Calm

Newsweek Article, an interview with the Dalai Lama excerpt:

Some images of the recent casualties have been graphic and disturbing. Have you seen them? What was your reaction? We heard you wept.
Yes, I cried once. One advantage of belonging to the Tibetan Buddhist culture is that at the intellectual level there is a lot of turmoil, a lot of anxiety and worries, but at the deeper, emotional level there is calm. Every night in my Buddhist practice I give and take. I take in Chinese suspicion. I give back trust and compassion. I take their negative feeling and give them positive feeling. I do that every day. This practice helps tremendously in keeping the emotional level stable and steady. So during the last few days, despite a lot of worries and anxiety, there is no disturbance in my sleep.

Ache

I am really missing my Grandma lately. She pops into my mind very often. I still miss her so much. I am grateful for Molly, another sweet, kind and strong female. I wish Molly could remember her.
I read PostSecret. It is a blog where people anonymously send in their secrets. I can not do it justice by describing the post, but i will try. It is an ultrasound picture of twins. One is named and the other just says girl. The writing says: She is only three weeks old, but I lose sleep thinking about how I will have to tell her one day how her twin sister did not make it.
I sent the card to my friend Rebecca, who was close to me when I was pregnant with Molly and her sister and she hit the nail on the head. It felt like a punch in the gut. Ouch.

Women & Courage

This is the story of our Grandmothers, and Great-grandmothers, as they lived only 90 years ago. It was not until 1920 that women were granted the right to go to the polls and vote. The women were innocent and defenseless. And by the end of the night, they were barely alive. Forty prison guards wielding clubs and their warden's blessing went on a rampage against the 33 women wrongly convicted of 'obstructing sidewalk traffic.'

They beat Lucy Burn, chained her hands to the cell bars above her head and left her hanging for the night, bleeding and gasping for air. They hurled Dora Lewis into a dark cell, smashed her head against an iron bed and knocked her out cold. Her cellmate, Alice Cosu, thought Lewis was dead and suffered a heart attack. Additional affidavits describe the guards

grabbing, dragging, beating, choking, slamming, pinching, twisting and kicking the women.

Thus unfolded the 'Night of Terror' on Nov. 15, 1917, when the warden at the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia ordered his guards to teach a lesson to the suffragists imprisoned there because they dared to picket Woodrow Wilson's White House for the right to vote.

For weeks, the women's only water came from an open pail. Their food--all of it colorless slop--was infested with worms. When one of the leaders, Alice Paul, embarked on a hunger strike, they tied her to a chair, forced a tube down her throat and poured liquid into her until she vomited. She was tortured like this for weeks until word was smuggled out to the press.

So, refresh my memory. Some women won't vote this year because--why, exactly? We have carpool duties? We have to get to work? Our vote doesn't matter? It's raining?

Last week, I went to a sparsely attended screening of HBO 's new movie 'Iron Jawed Angels.' It is a graphic depiction of the battle these women waged so that I could pull the curtain at the polling booth and have my say. I am ashamed to say I needed the reminder.

All these years later, voter registration is still my passion. But the actual act of voting had become less personal for me, more rote. Frankly, voting often felt more like an obligation than a privilege. Sometimes it was inconvenient.

My friend Wendy, who is my age and studied women's history, saw the HBO movie, too. When she stopped by my desk to talk about it, she looked angry. She was--with herself. 'One thought kept coming back to me as I watched that movie,' she said. 'What would those women think of the way I use--or don't use--my right to vote? All of us take it for granted now, not just younger women, but those of us who did seek to learn.' The right to vote, she said, had become valuable to her 'all over again.'

HBO released the movie on video and DVD. I wish all history, social studies and government teachers would include the movie in their curriculum. I want it shown on Bunco night, too, and anywhere else women gather. I realize this isn't our usual idea of socializing, but we are not voting in the numbers that we should be, and I think a little shock therapy is in order.

It is jarring to watch Woodrow Wilson and his cronies try to persuade a psychiatrist to declare Alice Paul insane so that she could be permanently institutionalized. And it is inspiring to watch the doctor refuse. Alice Paul was strong, he said, and brave. That didn't make her crazy.

The doctor admonished the men: 'Courage in women is often mistaken for insanity.'

Please, if you are so inclined, pass this on to all the women you know.
We need to get out and vote and use this right that was fought so hard for
by these very courageous women . Whether you vote democratic, republican or independent party - remember to vote.



****This is not my writing, FYI, I plagiarized.

Like Him (as in adore and the action)

Crazy wisdom is ... wisdom that flouts taboos in order to undermine their power; wisdom that evolves when one, while refusing to avert one’s gaze from the sorrows and injustices of the world, insists on joy in spite of everything; wisdom that embraces risk and eschews security; wisdom that turns the tables on neurosis by lampooning it; the wisdom of those who neither seek authority nor willingly submit to it. -Tom Robbins

Mucus

I have been fighting a sinus infection for a LONG time now. My lack of health care has made the fight longer than necessary. As I was laying in bed last night at 4 a.m. lamenting my head ache and the inability to rest, I was wondering.....
Does mucus have calories? Does a person with anorexia consider mucus a weight producing substance? Do they exercise more when sick because of mucus?
A lot of mucus runs down your throat in almost six weeks of being sick.

Intolerance

I teach tolerance to children every day. I try and practice tolerance in myself. I am intolerant though, why do I get so pissed off when I see ignorant, up tight, racist, stupid, moronic, judgmental, hateful, close minded, yes, INTOLERANT people. It makes me so fucking sad to know that people are so fucking stupid. I teach tolerance, therefore, I should have some....I work hard to accept everyone and look for good qualities within them. I just can not do it with stupidity though. I think the only way I function not pissed off all of the time at the idiots of the world, is I block the memory that they exist from my mind.
I need to stop reading Craigslist that is for damn sure.

Sickness

On Sunday night I got really stuffy and my sinuses began to drain down my throat. I have had a fever, body aches, chills, since then and now I have a cough. What really stinks is that when I cough, it is a really good cough, I pee a little. Love you Connor and Molly, thanks for the wakeup call regarding old age.

Angst

I taught a 7-8 class today and am going back tomorrow. Going back tomorrow, you say. Yes, tomorrow. I like their eye rolling, their smart ass attitude the look on their faces when they are trying to pull one over on you. I like observing this human behavior. Those kids are just as fun as the kindergarteners I subbed for last week, but way, way different. Good for them I am beginning to like kids.

Shaping America's Youth

I have been substitute teaching more often now. That does not mean that I like other people's children now (some of them I do), but I get great satisfaction out of producing good feeling in the little bodies and when the light bulb goes on, and they understand what you are doing, I really like that.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

says it all