I woke up super early this morning

So I took out some trash and put salt down on the back deck so Jeff doesn’t skid down on his ass, cause it be icy out there.

Jeff is off to Victoria this morning. He will be watching the Superb Owl with pOp.

Otto is back from the shop. I paid because it was the only way to get him back, cause I’m not giving them another crack at him. I am very unhappy with the results, and super unhappy with the tech, who didn’t even restring the mandolin properly. The world is full of competent people who only fuck up when I’m their customer, and I’m in line to receive customer service from every last one of them. It is my karma for all the exceedingly crappy service I’ve given to others in my life, I suppose. At least the Mac came back genuinely repaired, although the new layout of the function keys is going to take some getting used to.

I wrote 3200 words yesterday. Don’t know if I can meet or beat that today, but mOm isn’t complaining, as I’m basically forwarding everything to her as soon as I write it. I need to completely finish that scene and then I’m off to the hardest scene of all….

Housefilk at Tom and Peggy’s this afternoon to evening, happy sigh. I’m getting a sore throat but I’m going to load up on Throat Coat tea and fluids and vitamin C.

 

A blessing upon learning a grandmother has died.

May her faults be a lesson, her virtues an inspiration and her love ever part of your blood and bones.

 

 

 

I hope Polly rests easy; she worked with great energy up until her 80’s, and treated retirement as an invasion of her dignity.  I never had the privilege of meeting her, except through the reminiscences and travel diaries of her descendants.

god, libertarians suck

my response to two of them

 

You fellas are adorable.

When the first peoples came to Turtle Island, there was nobody to conquer. (Although the megafauna, were they still around and sentient, might object most strenuously to that categorization). They spread out, established territories, and sure, fought among themselves as people do when displaced by climate change and natural disaster, but they established collective lands and for the most part respected those lands with natural boundaries and traded like mad. (Although modern Haidas laugh and say that their name comes from the other tribes yelling Hide Us! when they saw those fricking war canoes….) The notion of federation was borrowed and improved upon (arguably, but not by me) and codified by the descendants of the people who kicked the Haudenosaunee off their lands by right of conquest. Except that they made treaties and broke them for convenience, for racism, in the name of the conqueror god, & for capitalism.

In the end the land will reclaim the settlers. Without collective care of the land we’re all going to die horribly as capitalism dirties and endangers every creature now alive. Private property rights are a wonderful idea, but they are unenforceable and serve crony capitalism by atomizing opposition. Those rights will be less and less enforceable as time goes by unless you bare your ass to whoever controls the legal (or otherwise) monopoly on the use of force.

When your government can rain death down on you unopposed from 20000 feet up if you annoy the people at the joysticks, I hope your spirited defense of property rights shields you and your children.

I belong to a collective of like minded people who are working our way back to food safety and security, as well as shared land. When I’m done I’ll be working less than 30 hours a week to feed myself and our animals, have the comfort and security of family and friends around me, I’ll have access to light and power and musical instruments, and private property rights will be ideological road kill on a highway long since grown over by bushes and weeds. Using scare tactics about shared land, rather than educating yourself about where it exists and where it is working (because you’re right about it not working, often, but do not really understand why, and shoot yourself in the foot by not seeing where it IS working), is in my view inertia masking fear. Private property is for people who already have something and are FRIGHTENED of losing it.

But like fiat currency, marriage traditions, organized religion and tailgate parties, private property is a social convention, not an absolute right, pace Bastiat and all of his heirs. My only absolute right is my person and the tools of my trade or trades, and they are not rights I may individually enforce. Everything else re property is a stake through the heart of my connectedness to other people, which can, and should trump my right to sit on any dunghill, be it shit or gold, and crow that I am wiser and better, for I have something to lose, and need never think of who died or was injured for me to acquire it. The concentration camp you threaten liberals with is in your own minds. Free yourselves, humans, with whom I share the immense and shameful legacy of conquest and genocide! You are looters and do not seem aware of it, do not seem equipped to even consider it as possible, and may not be able to admit that the violence of your scorn betrays the weakness of your position.

And of course I don’t expect to be on the side of any government, local or otherwise, at any point in the future, but I’ll leave the fighting and dying for land to others, and try merely to keep planting food and saving seed and tending those weaker than I. When I have finished shedding this crust of goods and have nothing but my instruments and seed bags, I will stop being a looter myself, at long last. A thing is what it is, and not something else, as a wise man once said.

Leaving for Georgia soon

I will be keeping a trip diary and posting irregularly… I have decided not to take my computer because I simply cannot afford to have it confiscated by the US government.  I have NOTHING on the computer which would warrant that, but I’ve been complaining under my real name about the US government for 10 years now.  Most hotels have a guest computer room.

If I do write any George stuff while I’m gone it will be cursive, or uploaded to Google drive…. they aren’t likely to confiscate that. I will take my phone and charger.

I pack today.  It will be a big batch of weird stuff I take, I hope the TSA and Customs can deal with it all.

I’m going to drop the keys for the business off with the landlord.  I have been trying and trying and trying to sell it, and almost 60 people enquired, and I showed it to at least 30 sets of people, but I can’t pay rent any more.  I closed the file with Fraser Health yesterday.  It has been a year out of my life, and we only operated for three months.  I learned a lot, got my heart and my shoulder broken, and I really think I’m a better person.  I certainly have more self-knowledge, a lot more respect for restaurateurs.  Knowing that I will never ever step through that door again is, candidly, more of a relief than I can say.  Anything else I say will be oversharing.

I am practicing and writing every day – music or one of my other projects.  That’s really the only thing that counts.

Jeff can handle getting a bolus into Eddie by himself with no difficulty, so I don’t feel like I’m abandoning Jeff over that.  Eddie is moving as little as possible to accomplish his goals of just barely eating, just barely drinking, and getting to the litter pan.  I’ve taken to leaving a hot water bottle next to him as he was cold to the touch the other day, and lifting him up into the chair he is sleeping in pretty much 24/7 these days.  Margot is being very sucky towards us and practically knocked Eddie over with her tail the other day, a liberty he simply would not have tolerated a couple of months ago.

So many people have told me how much they are looking forward to seeing me at GAFilk!  I feel genuinely underrehearsed, but I recently read that if you’re feeling nervous, make yourself MORE EXCITED.  So I will.

ATL is not currently experiencing delays in or outbound with the exception of international flights outbound.  Travel will be icky, but not impossible due to weather.

I’d like to call out Patricia for helping arrange a drinkypoo on my return, and a very warm hug for mOm and Chipper, who have been extra specially supportive beta readers for George, and for Tammy, who provided me with the book that unblocked my last objections to the writing.  I have something very specific to say on the subject of first contact, which is that we’ve had 100 years of science fiction in popular culture, and we have to start writing first contact fiction that allows humans to respond intelligently to aliens.  Not to freak out or say stupid things. To say, “Cool! Weird! How can I help? What’s in it for me?  Where’s your ray gun?” when somebody who really does think globally comes along.

 

Everybody who can, have a good day!

Catching up

It’s been a lively couple of days.  I’ve been writing hard, practiced almost enough, played at church to sincere and life affirming compliments, showed the shop, made the decision to hand the keys over to the landlord, got into last minute negotiations with guys that came in at Christmas, had a spider drop onto my keyboard and scare the shit out of me, I’ve stopped having nightmares but the insomnia has fired up again, we finished watching Jazz, which made me unhappy because it was SO wonderful, and I received some Buddhist wisdom which allowed me to release a lot of stored animus toward my life and situation.  I learned that my travel plans into the US are probably going to be completely fucked up by the INSANE weather ongoing in most of the US – shit, it’s warmer in Alaska – which reminds me of the time that I wanted to get to a con which would have been crucial to my development as an SF writer and 9/11 intervened, except this time it’s all expenses paid and guess what, they’ll WAIT for me, as I don’t imagine I’d be stranded more than two days so I’ll still get to do it.  I learned that Pearl, Cat Faber’s octave mandolin (ALSO by Peter Cox) experienced technical difficulties and is now in the shop, meaning I do not have an octave mandolin as a back up if United destroys or loses Otto. (And I know that as sad as that might be, I would just ask for the bits back or get Peter to make me another one, him being obliging that way, if remunerated.  Who’s to say the replacement wouldn’t be even more amazing?)  This means I would have to do the entire concert on a regular sized mando – which I DO NOT WANT – or transpose EVERYTHING to a guitar, which for a couple of songs would be fine and for everything else would probably cause my nervous system to implode – or sing the entire concert a capella, which would be extremely wearing for my audience.  I will be taking Lemming’s advice about packageration seriously.  I reproduce it below.  Jeff invented the word garbarcage to describe when tv shows are shitty because they have too much arc and too little of what we watch the shows for.  Eddie is needing fluids at least every other day, he has started to refuse his meds and he’s gone off his food, although he’s still making the trek to the litter tray.  Margot has gotten very sucky, which is unusual.  I’m making plans to travel after the shop is gone.  I found out that the Squamish name for Thomas Mulcair is “Angry Beard” (okay it’s just one Squamish dude who is calling him that, but DID I LAUGH when I read that) and that it’s too cold outside right now for the Lincoln Park Zoo Polar Bear. I’ve been applying for jobs every day, no response. However, I am relaxed about it.  What will be, will be.  No use flinching or being rebellious.  The leathern thong descends whether I’ve been a good girl or not.

 

Tip #1: Depending on size of body, sometimes banjo cases work for octave mandolin type instruments. Tip #2: A way to save money on a case AND protect the instrument: Call guitar stores in area and see if one will give you an instrument-size box. A banjo box would probably work. Check airline regs for box measurements before proceeding. They’re supposed to allow some leeway for musical instruments. Invest in some bubble wrap. Loosen strings. Wrap instrument in bubble wrap, inside soft case. Wrap case in bubble wrap. Stuff bubble wrap in bottom of box, put in instrument, put bubble wrap on all sides and top filling box, seal box with heavy 2″ wide packing tape, about twice as much as you need. Pack one roll of packing tape so you can re-pack before you leave to go home. Add handle (easy to make one with tape, or tape on a handle, or tie on some rope. Mark stuff on package with large black magic marker “THIS SIDE UP! FRAGILE: DO NOT BEND. CONTAINS ANGRY ELVES WHO WILL HURT YOU IF YOU WAKE THEM UP” or some such thing. Tip #3: First, find out if the planes you’re flying on all have closets. Second, carry the thing with you, in the soft case, but do wrap it in bubble wrap inside the case. Make sure it’s small enough to fit in the overhead. Go up to the counter and ask if they’ll find space in the closet for your instrument. If they’re crazy enough to want to gate-check it, well, that’s what the bubble wrap inside the case is for, but if they do that, ask them if they’ve seen the “United Breaks Guitars” video, nicely. If you have to put it in the overhead, stuff a large coat or something all around it so no one tries to smash it with their luggage. Again, bubble wrap. Bubble wrap is your friend

Oh, and don’t forget the loosen strings part. Most of the time, no difference, but the changes in air pressure in the luggage compartment plus string tension will eventually cause the neck to break at the nut.

And take along spare strings because one often breaks when you retighten.

Sorrow and anger

Should you divorce your family?

Dr. Michelle Golland suggested a sort of checklist of traits that are warning signs a familial relationship is unhealthy and may be worth ending, including: “You feel drained when associating with the person. The person continuously makes you angry. The person is manipulative towards you to get what they want.”

Trying to be ‘the bigger person’ didn’t help. Trying to ‘fake it til I make it’ didn’t work. Pulling out my wallet to paper over the cracks didn’t help. I don’t imagine for a second that it will help anybody but me, but exhaustion won, and I am slowly and painfully crawling away to someplace safe.  In the best of all possible worlds I’d be rational on the subject, but since I can’t, I have to protect what little sanity I have.

Wrote 750 words this morning, practiced, did my Lumosity, ran the dishwasher and tidied the kitchen.  Keith is coming over shortly.

—-

We watched Jazz – Keith very much enjoyed it.

—-

Katie is coming over to extract some of her clothes and toiletries.  Hopefully there will be enough gone that I can establish some order in the guest bedroom, which looks at the moment much like the den of a hibernating bear.

Loki lowkey Christmas

Showed the shop on Christmas day AND Boxing day.  It will be a Syncretic Agnostic Festive Miracle if I sell the place, but I’m okay with what happens.  Everything changes. Failure hasn’t killed me yet.

As part of our Syncretic Agnostic Festive Season, we acquired Chinese Food, watched documentaries and SGA, and bought zero presents, sent zero cards.  I did go to a Christmas Eve service which was about the advent and deliverance of joy, love, peace and hope, framed by the story of the Christ child and Mary.  (Joseph always gets left out… I’m gonna make a sermon for him some day).

One of the best things about filk is that if you change the lyrics to be less sexist nobody will comment.  I say this looking at Uplift, a wonderful song written in 1999, but it contains Mankind.  I will sing it as Humans.  All will be well.

I’ve already blasted through the second hand book Tammy gave me for Christmas.  It’s called The Forty Rules of Love, and I cried BUCKETS while I was reading it, but it is about the love between Rumi and Shams of Tabriz, and it is a very wonderful and sad story.  In the end, Rumi is a poet, but everyone around him paid a high price for it.

Poetry doesn’t come from nowhere; for me it is language reaching through my emotions to a page; to the release and abandonment of expressing a feeling in the most charged and delicate way possible.  Poetry is like the sprite that forms above a massive thunderstorm.  So brief, so beautiful, and invisible unless you are looking RIGHT AT IT when it happens. She who has not seen will say it doesn’t exist.  She who has seen will pummel words and rhythms, grasp at floating down, weave spider silk and daydreams, stare at bones, bond with discards, trace the impression of a car tire in tar, build launching pads of paper and foil. Her dissatisfaction is the human eternal, embroidered with a great ‘Ah!”

Lumosity, mando practice, paperwork.  That is at least part of my day.

Church today was great

A good service, enlivened by Rev Deb’s inclusion of both Thomas King and George Carlin.  Plus, Beatles, and Dark of Winter, my favourite hymn as sung by the choir.  Paul, bless him, is back from his gig in Seattle and gave me a lift to and likewise fro. I sent him forth with chicken breast for sandwiches, my homemade pickled beets (which he adores) and a frozen soup by way of thanks (also he gave me one of his very chiropractic hugs, which by damn I needed!)

Wrote about 750 words on Midnite Moving today.

Practiced HARD this morning.  It’s getting close!

Found Keith’s 300$ sunglasses in the couch downstairs.  Phoned him immediately and was he glad!

No walkies today.  Still a bit nasty underfoot out there.  Not like Toronto, though, it’s a freaking mess there.

A*****e McF*****t stood me up for the meet at the shop.  Sorry, I’m not in the mood to be charitable.  Jeff knows the whole tale and concurs.

Totally took down some asshat on twitter going on about vaccination.  The article he linked to said that vaccinations have something to do with infant mortality in the US.  ( well they do, just not negatively). The high infant mortality rate in the US has more to do with institutionalized racism and unevenly distributed prenatal care than vaccination, and anybody who says different doesn’t know a FUCKING THING about epidemiology, obstetrics, and forty years of data drawing a line between race and good — or poor — health outcomes.  Given that the twitter account is ostensibly an anti racism media site, I unloaded very hard.  I do not want persons of colour to put their kids at risk believing this bullshit because ‘da man’ makes bad vaccines.  HEAVY HEAVY SIGH.

As a palate cleanser….Cute temporary tattoos!

Privilege has its memberships!

White.

Middle class.

University educated.

IQ over 120  – as at last time I was tested…. my BPI on Lumosity is over 1250 and I am in the top percentiles (for all the categories for my age and sex).

Reproductively successful ciswoman.

No birth defects.

All senses currently intact.

Mobile enough to walk every day.

Able to obtain and use a driver’s license.

City dweller all my life with access to cultural amenities and public transit.

Access to health care at low cost including midwifery, physio and eyecare.

Member of an extremely supportive religious community.

Raised by both parents.

Both parents university educated.

Not abused during upbringing (not sexually or physically, no alcoholism, drug abuse or mental illness in family of origin).

Up until fairly recently, consistently employed and employable. Large number of skills mostly in an office setting, but it amazes me sometimes when I look back over my life and see what I’ve learned to do.

Never institutionalized for drug or alcohol abuse or mental illness.

Never jailed, arrested or detained for questioning.

Never randomly stopped by police except in a car for a drunk driving check, and even then I talked my way out of the one time I had been drinking and driving.  (I know, right?)

Never had an unpleasant personal encounter with the police.

Raised atheist/agnostic.

Raised as an appreciator of reason, science, science fiction and imagination.

Raised in a house full of books, music, and intellectual appreciation.

Always had a tv in the house and access to a library card.

Able at one point to afford to purchase a house.

Have a bank account.

Have a secure place to sleep at night.

Access to abundant food, clean water and fresh air, in my house or in walking distance.

Access to land to grow food on if I wish.

Not currently addicted to drugs or alcohol and apart from over the counter stuff there’s nothing in the house.  (OK, I think there’s an airplane bottle of rum somewhere in the house….)

Although I am not neurotypical, my brain challenges are not sufficient to prevent me from enjoying employment, relationships, creative endeavours.

Passport!  Just remembered that.  It’s a privilege I share with more than 50 percent of Canadians but globally it’s a huge privilege to have a Canadian passport.

Access to all vaccinations (I even got Hep C vaccinations when it turned out I could get them for free).

Access to refrigeration and subzero storage.

Access to appliances such as washing machines and cook stoves.

Access to internet 24.7 except when Shaw loses its mind.

Able to speak, read, and write English at a very high level.  It’s a privilege I’d trade for nothing, too.

Access to world class continuing education on a bewildering range of subjects.

Living in a big house with an excellent roommate, who is honest and sane and helps keep me safe and healthy.

 

What’s YER privilege?

 

 

 

 

I love it when my characters come up with good lines

George, sputtering about his cousin Theo, “The plural of fun is not drama!”

 

Jeff and I have started watching Longmire.  It’s loaded with some of our fave actors; Robert Taylor is totally new to us and turns out to be an Aussie; Katee Sackhoff, Bailey Chase, Gerald McRaney, Peter Weller, Lou Diamond Phillips.  Well written, exquisitely shot and kinda violent, just the way I like my shows.

No show

Oh my screaming g’s the Detroit Philly game. It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas. Six inches of snow on the camera crew and half the football disappears when you put it down. When the player rooted double handsful of snow out of his face mask I howled.

Furnace is broken, internet is spotty.  Working right now, but who knows later.  It’s been like this for days now.

We’re at the end of Season 4 for Burn Notice and Jeff has declared a short moratorium.  That’s okay, because I’m currently thrilling to the amazing dress sense of the lovely Phryne Fisher of Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries.  It’s very much in the Foyle’s War category of murder mysteries, except Australian and Phryne is a SLUTTTT! A cheerful, unapologetic and unambiguous one (but sex scenes are strictly decorous and mostly off screen).  She drives a Hispano Suiza! She has a gold plated pistol, which never seems to have any ammo! She is awesome.  So until I get Michael Westen back, probably about a week from now, I’ll have to watch Farscape and Miss Fisher instead.

Person to see the shop yesterday didn’t show.  Somebody else called, I’m showing it Tuesday.

David Simon (of the Wire) talkin”bout capitalizm.

I am thinking of going to the shooting range the next time Keith and Rob go.

I know I spend a lot of time whining, but I am really happy to be alive, and I’m writing and practicing every day, and there’s food in the fridge, and my friends love me, and my cat is cheerfully indifferent to me unless I’m crinkling packaging.

Eddie is feeling a bit better – his appetite has returned – but he’s now hiding in Jeff’s bathroom cupboard a good chunk of the time.

I have half completed my first of two new homilies (March 9 and May 11, or perhaps the other way around) and intend to have a completed draft of the first by the end of the week. mOm I should have a bit off to you shortly.

The Alberta government has tabled legislation that will prevent public sector union employees from even TALKING about striking.  What unutterable bullshit! My prairie populist ancestors are whirling in their graves like a rotisserie set on stun.

Yay, Natalie Reed is blogging again. She is a queer trans blogger living in Vancouver and she can write like a m*****-******* riot.

A somewhat likely story

following is fictional…

 

Dad staggered away from the kitchen in an exaggeration of his normal walk.  He had grimly supported Mom through the whole ghastly process of getting the equipment through customs, and grimly supported her in the sequelae, which included about four dozen eggs on the outside of the house and a number of unpleasant encounters with the more tender hearted of their neighbours, including the one neighbour they were always having fencing discussions with, and whom they suspected of allowing access for youthful depredations.

Now the damned machine was here, and it was as if every item which had been eviscerated from his diet was now coming at him as extruded by this knitting machine of the damned.

She’d seen it in a catalog, and ever since had wanted it so.

Dad couldn’t watch.  He knew he would not be able to resist, even knowing where the meat had come from.

________

So, today there was news about knittable meat.  There was also meat you could wear and meat you could form in rainbow layers and other kinds of Modern Foods kinda meat.

I DON’T  want to know what the meat was. In the story, that is. Sometimes the depths of one’s subconscious are a small but entertaining tidal pool.

 

Grace has no race

Man, I read some PAINFUL SHIT  yesterday.  But this is what fell out.

 

Unitarians have no issue with working through privilege and fighting discrimination. That is one of the functions of religion, to identify bias in ways that open the heart and warm the soul and loosen the fists.  It’s part of our congregational covenant.

â–ª The inherent worth and dignity of every person;

  • Justice, equity, and compassion in human relations;

 

Race is not specifically mentioned in our principles.  I can understand why that is; my personal bias is that a specific mention of race when we’re all about the oneness of humanity is well, unseemly.

 

But… We haven’t had the internal conversation on race. I believe our ideas and words on the subject are hampered by fears of giving offense, by guilt, by ignorance, by denial and by a vast interlinked network of laws and customs, tv news and badly taught history which result in the elevation of white people over people of colour.

 

It’s time we got over that.

 

One of the things I’ve noted, and which yet again was pointed out to me by a young FN activist in November of 2013, is that it is not the responsibility of those discriminated against to plead their case as and when asked – or, indeed, ever.  If you’re an ally, the thinking goes, you will put down the Chardonnay and google “Residential schools” or “Highway of Tears” or “Poll Tax” or “Komagata Maru”.  You’ll educate yourself.  And if you’ve got a boatload of guilt or want to interrupt at public meetings, please stay home, you’re tiresome and a continual reminder that many more white people want to have wings than earn them.

 

Having accepted after all this time that it is my responsibility to look at the problem and develop my own curriculum, this is how I see the process.  We’re talking years, but there’s no reason we can’t start.

 

Step one. Sorting.  Get over how we don’t know how racist we are.  Staying home and reading about it on the internet is not helpful.  We must share our painful, quirky, horrific, wrackingly tragic, bewildering, magical and intimately personal stories about race in the comforting bosom of our church siblings before we talk about it in public.  It is by story that we will be set free.  It is through story that we will find both the will and the vocabulary to accept our complicity and move on together, with grace and forgiveness stumbling forward with us.

 

Step two. Reconnecting with the flow of life.  Develop a way of talking about race and racial discrimination which removes inflammatory language (by listening to what people of colour have to say on the subject and humbly paying heed), doesn’t play into old guilty habits (“well we’ve done talking about race now”), models the best possible behaviour church-wide for our children and visitors (so yes, special attention given to greeters and those people in the congregation who have the ability to talk to anyone and RE), and helps distinguish us from other liberal religious organizations.  We’ve been a stagnant pond, it’s time to be a tranquil stream.

 

Step three. Clean up time.  ACCEPT that we will likely never be racially reflective of the areas we live in, STOP being ashamed about it, WORK to eradicate discrimination the way humans everywhere always have.  Build networks with people you personally like, who value life and freedom and beauty and nature and art as you do, to find whatever role to play against racial discrimination you have the strength to fulfill.  They don’t have to be in the church, and in fact one of the marks of a healthy Unitarian congregation is how many different social justice sandboxes are being played in at once.

 

Step four. Sing the message.  Encourage those UUs who can to self identify as people who have quit taking racial privilege and discriminatory bias as part of the natural order of things. Teach consistent and tested ways of knowing the why and when to speak up, what to say, and how to say it with humility and temperance.  If we have a haven on Sunday where we can bring our stories of confronting structures of evil, it will be much easier for us to shift out of our guilty little comfort zones.

 

Step five. Carry the flame.  Find ways to set congregational goals regarding eradicating racial bias, incorporate them into church life, celebrate milestones.  Continue to hold workshops and write curriculum on racism and equality, make art and media about it, blog and write and link on facebook and other social media platforms, build links to faith communities not just for interfaith kumbayas but for true stories about institutional racism and how we can be of practical help.  Put refresher courses on the church five year plan.  Note to self:  leave the presence of the word kumbayas but take it out of the final version because it refers to a spiritual song wrested from the Gullah folkways. Of course when I heard it in my childhood it was the Weavers singing it.  And I have to go away and think about that for a while.  Anyhoo…

In sum:  Racial bias must be defined and that definition broadly accepted, its eradication valued, encouraged and honoured, and participation in self-reflection, liturgy and civil engagement to end racial bias must be considered a foundational aspect of UU life. Grace has no race.

Well that was odd

As soon as I finished the last post, this fell out.  Right after.

 

And Katrina knows about the barrel of clothes

And the man who was stolen for the hell-bound train

And the little girl who died, and the man who broke my nose

On a night when I had to wear my paint in the rain

Leave me be!  your tracts all belong in my past

And I’ll live my own life now, and make my own way

And if it seems to you that I live without a care

I’m waiting for the worst — it’s always waiting over there

I’ll light a cigarette and stand on my very own verandah

I’ll listen for the train, and I’ll think about him then.

I’ll think about him then.

 

That’s the missing bridge for Bootlegging Mary!!! I’ve been waiting freaking ages for that to happen, and it finally did!!!  It’s still rough, but I love it when it all comes out like that.  I am sure I’ll have to edit the hell out of it for singability.

Projects!

Right now I am using Scrivener to assemble a book of all the small small things I’ve written over the years, snippets of this and that, some ranty, some funny, some just plain weird.  The project is already almost 20K long, so I am thrilled.  And I haven’t even started to draw in from the paper pile – this is all stuff from my blog, more or less.

I spent so much time complaining about Katie, I think with the cafe I got what I deserved.   That plus some other sincerely unpleasant things are what I learned.

However, I should really get going on the other two projects (Neil Gaiman “Make Good Art”), so I am going to put on a restorative cup of tea and run some laundry and get going on the other projects.