Settler words&music in S'ólh Téméxw, (leanpub.com/upsun) living where privilege meets precarity in MST country. she/her/they———– Novels: Midnite Moving Co., Upsun; Sweep Off Those Waves coming soon, Hair Sinister after that. —Restore All Indigenous Lands!
Seattle Bus Driver gets beaten up. This story caught my eye for a number of reasons. The biggest one is that the bus driver is forgiving her attacker.
Reviewing church. *this article was disabled. I have no idea, as it was current. Anyway, it was about a pastor who’s paying $50 to the unchurched to come to services and review them. [URL fixed by JR 2013May21]
A lot of very cute interspecies animal friendship videos. The Boston terrier and the pig video is my fave.
I met Caroline last night to watch Awake My Soul; she’s the gal trying to put together a Sacred Harp sing here in Vancouver. This is a worthy goal. I also met her cat Tully, who is a Superior Creature and who trained me in door management within minutes of meeting me. Sacred Harp or shaped note singing is a kind of Xtreme congregational singing. The trebles, altos, tenors and basses sit facing each other in a square and the song leader (who can be anybody in the congregation, and it alternates among congregants) keeps the beat. The music is upwards of a couple centuries old, or as new as the Nineties, because the singing tradition has had a revival in this past century. It is, among other things, intense, loud as blazes, polyphonal in spots, fugue like in spots and entirely weird and strange and although it’s a total piece of Americana, it seems almost too spiritual and pure to be part of the American worship tradition.
It would be bloody amazing at Beacon, but I ain’t the choir director.
Apart from reporting that I’m singing in church on Sunday and working temp for two days starting Monday, I have nothing to report. Oh, and there’s a demo and a birthday party in there as well this weekend.
Went to the wrong church. Church is at the Gathering Place today. Since I was already late for church if it was in Sapperton, I wasn’t going to drive to Coquitlam to be late there as well. Sigh. I suppose this is a sign from God that I should clean the kitchen.
Skating was wonderful, although I have a blister half an inch across on my calf. Then, I wrote a song. I went outside for a second and got inspired and came right back in and sang it into the mp3 recorder. Slept. Wrote another song. Got up. (Particularly pleased with this most amazing piece of multi tasking, what with the lying in bed and thinking up songs). Got dressed, and did not realize until I had left the house that not one piece of my clothing was on speaking terms with the next. Girls, I looked like I had slithered through six closets and only wore what stuck. Went to church. Witnessed the single cutest moment I’ve ever seen after a very entertaining and well received children’s pageant. I’m not going to try to describe it, but I hope there are pictures. Got a phone call from ScaryClown and went to a late lunch with him AND dragged him back here for Primer (neither he nor Keith had seen it, from which you may infer that my gorgeous, vivid, witty and perceptive son is here) and classic Warner Brothers cartoons.
Snow has been falling off and on since church got out.
I swept up straw from the manger this morning.
I had a day with my peeps… Jeff ate his late repast with gusto …. boys killing pixels in the basement. Beautiful and people-filled day, with music ringing in my ears. One of the songs I wrote is “Christmas in Vancouver” which is a very Accommodationist-wing-of-contemporary-atheism-anti-hymn, and the other is “Load On”. The latter is a very Band-ish tune meant to be played trad instrument, light percussion and at least four voices. Okay, that’s how I hear it in my head. It’s from Deadwood, when Sol goes to back Bullock’s play with that tomfool popgun his girlfriend Trixie loaned him. And, like one might reasonably expect, gets shot for his pains. The song is about Sol loaded up on laudanum before, during and after the extraction of the bullet, and the stuff he raves about while he’s wrecked. I know, isn’t that the damnedest thing to get an instant song about? I had sung my song about Al Swearengen earlier in the evening and it made me think about Deadwood, so I guess I was primed for it. I still can’t believe how fast it came on.
I have a quiet happiness inside me which corresponds to chocolate chip pecan cookies. Happy Xmas to all reasonable people, in the very broadest humanistic terms and without reference to goshes, I mean gods.
Stephen Fry on swearing. SPECIAL BONUS, Hugh Laurie in drag.
Attended a Jim Scott house concert at Tom and Peggy’s last night. I am going to be in a minority here, but I think it’s possible to write songs about peace love light cooperation and the rain forest and still keep some edge in the lyrics. Let me recast that. His choice of words irritated me a lot, also, too much repetition, please please please have more respect for the audience than that. Oh, really it was an indoctrination session? Why didn’t somebody tell me? He has a lovely voice and a lot of Brazilian nylon string guitar style but I enjoyed the a capella song about peace the most. There was lots of singing along and I couldn’t open my mouth or I just would have coughed through the entire concert. Also a church member and his squeeze talked ALL the way through, and when everybody else is quiet and you’re the one sitting next to the rude people it doesn’t add to the joy. Since this person behaved rudely at the last event we both attended, I’ll let him know when he’s had his third strike. It would be polite… no sense bottling it up and when I can firmly and respectfully tell him he’s rude.
However, Al Sather’s mini mousse tarts put some life back into me. MAN they were good.
Had a migraine by the time it ended, walked home in the rain and collapsed next to Keith on the downstairs sofa (I walked 6.4k last night, pouring rain both ways), while he groused his way through the new Assassin’s Creed II. Bastards dicked with the UI AND the game play, so you spend a lot of time falling off things you didn’t intend to. Also, Ezio walks as if he tucked a carrot into his ass crack and his jumps look… well I’ll let you see it, because I fell over the first time I saw it. Someone’s going to do a mashup of all his moves to techno, and it will be funny.
I am still feeling odd. Part of it is irritation with myself over something I can’t speak of in public, but I think I’m genuinely sick, too. I’ll see if church is still an option after I have my vitamins and some coffee. I kinda want to boycott church until they fix the sound system, but really that’s not a sufficient reason.
Tomorrow I interview Denis, and I am so looking forward to it.
Watched these two movies over the last couple of days. Flags of our Fathers, Letters from Iwo Jima. HIGHLY recommended.
How do YOU set boundaries with loved ones? Just asking.
Charity, defined here, here, and here, begins at home, or so they say. Continue reading For the love of charity
World’s strongest beer. I believe they gave the naming rights to a drunken comedian. Continue reading Want some
I spent a good chunk of yesterday angry and perturbed, but as is typical for me, once I figured out what to do about it, I quit being angry and perturbed. Continue reading Angry and perturbed turns into meh, and then huh, and then te he.
The Catholics in DC are convinced that teh gay sex is SO BAD that they don’t want to follow rules regarding discrimination against gay people. Nobody is asking them to either marry or provide function space for gays and their marriages. But that doesn’t stop them from being jerks.
The perfect library job for somebody…. Archivist for the Grateful Dead.
Too long, didn’t read.
I didn’t realize it until I went to the translink.ca site this morning, but I am now One Bus Ride from church. I walk out to the Kingsway, get on the 112, and it takes me straight to church.
This makes me very, very happy, and probably means I’ll be doing a lot more church stuff. I mean, it’s right there! No more not going to church because I want a lift!
Later on today I am going to go off to a Tim Horton’s and – yet again – see if a guy I’ve talked to on the phone a couple of times is going to actually show. I don’t think Timmy Ho’s has wireless, though. I may bring a small mending project just to keep myself out of trouble.
Lady Miss Banjola was robbed at gunpoint the other day – at work I hasten to add. She’s fine; she is one of these people who does not get upset about the normal things people get upset about. Exciting times we live in.
My unca Dave is not eating very much, but he talked to mOm on the phone for a while the other day, and it’s little things like that that keep us going.
Keith and Paul are off to see Lois at some point. I imagine somebody will tell me eventually exactly when I am supposed to feed the Kira critter.
Margot has abrumptly (sorry, this was a word emitted by one of the Xantrex overlords some years ago, and I liked it so much I kept it) decided to quit washing her rear end. I will give her a day or so to smarten up and then it’s off to the groomer to get all her butt hair shaved off. I tried shaving it but my clippers are anaemic to the point of mollescence and I’m terrified to cut her fur with scissors.
On the Nature of Things…
No single thing abides; but all things flow.
Fragment to fragment clings-the things thus grow
Until we know and name them. By degrees
They melt, and are no more the things we know.
Globed from the atoms falling slow or swift
I see the suns, I see the systems lift
Their forms; and even the systems and the suns
Shall go back slowly to the eternal drift.
You too, oh earth-your empires, lands, and seas –
Least with your stars, of all the galaxies,
Globed from the drift like these, like these you too
Shalt go. You are going, hour by hour, like these.
Nothing abides. The seas in delicate haze
Go off; those mooned sands forsake their place;
And where they are, shall other seas in turn
Mow with their scythes of whiteness other bays.
The seeds that once were we take flight and fly,
Winnowed to earth, or whirled along the sky,
Not lost but disunited. Life lives on.
It is the lives, the lives, the lives, that die.
They go beyond recapture and recall,
Lost in the all-indissoluble All:-
Gone like the rainbow from the fountain’s foam,
Gone like the spindrift shuddering down the squall.
Flakes of the water, on the waters cease!
Soul of the body, melt and sleep like these.
Atoms to atoms-weariness to rest –
Ashes to ashes-hopes and fears to peace!
O Science, lift aloud your voice that stills
The pulse of fear, and through the conscience thrills –
Thrills through the conscience with the news of peace –
How beautiful your feet are on the hills!
This is the poem that my church’s Care and Concern Committee sent to me after my grandmother died a few years back. A beautiful sentiment…..
Unitarianism is a progressive religious tradition with roots in the Protestant reformation in Europe. It is now a small but global religion focused on social justice, education, community and dialogue about what’s important to live a good life.
As much as we love our chosen faith, we don’t like talking about it too much because we don’t want just anybody joining. You see, we only really want intelligent, courteous troublemakers with a burning desire to make the world a better place. If you’re not that kind of person you should run far, far away and never even think about Unitarianism ever again.
If you do have a burning desire to make the world a better place, ask yourself one question. Is what people do for good in the world more important than what they say they believe? If your answer is yes, give me your email address and I’ll send you links to a church or fellowship close by so you can attend a Sunday service, and make up your own mind. No salesman will call.
But the really fun part was using it as an excuse to take minced moose and biscotti to the minister.