greg & activism surges

this is greg (that's right, i did make him that pink hat...per his request!). greg moves to my town tomorrow--wahoo! he's splitboarding in this picture. of the many things i am looking forward to, he's the cook of our duo and i anticipate some good eating with him in my immediate life.

in other news, people are rallying around darfur, walk-outs are well-planned and getting publicity , immigration rallies abound. the progressives seem to be back in the game. way to go, team.

good night, gma.

as i pack for sodak, i am struck by a vague sense of place. i have no desire to live in sodak ever again, but there will always be something about it. i head there under sad pretenses tomorrow morning, but there is always a nice thing about going there. flying over that quiltlike landscape speaks to me in a way i am often startled by. i know that land, i understand its quirky people (well, usually...).

as a very junior member of my family's entourage of cousins, no one will invite me to write the obituary. but i have been writing it in my head for about nine months. let me try to capture it here.

the town of hecla, sodak canceled the girls' basketball team during gma's senior year of high school. she always said they didn't know what they were talking about. to know grandma was to be taken into her world--one full of candy bowls and piano renditions of "five foot two & eyes of blue" and often surprising stories and, of course, a kind of encompassing love. she had a funny way of telling each grandchild that we were her favorite one...our age.

in the awkward moments of making new friends, i have somteimes drifted to a story about grandma playing the piano for silent films. i know only pictures of grandma from those days, but to hear her tell it, she was quite spitfire. boys on the couch before grandpa came 'round, basketball teams, bossing her siblings around.

she never made me eat food i didn't want to--none of that "eat grandma's food because she made it for you" sort of business. she always told the story of how i had, just short of 2 yrs old, pointed to my coat, asking her to take me home from the hospital where they were poking and prodding. she would tell me in secret i was her favorite grandchild my age. she would play "five foot two & eyes of blue" on the piano with such vigor that i could not wait until i reached the designated height & was a little sad to reach 5'3". i have a funny memory of the trackmeet she & grandpa sat in the lincoln watching me run around that track eight times, often in back, from the street. she loved fur coats. she hated swimming, but raised 6 kids & countless grandkids on the lake. she always felt so bad that i was allergic to ming toy. she had bottomless candy bowls. she could cook, to my mom's relief. she often told me she was praying the rosary for me. she was a force of nature--played hostess even from her wheelchair. sometimes i think she was the embodiment of a tough prairie woman; even down to her last days, it seems. matriarch could not have found a better resting place.

of course she was many things to many people. sister, mother, aunt, friend, gram. she has watched so many of them go before them. she joins them now. i knew her as grandma.

inie turns 95. no kidding.

tomorrow is easter monday (rather, marathon monday as the bostonians have it known). but a bit more importantly, it is my grandma's 95th birthday. she's still keeping people entertained in watertown, sodak...fewer hours a day than when i first met her, but with none the less vigor. three cheers for grandma!

interesting sidenote: its also my dad's birthday. she always says that he was the best birthday present she ever received. ah.

happy 95th, grandma. nee nah noo. k.

a jew among the germans

i just finished watching this documentary for a class called "a jew among the germans ." if you have an hour, its well worth the watch. its from frontline, pbs.

k.

marches

A friend of mine participated in Boston's march for immigrant justice yesterday and sent out these pictures. I found them quite moving.

k.

smoking near doors.

what if i could walk around with this sign around my neck? or attached to my book bag? would people who are smoking stop walking near me? would they stop crowding around the doors i am trying to use while holding my breath?

hey...i understand it's an addiction. and i am happy to look around and see that smoking is way less cool than it was even five year ago. but it's still gross. and just because you have to smoke outside does not mean you are not clouding my lungs with your yuckiness. i drink enough coffee to poison myself, thank you. i don't need your 2nd hand carcinogens on top of it.

it's a beautiful day out there--stop ruining it with your smokiness. haven't you heard: white, whiter and whitest teeth is the new hip thing. try that on.

kelly!

this is my very lovely sister, kelly. she is a proud kindergarten teacher.

she was the first person to ever post on this blog. she is #3 in my phone and i call her during the day even though she is not in my phone company network. that, my friend, is love.

peter & paul

i like the words to this song i just discovered:

“peter said to paul, you know all those words we wrote are just the rules of the game and the rules are the first to go. paul said to peter, you gotta rock yourself a little harder; pretend the dove from above is a dragon and your feet are on fire." --"girl in the war," josh ritter

richard o' st. victor

so here's the thing about richard st. victor (it'd be funny if he looked like the guy on the cover of this book, huh?). at least according to g. zinn, he's writing in the 12th century as one of the 2nd generation leaders of his monastery in france and at a moment in history when people, apparently, felt a real need to organize and systematize how contemplation works. he is concerned to relate imagination, reason and faith, it seems. starts to sound a bit like ol' thomas aquinas who, really, does not end up having much respect of my new friend rsv.

okay. so, in what zinn guesses is rsv's more mature work, rsv wants to think about how we can think about the trinity. its interesting that he leaves this final systemization of this squirrely doctrine to the end of his life. he tells us he wants to use reason to explain the trinity but only proceeds to show the necessary plurality of god's personhood. he uses beautiful community-oriented language that leaves me thinking he's more concerned with teaching his community how to live in love and charity than anything else. its almost like the trinity becomes a metaphor for how we ought to live in charity together.

but that's not completely fair because he continues to detail how supreme goodness shows trinity, happiness declares trinity and then glory confirms trinity. agh...this obsession with threes! starts to make me think the conversation ought to be more anthroplogical/cultural than theological! anyhow, to return: it seems necessary to lay out the top two ways that rsv sees contemplation happening:
#5: "above reason, but not beyond reason" &
#6: "above reason & seemingly beyond reason."

these two are almost a dialectic which humans must (and, through much disciplined contemplation are able to) move between in order to catch a glimpse of trinity.

it also seems that the creed of Athansius falls in the realm of #6. the legitimacy & problematic nature of that is a far different paper.

so...what if rsv's real intent here is to push at #5 as far as it bumps into #6, though they are necessarily like the human/adam and god--ever and infinitely connected, though never touching. its like the two cherubims that are metaphors for each of these: the look to each other, holding these tensions, looking for ways to achieve both/and.

ah, the mystics. beautiful and confusing and startling all in one. kind of like the trinity.

wounded knee: the museum

i don't know where i have been, but my stops in wall, sd have never included this museum. really. if the actual exhibits are anything like the website, its a must see. the website, alone, is pretty great, educational and a feat of flash web design.

(in other news, i, clearly, have figured out how to do pictures.)

restoring bike kharma

this is my new bike. good ol' raleigh green (which took me all the way from raleigh, nc to washington, dc) was hit by a car while parked in a silly location

important side note: do not lock things to light posts. ever. not even near hdiv school.

cheers to spring and biking! get out that non-wd40, lube up the chains and ride. if you happen to ride east and land in beautiful somerville, call.