I'm not blogging....but I have pictures!

Listen, people, I'm sorry that you keep checking this blog and finding little or nothing new. It seems I'm really not much for this blogging business - for one thing, it's kinda time consuming, and time is something I'm shorter on lately than usual. I'm the world's slowest writer, I swear. For another thing, I don't think I ever managed to reach a suitable balance between personal and public on this blog. It's like, I want to talk about deep and important stuff, and what's happening in my life....but I don't want to post anything *too* personal, since, uh, it's public, and I don't want to post anything about work, because I'm trying to keep my work identity and my blogosphere identity separate. But, once you eliminate the professional and the most interesting parts of personal, what's left?? Well, not much, apparently - so I'm officially giving up!
I will continue to post pictures and travel writing (if and when I ever travel in the future) as a way of getting them out to all the friends and loved ones who'd like to see them, but I think for the time being, I'm done with straight up blogging for its own sake. 'Twas an interesting experiment - thank you all for reading. :)

The latest pictures are about a month old, from my vacation in CA to attend Amy & Chris' wedding. I left most of the picture taking at wedding related events to other people, but there are a few random photos in here worth seeing. :)

Enjoy!

Amy & Chris, SF, etc

Also, some photos from the training I was at in GA recently. These are by a guy named Mark who's in the training with me. :)

Those are my feet, and that is Spirit the dog.

Me at a meal with the crew.

THAT is a BABY SQUIRREL!!

Fire, yeeeeah. We played a lot of Mafia. :)

Did your brain just flip over inside your head?

Sorry for the long silence, readers! I've been a tad distracted. All the loooong HOT days have the garden looking rather wild and unkempt, so it's been less photo ready than usual. But, we've got a "grown up day at the garden" tomorrow, during which we hope to knock out a bunch of weeding, clearing, etc etc and get things in tip top shape for the fall garden. There will most definitely be pictures, so stay tuned.

In other news:

* I am doing this intensive leadership training program that is requiring me to make a 5-year "personal leadership plan" for myself. I've only just begun to work on it, but already it's got me in super high-gear scheming mode, making up fabulous projects for myself, many of them having to do with gardening! My brain is regularly flipping over inside my head. It is awesome. I am also having a good time asking other people if and how they plan for their futures, and what their priorities are. When your friends are as exceptional and interesting as mine are, you hear a lot of amazing stuff. I think that structured thinking about goals and the future comes much more naturally to some than to others, ahem, like me, who intended to be working on that plan right now. Oops! In general, I tend to just sorta wait for inspiration to strike, and then ride the wave as far as it will take me. While inspiration (and the flexibility and sense of adventure required to follow it) are important to me, I also think I may occasionally be jipping myself because I don't always have a longer-range plan, or a clear sense of the bigger picture of what direction I want to be moving in. Making this plan is very good for me, and very well timed!

* I am going on vacation to CA for the next two weeks to be part of Superzygote's wedding! Aside from the actual wedding-related activites, I have no plan for the two weeks I will spend there.....I may just wander aimlessly in San Francisco for days on end, eating King of Thai and burritos, walking along Ocean Beach, slurping pearl tea, taking pictures and flipping my brain over in my head some more. :::shrug::: I reckon it's time to call around and make some plans with some people. :)

* The quest for the perfect song to sing in the ceremony was arduous but fun (asking friends about their favorite love songs has led me to hear a lot of fabulous music over the past couple months!), and led me eventually to choose Lodestar by Sarah Harmer. It has a beautiful, kind of maritime feel....in the pace and melody of the song, you can hear a boat rocking, the gentle splash of the water, the twinkle of the stars, the peaceful darkness....and then it builds a little towards the end to express just how beautiful it all is, and how beautifully like the intense, kind of elemental connection the person singing feels to the other person on this little boat ride o' love with her, tee hee. I hope it goes over well. :)

That's all for now! Thanks for reading!

Coming 'round the bend....

Ah, I'm coming 'round the bend in that funky little side track I've been on the past month or so, and it feels really nice. It's hard not to feel kinda nice on a day like today - it's cloudy and breezy and mild, the world is lushly green and still dripping from yesterday's thunderstorms, and the air has a quality that it occasionally gets in Raleigh, it's refracting light in just such a way.....it sparkles just a little when the sun comes out, and everything looks as though it has just a bit of a sheen. Not quite a glow, it's less like light and more like energy. Like auras. It's very animate, though it is air and trees and clouds. It's really beautiful. Makes me think of....

The Peace of Wild Things
by Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty in the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Ah.
Doesn't that just open something up inside you and make you want to sigh with relief?

This funk I've been in, it's got me thinking about funks and how they come and how they (hopefully) get gone. It's so easy to get ourselves stuck in a funk, easy as a habit. But the getting unstuck, that takes some time and effort and faith and hope. Hard. I think that one of the most important things that we can learn to do in life is to help ourselves out of a funk, to have a forward orientation and put one foot in front of the other and climb up out of a stuck place, get back up someplace high enough to see what's on the horizon. We need help, we all do, but ultimately, we have to do the climbing ourselves.

So here's to getting un-stuck, to the hope and faith in ourselves and the ones we love and the world that helps us get through the stuck times, and to all the good teachers who've helped me get un-stuck from previous funks. I'm really proud to say that I learned something. :)

UPDATE: Relatively recent garden pictures from 5/14! I think the way this slide show thingy works, is if you click on a picture, it'll take you to the site where all the pictures are posted. Check out the pumpkin jungle, I think that's my favorite picture!

Horoscope and gratuitous dog pictures

Rob Brezsny prognosticates for Sagittari this week:

Poet Kay Ryan told the Christian Science Monitor that her poems often begin "the way an oyster does, with an aggravation." Her ultimate intention, however, is to liberate her readers. "I like to think of all good poetry as providing more oxygen into the atmosphere; it just makes it easier to breathe." I believe this progression from aggravation to liberation is a strategy you could profitably pursue in the coming days, Sagittarius. If you agree to absorb what's bugging you, you'll ultimately create an expansive new swath of breathing room for yourself and everyone around you.

Hmm, well, which thing that is bugging me should I be absorbing and liberating the world from? Lord knows there's plenty. Some things very superficial. Others run much deeper, and make me feel like a petty asshole for being annoyed at small things. I mean, come on. Spring is a season of birth and also death, oddly. I have been, am, overwhelmed.

In completely unrelated news - another Sagittarius I hang out with is an established poster dog for Independent Animal Rescue. Every six months or so, I'll run into a picture of her somewhere out in public and think, "what a cute dog! Oh wait....that's my dog." So here are some glamour shots of the model herself. I particularly like the picture of the back of her head. It's rather funny looking.

Indiana Glamour Shots

More pictures of the garden coming soon, so stay tuned.

Garden time!

It's almost garden time!

We haven't even dug anything up yet at the Boys' Club garden site, but it's already off to a great start - I have a fantastic crew of 7th and 8th graders working with me who are enthusiastic ("ooh, can we grow spinach?!" I almost cried!) and bring a wealth of previous gardening experience to the table (several have gardened with their mothers, grandmothers, and aunties in the past!). Meeting them was a huge highlight of my week....nutty as they are, I really love teenagers, and I've missed working with them. I've also got a great grown-up crew for this garden project of Boys' Club staff and volunteers that I'm really looking forward to working with.

As if that weren't enough good news, we're now up to $600 in donated gift cards and certificates for this garden project from three local Home Depot stores. As much as I hate using my blog to give props to the second largest retailer in the USA behind Sprawl-Mart, promulgator of big box capitalism, crusher of downtowns and small businesses, and purveyor of voluminous pesticides, among many other environmentally unfriendly products....damn, is it cool to have $600 to use for this garden. Home Depot will also be sending a crew of their "associates" out for a big work-day photo op. Iiiiiinteresting. I've only got 10 kids, and a few local volunteers - a crew of 30 Home Depot folks could quickly overwhelm us. I'm thinking of having them work on other landscaping and fix-it projects at the Boys' Club that day in addition to the garden...we'll see what the Boys' Club is needing.

Anyway, after the crazy week I'm about to have at work, I plan to get right out to the garden and start working! Check back here in the coming weeks and months for pictures, stories, recipes and other learnings from the Boys' Club garden.

And, if you have any tips for me on gardening in NC (last time I had my own garden it was in NY state!) and/or gardening with 12 year olds - favorite books, plants, ideas, sources for great organic fertilizers, etc etc - I'd be thrilled to have them, so please feel free to leave them here.
Thank you!

Kings Barcade of My Heart

Last week, I performed on the stage at Kings' Barcade in Raleigh twice. It was a great week. :) I was in Raleigh's second annual community production of the Vagina Monologues, which appeared at Kings on Saturday the 10th along with the fantastic band The Ex-Members and the delicious Athens Boys Choir. Freakin' awesome. (Photo at right: Schmitty does a fabulous Jewish spinster pining for Burt Reynolds. Looking on are Amy, Robyn, me, and Nicole. Taken by AbbyLadyBug.) Then, I got to perform in the 8th annual Love Hangover on Thursday the 15th, something I've dreamed of doing since I first saw the Love Hangover with Michelle two years ago. (Thanks to Google, I just learned that Love Hangover was actually a Diana Ross song. Sweet!) To make matters even sweeter, I shared the bill that night with two of the Tres Chicas, Caitlin Cary and Lynn Blakely, along with Scott Phillps (Goner), Peter Holsapple (The dB's), not to mention my actual duet partner, Roger Gupton (Hotel Lights). He sure does play purty. So, you can see why my little self (of various informal, unsigned, and unpaid projects) was feeling quite honored and lucky to be there. (Photo below: Roger and I performing in The Love Hangover. Taken by AbbyLadyBug.)

Kings Barcade is a pretty incredible place. Recently, the owners of Kings' building agreed to sell the property to the city so that it can be bulldozed to make way for a new parking deck. Kings' has to be out by early April. It's soon! Ugh. Kings is looking for a new home, and I hope they find one, because they're a really important institution in Raleigh. They are one of those easy going places where everyone knows your name - probably once the standard for Raleigh, it's starting to feel rare. They have several annual events that are simply not to be missed - Barrister's Ball, The Great Cover Up, The Love Hangover, New Year's Eve. They are that venue where you hear the bands that change your life for the first time, because they're just the right in between size to draw bands who are dazzlingly talented, but still a bit underground, just on the cusp of going big time. I heard Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings for the first time by accident one Sunday night at Kings - great fucking surprise! I heard The Avett Brothers for the first time there, Dexter Romweber, The Corey Parker Band (with Maceo Parker!), Melvin Sparks (Melvin Sparks is THE BOMB), Des Ark....Logical Sound Discovery! Holy cow. And I haven't even lived here that long!

Thank you, Kings! May you find a fantastic new space, and soon.


Photo above of Kings' Barcade taken 2/15/07 at the Love Hangover by AbbyLadyBug.

Five Things

I've been tagged by f. pea to share five things y'all don't know about me. Now, as ms. pea also reflected, this is hard to do - I have no idea who my readers are, though I know two of you are my parents, who DO know pretty much all the bizillie trivia there is to know. I'll try and put one thing in here that even my parents don't know, but for the most part, this is for my non-family. :)

I was an art room freak. In high school, I took art classes every single semester, mostly on calligraphy and pastels. Our school's art room was connected to the yearbook office, to an outside courtyard, and also to a front room with heavily graffiti-ed cabinets and cubbies, and stained glass over the door to the main hallway. It was beautiful, and also meant no one could see what was going on in there. For all these reasons, it was primo hang out space for me and all my little druggie, nerdy, queer, artist, raver buddies before school in the morning, at lunch time, during any extended breaks from class during the day, and after school. After freshman year, I never ate lunch in the cafeteria again, not once. I never used my school-issued lockers again - all my things lived in the art room. Kids who didn't run with our freaky little crowd and who didn't take art classes thought there was something very unholy going on in that room. They'd tip toe in to get something from the art teacher, looking around in fear and fascination, as though they were expecting to find us in the midst of orgies, devil worship or drug abuse. In truth, it was (mostly) much more innocent than all that, and I am very proud of the little community we had in there....it was one of the only places you could be in the whole school and not feel like you were being judged. Not because everyone was just the same, far from it, just that the nerds and druggies and artists and queers all accepted each other and coexisted peacefully, even lovingly, in a way that the rest of the school didn't seem to be capable of doing. I think part of this magic actually came from the art teacher, Ms. D. She was wonderful, her space was chaotic and beautiful, celebratory of talent and dreams and high ideals and individuality - and also loving and warm and very very tolerant. Thank you, Ms. D. Some of the most brilliant and talented people I've ever known found refuge in your art room - it was a very special place.

I was a Jehovah's Witness for a few months in the 1st grade. My Mom was something of a seeker. We went to Jehovah's Witness church with her for a while. It was actually one of the only times in my young life that I can remember either of my parents socializing with African Americans.
Addendum: I was a founding member of the Pagan Youth Chat Group on AOL, circa 1995. We were both seekers.

I am named after a boy. His name was Billy Hines, named after his father (Uncle Billy Hines), and he was my Mom's favorite cousin. The only real story I remember about him is that he and my Mom would sit in their grandmother's apricot tree together (this was in CA) and stuff themselves silly. He passed away from Leukemia at the age of 13....I think he was very close in age to my mother, which would have made him 54ish now. I love my name, though I was very glad to survive 13.

I was born with extra fingers and toes. Four extras all together, one on each hand or foot, and all in the same place, next in line after the pinky finger or toe. They were removed when I was a little baby - at right, you see some of the last remaining evidence I ever had them at all. Count dem fingers, I dare ya! Most people actually already know this about me, but it's one of my favorite trivia items to share with people and freak them out, so why not? It's a genetic trait inherited from my Dad called polydactyly, (info here and here) though the extras I had didn't look anything like those pictures, or the ones I saw in the genetics chapter of my AP Bio textbook. I swear I am not Amish! Mine were shaped just like normal toes and fingers, but I don't think they had the support infrastructure in my hand or foot that a normal digit has- like those long bones in the palm of your hand that connect each of your fingers to your wrist? I don't think my extras had those, so they may not have ever been truly functional fingers and toes. Check out this cool list of famous people who also had or have extra digits! 1 in 500 - that may be less than are born with ambiguous genitalia, depending on which study you read! Huh!

I committed fraud in college. Well, kind of fraud. Student groups on campus could earn money for their activities by working for a particular fundraising arm of the university. Each group could do up to a certain quota of work hours per quarter, and receive pay for those hours. My fraud scheme involved one co-conspirator - the two of us were officers in a real student group that was working the maximum number of hours, and still coming up short on money, and needing a way to get more. So we made up a new student group, got it officially recognized by the university, then signed up for work hours for that group, too. We didn't feel all that guilty about it at the time, because our real group members were really doing all the extra work to earn that extra money....it's not like we were stealing it! (As an indication of how guiltless we were, we even got a picture taken for that year's yearbook, HAH, I've still never seen the picture, but I hear it is a totally corny close up shot of just the two of us, as though the rest of our phantom student group mysteriously had not been able to make it out for the photo.) But I do feel a little guilty - I used my position of authority in the real student group to mislead other members into signing a form saying they were in the fake student group. They didn't even know that they were helping us commit fraud! Doing more work to get a couple more Gs out of your university is one thing, but lying to your friends is another, even if it is so they can have more money. Yikes!
Creative, though, wouldn't you say?

Dear readers Amy and Miranda, tag, you are it! Enjoy, loves.

New Year's Resolutions

The theme this year is cutting the mental and emotional fat, and better focusing my time and energy on things that accomplish a greater good and/or make me feel happy and healthy.

Now, I feel I must make an important disclaimer before I continue. I am a strong believer in leaving space in one's life for mental and emotional frivolity (a.k.a. laziness), and also in leaving room for chance, fate, spontaneity, magic, and other unplannables.....because I think these things are vital to human sanity. Children need adequate time in each day to play if they are to grow into happy, healthy and balanced adults, and I don't think grown-ups are really all that different. We need some time for pointless-but-fun stuff to keep us balanced and human, and we need to resist the temptation to plan any sort of creativity or destiny right out of our lives, or else we risk becoming desperate, substance-addicted freakazoids. So in case you were worried all this talk of fat-cutting and time-focusing meant I was planning an over-committed, caffeine-addicted, soul-sucking 2007....rest assured, I will continue to enjoy my fat and folly. My New Year's Resolutions are just about giving them a trim to make room for some other good stuff....

* Drink Less - Drink Better.
Beer and I got closer than ever in 2006. I visited Prague this summer, and in only three short days I sampled not just one, but two of the best beers I have ever tasted. Prague was the first stop on a six-city tour of Eastern Europe, and in each I wandered from bar to bar, yearning for just a hint of the magnificence of the Prague favorites, and finding none. Back in the US, I scoured the beer fridges at Peace Street Market and spent valuable time and resources trying new beers. While this was fun, the quest didn't turn up many worthwhile brews, contributed relatively little to my overall productivity and happiness, and has bloomed into a downright habit of near-daily beer consumption. I'm still a lightweight, and the daily intake probably averages somewhere around two beers. It's far from a life threatening addiction. But still, it's time and money better spent elsewhere. Like on GOOD beer, for starters. I resolve to snip PBR and other craptastic beers from my vocabulary altogether in 2007. I resolve to drink only beer that tastes good, to drink it on no more than 3 days per week, and to drink no more than 2 beers on any particular day.

* Date Less - Date Better.
I am none too thrilled with the amount of time I spent in 2006 stressing about men. And to what end, pray tell? Well, ok, ok, I am a romantic and I do believe love is a very worthwhile thing to invest your energy in, and no experience is ever pointless if you learn from it, which I really try to do, so I guess those are "ends" if "means" and "ends" are the way to look at these things, which they aren't....but I'm not really talking about the love part or the learning part, I'm talking about the stress. Dating in '06 amounted to a good deal of emotional stress for me, albeit less than some other years in recent memory. And, as in years past, I inflicted this embarrassing state of affairs on innocent bystanders like my roommate and assorted friends and family. These people genuinely want to know what's up with me and how I'm feeling, but doubtless cringe when I broach the subject of my love life, for only those outside the particular emotional maelstrom I am in can see how dumb it is. People, thank you for your patience and support, and I am sorry. I resolve to spend less time and emotional energy on stupid dating in 2007. The quiet period I'm in at present feels pretty great, and I hope it lasts a good long while, because I am GREAT at being single, I LOVE having man friends who aren't lovers, and I need the mental energy for other things right now. I am NOT taking a vow of celibacy for '07, but I am resolving to date less and date better: to be more selective, to date for reasons that I am completely proud of or not at all, and, perhaps most importantly of all, not to obsess about whoever it is that I am dating or not dating at the moment.

HAH, you say, not obsess? GOOD LUCK!

I'm serious though. Mind over matter, er, mind over hormones. Grrr.

Whew, those were my big "shall not" resolutions - how about the "shalls" ?

* Grow new projects with persistence and love.
The end of 2006 brought beginnings to several magnificent new projects that I resolve to invest adequate time, energy and love into in 2007 to make them great. The growing metaphor is not accidental here - I've signed on to head up the garden club project at the Raleigh Boys Club in 2007. I am SO excited to have a place to make a garden AND a bunch of kids to work with on it, and also somewhat daunted by all that must be done to get the garden up and running....and with no money! Whoopee! This will be fun. I truly love stuff like this. I am also blessed with not just one, but two new possibilities for musical collaboration in 2007, though Memphisto has fizzled. They're really just beginning, but both have great potential, and a great creative streak that Memphisto did not often have, so this is rather interesting and exciting!

* Spend more time outside.
I do a pretty good job of this, but I could always do better, and I know my dog would appreciate it if I did. So, I resolve to play outside more. The garden club should help with this, but beyond that, I resolve to get back into the habit of hiking every weekend, or at least taking a good long walk.

* Save money.
Ooh, fiscal responsibility is a tough one, but I now have my eyes on a particularly awesome prize, and I think it will provide just the motivation I need to spend the year saving up. And the prize is....drum roll please....a house! I resolve to save up my money in 2007 to buy a humble Raleigh home. I love Raleigh, I have no particular plans to leave anytime soon, and there are some pretty great loan programs for first time home buyers who make as little money as I do. So, carpe poverty! Sure, I'm still paying off student loans and now have payments to make on Rhonda too, but I have pretty great credit considering. Why keep giving the landlord money to pay off his mortgage when I could use it to pay off a mortgage of my very own?? :)

* Do Yoga.
I keep on saying it, and I keep on not doing it, but I know that new yoga studios are opening soon in Raleigh, and so I resolve to find a studio and a teacher I can get in to, and to do yoga at least once a week.

So them's the resolutions. I feel pretty good about them. I would welcome your help with any or all of them...like, been looking for a yoga buddy? Got an extra wheelbarrow or heap of compost that you don't have any particular use for? Want to go for a hike and not sure who to call? I'm your girl!! Or, if you see me ordering PBR, or getting sucked in to a stupid emotional maelstrom, I invite you, no, beg you to help me snap the f$#& out of it and stick to my guns. Many, many thanks for your support!

Are you all making any resolutions that you care to share? Is there anything I can do to help you have a more wonderful 2007? Please tell me about it!

Thank you, all, and here's to a delicious and delightful 2007!

My life & used car salespeople - a three week odyssey

I've spent an inordinate amount of time in the past 3 - 4 weeks doing car stuff. Insurance, rental, shopping, test driving, researching, haggling, loan applications, at the mechanic, getting a ride to the mechanic, driving on rural highways, driving (or rather waiting) in State Fair traffic, loading the car, unloading the car, and finally buying a freakin' car. For someone who lives exactly 1.2 miles from work and prefers to spend the sunny cool days of early and mid fall on foot or bike, this has been a lot of car time, and while it hasn't been entirely unpleasant, it has been exhausting and unusual.

I have learned a great deal during the course of this odyssey, not only about cars, but about the human psyche at its most raw and gendered. On and off the used car lots, everything lately seems to me to be about the tension between genuine human connection and salesmanship, between strong protective maleness and aggressive sleazy maleness, and between true valuable beauty and showy hollow beauty. It's following me into bars, to work functions, even to my volunteer gig as a writing tutor. Suddenly, everyone's a salesman! Pretty weird, and definitely not all bad.

So, when it comes to a young woman buying a car, the men in her midst seem to fall into several categories:

The first, perhaps obviously, is the Dad-guys. Dad-guys are protective and trustworthy. Whether or not they are actually experts in car stuff, they have more expertise than I do, and they let me know that, as respectfully as they can. :) Now, the Dad-guys in my car buying odyssey included my own actual Dad, as well as another SuperDad I brought with me car shopping one day for back up, and the salesman I ultimately bought the car from. Dad-guys one and two were of course very genuine and pretty helpful (and I thank them!!), while Dad-guy three said slippery things to me like, "Now, you know I have a daughter, and I wouldn't let you leave here with that car if I thought you were getting ripped off. I really think you're getting a very good price." Notice how suddenly this is not a two-way interaction between him, the salesman, and me, the buyer....he's made it into a three way interaction between him, the trustworthy Dad-guy who has my best interest at heart, me, the smart daughter, and some mysterious car selling third party that he is protecting me from? Interesting sales ploy, eh?! Hah! It's smart though, and I bet it works. My Dad probably doesn't know more about cars than the average industrious gent, but he is inextricably bound up with cars in many of my childhood memories. My Dad has been on more road trips with me to more places than any other living creature on the face of the planet, by a factor of five at least. We've been to FL and back several times, cross country to CA twice, and to and from half the state parks, campgrounds and concert venues in the Northeastern United States. (Not to mention our road trips in China, though technically neither of us was driving, so I'm not sure if that counts...) I remember very well driving with my Dad from FL to NY when I was about 4 years old in the new yellow 1984 Volvo station wagon he drove for the next 20 years. He had a CB radio that he hooked up, and we talked to truck drivers and to the receptionist at the motel we were headed for. "Breaker breaker, this is Mr. Yellow, do you copy?" I've been on the phone with my Dad during every major and semi-major car situation I've ever encountered - break downs, repairs, stranded-on-the-highway situations. My Dad even taught me to drive. Of course, I didn't pass the first road test I took, but he's still the primary car guy in my life, and so Mr. Salesguy picked the right sociocultural associations to make. Slick!

Then, the second type of man in my car-buying life: the Cousin-guy, which I have dubbed Cousin-guy because this class of gents reminded me of my cousin Josh, who helped me when I was buying Pablo. They're much younger than the Dad-guys, but older than me and far more knowledgeable than I am about cars. They're very helpful to have around and mean well, but they can take the whole thing a little too seriously and are prone to getting a little pissed at me if I don't follow their advice to the letter. Veddy interesting.

The third group is the Uncle-guys, whom I have dubbed Uncle-guys because they remind me of my Uncle Nick of Hyannis Foreign Auto - Cape Cod, MA. My mechanic in Raleigh, Harry, is DEFINITELY an Uncle-guy, and not just because he's from Boston and sounds like the Car Talk guys. ;) Uncle guys are brief and to the point, extremely helpful in just the ways you need them to be, they watch out for you, but they never ever imply that you're an idiot. Esotic was mostly an Uncle-guy during the Rhonda mission, too.

The last type is the Desperate-type, characterized by flipping between one of the above types and something much less subtle. The phrases "We can work something out for you on this number," and then "What will it take?!?!" are characteristic. If you don't run screaming, you can actually get a very good deal out of these guys by telling them exactly what it will take. In the case of the guys who sold me Rhonda, I actually used a little desperation-stoking strategy I will from now on call the "talking to Mom" strategy - this particular salesman was helpless against it. It involved sitting in his office with his door closed on the phone with my mother for about 30 minutes. She checked the car price on Blue Book for me, which was helpful, but mostly it made him very nervous, made him think I was about to leave without the car. When I came out, he was ready to take just about any price I offered. Sweet!

Anyway, it was a highly interesting journey through paperwork and maleness, with lots of interesting sociocultural stuff to ponder under the surface of it. Thanks for reading folks - I'll post pictures of Rhonda soon!

Poor Pablo

Poor Pablo!

Pablo is my 1997 VW Golf. Pablo and I have been together three and a half or four years now. A little over an hour ago, he was parked out front of my house, minding his own business, and a woman in a Mitsubishi rear-ended him. That's right, hit my car, while it was parked, and hit it hard, too. Pushed it forward at least a car length and up on to the curb. Screwed up the back left side of the car so bad, the two driver side doors won't close completely, and metal from the body is now touching the back left tire, rendering the vehichle un-drive-able.

I was on the couch diddling around on this here computer when I heard the CRACK outside and thought, shit, someone got into an accident! Oh wait, shit, my car's parked out there....and lo and behold, it was my poor unassuming Pablo. Shit, shit.

I'm lucky, really. The woman stopped, got out, spoke with the police when I called them, apologized, fretted, etc. She was sweet. Freaking out, but sweet and kind of helpless, it made me feel really bad for her. It appears she is insured, which is good. I've just spent the past hour on the phone with my insurance company and then hers....it's a big damn hassle, and inconvenient and all the rest, but it'll certainly be OK.

I've been feeling antsy and unsettled lately about what I am suddenly acutely aware is relatively stupid stuff. Little stuff, if you will. I'm getting over a case of the sniffles and they've made me grouchy and a bit harried as I try to make up the time I lost at work while I was sick. I have wee fits of envy as people around me are doing really enviable things like buying their first homes, falling in love, and/or having babies, and related fits of insecurity about my own comparatively slow pace of maturation in all those departments. I had the gall to bitch to a 33-year-old over the phone today that I'm going to be 27 in a few months, and gosh aren't I getting old. Wah wah. I miss my ex horribly, and I've almost talked myself into calling him a few times lately, but I know I shouldn't and it'd be a stupid and selfish thing to do right now and so I don't and it just makes me feel icky. Wah wah, woe is me.

So I've been angsty over these minor stupid dramas, but you know what? Life could be a lot more dramatic. I could be uninsured, or she could be. I could have been in the car. It could have been me and Dave and Indy driving around earlier this evening and getting hit. She could have been hurt. She was just talking on her cell phone, the driver who hit my car tonight, just calling her boyfriend to tell him she was on her way home for dinner. That simple. Just a split second. Freaky!

It underscores for me something that I know I should already know - all of life's little stupid things aren't worth sweating over if they keep you from living the rest of your life. I know, I know. I think I do a better job at that at some times than at others.

Anyway, it's too dark to photograph outside now, but I'll post pictures of my poor damaged Pablo soon. Wish me luck.

Break from self!

I journal incessantly when I travel.

It's partly the traveler's impulse to document the journey, so I won't forget any of the good stories, and how completely out of my everyday world I got. (....we rode in a train compartment through rolling green Polish countryside with the hot wind blowing us around, accompanied only by an elderly man with crazy white hair and beard [made much crazier by the wind-blown effect, no doubt] and an ENORMOUS white shepherd dog, easily 200 lbs or more, that took up the entire floor of the compartment and left 5 inch-long white hairs on our pants everytime he walked by. They were on their way to a dog show in Krakow, having started in Vienna. On the train. In the wind. So simple, really, yet just a few hairs away from being anything that would ever happen at home. Don't even have to get in to any of the 2-AM-maze-like-train-station-in-cyrillic-where-are-we stuff.)

There's also some touch of an artist's vanity in there, or a student's part study, part show off - like someday, someone will read this and be very impressed by my powers of observation, the depth of my genuis insights on culture and history and politics and art, and the gritty eloquence of my writing! Arrr! Of course, that will only be if they can read the handwriting, which is becoming less and less likely the older I get. I was once an amateur calligrapher!! :::sigh:::

And, I can't deny that journalling is also just a way to constructively (and inexpensively) use the looooong stretches of time spent on trains or waiting on lines that would otherwise be spent sleeping, stressed out, spending money, bored, or some combination thereof.

But more and more, I think I use journal time when I'm traveling to observe myself, which is interesting, and leads to important insights I'm sure, but also gets very exhausting. How do I feel? What am I thinking about? What am I afraid of? What do I miss? What's hard? What's fun? It's part of the whole traveler-as-observer thing - I observe new places and people, I observe the art and the architecture and the landscape and the food, and while I'm at it, I observe myself, much more closely and in much greater detail than usual, and I start to get sick of myself. Bleh.

So, this is a long winded explanation for why it's been a solid month+ since I put keypad to blog (or pen to journal) and wrote anything. I've been on a bit of a hiatus from the self-analysis that makes up a good portion of my journal and blog entries, taking a little break from me and seeing what's new with everyone else. It's been lovely!

I do love writing, and though the break has been nice, I don't think it's ever good to just up and ignore my internal life like that for very long! It's funny, how not writing really IS like I've ignored what's going on in there - ah, the introvert's brain is a strange, strange place indeed. So anyway, I'm ready to come back now!

Getting out of Lviv

Suffice it to say that getting out of Lviv, Ukraine was as hard - if not harder - than getting in. That story, were I to tell it here, would involve a three different windows at a ticket office in town, a travel agency, a tourist information center, a long smelly tram ride, several ticket windows at the train station itself, one English-speaking Ukrainian, 2 Peace Corps Volunteers, almost an entire day, and some really antiquated looking gizmos for stamping out train tickets.

I am glad we went there, and awfully glad we made it out, and would not recommend that anyone else attempt it without learning Ukrainian first. Aye!

The road to Lviv...

I _think_ that my great-grandfather Joseph Karel (born Yael Karditsky, or something like that) was born in what is now Lviv, Ukraine. In the sixth grade, Miss Mooney had us do some sort of international family heritage project - for my project, I called my Grandpa Milt to ask about his family. Grandpa Milt responded by making a cassette tape for me of a story about his father, Joe. Of course, like the careless sixth grader I was, I promptly lost the tape once the school project was over. Oh, what I would give to have that tape. Grandpa Milt died a couple years ago at the end of a long battle with a Alzheimer's-like brain disorder, and I am missing that tangible memory of his voice and his speech and what he thought was important about his father's life. It's such a shame.

Anyway, the reason I bring it up, is that I _think_ Grandpa Milt said on that tape that his father, Great Grandpa Joe, was born in a town called Lubitz, Poland. Now, Poland's borders changed a lot during the 19th and 20th centuries becaues of aggression from its neighbors - the Prussians, the Russians, the Austrians, and later the Germans, all claimed pieces of what is now Poland at various times. This Lubitz place doesn't appear on any map, but my theory is that Lviv (a.k.a. Lvov) was part of Poland at the time that my great grandfather would have been born (late 19th century), and that it was called Lubitz in Polish or Yiddish or some other language that Joe Karel's family would have spoken. What do you all think? Am I making this up, or does that sound like it could be true?

Now, getting to this place was a royal pain in the you-know-what. Let's start with trying to get a hotel room in this town. We were in Krakow, lovely veggie-friendly Krakow, with hostels galore, and train tickets to Lviv in our pockets. Lviv doesn't have hostels, really, it has a few hotels, and reputedly there are also babushkas hawking sketchy "private rooms" somewhere, but we've yet to see any such hawkers. So, we reconcile ourselves to staying in relatively posh accommodations in Lviv and start dialing hotel numbers. Wait, what's the international code for the Ukraine? Ok. How about the city code? Yeah, okay, so how many calls have we already made just trying to figure that out? Don't even want to talk about it.

Turns out the international phone in our hostel lobby actually stunk - a couple times, we got through to real live people in Lviv, only to find the line static-y and get disconnected. In the lobby of a very shwanky hotel near the Wawel Castle which we were definitely not guests at, we burned through two phone cards and learned that one hotel was full, and one only had Ukrainian or German speakers at its reception desk. We finally succeeded in making a reservation at a way over-priced option, but hey, a bed is a bed. Who knew Lviv was such a popular destination??

We breathed a sigh of relief. It'll all be OK. But then came the train....oh, the train.

First of all, the train was delayed 90 minutes.

90 minutes later, we get back to find it on platform 2. Great. We wait at platform 2, and wait and wait and wait.

Upon hearing an announcement entirely in Polish, everyone else waiting at the platform gets up and runs with their bags to someplace, Heather and I know not. Heather politely asks a Polish girl in English, "where are you going?"
She looked annoyed and said "one." OK. We go to platform one. No one is there but us. Hmmm. Billie runs out to the main train station to check the monitor, and finds that the train is in fact at platform 3, and that it is indeed very late. But how late? What exactly did that monitor say about the lateness? Pondering this on the walk back to meet Heather, Billie apparently mixed up numbers and thought the screen had said 300 minutes late. 300 minutes! That's 5 hours!

Billie and Heather decide not to go to Lviv today. In fact, our words were, "fuck Lviv."

We put on our packs that were growing heavier by the minute, and trudge back up to the terminal to check the screen again.

Wait, it says 180 minutes late, not 300! (Billie, where the hell did you get that number?) Wait, shit, the train is leaving in 5 minutes!! So, we sprint, or rather, scuttle back through the terminal, across the platforms, up the stairs to platform 3, just in time to leap aboard the almost-completely-full train, sweating and stinking and cursing as we were, and crammed into a cabin with four other people. Grrreat.

Fast forward through 200 km or so of beautiful Polish countryside to the border town of Przmysl. (Don't ask me how to say that, I have no idea. Can I buy a vowel?). We get our passports stamped at the train station and are escorted by Polish military onto the platform. Trying to board the train, the woman taking tickets waves us back to the station, saying "kasu, kasu!!" It seems that the ticket agent in Krakow failed to indicate the date, train number, or seat numbers on our tickets....the station agent in Przmysl wanted us to go back to the station to get these things assigned. But we'd already officially left Poland, passports stamped and everything. And, because of the 3-hour delay of our first train, it was too late, the "kasu" was already closed up for the night.

So, we stood around looking plaintive and helpless. We smiled at the Polish customs/military people a lot, and showed them our poor number-less tickets. They took pity on us, and spoke to the steward of the first class cabin on our behalf. He let us on board, and assigned us to a cabin just next to a cabin full of drunk Ukrainian dudes with pot bellies, wearing no shirts. Hot. And it was, temperature-wise, very hot. We were sweaty. So were they. It was gross.

But, here's the catch - the train we were getting on had no locomotive just yet - apparently, that train was wicked late too.

So, in the fashion of young American women traveling abroad, we made friends with young men. We met a nice Dutch doctor and talked politics of both our countries. We also befriended one of the military/customs guys, a 23-year-old, very overworked young fellow named Peter. He was a good egg, he did his best to get us on that train, even though he couldn't understand most of what we were saying.

There were mosquitoes. Luckily, we had Burt's Bees herbal insect repellant. Pesticide free, baby!

We were hungry. Luckily, we still had the makings of peanut butter and nutella sandwiches that we'd purchased at a Tesco grocery store back in Prague. So, we pic-nic-ed, on the train platform, in the dark, and made the Poles and Ukrainians laugh.

Fast forward to our arrival in fair Lviv...at 2:30 am local time. Ouch. After a very weird cab ride from the train station, we checked in to our excessively swanky hotel, fumbled around with buttons on the teeny weeny elevator, and fell exhausted into our beds.

What a fucking day.

I can only imagine what Grandpa Joe went through going the other direction back in 1902 or so....there's a great line from Angels in America, when the elderly Rabbi is eulogizing a recently deceased immigrant from Russia or somewhere....and he says, "in our day, such journeys do not exist." Something like that. Even with all this hell, I'm sure it's true.

Rednecks at Carolina Beach

Kate and I were rednecks at Carolina Beach this past Saturday. After a long day of putting ladybug tattoos on small children, we slept in the back of an SUV, drank beer, woke up several times to the sounds of bad country music coming from other people's stereos and drunk rednecks screeching down the beach in their cars, and then finally to the sight of the lovely sun rising over the ocean. Deeeeelightful.

A week from today....

Cheers mates. I apologize for not having posted in a wicked long time. It's a problem I hope to rectify while abroad in Eastern Europe this Summer - I'm leaving in just less than a week! Holy crap, did that sneak up on me fast!

In lieu of the mass email I used to send my beloved friends and family from the road when I was a spring chicken, I will post up some basic travel tales on this blog. So keep your eyes out for them!

For now, I'm just anticipating the trip....it's been sinking in slowly, and has just hit me hard over the past couple days. I was at a very long, rather intense conference this past weekend the Precautionary Principle, and how we can use it in our work. The P. P. being the very radical and far out idea that governments, when regulating things like pesticides and industrial chemicals, should strive to allow as little risk for harm as possible. Kinda like buckling your seat belt or looking both ways before you cross the street - taking precautions to make sure what you're about to do won't kill you, or anyone else.

Believe it or not, governments do NOT work in this most logical of ways. The burden of proof is not on proving something's safe before it's used - rather, a new chemical product can be used until someone proves it's not safe, and then it can still be used until they prove exactly how and why and in what quantities it is not safe. Weird, I tell you. You won't be surprised to hear that the motives for operating in this way are largely financial, ugh, but let's not get too much farther into that, it's depressing. The conference itself was also a bit depressing....something about preachy white people that makes me feel funny. There were some preachy, self-centered, quirky middle aged white people dominating the agenda at this thing, hoo nelly. I learned a ton from the conference and had all kinds of brain storms, very productive, but I overloaded on the crowd very quickly.

Now on the other hand, the young people I met, the twenty-somethings at this conference, gave me a great deal of hope and excitement for the future of non-profit progressive advocacy. I am part of a kick-ass, no bullshit generation that seems to be operating in a very smart, sleek, and respectful fashion. I could be biased, but I think it's really true - I see it all around me here in NC, not just at conferences.

Anyway, the whole leaving on vacation thing is starting to sink in big time, and I CAN'T WAIT! I'll post an itinerary soon.

For better or for awesome!

From top to bottom: 1) Miranda and Joe, just married. 2) For better or for awesome! A fantastic misquote of strongbad emails. Tee hee. 3) The bride and I cutting it up at "The Log Cabin." That's Gwen on the right.

My best, biggest, most beautiful wishes for an awesome marriage, Miranda and Joe. Thanks for having me to your wedding, I had a blast, daaalings, a total blast. :::mwah:::

Vaginal Wonder

"It was better than the Grand Canyon, ancient and full of grace. It had the innocence and freshness of a proper English garden. It was funny, very funny! It made me laugh. It could hide and seek, open and close."
- Eve Ensler, The Vagina Monologues

Folks, I have absolutely adored being involved in Raleigh's first ever community production of the Vagina Monologues. What a total blast, what a bunch of great women and men I got to work with, what a powerful and important message to carry into our world with laughter-filled sails! A sort of artistic vagina manifesto, if you will, with core beliefs being that:

* Our bodies are sacred and beautiful (temple of the soul...), and that vaginas, though mostly hidden from sight and a bit odd looking and hairy and sometimes smelly and delicate and often a site of illness, invasion, and other trauma and turmoil, that our vaginas are among the most beautiful and sacred parts of anybody's body because they give us such pleasure, they give us all life, and ultimately, they are the reason we get to shake our fists proudly in the air (or our asses proudly on the dance floor) and rejoice in being members of the fine fabulous foxy ferocious fantastic female community.

* That though extremely personal, women's experiences of their bodies, their womanhood, and their vaginas are deeply affected by socio-cultural systems of oppression, judgement, and outright violence and warfare. That to love peace is to love justice is to love people is to love women is to love vaginas, and that creating a cultural community that is kind and loving and reverent toward vaginas is ultimately creating a just, peaceful, loving culture. And that, my friends, is the good stuff, eh?

And what of the monologue I had the distinct pleasure of performing? The neurotic nerdy British woman in "The Vagina Workshop"? I really loved getting to know her, getting into her character, and cultivating the fantastic sense of wonder and humor that come through so vividly in the monologue written about her.

I identify with her a lot - I indentify with her nerdy overanalyses, her run on sentences ;), her tendency to rationalize the hell out of everything, tee hee, her love-hate relationship with her sexual self - sort of delighted and innocent and awe-struck and also tentative and difficult - and also with her journey out of a sort of sexual dependency and passivity and into a more independent, proactive, self-loving relationship, not only with her sexuality, but with the direction of her whole life.

I mean, the monologue is about masturbating, so yeah, at a real basic level, it's about self-loving, but I don't just mean solo sex, come on, y'all know what I mean. It's about taking care of ourselves, taking responsibility for our own happiness, for the fulfillment of our righteous desitines in the world, for being the love we wish to have in our lives, for cultivating our own internal springs of love and energy and conscience and ambition and creativity. The point being that when we're with the important people in our lives - our lovers, friends, family, etc. - we're not needy and waiting for them to fill us up, direct us, define us. We're already overflowing. We're able to give and to receive love and life with these people, and to move forward and build something new and fantastic together out of our overflows, rather than just trying to fill each other's gaps.

Anyway, this has been a very interesting and fun monologue for me to think about and perform, for these reasons, and also because of the accent, I adore accents. :) Here is one of my favorite passages from the monologue on the subject of righteous self-love, or rather on the subject of un-righteous fear of self-love, for your reading pleasure (emphasis mine, not Eve's):

"Then, the moment arrived that I'd both dreaded and longed for. The woman who ran the workshop asked us to take out our mirrors again and to see if we could locate our clitoris. There we were, the group of us women, on our backs, searching for our spots, our locus, our reason, and I don't know why, but I started crying. Maybe it was sheer embarrassment. Maybe it was knowing that I had to give up the fantasy, the enormous, life consuming fantasy that someone or something was coming to do this for me, to lead my life, to choose direction, to give me orgasms. I could feel the panic coming, the simultaneous terror and realization that I had avoided finding my clitoris, had rationlized it as mainstream and consumerist because I was in fact terrified that I did not have a clitoris, terrified I was one of those constitutionally incapables...."

So, stay tuned everyone - due to popular demand, the Vagina Monologues will be back in Raleigh before month's end for a special encore engagement.

And also, stay tuned for pictures from the show, the final $$ count from our production - all proceeds from ticket & merch sales are going to the Women's Center of Wake County - and for information about getting involved in next year's Raleigh community production of the Vagina Monologues.

Many many thanks to all my homegirls and boys who helped make this happen. And thanks to Eve Ensler and V-Day for spreading the gospel of vaginal wonder hither and yon, and for sharing the Vagina Monologues - not only the show, but the powerful experience of performing it ourselves - with people all over the world. Rock on, brothers and sisters.