shelves. I am a reader. I love books. I will celebrate books as long as I can know and comprehend. Books let me know that I can not only escape into fiction, but can become something even more real than I can know without them. Oh, dammit, words fail. Maybe I'll find a good passage in a book to let you know how important this is to me, how much I need reading and books and writing to become me, to grow, to find life in words.

My mom died of side effects of Alzheimer's Disease. I want so much to be able to hold on to these words. So, just in case, I write all of this to you, a reader.

An Anniversary

It's a big anniversary this week. Pilgrims saved from starvation by Native Americans? Yes. Sadness, grief, bereavement? Yes. 10 years.

And then, the next year, near-death for a dear friend. Yes. 9 years.

And, since being in the hospital on a holiday is a miserable thing, I'm going to keep my same schedule at the hospital, visit some folks on the Family Medicine floor (reminds me of something Nancy would do), and some wee ones and their families in the NICU.

CPE is a great experience for me. It's not just about connecting to the past, or hoping there's a future in it; it's about being present with others, slowing down, listening, paying attention.

I will be remembering. I am so very thankful.

Thank you, Rachel. Thank you, Grace. I love our family. I love you.

Thank you, friends. Thank you, family. I love you.

Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving preparations

Click here to go to the Picasa slideshow of my photos.

My refrigerator treated me to some good stuff this morning. I woke up thinking about the leftover turkey smoked sausage from dinner a couple of nights ago, how good that mix of sausage, bell peppers, onions, and garlic would be in a breakfast casserole. Yes -- it was delicious!

Then, as I was digging out the dregs of the rest of the leftovers of the past week, I discovered a bag of poblanos, seven of them, in perfect condition. I put together my indoor grilling apparatus and quickly roasted the peppers to use later on in something good and wintery, or maybe this Saturday, the Bama-Auburn game, a big ol' pot of chili.

Ramma jamma yella hamma give 'em hell Alabama!

The Cruelest Month?

These chilis are a feast the eyes and the palate! T. S. Eliot said April is the cruelest month, and I think I know what he means.In April, winter seems like it will never end; just when the buds break into bloom, the killing frost can come and destroy all of that promise.

I think October is the cruelest month. The poblano and Tabasco plants and their other flowering nightshade cousins, the bell peppers, and even the Roma tomatoes are still loaded with blooms. They want to go on and on, and the sunny days have them fooled. But, we are going camping this weekend, and just as likely now as with April, a killing frost is likely any night, most likely when we're gone, and we would be so disappointed! So ...

Today, I went out and pulled up a Tabasco plant by the roots. I picked all of the poblanos, at least three gallons of them, and broke apart and pulled up the plants as I went, being the cruel gardener who determines the end of the harvest.

I roasted the last of the eggplants. Some, I scored and baked to freeze for later use in a ratatouille, or a baba ganoush. One, I sliced thinly for a lasagne, for some cold winter night's repast (hear that drama?).

I say again, our garden was wonderful this year. Nature surprised us with the blessings of so much fruit, and enough to share and exchange. We Our friends were so generous with their fruits, also. Duane's cucumbers made a shelf full of dill pickles. I am so proficient now with the stove-top canning that I can quickly decide, as I did tonight, to cook up the last of the Romas with a couple of hands full of chilis, mix with some salt and cumin and a couple of the last of the bells, throw in some onion and garlic, and put away five quarts of taco sauce for later. We had so many tomatoes that I have another half gallon for our use in the coming weeks without having to use the sterile procedures.

The cold is beginning to settle around the doors and windows. You can still go out with bare feet, but not for long. Probably by Christmas, we will wish we had put away all of the vegetables instead of giving so much away. We will probably eat our way into winter and the freezer, now packed almost full, will dwindle before we are ready. But for now, I am smug. I remembered the lessons of my mother and grandmother, we can grow much of what we eat, we can find and share and exchange for what we don't have ourselves.

Let's go to the woods for a few days. This winter will come and we will go out to meet it.

Hey -- that's melodrama! We have a cozy Airstream. We'll be toastie-warm, and get our fire going for s'mores, not for survival!

Season's End for These Sweet Hot Chilis

From Hungarian Pepper Sauce

[Click on these images to see the whole album in Picasa.]

What a beautiful afternoon to feast visually and victually on some chili peppers! We planted a couple of pepper plants next to the deck. The man at the farmer's market in Greenwood said they were Hungarian sweet peppers, but he forgot to mention they are also HOT.

I canned some pickled rings using the earlier greener peppers. Now, after some weeks of growth and neglect with lots going on, the green has evolved to green with a blush of orange to the emblematic chili pepper red that anyone would recognize as a HOT pepper.

I would not say these are as hot as a jalapeño, not by far, not even in the same county; and they are not even in the same country as the habanero (literally). But, they have just enough piquance to make them into a sauce all their own without mitigating with carrots to cool them down, or adding them to tomatoes for a salsa.

I made this recipe up, so all caveats apply: This is for entertainment purposes only, please consult expert advice for cooking and preserving home grown vegetables; I am not responsible for the safety of this recipe.

I added all of the following to an average blender (5-6 cup container); I blended on the high setting for about 20 seconds after adding each vegetable.

1/4 cup distilled water
1/4 cup white vinegar (store brand)
1 tablespoon pickling salt
1 3" diameter onion, peeled, trimmed, chopped coarsely
6-8 cloves of garlic, smashed, peeled, trimmed, chopped coarsely
1 lb peppers, seeds removed, but membranes kept

From Hungarian Pepper Sauce

After adding all ingredients, I blended on high for about a minute. My ingredients made about four cups of mixture. (Blending adds a lot of air to the mix.)

From Hungarian Pepper Sauce

I poured the mixture into a 4-quart saucepan. I brought the mixture to a boil slowly. All of the air added by blending wanted to escape rapidly, so I had to remove the pan from the heat several times and stir to release the air bubbles. After the mixture reached a boil, I reduced the heat by half.

From Hungarian Pepper Sauce

Once I could see mostly pepper sauce and a little froth around the edges, I simmered the mixture on low for 15 minutes. I wanted the onion and garlic to cook well, to release the flavors and sugars, and to blend those flavors with the peppers well. Eventually, the froth was gone, and the mixture became a beautiful rich deep orange color.

I sterilized some containers -- an empty bottle of from my second-favorite sauce, Yucatan Sunshine; a plastic squeeze bottle from the grocery wholesaler's; and a pint jar. I ended up using all three. The half-pint in the jar will probably go into the next batch of soup or stew.

From Hungarian Pepper Sauce

The sauce was the perfect topping for my late lunch of white beans and ham, served in Margie's pottery bowl. Very tasty.

We have five Tabasco plants that need to be harvested before frost. I'm sure I won't come close to the flavor of my very favorite sauce, Tabasco Sauce, because I would not know where to begin with the aging process they use. But, I'll have fun coming up with my own take on it. Next!

Facebook Friend Wheel

Facebook is fun. This morning I became a fan of Guinness. Actuallly, I became a fan a long time ago, but just now on Facebook. I wish all of my friends from every era of my life would join Facebook so we can keep in touch.

One product of Facebook, the Friend Wheel, is bugging me like a little itch one of the sides of my brain. [Wait a minute: the brain is rather round, but is divided down the middle; what if mine is like a brick, with six sides?] I can't figure out which side, but the itch is real. The Friend Wheel is cool, showing the connections among all of my friends.

If I think about my life in terms of eras, I actually have several. First is the Athens, AL, era, from age 0 to roughly 18 [Era I]. Then, there is the UNA era, ages 18-21 [Era II]; the Asbury era, 21-24 [Era III]; Hattiesburg, MS, Main Street UMC, 25-30 [Era IV]; Hattiesburg, MS, USM Wesley Foundation, 30-35 [Era V]; Vanderbilt/Nashville, 35-43 [Era VI]; Jackson, MS, 37-41 [Era VII]; Dayton, OH, 43-50 [Era VIII]; Indianapolis, IN, 50-present [Era IX].

That's a lot of change in a lifetime -- 9 eras -- but not extraordinary. However, as I look at this Friend Wheel, I see very little crossover among these eras of my life.

I think this would be a very interesting ethnographic tool of study. So far, my social network shows that no friends from my Athens era have come forward with me into subsequent eras. In the Athens era, roughly 1957 t0 1975, I can think of no friends now who picked up on the use of email and internet to stay connected. My brother uses email when he can get to the public library, but so far, he is not an internet user to the extent of joining Facebook.

The presence of a person on Facebook does not appear until the fourth era, roughly 1982-1992. This person has no connection to any other era. Another individual shows up from the Jackson, MS era [VII], and he also would fit into the Nashville/Vanderbilt era [VI], but so far, there are no friends on Facebook to link between him and me.

One crossover is visible to me. Two people link the two Hattiesburg eras, and one of those links to the present era.

Why should I expect any crossover at all between my life's eras? Taking into account that Facebook is new, and most of my current online contacts are not using Facebook, the friends I do have on Facebook are in distinct categories. My life's eras are also so divided geographically, that I have made a new start in a strange location, by myself, 8 times.

Some of the transitions between eras have been normal developmental transitions: leave home to go to college; leave college to go to graduate school; leave graduate school to a job; leave a job to go to another job or more graduate school. A couple of transitions have been traumatic: death of my spouse and radical change to a new place, job, new friends, loss of ties to the past; leave a miserable job situation to start over again, find love, move to a new home.

I guess this Friend Wheel is a bittersweet visual reminder that life has taken unforeseen twists and turns. It also reminds me that I am pretty resilient. I do wish for more connection among these eras of my life, to be able to share all of my collection of freinds with each other. There is also a wish that probably is not realistic, that life can look like a journey of continuity with roots in the past and wings toward a fullness of presence. The reality is more like a journey with departures, lengthy sojourns in strange lands, flights away into places of survival, and a lot of traveling without a map.

I have some pain in realizing that not all of my friends have come along with me, and that I have let some friends go, perhaps knowing that they belonged to an era, not to me, and that I belonged to an era or reason for them. A student once told me that we have friends for reasons and friends for seasons, but very few friends for life. The recognition of the reasons and seasons friends sometimes comes late, bringing a lot of pain. Trying to hold on to some friends who will not come forward with me pulls on something deep, unconscious, a longing for something of the self that will not be fulfilled.

Not everyone I love and value appears on the Friend Wheel; some appear on the Friend Wheel for different reasons. This way of staying connected is not necessarily "electronic", and therefore "shallow" and "artificial." Facebook and other social networking is something new, leading who knows where.

Arriving where I am now has nothing of the inevitable about it, except to know that I have learned to trust my heart. I love my home, and this huge collection of friends that now is visible in my Friend Wheel.

KitchenAid Refrigerator Ice Maker

I fixed the ice maker today. Somehow, it was not filling and making ice. Before calling a professional, I thought I would at least try to troubleshoot. You know how it is when you're Googling along, and you get just enough of a hint to convince you that the answer is just another click away... then, next thing you know an hour has passed. Or more. That was how it was this afternoon.

Finally, I found the service manual here and here. Unfortunately, this is a PDF that cannot be published on Google Documents (yet). Look for Whirlpool manual R-92, JOB AID Part No. 4322658A. The part number for the ice maker is actually 4322658A, for both Whirlpool and KitchenAid models. The manual's foreword, p. ii:

This Job Aid, “Whirlpool & KitchenAid In-Door Ice System,” (Part No. 4322658A), provides the technician with information on the operation and service of the Whirlpool & KitchenAid In-Door Ice System. It is to be used as a training Job Aid and Service Manual. For specific information on the model being serviced, refer to the “Use and Care Guide,” or “Tech Sheet” provided with the Refrigerator/Freezer.

If all else fails, I cut and pasted the two sections that I used from the manual into a Word file.

Various components of the ice maker can be found fairly easily online at sites like this one. Model number of our fridge is KitchenAid KSCS23INSS00. Curiously, Whirlpool is the origin of the KitchenAid fridge. I wonder if one manufacturer makes the parts that are used in different brands? Probably.

In all of my browsing to try to find the answer to the problem, something that is inordinately time-consuming and frustrating, I realized that I could very easily have used my cynical go-to plan: if all else fails, hit it with a hammer. But, that would only make me feel better for just a little while.

None of this will make sense unless you actually unplug the fridge from the wall, take the ice maker out of the freezer, and remove the cover first.

Don't force any part of the ice maker, no matter how tempting it would be. Not to worry. If, like me, you pass the optical test and the electrical bypass with the jumper wire on the T & H little holes in the side test, and then you power off, power back on, open the door, and pass the LED blink test, you will be rewarded with the specific results you are hoping for. The electronics of the ice maker will cycle a few times and will set the ejector into the "home" position with the blades at 2:00. Now, I am waiting to be sure the thing is cycling properly on its own.

Savoring High Summer

These late days of high summer have been all about the outdoors here at our family compound. When we have not been camping and working on the Airstream, we have been working on our first garden, growing some veggies. We consider it an experiment this year, to figure out what will grow in our limited space, what we can manage, what we did wrong, what we did right, what we will do differently next year. There are no rules, other than the ones provided by the natural biology, meteorology, and soil of our location.

Our inspiration has been Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. I recommend it as a guide to a first attempt to try to grow, buy, and live more locally. I need to find some asparagus crowns before frost. We are able to get lots of wonderful produce here in our farmer's markets. Something about growing your own, though, feels pretty good. I love working with veggies that did not cost a fortune and came coated with wax.





We spent our anniversary week at Patoka Lake. As I know very well from my hard-core backcountry camping experience, hiking segments of the Appalachian Trail in the Great Smoky Mountains, that these outings to the state parks and forests of Indiana are not, technically speaking, camping, but it's a great way to spend some time together and have some incredible experiences, like seeing the bald eagles and ospreys, and several types of herons and egrets on that huge lake.







We haul a little home with us out into the well-groomed utility-provided campgrounds of Indiana. We cook our meals outside on a fire and a gas stove, but that is really just because we like to do that. We could cook our meals inside, on a tidy little 40 year old Magic Chef range, which could include baking brownies in an oven, if only I could figure out what's keeping the oven from igniting, and I'm not going to take the time to figure it out as long as we can make s'mores and banana boats on the fire (thanks, Amy C. !), instead.

We also partied a lot in July and August with a whole lot of birthdays -- Mammaw, Pappaw, Cathy, Teenage Cousin, and moi. Hmm... must have been something about these cold midwest winters bringing on these summer birthdays. What's my story of origins? I guess it gets cold in Alabama, too.

Hey -- look who started third grade on 8/4/08!

We've been pleasantly surprised to find that the Chiclette loves to go camping -- as long as there are DVDs, cousins, buddies from church, bicycles. How do you talk to an 8 year old about slowing down, unplugging, and connecting with nature? We're figuring it out. Daddy long-legs, moths, and other insects are still sources of much screaming, but we're trying to introduce curiosity, which helps.











Most recently, we have been canning pickled veggies -- again, experimental, with a Proustian touch of reminiscence about how my grandmother and my parents did this in the summers of my childhood. The scent of dill evokes those kinds of erlebnis experiences upon which Dilthey elaborated, full of emotional associations, all good, tender, full of discovery and the freedom of many years of childhood summers and weekends spent in the country.

If I were a superstitious person, I would not continue this nostalgic exercise. These memories are mostly childhood memories because my grandmother succumbed to Alzheimer's Disease and died when I was in college. Then, when I was becoming a free-standing adult in a sort of marriage that was absolutely wonderful, and we finally lived in a house where I could garden and flex my homemaking muscles, my Mom was found to have AD, also, and died in 2001.

What am I doing now, carrying on these kitchen garden traditions? I mean, is Chiclette paying attention? I don't know ... maybe. I don't think she likes pickles. Now, maybe if I made ketchup, I would earn a few neurons in her mind, in which some future steaming pot of homemade ketchup will evoke memories of our kitchen.

I might have come close to surfacing a few neurons of my own I made my first attempt yesterday to duplicate taco sauce that I miss from the Mexican Kitchen in Hattiesburg. Maybe someone can let me know if this is the Mexican Kitchen I remember from living there in the 80s and 90s. I used to buy their taco sauce by the quart. Someone told me it was a commercial food service product, but I have searched for it high and low and cannot find it.

Finally -- I found something close here on the Southside, at Roscoe's Tacos. OK -- it's not Southside Indy -- it's Greenwood. Let's get this out: we live on the Southside, not in Greenwood. We live in Indianapolis, on the South side. We live sort of in Homecroft but not quite, but also not in Southport. Roscoe's Tacos is definitely in Greenwood, and anyone who thinks Roscoe's is the best Mexican in the world ought to live in Greenwood. Just like the Mexican Kitchen, Roscoe's is not the greatest Mexican restaurant in the world. But, it is good, as far as it goes, and you can't beat the value. One of the four secret recipe sauces I tried on my tacos came pretty close to what I remember from the Mexican Kitchen. I tried to duplicate the recipe at home. I think I am closing in on it. More about that in a later post...

So, anyway, back to Dilthey and erlebnis and all, I choose not to live with superstition nor nostalgia. Rather, I carry on for the sake of the here and now beauty of our garden, the fecundity of it all, and the anticipation of putting out a relish tray at Thanksgiving that will include our okra, squash, cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, chilis, as well as the local produce we have collected all summer.

The next few posts will document directly or refer to some of our pickling efforts. I'm sure some stories will emerge along the way. Thanks to Troy and John for coming over to our pickling party where we all practiced with the Ball Blue Book. I hope this party will become a summer tradition in late summer/early fall.

By the way, I am looking for the best one-stop resource for all sorts of preserving, including freezing. Amazon has a plethora of choices listed. Does anybody have an opinion about Putting Food By?

We just got a chest freezer for the easiest preserving. We put it in the garage, just like everybody else I know.

Focus on Making Poverty History

After writing some unfocused and rambling thoughts about the series going on at my church, I was asked to condense a piece to be included in a summary/evaluation in this Sunday's bulletin. I submitted these three options. As I got them into smaller and smaller word counts, lost a lot of blather, maybe the focus became a bit more clear:

The first attempt:

Broadway UMC is presenting a series of sermons and activities emphasizing the theme, Make Poverty History. There is even a theme song, written by a lay member, Dave Frauman, and the choir master, Chris Schroeder. We dressed in white, made a big circle out on Triangle Park in the rain, and wore white arm bands.

I have a lot of cognitive dissonance about this series. I hope it provokes a lot of conversation -- like this blog that I am writing. I hope others are finding it provocative in the best way, as motivation to act.

The main idea is that we have been conditioned to think of poverty in a certain way, as another social justice issue against which we are at war, or a disease that is chronic and almost impossible to cure. Our pastors have presented us with the notion that poverty is already history (based upon the words of and about Jesus in the Bible), and that those previously understood as poor are full of abundance.

I am groaning inside – my dissonance is unbearable! How can I say now that poverty is history, when so many people are suffering within a stone’s throw of my own door and from our own sanctuary? I turn on the TV to an update on Darfur, and immediately I am frozen in helplessness and futility. How could I possibly extend my hand to the mother of the starving child and reassure her, “God has ended poverty!” And yet – I must extend my hand, somehow. I cannot bring myself to make the proclamation along with Mike and Rachel. Something in me, the way I think, the way I see it, will have to change before I can make the affirmation.

A proverb from Africa in circulation helps me think about what I can do differently: People living in a village beside a river went to the shore to collect water for their laundry and bathing. A man shouted and pointed upstream to a nearly drowned child coming down toward them, fighting the current, struggling to keep her head above water. Someone threw a rope and pulled her in. Soon, many more people – babies, elders, women, men – followed. The villagers ran and brought more ropes to rescue them. One of the elders, attracted by the commotion, came down to the shore to see what was going on. She asked, “How did these people get here? Is someone throwing them in the river? Are they jumping in? What is happening upstream from us? Send a delegation up the river and find out why these people are drowning.”

This proverb richly illustrates the complex responses to poverty. We can wait downstream, throwing ropes and reviving individuals who are drowning in many different ways. Some, as Mari Evans noted, are drowning in insufficiency: of money, of home, of love, of concern, of heat, of cool, of food, and on and on. In terms of addressing insufficiency, how many ropes, how much CPR, how much money, food, water, electricity, caring, concern, etc., etc., will we need to pile up beside the river to meet the needs?

We can join the delegation heading upstream. We might find many sources forcing people into the river: disappearing jobs, a miserable economy, education systems suffering from a lack of funds, broken down pieces of social and civic infrastructure, violence, apathy, dearth of imagination.

Walter Wink wrote a series of books about “the powers,” prompted by Paul’s letter to the Ephesians (6:12). The powers are the spiritual energy or forces (some would say personified in actual people or demonic beings) within systems and institutions of oppression. The trilogy consists of Naming the Powers, Unmasking the Powers, and Engaging the Powers. As I take my liberty with Wink’s work, making a very complex series very simple, I will note only that these books make very clear that we are embedded within and pressed from without by systems, some of which are evil. Sometimes we unknowingly participate in these forces, and sometimes we benefit from them. Some institutions and systems are broken beyond repair, some are fixable.

To work upstream is, in my opinion, to confront the powers. Although it is hard work and sometimes dangerous, it is eventually the only way to bring about change. As Wink says, “History belongs to the intercessors.”

I think my response to the dissonance provoked by our Make Poverty History series is to join the upstream delegation. Somehow, my gifts and abundance can work through confrontation of the powers. I’ll need to catch up with these upstream travelers. Anyone want to join me?

Second attempt:

I have a lot of cognitive dissonance about the Make Poverty History series. When we had a dinner conversation about it at Troy and John’s house, my one-word response was, “perplexing.” My one word joined several others, “concerning,” “revealing,” “energizing,” “hopeful,” and others.

I am groaning inside – my dissonance is unbearable! How can I say now that poverty is history, when so many people are suffering and dying in poverty within a stone’s throw of my own door and from our own sanctuary? I turn on the TV to an update on Darfur, and immediately I am frozen in helplessness and futility. How could I possibly extend my hand to the mother of the starving child and reassure her, “God has ended poverty!” And yet – I must extend my hand, somehow.

An African proverb helps me think about what I can do differently: People living in a village beside a river went to the shore to collect water for their laundry and bathing. A man shouted and pointed upstream to a nearly drowned child coming down toward them, fighting the current, struggling to keep her head above water. Someone threw a rope and pulled her in. Soon, many more people – babies, elders, women, men – followed. The villagers ran and brought more ropes to rescue them. One of the elders, attracted by the commotion, came down to the shore to see what was going on. She asked, “How did these people get here? Send a delegation up the river and find out why these people are drowning.”

This proverb richly illustrates the complex responses to poverty. We can wait downstream, throwing ropes and reviving individuals who are drowning in poverty. many different ways. Some, as Mari Evans noted, are drowning in insufficiency. How much money, food, water, electricity, caring, concern, etc., etc., will we need to pile up beside the river to meet the needs?

We can join the delegation heading upstream. We might find many sources forcing people into the river: disappearing jobs, a miserable economy, education systems suffering from a lack of funds, corruption in government, broken down pieces of social and civic infrastructure, violence, apathy, dearth of imagination.

I think my response to the dissonance provoked by our Make Poverty History series is to join the upstream delegation. Somehow, my gifts and abundance can work through confrontation of the systems and institutions that make poverty possible, even necessary in some frankly evil ways. I’ll need to catch up with these upstream travelers. Anyone want to join me?

Third attempt:

I am groaning inside – my dissonance is unbearable! How can I say now that poverty is history, when so many people are suffering within a stone’s throw of my own door and from our own sanctuary? I turn on the TV to an update on Darfur, and immediately I am frozen in helplessness and futility. How could I possibly extend my hand to the mother of the starving child and reassure her, “God has ended poverty!” And yet – I must extend my hand, somehow.

An African proverb in circulation helps me think about what I can do differently: People living in a village beside a river went to the shore to collect water for their laundry and bathing. A man shouted and pointed upstream to a nearly drowned child coming down toward them, fighting the current, struggling to keep her head above water. Someone threw a rope and pulled her in. Soon, many more people – babies, elders, women, men – followed. The villagers ran and brought more ropes to rescue them. One of the elders, attracted by the commotion, came down to the shore to see what was going on. She asked, “How did these people get here? Is someone throwing them in the river? Are they jumping in? What is happening upstream from us? Send a delegation up the river and find out why these people are drowning.”

This proverb richly illustrates the complex responses to poverty. We can wait downstream, throwing ropes and reviving individuals who are drowning in poverty. I think some will join the delegation heading upstream, to confront the institutions and systems that make poverty possible. Both are necessary, both are worth doing.

Walter Wink wrote a series of books about “the powers,” prompted by Paul’s letter to the Ephesians (6:12). The powers are the spiritual energy or forces (some would say personified in actual people or demonic beings) within systems and institutions of oppression. To work upstream is to confront the powers. Although it is hard work and sometimes dangerous, it is eventually the only way to bring about enduring change. As Wink says, “History belongs to the intercessors.”


"Oh, the suffering of a writer," she lamented, in her upstairs burrow, fussing over the loss of words
-- and the loss of time she should be spending out on the Airstream, which needs to be ready on Friday!

One of My Dreams

Here's a dream of mine: I would like to make a living rehabbing vintage Airstream travel trailers. I could buy one to start, besides the one I have now, rent space to do the restorations, hire some people to help me. Eventually, I could fix and sell a couple, and keep a couple to rent out for some income, for people who want to take a weekend or a week here and there, but don't have the money to buy them, or don't have room to store them.

I have always known that I have competence in working with mechanical things. I think it is in my genes, which is kind of a pun, because my Mom's name is Gene, Imogene really, but she always was called Gene. All my life, I watched her fix things around our house, and watched her uncles fix cars and farm equipment, using all kinds of neat tools and welding equipment. Now that I am learning welding, I remember a lot about those visits to those great-uncles. My Dad would not let her have power tools. I gave her a sabre saw once for Christmas, and he gave it away. Guess what? I have all kinds of dangerous tools! My mom also told me that great-great-how many greats ancestors, husband and wife immigrants from Ireland were behind a lot of my interest in working with my hands. He was a blacksmith, she carved gravestones. In this current age of slower living, I think it feels very good to recover something of quality, bring it back into a beautiful state, and use it for slower pleasures of getting out into nature. OK, enough of the romance of hard work and restoring trailers.

I wonder if there is a warehouse near Mapleton-Fall Creek, where I can rent the space I need? I wonder if there are any skilled laborers in the neighborhood who can help me with the things I don't know yet, like electrical systems, advanced mechanics of brakes, trailer frames, axles, and wheels?

I'll need people to help me restore the warehouse, first. Roofers, HVAC to make the place humane for summer and winter extremes. I'll need security workers because the tools and trailers will have to stay in the warehouse.

I'll need a lawyer to help me with the business legalities, and an accountant to help with the business plan. I'll need a loan to buy the warehouse and fix it up, hire and pay the people, buy some health insurance for everyone.

Eventually, I would like to work my way out of the job, sell it to someone in the neighborhood who can keep it going. It could also become something else, someone else's dream.

While I own this business, the standards would conform to and exceed those of the original Airstream dream. I will bring in experts and DIY enthusiasts as consultants for updating our practices. We could generalize some training to various skills like welding, electrical systems, HVAC, small space design, engineering for trailer frames, brake systems, and the monocoque shells unique to Indy cars, Airstreams, and Avion trailers. People who take our training don't have to work for me. They can work anywhere. That's the beauty of the idea. People can train, and I can connect them with employers.

So, when can I begin? I wonder if I can get a grant for this dream?

Make Poverty History Manifesto

I read the Make Poverty History manifesto this morning. I should be thinking about how to get the Airstream ready for the family camping trip coming up in a couple of weeks, but I'm puzzling over this statement.

I don't know what our pastors are proposing, if it is not more confrontation of the powers with regard to poverty, while also finding the "appropriate" path out of poverty for our particular community.

What are my gifts and dreams? What power and influence can I leverage in my social location as a relatively wealthy and intelligent agent of change? What do those formerly known as poor have to leverage in their social location?

What do I make of Jesus' identification of the poor as blessed; of the poor as the least? What do I make of the Jesus of the Gospels, when he confronts the rich and warns them that their wealth is dangerous? Is Jesus using the poor as a prop for his political message of overturning powers? Isn't this where a lot of the guilt I have comes from, anyway? Woe to the rich, blessing to the poor? Don't we need the poor around to remind "us" of our spiritual poverty? This is cynical, I know, and I don't believe it, but something about this logic is troubling to me.

While we are changing our thinking about who the poor really are, what do we do about the rich? Where does this conversation about gifts and dreams go for the ones who are more economically comfortable? Complacency is a dangerous thing, isn't it?

Liberation theology teaches that God has a preferential option for the poor. It's easy to recognize this preference. Liberation theology teaches that the rich need to beware, that poor far outnumber the rich, and once they figure out how to organize and gain a voice, they will overpower the rich and set the accounts right and balance the economy -- by force if necessary. Liberation theology says a lot more than this, but for my thinking this morning, that's as far as I am going.

I suppose the balance of another kind is coming into focus for me today. The thinking change about what's upstream and what's downstream is percolating in my little brain today. This has to be about more than semantics and psychological reframing. Language games and mind games will get us/me nowhere.

By the way, upstream thinking comes from my time spent with the UCC. Their entire social justice process begins with thinking upstream. I found an article (p. 3-4 Scott Anderson, Exec. Dir., Wisconsin Council of Churches) that explains pretty well the approach.

Make Poverty History

The church I attend is presenting a series of sermons and activities emphasizing the theme, Make Poverty History. There is even a theme song, written by a member, Dave Frauman, and the choir master, Chris Schroeder. We dressed in white, made a big circle out on Triangle Park in the rain, and wore white arm bands.

A lot of conversation is going around about this theme, not just here, but world-wide. The theme seems to have begun in the UK, with that great celebrity social justice champion, Bono, in the lead, joined by Nelson Mandela, and since 2005, the addition of a coalition of thousands of global organizations.

The main idea is that we have been conditioned to think of poverty in a certain way, as another social justice issue against which we are at war. Actually, we've been at war against poverty for most of my life, politically speaking. Rather than stay bogged down in the history of war against poverty, we must see the poor as individuals with gifts and dreams, who live in a world of abundance.

Here, where I live and worship, the theme is acutely in focus, given that the church sits in the middle of a poverty-stricken area of the city. I hear the pathology in that previous sentence. The World Health Organization has identified poverty as a public health crisis. To be poverty-stricken is like having a case of the measles, maybe, or like having a chronic but incurable condition, like diabetes. You learn to live with it, within its boundaries. How do you see disease as a gift?

What our ministers want us to think about is the notion that poverty is already history, because we will be looking upon those previously understood as poor as being full of abundance. This is part of an asset-based community development philosophy. Rather than focusing on the needs, that are endless, chronic, and incurable, we focus on the strengths, abilities, gifts, and dreams coexisting with the needs. I have a lot of cognitive dissonance about this series. I hope it provokes a lot of conversation -- like this blog that I am writing. I hope others are finding it provocative in the best way, as motivation to act.

Having worked in the church for a long time, I wonder what the staff would rather have -- people complaining about who has a key and who doesn't, about using drums in the sanctuary, about playing certain kinds of music by certain kinds of trained or untrained musicians; OR, would they rather have people disturbed by a sermon series on poverty, thinking and puzzling over the meaning of a concept, wondering, indeed, what is the Gospel in this series? Where is the good news? What am I going to have to change about my thinking in order to embrace this concept of poverty?

I've heard that when someone comes to the church to ask for financial help with a power bill, or for food from the pantry, staff and volunteers first ask them to sit down and talk. They ask them about who they are, their story, their dreams, and their gifts. I have heard that some amazing connections have been made in these conversations. Someone found a job by having one of these conversations. Sometimes people go away empty-handed, and staff and volunteers go to their homes to visit them and bring them things they need. Sometimes, they bring a phone number or contact about a job.

I have used the paradoxical thinking about despair and the ultimate overcoming good news. I have written to friends and coalition partners about the proleptic apocalyptic hope that the world is changing toward full rights and recognition of the right to marry for same-sex couples. I have actually written that love has already won. We're just waiting for the world to catch up so we can move on to significant struggles -- like poverty! And universal single-provider health care. I can write about this hope with a certain degree of confidence concerning the freedom to marry because the coalitions working on solving this problem are powerful, wealthy, and persistent. It could also be true that the numbers of people who are wanting to marry are far fewer than the numbers who are caught in poverty. I can write with a certain degree of confidence that the world will change. Even if we have to wait for the Jesse Helmses of the world to die, and a new generation comes along with freedom from this particular bigotry. The same kinds of upstream dynamics are involved -- get the attention and win the concern of those in power and influence, and you can solve a lot of problems. Not many believe poverty can be solved the old-fashioned way.

Dave and Chris wrote, 850,000,000 live in poverty. Unknown millions are uninsured -- and I am now among those now that I am unemployed.

Is poverty already history? The poor are beloved children of God whose gifts and dreams are waiting to be known and expressed. Is this a romantic notion, to say that all we need to do is reframe our thinking about what it means to be rich, so that no one is actually poor? What about people who can't buy groceries, who cannot buy medicine, who cannot pay rent, who cannot air condition their babies and elders in the summer or provide them with heat in the winter? Sure, the poor, or those formerly known as "the poor" can grow gardens and sell the produce. Is that what we mean?

I am always thinking "upstream," especially about poverty and health. I blame our free market economy for most of these problems. If we can fix the system, we can feed everyone, employ everyone, and take care of the health care needs of everyone. Throwing money at the downstream symptoms of a broken system, upstream, will be a never-ending process.

This kind of upstream thinking reaches back to bite me all the time, puts distance between me and the poor. I struggle all the time with liberal white guilt. What do I have to offer the neighbors? Who am I but just another upper class white woman, with my privileged education and background? I want to do good, but I am not OF the people, never have been, never will be. This kind of distance is not helping anyone.

Does this mean I have to move into the neighborhood into a house left derelict by absentee landlords, to legitimize my concern for the people who live there? If I want to bridge the chasm between Broadway UMC and Mapleton-Fall Creek, do I need to sell everything I own and give it to the neighbors? What is the answer to this distance that I not only feel, but that exists in every manifestation of my own life -- where I live, where I sleep, where I shop, what I wear, what I think about most of the time, whom I entertain in my home, how I spend my free time ... There is no end to need and giving in respond to need. In some ways, giving is easy. Out of my abundance, I can give generously, even when I am unemployed.

In my present state of sabbatical, I am miles ahead of someone else who has never had an education, never had the comfort and care of health insurance; I suffer no debilitating conditions. I don't have children to care for (not biologically, not solely mine to raise). The times I injured my back (who knows how?) I have been able to have surgery, no questions asked. I managed to recover from the bills in my deductible period and the 20% co-pay. I can take medicine when I need it. I have a healthy savings account. I own property. Is all of that true for those who live close to the church? How much more difficult would it be for a fifty-year-old woman who is my opposite in disadvantages to recover from life's insults and surprises?

I hope this proposal to make poverty history is not just about reframing our thinking. Rather, I hope this is about creating a different kind of economy, with a different kind of currency. I hope we are talking about the abolition of poverty by the creation of communities that value different ways of being in the world. I'd love to see maybe a six-block radius around our church begin to live into a new way of thinking about economy, community, and value. We certainly can't wait for the city to respond. The neighbors can't wait for the church to provide the answer to what is lacking, although they do have a food pantry and a growing sense of neighbors helping neighbors.

Poverty is already over? Abundance is all around? This will take new eyes to see, new ears to hear. What will become the new currency, the new economy? Is this happening anywhere else besides Mapleton-Fall Creek in Indianapolis?

Right now, I am still struggling with my white privileged guilt, still thinking upstream, unable to put these pieces together yet. Right now, this all still feels like a liberal thought experiment. I cannot imagine telling someone who cannot put food on the table that her poverty is an illusion, that it is over, that life is abundant, that her dreams are more important than anything I could give right now, in the present moment.

Love Pink?

Do you love pink? Do you love guns, especially semi-automatic handguns? In the hunting section of a popular store, featured on sale this month in Outdoor Recreation is this lovely weapon.

Definition of semi-automatic: (Wikipedia) A semi-automatic pistol is a type of handgun that can be fired in semi-automatic mode, firing one cartridge for each pull of the trigger. This type of firearm uses a single chamber and a single barrel, which remain in a fixed linear orientation relative to each other while being fired and reloaded semi-automatically. Some terms that have been, or still are, used as synonyms for semi-automatic pistol are automatic pistol, autopistol, self-loading pistol, and selfloader. ... Standard modern semi-automatic pistols are usually double action (DA), also sometimes known as double-action/single-action (DA/SA.) In this design, the hammer or striker may be either thumb-cocked or activated by pulling the trigger when firing the first shot. The hammer or striker is re-cocked automatically during each firing cycle.

Cheryl Wheeler has a song that would make a good sound track for this ad and all the images it conjures up for me.

By the way, was browsing the sale ads to find some stuff for our family camping trip coming up, looking for a shade canopy and one of those complicated but oh-so-handy cooking centers for the outdoor kitchen. And, I was hoping to take the kids fishing at the lake, so I began to browse for fishing licenses. At the State of Indiana site, I ran across this article from Purdue U. about water quality. It seems our streams and rivers, and, thus, our lakes, are full of septic system overflow.

(Heavy sigh) Time to test our immune systems in the great outdoors. I hope we don't need any pink sidearms along with our giardia filters.

simple pleasures

A very sunburned nephew (6) was having trouble getting to sleep. He refused children's Motrin, so I suggested a late night snack. As he ate his toast, he leaned over his cup and said, "Maybe some milk will lift my spirits."

He's the same boy who reported how great the pool felt after a hot ballgame. "It's so freshing -- try it, I think you'll agree."

Why do these little phrases catch me off-guard? Such embodiment and absolutely present awareness, deep sensing, and ability to articulate it; desire to share it and to know the reciprocity will be true and accurate; these catch my breath.

Riveting Preoccupation

Hey, everybody,

I've been working like an obsessed person on replacing the bathroom floor in the Airstream trailer. Nothing is simple and straight-forward in this project. The trailer is 40 years old, 1968, has held up very well, but some things have not held up so well. I'm documenting the progress on Airforums.com, where I am also IndyAnne, and on my .mac iWeb pages, where it's easy to post photos and use captions for them. Please visit there sometime.

I'm also taking welding, MIG welding, at the J. Everett Light Career Center at North Central High School. A friend took the classes and recommended it. I'm having great fun with that. I have some projects to do on the trailer frame and other things around the house.

Even the children like to help out. We're building up credit toward a Wii for the basement playroom that I'll be working on on my sabbatical.

My job at CTS ends on June 30. I'll have July and August off, then start CPE residency in the fall.

Life is very good personally. We're going camping in a week or so with friends from church, and a longer trip with more family in July. The kids loved the Outer Banks reunion so much, they insisted we put something together this summer. Could become a tradition.

Sorry about the reportage, sans critique. I'm a bit overwhelmed with issues I can't control but that cause me to lose sleep. I heard that two things keep you awake at night: conscience or curiosity. I guess the conscience part is, "Could I be doing more to help?" and the curiosity part is that I just can't help worrying sometimes about what's next. I try to live in the moment, to meditate and be present. It works most of the time, but not 100%.

Also, I 'm trying to detach from those things I cannot change. Brother, dad, institutions with FUBAR processes and idiotic leadership.

All of the manual labor is truly a source of energy and self-confidence, sense of competence, and just plain gratifying. I go to bed most nights exhausted from the labor.

The life of the mind is also good work, gratifying, and competence-affirming. Maybe it's a sine wave of energy flow.

More soon,
Keep in touch.

From Bonhoeffer to Weatherhead

My friend wrote to me about yet another potentially great institution doing something stupid. I found it helpful to respond in this way:

Subject: From Bonhoeffer to Weatherhead

I was talking yesterday afternoon to my process theologian friend about the evil that institutions do. I do think you must be talking about institutions and their mad, insane, irrational preoccupation with Bonhoeffer's subject, success.

Here are three theological seminaries with which I have personal experience. Three that have accrued such a surplus of stupid decisions that they cannot but do the harm they do. Add to the surplus of stupid the surplus of irrational idealism that we -- oops, I-language, Anne -- *I* invest in them. I want them to do the good that they can do. The good is why I wanted to join up with them. When I find that they are not communities after all, but collectives, with all of the magnification of human potential for bad, it hurts all the more. They continue to do this harm over and over. The salary and benefits eventually are not enough, and my capacity for detachment is not enough, to keep me there, entrapped by the system and my collusion in it.

What potential, then, is on the public face of these institutions, if not the evil one? Gospel potential, the rebel Jesus, the impulse of self-giving love, whatever it is that draws us into that light -- *that* potential. That's the false consciousness, I think, that sets up the miserable disillusionment and sense of the hidden parallel reality of meanness, bitter cruelty, and mindless plowing under of any nascent creativity and novelty.

Witness the damage these collectives have done. Not just the accretion of history (Inquisition, Constantine, the theologians and institutions under Hitler whom Bonhoeffer might have been addressing), but the immediately past memories of our own lives in churches, seminaries, and the institutions who employed us. We, the ones with whom I am now speaking in solidarity, threw our lives into them and were beaten down bluntly by the collective wickedness.

I asked M, is there not still a sum of good, potentially, that these broken institutions can do? We argued ourselves into a place that said, no, they have to eventually exhaust themselves (die?) of all of the negative energy they are accumulating more rapidly than they care to know. It takes a long, long time because the momentum they have accumulated is so strong. Creativity, novelty, options, the force of the better argument are not overwhelmed, however. These forces for good (may I say, forces of God -- in all of the beyonds, thanks, Laurel) emerge where they will, especially in the critical consciousness of those who survive the blunt force trauma and others who are able to escape the entrapment.

Will institutions always have this sine wave, of diminishing duration, this alternating current of good and evil? It seems such a waste because so much is possible when an accumulation of sufficient numbers of people form committed communities capable of clarity and unity of vision. Can't we go into these idealistic (real world) communal efforts with eyes wide open on the possibilities of distortion, to the net effect of a surplus of good? Isn't this happening somewhere? Or does it happen only for brief times and eventually succumb to the fatal flaw?

[I said to Chiclette (age 8) recently as we were approaching the bottoms of our ice cream cones after her softball practice on one of our just-the-two-of-us outings:
--Well, Honey, I guess all good things must come to an end.

Her reply, shaped by the disillusionments she has already suffered:
-You mean like you and Mommy?

Stunned, I responded:
--No, Honey, just ice cream cones. Your Mommy and I are just fine and we love you very much.

I think my point is, this relationship requires attention, careful presence, mindfully monitoring the potential for erosion of the energy that draws us together. The erotic idealistic energy that drew us together is not as sustaining as the energy of relationships anywhere eventually, in which the love and its potential must evolve constantly into novel forms and spaces. It's hard to explain all of that to an 8 year old. It requires lots of ice cream, and watching us grow, argue, test, bond, laugh, cry, etc.]