Mr. Jim is publishing an article I wrote in his online zine, IdealLab. This was my tame version, which still had to be edited down. Here’s the draft I sent, and the zine is here. (click on latest edition) Theres some good stuff in it…and Brian McClaren often pops by for an interview or some good advice. Oh, for pics of the parade click here.

Outrageous Outreach: Cross Dressers and a Brewery

And Next Up…Naked People!
A mob of bikers wearing nothing but body paint are the first to come through the starting gate. Next there’s; an inflatable sculpture which is having a bad hair day; men on stilts in elaborate drag, and a float full of Oompa Loompas. You’ll … {read more…}

Paul (my husband) recently got a free subscription to Money Magazine. This month the cover has a small picture in the corner. It’s the two presidential candidates facing off. Underneath it says something like “Voting for your Wallet…Wisely.”

Is this really the criteria?

Alicia is getting ready to host a Debate viewing party over at our place this week for ThPM. (6pm, see you then) Her goal is to watch the debate and ask thoughtful questions with her community regarding how to vote. One of the things we are doing to try to keep the party from becoming a mudslinging fest is to pass out some non-partisan thought provoking questions with the cocktail napkins.

Here’s some I thought of:

What matters … {read more…}

I know I’ve written about this book before, but I really dig it. I’m a big fan of cleverness. You don’t have to be intelligent for me to like you, or even super smart…but clever, now that will endear you to me for quite some time. How can you not love chapter titles like these?

TV: Is six hours a day too much?
Bedtime: Is 5:30 too early?
Screaming: is it necessary?

And how can you not love an opening paragraph like this?

Gone are the days when a small person of tender age would do as he or she was asked, good naturedly and obediently, and the rest of the time would sit quietly reading or practicing a simple cross stitch. The child was able to carry on a lively and friendly conversation with a grown-up, when asked; but with equal good nature the youngster would disport himself to a quiet corner when it appeared that the grown-ups were converging. He might be trotted out to say his hellos, perhaps to recite, possibly to help serve drinks or pass cocktail peanuts. He might sit on a lap, but only if requested by a familiar grown-up he never presumed.

One wasn’t required to transport the little children hither and tither, here to T-ball practice, there to a “playdate,” may the chipper mommy who coined that particular term forever rot in a hell of eternally colicky babies.

One wasn’t required to endure swarms of youngsters teeming over the hors d’oeuvres, begging for refreshment just as one was about to take that first heady sip of one’s ice cold martini. There was water, and they knew how to retrieve it.

Let us be perfectly frank. You were here first. You are sharing your house with them, your food, your time, your books. Somewhere, in fairly recent memory, we have lost sight of that fact.

So out of gratitude for Christie Mellor I am now embarking on a series of Martini Tales. Ms. Mellor, you supplied the inspiration…the children and I will supply the “you’ve got to laugh or you’ll cry” fodder for storytelling. Click to see the first one. I hope you enjoy it.
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“I think Jesus has white skin like yours Mommy, only with out all those polka dots. I think he has long long hair like mine (pulling her hair out to the sides and letting it fall over and over again.) He wears a blue outfit. Okay, so that’s Jesus. Now, I think God looks like Lord Digory, with brown curly hair and a brown curly beard.”

What do you think the Holy Spirit looks like Eden?

(very animated w/eyes a’sparkle.) “She has beautiful long golden curly hair that goes all the way down to her feet. She wears long white robes that swish around, and she is very tall and she has beautiful purple eyes.”

ThPM celebrated Rosh Hashanah last week…at least our own mutt-like version of it. A friend of a friend was there, Erika, and she’s Jewish. That always give me pause, because we mess with the traditions SO MUCH. But then again we mess with our own Christian traditions as well. We aren’t trying to be disrespectful; we’re just trying to make it real, to find meaning in our histories. Hopefully that comes across in our practices. (Erika seemed to think so.)

At any rate, we stepped into Rosh Hashanah in order to express gratitude for the season which we have just passed through (summer) and to look forward to a new beginning in the season that is fast approaching (fall). Part … {read more…}

He had already won his third Daytime Emmy, and now he went onstage to accept Emmy’s Lifetime Achievement Award, and there, in front of all the soap opera stars and talk show sinceratrons, in front of all the jutting man-tanned jaws and jutting saltwater bosoms, he made his small bow and said into the microphone, “All of us have special ones who have loved us into being. Would you just take, along with me, ten seconds to think of the people who have helped you become who you are….Ten seconds of silence.” And then he lifted his wrist, and looked at the audience, and looked at his watch, and said softly, “I’ll watch the time,” and there was, at first, … {read more…}

I think about things, a lot of things. Sometimes I can even connect the dots between them. But when it comes to writing them all down, to speaking them out loud to all of you, I feel inadequate and unpracticed. But still, this season inspires me, fall, autumn…the only one that gets two names. It makes me want to try to speak of it somehow.

There is a prayer in one of the Haggadah’s, one of the Jewish prayer books for Passover which says in part, “Blessed are you O Lord Our God, Ruler of the Universe, for giving us seasons of remembrance.” Isn’t fall a great season of remembrance? There are all these summer memories to look back on. The … {read more…}

Through the old I wanted to confirm the rightness of the new.
-Helene Kruller-Muller, describing her collection of impressionist, neo-impressionist and cubist art

Wheat Field with Sun and Cloud,
Van Gogh, 1889

Van Gogh believed that drawings, in and of themselves, could be as complex and as deeply satisfying as a painting. To him, his drawings, which he did with raw “mountain charcoal”, were not just studies for a larger project, but complete pieces with carefully crafted strokes. This one was painted through the bars of the asylum; I believe it was on his first stay there. The first thing one notices is the sun, cold and bright, extending its rays like a hand with fingers spread wide. Next you take in the wheat … {read more…}

I woke up early this morning to plunder and remember. Here in Seattle, the local glass artists at Art by Fire have been busy. Together they’ve been blowing glass balls to mark the second anniversary of the 9-11 attacks. Last night, after dark when the park was closed, they tucked nine hundred and eleven of them into the sea grass and between the breakwater boulders of Golden Gardens at Shilshole Bay. In the morning residents were invited to comb the beach for these colorful surprises. I was at the park by dawn’s early light. The park, popular in the summer but typically abandoned at 6:30am on a Saturday, was crawling with people, empty handed and disappointed. One mother … {read more…}