It's a light, refreshing lemony beer. It takes my mind off my worries, mostly due to its alcohol content's amnesiac qualities. Also because it makes me think about the ancient goddess of beer, Ninkasi. It makes me think that even if civilization as we know it is doomed and that climate change is going to continue wrecking havoc on our planet, and many of us will not survive, it gives me hope to think about long dead people from ancient civilizations whose messages have been left behind. Like the ancient Sumerian "Hymn to Ninkasi" which has been preserved on a clay tablet for nearly 4,000 years. It's basically a recipe for beer. And it's survived through all sorts of man made destruction whether it's battling each other in war or pissing off Mother Nature with our fossil fuel addiction.
Which reminds me: Kurt Vonnegut suggested we quit "Cold Turkey".
My heterosexual husband was unfamiliar with the story. We used to call it the "Stonewall Riots" back in the day, but nowadays I prefer the more hopeful-sounding term "Stonewall Uprising." If you haven't seen this fantastic PBS "American Experience" documentary "Stonewall Uprising" you can watch it here:
As I was telling Will what I know about the events, he said, "I would have loved to have seen a bunch of badass drag queens kicking the shit out of a bunch of homophobic cops." Me too. But neither of us could have seen it since that night occurred before we were both born. Too bad those weren't the days of smartphones and social media or else I'd have some video or photos to share with you. Instead we have reenactments in documentaries like the one above to figure out what happened that night.
Forty years later our technology has evolved, as has mainstream society's opinion of gay culture, so I can share with you this photo by Christian blogger Nathan:
I can think of few things more beautiful than progressive, sensitive heterosexual men embracing queers. Watch out! Hugs are contagious! You might catch an open mind.
As my baby's birthday is approaching, I've been thinking of how much she has grown these past six years. The time has passed so quickly I can barely catch my breath. I have to remind myself from time to time to stop whatever it is I'm doing that seems so important to take a moment to witness my child's first steps.
I used to have big dreams of some day being a Pulitzer Prize winning novelist. I wanted my words, my creation, to touch people far longer than I will be able to in the span of my own life. And I've got this little blog. It's self-published, which gives me tremendous freedom to write what I please. But it's also largely unfunded. And when I think about all the time I spend digitally documenting my thoughts, basically unpaid, I worry that I'm not doing enough. How can my writing be worthwhile if it doesn't rake in large amounts of money? I'm a subsistence writer.
But what's wrong with that? Life still has happy moments for poor writers and farmers. And painters. I look at this picture "First Steps" by the legendary painter Vincent van Gogh:
Didn't van Gogh only sell one painting during his lifetime? He must have felt like an utter failure. I know how he feels. I hope he somehow knows that his works, his creations, live on long after his life has ceased.
Parents like this father in the painting and like me are lucky. Our finest creations are alive. They can pull our attention away from our toils, whether our tools are a wheelbarrow or a keyboard.
So I'm probably not going to get that novel written as fast as I'd like, just as this farmer's crops might come in a smidgen later than planned. We've got important parenting to do. This man needs to watch his child's first steps. My baby wants to go swimming. I must take a break from writing now so I can watch her first strokes.
Katie was fussy. Over-hungry. We were just sitting down to a late dinner, something quick after a long day. I'd made the mistake of asking her if she preferred mayo or pesto on her turkey and swiss sandwich while she was lying on the couch, squashing the wings of the fairy costume she was wearing while watching "Barbie Swan Lake". She immediately called out, "Pesto." But of course, what I forgot is that when she's not really listening, she just replies back the last choice you offer her.
I realized I had made the mistake of thinking she was paying attention when she spat out the first bite of her sandwich, tugged at her neck, and cried, "I don't like this!"
"You don't like what? Your sandwich?"
"Uh huh!" She grunted, still tugging at her collar.
"You said you wanted pesto. What's wrong with your collar?"
"It's itchy! How come every costume I have is itchy?! And I thought you were putting pesto on my paaaaasta." She picked up her sandwich and threw it back onto her plate.
"Hey, hey, heeeeeeeey, now!" I pushed her plate away from her pending tantrum hand. "Don't ruin a good sandwich because you're crabby."
Katie sighed dramatically and sat with her arms crossed, bottom lip sticking out cartoonishly. I wanted to laugh. I'm like Mary Tyler Moore during Chuckles the Clown's funeral. Always laughing at inappropriate moments.
But no one died here. It was just a little low-blood sugar whining. Something I feel quite competent at handling after nearly six years of practice.
"Just take your costume off if it's scratchy. You don't have to watch that fairy princess movie while wearing a fairy princess dress. You're not even watching it now. It's time for dinner. When dinner's over you can watch it in your underpants. It's no big deal."
Katie dropped her arms straight to her sides and dropped her jaw. "I can't watch it in my panties, Mama!"
"Why not?" I cut her sandwich in two and fed it to the dogs. I got up to make her another sandwich.
"I have to wear the dress to be beautiful!" She cried out.
"Ha!" I couldn't help it. It burst out of me just as I opened the refrigerator door. When I took out the turkey and cheese and mayo and closed the door, I saw Katie's face and realized she was serious.
I set the sandwich fixins on the counter. I felt defeated. How could my child - MY child - feel that way about herself?
"Katie. You do not need that dress to be beautiful." I looked in her direction from over my glasses as I assembled her new sandwich.
She sat back in her chair, turning her head slightly and looking up at the wall as if she wasn't listening to me. Like she does when she knows she's in for a lecture.
"You know what makes a person beautiful?"
I waited until she looked at me and shook her head.
"A dress does not make a person beautiful. How much love that person gives is what makes a person beautiful. Being loving makes a person lovely." I cut her sandwich diagonally so she could get the widest bite without getting any of the crust, which she never eats even though I'm not inclined to cut it off for her. Some day she might like it and until then she could throw it to the dogs.
Katie said nothing, unsmiling. But she was at least looking my way as I returned the items to the fridge.
"If someone has on a beautiful dress," I continued, "but she's acting all mean--bossing everyone around, shouting, pouting, acting like no one else's feelings matter--is she still beautiful?"
The corner of Katie's mouth twitched upward, slightly. "No," she said, finally.
"Was Snow White beautiful when she was at the wishing well, singing to the birds, even though she was wearing rags?"
"Yes." Full smile. Snow White has long been Katie's favorite of all the Disney Princesses.
"You do not need a dress to be beautiful, Katie. To be beautiful you just need to be kind and loving." I set the sandwich down in front of her.
"Thanks, Mommy." Katie reached back and unfastened the Velcro closure to her costume, returned her hands to her plate, took a bite of her sandwich, and smiled wide, with mayo on her cheeks.
***
The next morning I awoke to Katie lying next to me in bed. We started talking about her birthday, which is coming up. I asked her if she feels like she's getting older.
"No, not really." She said, twirling her hair.
"Really? I can tell you're getting older. You're learning so much every day."
"Yeah, like it's good to share your toys." Katie stated.
"Yeah," I agreed. Hanging out with her cousins this summer is giving Katie plenty of experience learning the merits of sharing. Like not having your mom yell at you and taking your toys away until you can share them. But I wanted to see if last night's lesson sunk in, so I asked, "And did you learn something last night at dinner too?"
"Oh yes!" Katie rolled over and looked at me face-to-face. "I learned you don't have to wear a fairy princess dress to be beautiful."
"That's right!" But before I could start nominating myself for parent-teacher of the year, Katie continued her thought.
"You just have to be kind and have long, beautiful eyelashes!" She fluttered hers like an experienced princess.
I didn't argue with her. Instead, I returned her butterfly kisses.
It's hot. So hot even I, unusually modest about my body for someone in my culture, have taken to wearing sleeveless shirts and shorts. And sundresses. Ah, yes. Whoever invented the sundress loves women.
I decided today I need more sundresses. Unfortunately, shopping is a complete bitch to me. I hate it. I'm a difficult size to find. I have unusual taste. I'm frugal. I'm impatient. I'm lazy. Such a combination that it impedes a shopping trip so much I often just forget about it rather than go to all the trouble to buy myself something when it pops into my head that I have a clothing need.
It's so hot, though, I've begun online window shopping. I'll probably change my mind and convince myself it would be better in the long run to spend the money on my car repair bills rather than something comfy and cool...but oh wouldn't it be nice to have this soft dress to wear?
So I start seriously thinking of purchasing it. I check to see if they have my size. It's a miracle: they do. So I check out all the images of the model posing at different angles. Then I notice it.
This is a thin, small breasted woman modeling a dress advertised to a fat, large-breasted woman. I specified "plus size" in my inquiry. I had even checked that they have my size. So why can't they get a woman my size to model clothes I'm trying to envision myself wearing? Why the one-size-fits-all model slinging the choose-your-size apparel? I know I'm not a tall, skinny woman. It won't hurt my feelings to let me see a model closer to my reality.
And so then I click the big x and don't bother buying it. Maybe I should take up sewing.
Happy Independence Day! Here's the song that courses through this red-blooded American's veins today, filling me with patriotic pride:
I'm totally serious. It takes a great country to encourage such satirical criticism from its citizens. Team America:World Police is one of my all-time favorite movies, just as The Onion is my favorite fake news site, just as The Daily Show and The Colbert Report are my favorite fake news shows. As has been the case for hundreds of years, the court jester is often the only one telling the truth.
Today as we reflect upon what it means to be an American--while drinking beer and setting explosives on fire--I can proudly say "Fuck yeah!" It's not the strength of our military or the fortitude of our leaders that makes ours such a great nation. It's our ability to make fun of ourselves.
I was thirteen in the summer of 1984. My sister Kit had been living away from home since September 1977. My dad, Kit's step-father, got a job sixty miles south of our home. Instead of wasting money on gas for the commute, he decided to move our family closer to his work. One month after I started first grade. Kit's senior year of high school. Instead of uprooting herself from her extensive network of friends and her plethora of after-school activities, Kit stayed with my aunt while our mom, my dad, our sister Jenny, and I moved away.
We also left behind our brother Pat. He was just barely a sophomore in high school when we left him to stay with our mom's dad who was himself orphaned at age eleven. Fortunately our grandfather taught Pat how to work with his hands because he failed to teach him the importance of getting up in time for school.
Kit finished not only high school but college. She's the only one of my siblings with the tenacity to make it through college algebra.
The summer of 1984 Kit came to stay with us for a few weeks before her wedding. Her apartment lease was up and she didn't want to move in with her fiancee. That could wait til after marriage. So she stayed with what was left of our ever-shrinking family, our mom, my dad, and me. Jenny had long ago moved out and was planning her own wedding to be held later that summer.
I was at home alone when Kit first arrived. She brought her suitcases inside. I got her a glass of water, feeling big. Like it was my own home and I was the hostess. But then I felt secretly embarrassed that I was still playing pretend at age thirteen. It just felt so good to release my mind for awhile, a respite. To be not-here.
Kit came into the living room. I handed her the glass of ice water. We sat together on the couch for a long time. Talking. I don't remember about what. Probably about things that seemed so important at the time: endless, anxiety-provoking wedding preparations, unrequited crushes on boys at my school. Things long ago forgotten while only the happy memories remain.
Like this one. Kit's glass of water, sitting in a pool of its own sweat, sat empty on the end table next to her. She sat cross-legged on the couch. I, therefore, also sat cross-legged on the couch. I idolized my older sister. She had been like a mother to me during my formative years. When I was even younger, before she moved in with our aunt, I used to watch Kit at the dinner table and try as best I could to hold my fork the way she held hers, to take a bite of whatever food she was eating too.
We sat together on the couch, giggling. Soon we were laughing so hard we had to remind ourselves to breathe. The sides of my cheeks hurt from smiling.
What instigated our communal laugh-fest was not pot, as you might suspect from two sisters coming from a family of dysfunction. It was another frequently used recreational drug preferred by many survivors of bad decisions and unintentional mistakes: humor.
My sister gets my sense of humor. That's the first time I remember thinking it. Feeling validated. As we sat on the couch together before our mom and my dad would get home from work. Watching "The Andy Griffith Show" on a late-afternoon rabbit-ears TV.
"Can you whistle the theme song?" Kit elbowed me and began trying herself. She barely got through the first bar without laughing.
As it turns out, no, neither of us can whistle the theme song to "The Andy Griffith Show". It is simply impossible to get through the whole thing without laughing. It's like trying to lick your own elbow. Only people freakishly void of a sense of silliness can perform such a feat. They must have a dislocated funny bone.
So today when I heard Andy Griffith passed away, I smiled. What a tribute to a person's life that their death makes someone smile. Not that I'm glad to see him go. But when I think of Andy Griffith, I associate him with that afternoon with my sister, laughing, despite our struggles. Over the silliest thing. It's the small things that help us remember how wonderful life is if we pay attention to it.
And isn't that what was so special about Griffith's fictional life in Mayberry? His character was a widow. He worked with an annoying deputy. His neighbors were nosy. But through those obstacles Griffith showed us how wonderful life could be.
And so, I dedicate this video to Andy Griffith, and to my sister Kit. May I present to you, cockatiels whistling "The Andy Griffith Show" theme song:
When President George W. Bush nominated John Roberts back in 2005, I admit, I didn't pay close attention to his biography. After the Harriet Miers fiasco, I made the assumption that because W was "The Nominator" I would have little respect for his choice.
We all know what happens when you assume:
I guess my mom is right. I should have watched more TV growing up and I might have known better than to assume.
Since the SCOTUS ruling that upheld the constitutionality of Obamacare's individual mandate, I've been paying attention to Chief Justice Roberts. From what I'm reading, he seems likes a nuanced thinker. Certainly a judicious one. And someone I think I'll add to my list of friends of ambiguity.
Magic Mike looks good, but I'm not sure if I'm going to go see it. The last movie I saw purely for its high babe quotient (BQ) was The Day After Tomorrow. Not because I particularly like science fiction disaster films but because Jake Gyllenhaal is hot.
That movie burned me, though. It turned me into a tin foil hat-wearing climate change Doomsdayer. Any time the weather gets wacko I get worried. And I live in Kansas, so I get worried a lot.
Like now. It's currently 97F with just 25% humidity in my neighborhood. No, last time I checked Wikipedia Kansas is not a desert. It gets hot here, sure, but usually around this time of year I start complaining about my Bride of Frankenstein 'do due to the high humidity. These hot, dry conditions make me worry, is it climate change? Am I living inside a Roland Emmerich film?
Lots of my fellow citizens are complaining it's hot as hell. What could be more hellish than being stuck inside a big-budget disaster film? Although if you're gonna get stuck in a movie, why not get stuck in one with a high BQ? A low-budget, high BQ film would be even better.
At the end of 2009, as the House was debating what would later become Obamacare, I half-jokingly announced I was ready to move to Canada. I'd actually rather move to France or Sweden, but I doubt they'd have me. Not that Canada would think my unskilled worker's ass is something special, but at least I might be able to get a job as a nanny or something without having to take a crash course in French or Swedish. And if I could somehow make my way to Vancouver, I might get lucky and encounter an occasional k.d. lang sighting.
It wasn't the idea of an individual mandate that was ticking me off like some people these past few days. I didn't think what our representatives were arguing for went nearly far enough. We don't need to force people into buying insurance from for-profit insurance companies. We need universal healthcare in this country.
Now that some of my fellow citizens are going full-drama queen like I once did and claiming they're ready to move north, I just laugh. As this article points out, if they really want to escape the individual mandate, they'll have to move to a different continent:
"Even with the individual mandate, the United States still has one of the most privately-run health care systems in the world, said Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations."
"'We were very exceptional,' Huang said of the U.S. 'Among industrialized countries we were the only one that adopted the market-based system.'"
"So where can people disillusioned by 'Obamacare' turn to find a country whose health care system has less government involvement than the United States?"
"'I can't name one,' said Robin Osborn, vice president and director of The Commonwealth Fund's International Program in Health Policy. 'It'd be more likely a third world country.'"
"Haung suggested 'maybe sub-Saharan Africa.'"
I have a better idea. Why don't we whiny butt Americans just stay put and try to make our own country better?
If my obvious liberal bias won't convince you to unpack your bags, take a look at this conservative opinion on why the individual mandate is a good idea: "The Core Conservatism of Obamacare".
"This law is all about forcing freeloaders to take responsibility for their actions." -- Rich Perlstein and Kathleen Duffy of New York Daily News
So whether or not you're a fan of Obamacare, you have to admit it's complicated. It's easy to see both a liberal and conservative argument for and against it. I think such complexity means it's better than what we had before, but there's still room for improvement. My advice? Pass thesesuggested amendmentsfrom Sen. Bernie Sanders.
I'm not a huge fan of Obamacare in general or the individual mandate in particular, so when I heard that conservative Chief Justice Roberts sided with the liberals on the Supreme Court, I did not hear "O Canada" inside my head. Instead, I heard this song:
