Sitting Around the Campfire

Beautiful weather for sitting around the electronic campfire with family and friends. It's a funny thing to be in touch with people from so many decades and so many places in my life.

Am enjoying facebook in particular. I have some idea what my delightful nieces and nephews are up to, and don't worry, I won't tell.

My 85 year old mother just joined fb, possibly from the lure of seeing more family pictures. Years ago we would wait weeks to see baby pictures, if not available before the annual Christmas card. Now they're visible right away.

Beyond family it's been wonderful reconnecting with friends from childhood and young adulthood. These are people with stories! I'm basking in their affirmation of me as a capable person during periods of doubt. A great blessing all around.

[This lovely photo by Fiona Shields]

Shy Girl Branches Out

It's the little things in life that can make it so sweet, if we will stop to think about them.

A neighbor dog, that looks just like mine when I was 5 years old, came up to me and just stood with his head next to my leg. Never did this before.

The repairman came a day early and fixed 3 things instead of the scheduled one. Got quite a lesson in how to install towel racks, and even better, learned about the man's family back in Guatemala.

Let me start this one by saying no one was hurt - a gigantic leafy branch fell off a tree in the courtyard and the kids had a super time dividing up the spoils and playing with them.

In front of the grocery I stopped to talk with the guy handing out something, instead of going on by which I would normally do. Turns out he is a school teacher from the neighboring town who is trying to raise funds for one of the high school kids who had an accident. The paper wasn't an ad, but the article in the local newspaper about efforts to help the family.

I got brave and called up a friend that I hadn't talked to for a long time. She was delighted to get back in touch. [Are we sensing an introvert theme here today?]

Went to the bank and the woman who helped me said, Yes I remember you, I helped you open your account last summer.

So it's my natural tendency to hide and not talk to anyone - need to push myself out there a little - but the rewards are very sweet.

*****

photo by adwriter

Dem Convention Journalist

When being recognized by Gavin Newsom, the young mayor of SF, doesnt even make the top ten amazing things that happened this week at the convention, it's time to start writing some impressions. Back yesterday, completely amazing time, so many new friends and colleagues and the opportunity to meet people I have been working with online.

In no particular order:

1. Talked with Senator Jon Tester - complete love fest in the press room.

2. Scoop interview with George Lakoff on framing: next steps. I saw him walk by and jumped up out of my chair to meet him, got the story on the new narrative.

3. Photo of me and snarky quote on Comedy Central site. And the producer and writer are so cool. Look at 11:03, my quote at 10:28, and photo at 8:45.

4. Four on camera interviews -- not bad for one whose pre-egregious screen name was "shygirl" -- including Reuters and Cox News.

5. Awesome time with old friends including Marcy, Ian, Christy, Jane, Pach, Dave Johnson

6. Interviewed Rep. John Hall -- "Still the One" --energy policy awaits Obama's election.

7. Spoke with a dozen governors, senators, congressmen, and candidates - list later. I'm tired. Sen. Salazar -- who was amused to learn about what firedoglake means. Gov. Schweitzer. Shulman. Polis. Taddeo. Sen. Durbin.

8. Came close to, but did not speak with: Rachel Maddow, Senator Leahy, Wash State Governor Chris Gregoire, Rep. Moran, Jonathan Alter of msnbc, Katie Couric, Sen. Schumer, Sean Penn, Paul Pelosi.

9. Met so many new folks -- again the full list must wait. Noneck - who got thrown out of China for interviewing people about Tibet, this is his photo of me. BenGoshi, attorney at kos, and the whole LeftinAlabama team. Crooks&Liars' Amato - wild man and his partner who is a complete sweetheart. Aravosis/Americablog. Glenn Greenwald. Markos/kos. Duncan/Atrios. Jesse, Lauren, Evan, and Sara at Group News Blog. Tim Tagaris.

10. Helped C-Span edit an article.

11. Back channel established with an official high up in the DCCC. Long off record interview.

12. Glad I didn't bolt the first day when I was so scared I nearly left.

13. SF Mayor Gavin Newsom recognizes me.

14. A new sense of self confidence as I try new things and many of them actually work. I look great and apparently am throwing off sparks. Thanks to Team Egregious for wardrobe advice and general support, you know who you are even if I can't name you in public.

Small steps, brave small steps, add up when it counts. Thank you new friends and old friends. We are going to elect Obama/Biden and rock the world.

*******

One Good Year

Challenged myself to come up with a list of good things that have developed since last July 22.

1. Courage/face fears
2. Live in a place with perfect weather
3. Shed bitterness
4. Own resources/choices
5. I like my new little place
6. Friendlier to everyone, store clerks, etc
7. Live near mountains
8. Humble to accept love and help
9. Help my mom more
10. Work on progressive infrastructure
11. New friends
12. Great neighbors with kids and dogs
13. Really fresh food
14. I am writing at last
15. Closure on my russian work
16. Finally off meds
17. Being given more responsibility at work
18. More honest relationships
19. Time spent on beauty and health
20. Open to the next steps in my life

*******

photo by bensonkua

Grateful for Friends

Rough weekend. Thank you to my friends who once again are there for me. Shoutout to my FDL buds and George Saylor especially.

A belief in the power of love and reconciliation among people who love each other but fight, that will carry the day.

*******

photo by pippyxox

Getting Connected

Waiting for the cable guy to come and connect my new television. Having severe C-Span withdrawal [or C-Spam as twolf calls it].

It's been interesting to watch how my new connections are evolving on both a technical and a human level. One of my greatest fears moving here was that I would be so isolated and alone.

But I am doing my best to be patient, to be friendly, to take each day and make the most of it. Keep telling myself that "things will become less unfamiliar." I've planned for the entire month of February to seem weird.

At some point, I imagine I'll feel like camp is over and it's time to go home. But for now, so far so good.

*******

photo by kenyee

Let There Be Light

Some scary yellow thing appeared in the sky this afternoon after five days of rain in ?sunny Menlo Park California. Must investigate.

Was on my way home from buying my first lamp for the new kinda dark apartment. Tonight is my first time to sleep there, wonder if I'll even be able to fall asleep. Excitement spills over into an anxious vigil, tho what I am waiting for is unknown. Keep telling myself things will become more familiar.

Best of all today was a reunion with an old friend who is now a minister at Menlo Park Presbyterian. I helped guide her internship when she was a student minister in Massachusetts, now she is welcoming me into her community and her home. Lotta years gone by and catching up to do. I'm looking forward to it. The best kind of Light: the inner light of the spirit. It's been dark there too.

*******

photo by Essjay NZ

Firedoglake: Pull Up A Chair

crossposted at firedoglake 20 october 2007

Hooray for Saturday! When we were little kids that was the greatest day of the week. Time to run around barefoot, ride bikes, play ball, do whatever we wanted.

Saturday, or Sunday for my friends who went to temple, was just the most glorious day. We could sleep in, linger over breakfast, ignore homework, and head outside for a long day of happiness.

My best friend Sarah and I would spend endless hours exploring our neighborhood creek with all its treasures. She was always picking up a beautiful rock and telling me all kinds of things about it.

It might not surprise you to learn that she went on to study geology, and now works in a national park teaching kids how great nature is. For her 50th birthday she asked her husband to take her to see where the monarch butterflies winter over in Mexico, how cool is that? We live hundreds of miles away but have kept in touch over the decades.

So I got to thinking how fun it would be to ask you guys about your best friend when you were little. Who was your friend and what did you love to do?

Big shoutout to Christy, we know you're peeking! Have a great vacation and see you back soon.

Now I want to hear all about you and your friends and the joy of Saturday. I especially want to hear from you readers who have yet to make a comment. Come on in and pull up a chair...

*******

You've Got A Friend

crossposted at firedoglake 17 november 2007



This early James Taylor, with Carole King on piano, is dedicated to old and new friends at the Northern California pup meetup from this afternoon.

We struggled bravely thru an enormous amount of appetizers, entrees, and desserts including one which we dubbed The TRex:


Thanks especially to the wonderful Suzanne who shared her redwoods, her creek, and Token, the cutest dog in the world with us.

The firepups:
Mary McCurnin
punaise
Teddy
spurious
newtonusr
egregious
newspaperbrat
writer/musician Sahra
and the one, the only, Freeway Blogger: scarlet p.

*****

Added: Teddy's pictures

I can save lives. No pressure there.

Why me God? Yes I can save lives but why do you choose me for this I am weak and cannot carry this burden.

I have saved the lives of 3,000 Russian children which is a totally unbearable fact. I can scarcely bear the knowledge that I have saved the life of a single baby. How can I handle this knowledge. Where do I put it.

And on a more understandable level I think I have contributed to saving the lives of several young people. No pressure! One Christmas we had eight people on suicide watch. All lived. Dear God why do you ask me to stand between when I myself am on the cliff.

When my children were teenagers I always had a jigsaw puzzle going in the room right by the front door. Their friends were welcome to sit down and play with the pieces while they spilled about their lives. I have had confirmation of two lives saved this way and feel there were others.

It is humbling and something I almost dont want to think about, except for the obligation to share knowledge about something simple to do to stand between vulnerable people and the cliff for I have so been there, so often. I thank those who stood at the bleeding edge and demanded that I move back and who held me while I cried my eyes out thank you all, you share in the 3,000 lives I have saved and the unknown number who wait while i look for support for the next leap into being brave.

No pressure.

Josh Groban:

Let me fall
Let me climb
There's a moment when fear
And dreams must collide

Someone I am
Is waiting for courage
The one I want
The one I will become
Will catch me

So let me fall
If I must fall
I won't heed your warnings
I won't hear them

Let me fall
If I fall
Though the phoenix may
Or may not rise

I will dance so freely
Holding on to no one
You can hold me only
If you too will fall
Away from all these
Useless fears and chains

Someone I am
Is waiting for my courage
The one I want
The one I will become
Will catch me

So let me fall
If I must fall
I won't heed your warnings
I won't hear

Let me fall
If I fall
There's no reason
To miss this one chance
This perfect moment
Just let me fall


*******

mcEgregious learns the Mac

It might not surprise you to learn, after hearing me rave about all things Scottish with the possible exception of haggis [sorry Marcy], that I am a Mc. This weekend I had the opportunity to learn about another kind of mac.

Learning to use a new computer, a new operating system, and new software during a work emergency should be a breeze right? It worked out in an unexpected way. Story of my life.

I started work as usual at 7 in the morning. That alone should be enough to alarm family and friends, since historically and until very recently I was quite the night owl, working til 2am not uncommon.

At a critical moment I couldn't access my files. Good old microsoft IE at its best. Yes, I was going to have to get up to speed immediately on the new mac, which had been slowly assembled and tested over a couple of weeks. I'm not against technology, I just want to understand things in depth before allowing them into my life. Is that so unreasonable?

The good news is that both my working partner and my best friend are mac people. They have been beating on me encouraging me for months to come over to the Light. I finally purchased one when my 5 year old thinkpad developed vertical lines so wide I couldn't always read what was on the screen. These two people saved me and my work from chaos.

After four hours of tutorial, I was ready to fly solo. Good thing, because the work situation was imploding. Don't know what I would have done without the mac. It ended up being a 15 hour work day, if you count the morning lessons, but that's ok. It all worked out, and time off can be put off for another time. I do notice how it rarely is that other time...hm....

Takehome message: yay friends and coworkers. Thank you.

Best friend moving: no April Fools

Stunned to learn that my best friend for many years will be moving to Chicago within the year. Excuse me, but no. It might very well be what is best for her and her family, but it is breaking my heart.

This friend has worked with me from the beginning 11 years ago to support our Russian children's hospital work. When I was considering who I wanted on my new board of directors, she was the first one. She has helped in myriad ways and has come over weekly to help support our work.

Support takes a variety of forms. In theory it is envelope stuffing, however the deeper work is listening to the president rant about the ridiculous, unfair, and evil obstacles to our work in Russia. She has endured a great many of these rants over the course of my thirty trips to St. Petersburg. How shall I prepare for future trips without this feedback?

We met thru our daughters' music and bonded over their teenage difficulties. We found out rather late in the game that both of us are amateur genealogists, active in her case and rather lapsed in my case after writing up 150 pages when the girls were little.

They moved to Hawai'i just at the time when things were becoming chaotic and intense with our work, when we were building a new ICU and planning a new operating room suite. I didn't realize how much I had depended on her for home baked goods and other symbolic forms of pre-trip support until she was away for two years. Hope the military appreciates what I gave up in the interim.

Now it seems I must prepare to lose her to the wider world again. There had better be planes between Washington and Chicago, that's all I can say. Email is good, phone calls are good, but there is nothing quite like the raised eyebrow in support of one's latest rant to feel that things will be all right, because my friend understands.

My ADD interferes with my OCD

True quote from my best friend. We were discussing the joys of being both ADD and OCD when she came up with this gold. Need to think about the implications.

May I ramble on a bit? All right, you say, and in fact necessary to identify a post as being uniquely mine. Not kind of unique, sort of unique, nearly unique, [uniquer--per egSon] thank you lovely children who know this pet peeve. It is either one of a kind or not. Unique or not unique. /rant.

As to rambling, you might think this was the very sign of me posting, rather like looseheadprop's spelling errors at firedoglake. It's how we know it is her speaking.

This lovely friend came over today, as every Friday, to help in whatever way I needed for the Russian Medical Fund work. Today the agenda was to keep the president from quitting. Again. But rather seriously this time.

According to my friend, there are still children who will die without our help, and no one will take my place if I quit [what is WRONG with this world], and I probably am strong enough to keep doing this work. Gratuitous swear word inserted here. I apparently continue to have the obligation and the opportunity to save lives if only I will keep going. So be it. But I hope it's worth the cost.

We operated on a child from Tadzhikistan, who came to us from another center that will remain nameless to protect the guilty. The parents SOLD THEIR HOUSE to pay for his first surgery at the other institution, and they nearly killed him. They at least had the conscience to send him on to us. We did his repair, undoing their strange cutting and pasting, and now he has a chance at a normal life.

I watched the re-do surgery and sat with the mother, who was understandably hysterical, as her son came from surgery to the ICU. I explained to her that the surgery went well, was perfectly normal, yet her son would look strange being under anaesthesia and with tubes sticking into him. We spoke in Russian, which was her second language and mine. Yet as mothers we communicated at a higher level. She trusted me since I too had children.

That's the good news. The bad news: there are people in the city where I work who are actively trying to shut down our program, which saves the lives of 350 children a year.

Why? To bring a trickle of federal money toward their own program, so they can have a small and weak program that kills more patients than they save. They want to expand their own program at the cost of killing ours.

Can you hear my response? Their inability to see beyond themselves is evil.

Yet at some level I am sympathetic. It is always hard to see beyond oneself, or beyond one's own organization. But in this case, for them to succeed, children will die. I WILL RESIST.

My alcohol counselor is unhappy. Better I should withdraw from this struggle and work on my own sanity. What is morally right here?

I have already decided to withdraw from the issue of war and peace between the United States and Iraq/Iran/et cetera, for the benefit aof my sanity. Must I leave my work of 10+ years as well?

Burning out in a flame of glory

Hi nzexpat! Come on in and comment.

In the life is strange category: phone call to a friend after several months, hi how are you:

(1) She has cancer, most likely will be ok, but that 'mostly' word....kids still at home....

(2) A close relative of hers just got elected to Congress in a tight race.

Thus leaving me about as close as you will ever come to speechless.

Comment from rumi/fdl: damn,...moderation just never seems to find you, does it? Hope you're doing ok and congrats on the election.

egr:
Moderation never seems to find me---that's the story for somebody with bipolar, OCD, -and- ADHD. Colorful til we burn out in a flame of glory.

The election is in my friend's family. It was quite the one-two punch for not having heard from her in a few months.

Re the election in general, except for Lamont I am ecstatic. The SENATE. The United States SENATE. We WON. Ok and the House too. Webb...Tester...Good things can happen.