Blogs
January 01, 2009 by barbara barbara writes
I woke this morning, fine-tuned to the reality of a new year birthed. Last night, glasses of wine in hand, my friend and I toasted David. We toasted Barack Obama, about whom I said that I hope he is even half as good as I’ve been hoping he will be. We toasted our deep personal and global need for financial recovery. I hoped out loud that my adult children will keep their jobs.
Later, I found this link at FireDogLake to a piece written by Starhawk. She invites readers to post it in its entirety, and so I shall. Given the horrendous events in Gaza (and Iraq and Afghanistan and Mumbai and Greece and multiple African nations and yes, in the U.S. of A.), her words speak not to choosing up sides, but rather to embracing our shared humanity. Totally transcends Kumbayah, IMO.
On Gaza
by Starhawk
December 30, 2008
All day I've been thinking about Gaza, listening to reports on NPR, following the news on the internet when I can spare a moment. I've been thinking about the friends I made there four years ago, and wondering how they are faring, and imagining their terror as the bombs fall on that giant, open-air prison.
The Israeli ambassador speaks movingly of the terror felt by Israeli children as Hamas rockets explode in the night. I agree with him-that no child should have her sleep menaced by rocket fire, or wake in the night fearing death.
But I can't help but remember one night on the Rafah border, sleeping in a house close to the line, watching the children dive for cover as bullets thudded into the walls. There was a shell-hole in the back room they liked to jump through into the garden, which at that time still held fruit trees and chickens. Their mother fed me eggs, and their grandmother stuffed oranges into my pockets with the shy pride every gardener shares.
That house is gone, now, along with all of its neighbors. Those children wake in the night, every night of their lives, in terror. I don't know if they have survived the hunger, the lack of medical supplies, the bombs. I only know that they are children, too.
I've ridden on busses in Israel. I understand that gnawing fear, the squirrely feeling in the pit or your stomach, how you eye your fellow passengers wondering if any of them are too thick around the middle. Could that portly fellow be wearing a suicide belt, or just too many late night snacks of hummus? That's no way to live. Please read on.
December 25, 2008 by barbara barbara writes
Ring the bells that still can ring,
forget your perfect offering,
there's a crack in everything,
that's how the light gets in.
~ from Leonard Cohen's "Anthem"
Wishing you all a peaceful and satisfying holiday!
December 20, 2008 by barbara barbara writes
Saturday afternoon. Big fluffy snow on top of fluffy snow from earlier in the week. My snowplowing guy just took his first pass at my driveway and the long, winding stairs up to the house. I blew him a kiss. I’m sure he was thrilled. He did smile.
The wind is up enough now that the birds have stopped the frenetic gorging that started early this morning. And though I can’t see them, I have little doubt the squirrels are lying in wait somewhere, plotting their next assault on the bird feeders. I just read somewhere about a guy who smears BenGay on his feeder poles. Apparently it’s a close to fool-proof deterrent. Too bad no one tried that on the desk chair in the Oval Office.
Thirty-one days. One month exactly until the door slams shut on you-know-who’s sorry butt as he swaggers and smirks his way back to Texas. He’d have to be completely stupid to think that anyone much will miss him. What’s that you say? Oh, well then, never mind.
Thirty-one days. One month exactly for Dubya and Darth to manipulate, intimidate and incinerate. There's more.
December 08, 2008 by barbara 
garry wiibarbara writes
Much as I love chickadees, even I am growing weary of the Thanksgiving photo, now stale as dried-out stuffing. Or something. Metaphors have taken a break, too, it seems.
What to say? Well, for starters, brother Garry went home yesterday after a month-long stay with me following surgery. As some of you may recall, Garry is my little brother -- and also an adult with mental retardation. A sweeter guy you cannot possibly imagine. At least, he is when he's with me. He gets a kick out grinning while telling folks, "Mess with me and you mess with my sister!" Thus is a fierce, hypervigilant advocate pigeon-holed. *g*
Apparently Garry has some cranky moments at home with his roommate, but then so did I. You, too? Here's how we decided to deal with it. Read on, Macduff.
November 26, 2008 by barbara 
Chickadeebarbara writes
A funny thing happened to me on the way to the keyboard….
Ummm, long time no see!
So, uh, cold enough for ya?
Crikey! It’s been so long since I’ve been here, I don’t remember how to think or write. (Okay, you’re rolling your eyes and saying, “And this is new how?”, right?)
I did make a cameo appearance on election day or thereabouts. Otherwise, it’s been up to Susan to keep the clothesline from drooping into the frosted-over leaves out back.
The clothes poles never did get painted this summer. The shed is even more ramshackle than last year at this time. The pears and apples and plums I couldn’t reach from the ground froze on their high-hanging branches. There will be no jam, no applesauce this year. Friends gathered to cut back David’s gardens for me. I took care of the tea roses and the butterfly bush myself. The pond is covered with the Styrofoam form David crafted to insulate it, and over that lies a brand new slab of plywood a friend brought to replace the rotting OSB that’s done the job for one too many years. There’s firewood on the patio for David’s pet wood stove, and the new doors he wanted have all been installed.
And so, here we are in the place between. Not quite finished with autumn, not yet fully winter. Brother Garry has recovered again from abdominal surgery, but is not quite ready to leave here for his own home. Everyone seems to be second-guessing a man who’s won’t be president until January. There’s a kind of breath-taking thing going on with free-falling investments that have just caught a momentary updraft before they tank again. And so it goes. Click here for more.
November 22, 2008 by susan What an odd season it is. Our emotions swing like the stock market -- the high of Obama's election to the low of the three tone-deaf auto CEO's, begging for dollars from we-the-people because they couldn't sell their you-the-dope gas hogs. If they couldn't read the public mood enough to know that showing up in three separate corporate jets to beg for a bailout wasn't an effective PR strategy, is it any wonder they failed to notice that the foreign auto makers were thumpin' their buttery leather bums with smaller fuel-efficient cars? (To add to their very bad no good day, their octogenarian water boy, the hide-bound Rep. John Dingell, also took a thumpin' and lost his post as chair of the House Energy and Commerce committee, replaced by Henry Waxman, one of the few Dems with a zest for digging deep and a proponent of controls on auto emissions to help curb global warming.)
Gobble ahead for more.
November 18, 2008 by susan So personally, I'm in withdrawal. Thank god for Al Franken's recount and the Martin/Chambliss run-off in Georgia. As I write this, Mark Begich has just declared victory over convicted felon Ted Stevens, so that's 58 senate seats, two to go. Thank god we can draw this out. A bit more here.
November 12, 2008 by susan Firebombed street in Fallujah. Okay, so I guess we owe them a sewage plant. But does it have to work?
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With all the dung the former Maverick and his sidekick were tossing around the country in the last few weeks, you might have missed the latest poop on Iraq, the forgotten stepchild of this b'zillion dollar election.
The Special Inspector for Iraq Reconstruction, an independent federal office led by Stewart W. Bowen (who has consistently released damning reports on the lost billions and failed projects in Iraq that go virtually unnoticed by most Americans), reported that a sewage treatment plant being constructed in Fallujah, with American dollars and know-how, is three times over budget, three years behind schedule, and may never be used. Read on, it just gets better.
November 08, 2008 by susan Photo courtesy of Utne.com
We've all read accounts of the amazing outpouring of elation all over the world after Obama's Tuesday night victory. I couldn't help thinking that it was like the Munchkins dancing after the wicked witch was dead.
Here's another view of that night. My sister DKNY emailed me what she saw and heard from her 9th floor apartment on the upper west side, near 106th and Broadway.
Read it here.
