Goodbye to Molly in Haiti. Rest in peace, sweetie. Her blog is really touching — I started reading through her archives. University of Portland grad who arrived in Haiti last June. (Thanks, C, for the link.) Then i realized that all of the sweet kids in those photos are most likely gone, too, and that did me in.

peace, Haiti. so sorry about… everything.

— wm

listen up. i’m alive, leaving for work soon. took a couple days off to rest. my sweet mother-in-law (one of two, both sweet, yes, i’m lucky, lucky girl) is here for long weekend. when did i realize it was a 3-day weekend? last night at 4:30. no kidding. hahahahaHA! what a dope.

i am still sore, moving around a little slower than my usual ZIP-ZIP GOTTA GO SPOCKY! self. You know. Life. It comes at you fast, just like the commercial says.

do you read So the Fish Said? here is her list of books for 2009. this week i’m reading “Literacy with Attitude,” the Michael Pollan book about plant sex, more stuff by the “Wicked” author and… a bunch of kid books, per usual.

miss you, miss you, more later. hope life is good in eastern Canada, Texas, England, Morocco, Happy Rock, the South Side, or wherever you happen to be.

peace & love to Haiti, i’m lighting my candles. it’s not much but it’s all i’ve got. that and this little blog. (private note to U.S. government, Stop Katrina’ing things, how about? Just sayin’.)

— wm

Nice that the Mayor of my fair city does what I ask him to, since Hockey God won’t. hahahahaha.

Seriously though, y’all. There are a ton of kids going hungry in this world. Can we all do a something (little or big) to help with that?

Peace, and here’s to a chicken in every pot,

wm

Dear World (and by “world” I mean the 14 people out there who still read me),

So. So, so, so.

It is Sunday, January 4th, 2009.

We have a new president moving into the White House pretty soon.

Things are a mess in Gaza. Israel, I would like to ask you: While the rest of us are talking “hope” and “change” and “substance” in the new year, why do you feel the need to kill others? Please stop now. Obama seems to be pretty pro-Israel, pro-hawk, yes? Wanting to hunt down Bin-Laden and all. Maybe Israel is wanting to get in a few punches now, just in case they’re not allowed to later?

Unfortunately, as hopeful as I am about the new American administration, I think Israel is going to continue to be allowed to do whatever the hell they want to do. Israel = bully.

Why is it that while our nation’s schools are focused on policies of no-bullying, no physical violence, no verbal, sexual or mental abuse, no murder, certainly, the grown-ups can’t follow suit? Do as I say not as I do, aiiiiight?

The year my daughter started kindergarten, one of the first-graders wore a button everywhere that said

PUNCHING

with a black line drawn through it.

“Who gave you that, K?” I asked him.

He was all, aw shucks, smiley. “My teacher.”

Smart teacher.

No punching. Just love. And hope for a better world.

I have been meditating, writing in my journal and studying every day. It has helped with the chaos.

After a long, sometimes bumpy winter break (ice, snow, rain, snow, snow, sunshine, flooding, ice), we are heading back to school and work tomorrow. I’m thinking 6 a.m. should be pretty fun, especially since I’ve been sleeping until 9, 10, 10:30 a.m. every day for almost three weeks. Whatever it takes, that’s what I’m saying.

I saw on the news that the Estacada Library underwent a ton of damage (to books, computers, building) during the most recent bout of flooding. If you have a few dollars to spare, I know they would appreciate it.

Estacada Public Library
825 NW Wade
Estacada, OR 97023

peace,

wm

Hockey God is International Stud.

But you already knew that.

First, the Starbucks bloggers are all abuzz over him. So you knew who had to be next, don’t you?

That’s right. The French, they love my husband. (Or, would you prefer it translated?)

Of course the French love Steve. ?Por que no? Oh, wait. That’s Spanish. But say it out loud and it sounds the same in French.

What’s not to love, for reals? All of this coffee and love and international patter reminds me of the Planet Nomadics, when they visited last summer. They stopped by for my birthday, and Elliot missed the singing (in French and English) and candles.

“They sang en Franzosisch!” I told him.

He looked at me, perplexed, “They sang in German?”

Ba-da-BUMP! Ha ha ha ha heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

Happy Monday, y’all.

that’s all.

wm

When I was young and drunk, I dated a large Irishman, who was 6’5″ and, like me, an English major and writer. He also liked to drink. And have conversations that were apropos of everything and nothing at the same time. (more…)

I am not fond of propaganda. I am not fond of people telling me that I should hate and hate some more when you know all I want to do, even in my darkest, saddest moments, is LOVE and LOVE SOME MORE.

I want that love spread around. I want us out of Iraq. I want people to stop hurting each other, killing each other, with our words, bombs and guns. Those of you who are not in the United States, you will please remember that many of us are against America’s war against Iraq. When I first heard the news on Sept. 11th, 2001, my thoughts went in this order:

1) That can’t just have happened.
2) It couldn’t have been an attack, it was an accident. It was a freakish, hideous accident
3) It was an attack.
4) Now America will have to “get back” at someone. Now Bush and his cronies will want to lash out, bomb civilians, kill everyone they can.
5) No, they won’t.
6) They can’t.
7) They’ll learn from this. They’ll turn the other cheek.
8) No, they won’t.

So for the Oregonian, our “paper of record,” to include a hate-mongering DVD in the Sunday paper… this is just as horrible to me as knowing how German-Americans and Japanese-Americans were treated here in the U.S., during the Second World War.

You can tell me a lot of things, but you cannot tell me to hate.

Here is an extremely moving video that Portland, Oregon, radio host Opio Osokoni put together of the protest outside the Oregonian. Portland political activist Anne Trudeau and several others are interviewed. In the words of Portland blogger Terry Olson:

“Any doubt that the DVD Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West isn’t an endorsement of McCain should be dispelled by the fact that its newspaper distribution occurred primarily in swing voting states.”

“It was our own moral failure and not any accident of chance, that while preserving the appearance of the Republic we lost its reality.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero, statesman, orator, writer (106-43 BCE)

The kids and I have had a great couple of weeks, swimming, celebrating birthdays, staying up ’til midnight. On Thursday we actually made it to the park to play and have free lunch. Yes, free lunch. Oh, free lunch, how I love thee. (more…)

Peace Frog
the Doors

“There’s blood in the streets, it’s up to my ankles
She came
There’s blood on the streets, it’s up to my knee
She came
Blood on the streets in the town of Chicago
She came
Blood on the rise, it’s following me
Think about the break of day
She came and then she drove away
Sunlight in her hair
She came
Blood in the streets runs a river of sadness
She came
Blood in the streets it’s up to my thigh
She came
Yeah the river runs down the legs of the city
She came
The women are crying red rivers of weepin’
She came into town and then she drove away
Sunlight in her hair
Indians scattered on dawns highway bleeding
Ghosts crowd the young child’s fragile eggshell mind
Blood in the streets in the town of New Haven
Blood stains the roofs and the palm trees of Venice
Blood in my love in the terrible summer
Bloody red sun of phantastic l.a.
Blood streams her brain as they chop off her fingers
Blood will be born in the birth of a nation
Blood is the rose of mysterious union
There’s blood in the streets, it’s up to my ankles
Blood in the streets, it’s up to my knee
Blood in the streets in the town of Chicago
Blood on the rise, it’s following me”