The Garden of Words

Red and shiny: Okelle goes all-natural and gets the best hair color she's ever had

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 03:31:59 GMT

Starting in college, my naturally golden locks started to darken. When I overheard someone describing me as having brown hair (it's dirty blonde, thank you very much), I finally took the plunge and dyed it red. I look great as a redhead, and at one point had shoulder-length red hair. Unfortunately, chemical dyes are murder on anyone's hair. Since I'm spoiled with naturally thick and mostly healthy hair, I really noticed the difference when it started to frizz out. Eventually I allowed my natural color to grow back in. Last summer, though, grey hairs started making serious inroads into the faded blonde. When I cut it short, I decided to take the plunge and go red again. Chemical dyes worked okay for a few months, but once again my hair started to frizz, break, and whimper. I wanted to grow my hair long again, but knew that if I kept dying it I'd end up with a full, thick head of damaged, faded red hair and obvious roots.

I'd heard about henna, but had been warned about the difficulty of finding a quality supply. The henna they sell in supermarkets and beauty supply shops isn't pure henna, and it's often mixed with unnamed chemicals that can do all sorts of damage to your hair, especially if you've already dyed it with something else. Then I discovered that a friend of mine with gorgeous, long, glossy curls uses henna, and I asked her where she gets it.

"I use henna from Yemen," she said, and sent me a link to Catherine Cartwright-Jones's online henna empire. I didn't realize it at the time, but my curly-haired friend sent me to one of the only reliable sources of 100% pure all-natural henna. The website isn't the easiest thing to navigate, but that's for the best of reasons: It's host to a wealth of information about the history and uses of henna. And it's a home-grown business without the budget to hire an information architect and UX designer.

After a fair amount of perusing, I ordered a 200-gram packet of henna from Pakistan. I opted for the Pakistan henna because it was described as having a lower dye content than the Yemen variety, and I was hoping for a more coppery red.

When I got the package, I was really excited to try it, but also wanted to make sure I paid attention to what I was doing. It's not difficult to prepare Mehandi henna paste in advance, but it does require some planning. You have to mix the henna powder with a mildly acidic liquid (lemon juice, for instance) and let it sit for at least 12 hours in order for the dye to be fully released. You also have to leave it in for at least twice as long as a standard chemical dye.

My first attempt was less than perfect: I only used about half of a 200-gram packet, mixed with orange juice, and didn't have quite enough paste to coat my hair in the recommended "mud-mask" fashion. In spite of the shortage, the results were quite impressive.

Here's my hair before using the henna:

And here it is after my first henna attempt, about six weeks ago:

This time, inspired by the individual mixes posted by various women, I decided to get more creative. In particular, I wanted something to mellow the smell of uncut henna, which I find vaguely reminiscent of dried blood.

This is what I put in my second batch:
300 grams henna (Lawsonia inermis) (half from the last packet, plus one full packet)
about 20 grams senna (Cassia obovata)
Enough orange juice to give the mix the consistency of stirred-up yogurt
~1/2 C ground cloves
a righteous sprinkle of ground ginger root
cinnamon
frankincense (I've always wanted an excuse to put frankincense in my hair!)

I let the mix sit for almost 24 hours, and while the smell of the henna was definitely still there, the other spices masked it well. More than 24 hours after rinsing out the dye, my hair still smells richly of cloves and the other spices I used. It's a deeper, richer red than the last application. The texture is glossy and smooth, rather than the frizzy, damaged mess that chemical dyes produce.

For my next batch, I'm thinking about reversing the proportion of senna and henna for a more subtle color. I'll probably use less cloves (they darken the dye) and more cinnamon and ginger root. I may use some cardamom as well, and more frankincense if I have time to replenish my stash (I've had a bottle of frankincense on my altar for about 10 years. I don't think my ancestors mind.)

If you're interested in learning more about henna, its history and uses, there's a free e-book on the Henna for Hair website.

I found the historical information fascinating and feel like I'm connecting with an ancient tradition that goes back thousands of years, even while I wrap my head in plastic wrap and watch Netflix videos while the henna sets.

Spy Pond Haiku (again)

Tue, 12 May 2009 01:03:54 GMT

The pond at dusk
Voices carry over the water
Stillness

Human and goose words
Dramatic sky reaching
colors of my mother's scarf

Of Shortbus and Selkies

Sat, 02 May 2009 11:59:27 GMT

This morning I was indulging in a bit of self-flagellation about my writing, or lack thereof, and I remembered something cheqyr said to me some months back.

It was something along the lines of "it doesn't really matter how you write, it's the act of writing that's important."

So who cares if I'm not writing my three pages a day every morning? Oh, right, my inner perfectionist, sitting in her walnut-paneled library with her hair up in a bun and her steel-rimmed glasses.

I saw Shortbus last night. Polymorphous perversion, I think that was the term some L7 headshrinker came up with in the 60s to describe anyone who isn't a candidate for membership with the Family Research Council. Polymorphous couplings, real people having unsimulated sex, the importance of female orgasm, John Cameron Mitchell (of Hedwig and the Angry Inch fame), a script that was developed by the actors themselves and not approved by a ginormous movie studion -- what's not to love?

Watching it made me feel a bit nostalgic, somewhat regretful. Shortbus takes place in New York City, and in typical New Yorker fashion, the characters and indeed the film itself exudes that confident, annoying assurance that New York is indeed the center of the universe. In my 20s, long before 9-11, I had aspirations to move to NYC. The more I got to know the city, though, the more it overwhelmed me. I grew up in a bedroom community about 45 minutes away by Metro North express train, but very rarely took advantage of my proximity. Later, when I was living at the end of the Hudson line, I fell in love with the place. Later, my love for the place evaporated in the cold, hard light of things like the cost of living, especially compared to my earning potential at the time.

I settled on Boston because it had some of New York's cosmopolitan feel but wasn't as intense and sprawling a place to live. Every city has its sprawl -- its purgatorial rings surrounding its juicy center. Boston may not be as big a Tootsie Pop as New York, but you won't break your teeth trying to get to the chewy center.

Sometimes it seems that people's favorite pastime is to dump on this city, though. While I was waiting for the cross-town shuttle in Harvard Square, two folks started in on the old litany of complaints about My Fair City: it's too segregated, the streets don't make sense, it's not as cosmopolitan as New York, bla bla bla bla bla.

Maybe it was the annoying timbre of the woman's voice, maybe it was that I was going to be late for my meeting, maybe I hadn't had enough leafy greens. Maybe it was because I, a white woman who actually enjoys talking to people of different nationalities, had engaged both of these brown-skinned people in conversation only to watch the conversation devolve into a diatribe about how generally inferior my chosen home town is -- and how racist and segregated to boot. Whatever the reason, I got fed up. And I didn't want to keep silent.

"They want it that way," said the pleasant young man (possibly Latino or Pacific Islander) on his way to work in Central Square to the Indian woman on her way to Beth Israel for a cardiac stress test.

"Who is this mysterious they?" I countered. "Did to think that maybe the white people in this city don't want it to be segregated either?"

They looked at me in shock.

"People love to complain about Boston. It really irritates me. I chose to live in this city, not New York. And you did too, apparently. If you hate the place so much, why don't you leave?"

"I don't think that's very fair," countered the woman. "You can't just follow it up with a prescription like that. It's free speech, you know. You don't have to talk to me."

"You're right, I don't. But it is free speech, and I'm free to tell you how annoying it is when people come along and complain about my town. It's not New York City, it's Boston."

"Oh, I love Boston-" said the nice young man, the same nice young man who'd been complaining about the pattern of the streets and the nasty Powers that Be intent on preserving their lily-white neighborhoods. But his attempt at peacemaking got lost in the shuffle. The woman didn't hear me.

"I wish you luck with your appointment," I said, firm, final, trying -- for my own sake, not hers -- to return to some level of cordiality. And stormed off until I was out of earshot.

What does this all have to do with the movie Shortbus? At one point, one of the characters, suffering under the weight of a profession she's grown to hate, agonizes over her predicament.

-What if I don't have enough money to live in the city? Where would I go? Fresno?

I have no strong desire to live in Fresno. But I'm sure that there are people there who make art. There are people all over the world, and there are other cities too. New York is awesome. I know that. It's got things you won't find anywhere else on the East Coast. But it's not the only game in town. Even in Fresno, I'm sure you can find artists and kinksters and perverts. Thanks to the power of the Intartubes, you can probably find them that much faster.

The reason why this issue affects me so much, of course -- the reason why I raised my voice to some poor woman at a bus stop -- is because my relationship with New York is deep, complicated. Long-standing. In another life I may have ended up in Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn. Riverside. In another life I would be able to take mass transit 24 hours a day. Would smell that particular salty-muddy smell of Long Island Sound, the confluence of fresh water and salt, that smell I remember from my childhood. Smell it and live in it, along with the smell of hot dogs and car exhaust and hope and desperation. Would live and work and walk and fight and elbow my way through crowds of people, a different mix of people, brown and blue-black and lily-white and all the lovely tones in between, live in a place where the Boston Irish don't predominate. Live on a grid.

But I don't. I live here, a gentle little city built on cowpaths, a conglomeration of villages still with their separate boundaries, a mass transit system color-coded and sprawling like a web built by a drunk spider. A place where you can drive 20 minutes up the road and go cross-country skiing for $30, or live your whole life jammed up against your neighbors and car-free. A place where gay couples can legally marry, where indy bands and artists thrive and work and play, a place where health care is a right and not a privilege.

But I grew up in the shadow of New York City. It's my white whale. It's a dream I used to have, a fantasy that needed to stay a fantasy. It's someplace I like to visit once or twice a year. It's not my home.

My home is here, with all the web of community and love and memories I've built here for the past decade. My home is here, with Army Guy.

Which is the other reason Shortbus makes me nostalgic. Nostalgia isn't the same thing as memory. Nostalgia filters memories through a pink filter. It erases all the angst and loneliness, all the alienation and uncertainty, and leaves just the glamour, the excitement. The fantasy of youth.

Youth isn't wasted on the young. Only the young have the resilience and the stamina to put up with it. As much as I like to look back fondly on my 20s, I wouldn't relive them.

And I wouldn't re-make the choices I've made. Well, maybe the ones around unsecured debt. But not the lovers, the relationships, the moves, the experiences. I don't regret my wild and crazy past, and I don't regret my commitment to Army Guy.

"I'm afraid you're going to build up a head of steam over all these parts of yourself I'm asking you to give up," he said.

The fact that he even cares about that makes me love him more. He'd never steal the skin of a Selkie. He'd sit on the shore and talk with her until she folded it up of her own free will and tucked it into the thatch of their house.

Quotidien happy

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 16:01:15 GMT

Five things:

Springtime in Boston is like springtime on Long Island Sound, but more dramatic. More like La Boheme and less like... um... a Synge play?
I slathered on the sunscreen and brought my sunhat.
I've made the decision to lose weight. I've already begun the process. It's scaring the crap out of me, but the prospect of ending up with Type 2 diabetes and/or not being able to reach my arm across extraneous body parts is even less appealing than misguided compliments and unwanted male attention.
In an effort to make good on my New Year's resolution to increase my creative expression, I'm doing a monthly poetry salon. The date keeps changing. Right now, I'm looking at Sunday the 24th. There will be whole-leaf tea and cucumber sandwiches. Bring some poetry you like or some of your own. Woman-friendly space.
It's not Sunday the 17th because I've decided to go to Kripalu that weekend.
I don't like budgets. Not for money and not for things. Coloring outside the lines, including the lines of my five-things list.

Get to, not have to

Thu, 23 Apr 2009 15:50:07 GMT

Woke up only slightly reluctantly this morning, all the alarms blaring and the kitty purring. Thought about a blog entry I might write about the night before.

Army Guy calls just a little after 7:00, and I answer the phone saying, "Just ten minutes!"

"Wake up Frances!" he shouts into the phone. Our own little ritual.

I get up.

I get to get up today.

I get to drive to work -- I get to have a job to drive to!

I get to have supportive conversations with my reports.

I get to see the beautiful puffy clouds.

I get to do some real work.

I get to enjoy springtime in Boston.

I get to be alive.

Alison Townsend in Mudlark: Demeter and Persephone

Tue, 14 Apr 2009 14:10:22 GMT

One of my favorite myths. From Demeter Faces Facts (second poem down)

Without even meaning to, she’s gone underground,

the face whose curve you shaped with your own hand,
fugitive, a sullen stranger’s you’ll never touch the same way

again. Still, you keep brushing and braiding, separating
the strands and binding them together again, as if they were

a rope by which you could hold her, tethering her to your body
as she was once anchored and fed, your blood hers. Before

she got big enough to cross the street without looking back
to catch your eye. When you were still everything she needed.

-- Alison Townsend

The poems here don't always inspire me with tight, bright language, but lately I've been inspired by writers whose work is less than perfect. Some deep inner critic, some just-sprouting bulb of defiance inside me says "if they can do it, why can't I?"

Seeing a feminine moniker in the masthead at least soothes the woman-shaped ire within.

In the midst of madness, beauty

Fri, 12 Dec 2008 21:17:12 GMT

Lick

The love-struck deer is asking, with his eyes
and tongue, is asking, with black gums and quivering
limbs, to be let in–

grinding against the actual gristle and crystal of salt,
wetted and domed in the forest's center.
Someone else's pleasure is always present.

The lick's a sensate toy, a voyeur, watching him work:
shrinking her body by the second,
using lust, that dominant drug, to disguise aggression.

Apologies to the soaked ground, marked with arcs:
trampled bed, doomed intersection.

Paula Bohince

Reading tonight at Brookline Booksmith. I'm not going. I just get lots of email.

The good, the bad, and the roomba

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 02:18:22 GMT

The Good
"Remember how you said that the beef stew was a little thin for your taste? Well, I added some stuff to it and cooked it down, and now it's nice and thick. Do you want me to save you some?"

"You know, sometimes I think you have the impression I don't like your cooking. I think you're a good cook."

"I know. But it's not just enough to be good. I'm a perfectionist. It can't just be good, everything has to be faaaaabulous!"

"Well, you already are fabulous."

"Awwww! I'm going to eat the last of the stew for lunch."

The Bad
Transgender Day of Remembrance. My cousin out in California and I had a falling-out because I kept trying to raise his awareness about trans issues. Regardless of what you think about trans genitalia, or whether trans sex is "real sex" (take a wild guess as to where I stand on that issue), I think we can all agree that transfolk have the right to, you know, live. Without being beaten, maimed, or murdered. I think that the ability to walk down the street undisturbed is a basic human right we can all agree on.

More information here: http://gender.org/remember/day/index.html
(and no, visiting the site will not make you queer).

The Roomba
Yet another reason for me to get a Roomba (I need to amass a good amount of them in order to overcome that "but we're in a recession" voice in the back of my head):

Link in case of embed failure

I can't imagine my timid kitty would ever actually ride the thing around the room like that. But still, soooo cuuuuuute! Robot friends!

from 52 to 48 with love

Fri, 07 Nov 2008 23:50:17 GMT

I sent this in to the Ze Frank project but I'm posting it here too. 'Cause I can.

And because I do love you, 48. Each and every one of you. Just as you are.

Friday five

Fri, 07 Nov 2008 14:34:12 GMT

From 52 to 48 with love

I have a lobulated endometrium with a small polyp. I wasted an entire afternoon at Diagnostic Ultrasound Associates in Longwood to discover this. Okay, maybe it wasn't an entire waste. They know it's not cancer.

I started painting again. Haven't turned into Camille Claudel yet. Haven't even stained the floors or the walls. Acrylic is pretty easy to clean up.

My editor's mother is dying of Creuzfeldt-Jakob Disease. There is nothing I can say after this statement that won't sound (a) selfish or (b) hackneyed.

Sometimes you have to show up at the office even when you know you'll probably be more productive at home.

I still can't believe it

Wed, 05 Nov 2008 19:20:09 GMT

In my lifetime...

...a black man became President-Elect of the United States of America.

...same-sex couples are now legally married.

That is all I have to say. I want to just revel in the success for a while.

And both of them gifts. Requiring just the most minor amount of effort on my own part.

Both of them worthy of crying tears of joy.

Neither of them did I expect to see.

Don't just vote. Vote for Obama.

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 19:22:29 GMT

This year I've come to realize something so important, so fundamental, about the way people vote, that it's going to sound stupid when I say it out loud. The decision for a candidate is not made in a rational way.

Not usually, anyway.

People vote with their hearts as much as with their heads. People--myself included--respond much more strongly to irrational calls on their fears, their prejudices, their own personal and subconscious leanings, than they ever do to the realities of policy, or issues.

How else can you explain the thousands of Hillary Clinton supporters who have decided to vote for John McCain? The only thing the two candidates have in common is skin tone. What self-respecting feminist could possibly vote for a man whose record on women's issues is abominable as McCain? Regardless of what he called his wife (that's his second wife the hieress, not his first wife the disabled woman), just take a look at his voting record.

And even if you're not an abortion-happy feminist, take a look at McCain's economic policy. Is it the folks making more than $250,000 a year who really need help in these tough economic times?

People come up with all kinds of reasons not to vote for Barack Obama, but the main one, the one that no one wants to talk about, is the one that AFL-CIO's Richard Trumka pinpointed in a recent speech. In his words:

"They just can't get past the idea that there's something wrong with voting for a black man. Those of us who know better can't afford to sit silently or look the other way while it's happening...

There is no evil that's inflicted more pain and more suffering than racism."

And even more so when it's self-inflicted.

Barack Obama's speeches are high-flown and hope-inspiring. He's surrounded himself with smart people. I'm sure he's as human as the rest of us, underneath the well-managed campaign. But he's a better human being than McCain by a long, long shot. And I truly believe that he has the best interests of the entire country at heart.

I was born in 1973, during the Watergate hearings. I've never known a time when the office of the U.S. presidency hadn't been sullied by the shadow of Nixon's shenanigans. Kennedy was long dead by the time I was born. But listening to Obama's speeches gives me an inkling of what it might have been like to have a leader who truly inspired people, who spoke to the higher ideals of truth, and justice, and hope. We need bread, surely. And we've been pacified by circuses. But this campaign has opened a little window of belief in me that there just might be someone out there willing to work for roses, too.

All I want for Christmas is a robot friend

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 01:08:41 GMT

My downstairs neighbor and I hit it off almost as soon as he moved in. Turns out we're both huge geeks with just enough of an overlap in interests to loan each other books we don't actually own. Yesterday, he loaned me something way better, though:

Widdershins, the singing, vaccuum-cleaning robot.

I know Roombas aren't new, but it's the first time I've had one in my own house, merrily chugging away. When you push the little button, it sings a happy little I'm-going-to-clean-your-floors song. When it chokes on an item of clothing you forgot to pick up off the floor, it sings a little HALP! song. When it's all done making your floors shiny and clean, it sings a happy little I'm-done-cleaning-now song. And when it runs out of juice, it sings a sad little I'm-all-run-down song.

A few months ago, when they installed the new super-duper security gates in the downstairs lobby of my office building, I had an epiphany. We have little robot friends everywhere! The robots in the lobby read my RFID card, think a little while, and then beep and let me in. They're posh robots, all stainless steel with some wood detailing and frosted-glass gates.

More and more people have little robot friends in their houses, chugging away sucking up dirt, mopping floors, or reading them their email. And the designers have wisely made them as cute as the DRDs from Farscape.

I can has robot frienz? For a few hundred I can haz!

How "fetal rights" laws hurt mothers who want to give birth

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 20:57:48 GMT

Link to video

Some very compelling arguments about how "fetal rights" laws have been used to hurt -- and in some cases kill -- both mothers and the babies they want to carry to term.

Did you know that in states with "unborn rights" laws, hospitals can force women to undergo C-section surgery, even if the surgery would be life-threatening? That a woman is facing life in prison after one of her twins was stillborn?

I really do love my country

Fri, 17 Oct 2008 19:07:44 GMT

And like all my lovers, I like to explore its body. Most of these states I visited during a whirlwind cross-country road trip I took during my sophomore spring break in college. Ironically enough, I think it snowed in Florida that year. But the hills of Vallejo, California were as green as a heartbreak.

Once you've traveled the breadth of our continent and seen all the glorious and varied geography, and understand the way that geography informs a people's mentality--once you've done that, you realize how weak and pitiful a substitute for American culture the schlock out of Hollywood really is.

visited 30 states (60%)
Create your own visited map of The United States or determine the next president

Iraqi war bride in the Ozarks

Fri, 17 Oct 2008 11:34:55 GMT

Munira Shahamorad was 20 years old and dressed head to toe in all-concealing black robes when she showed up at the gates of the U.S. Marine base in Fallujah, Iraq, looking for a job. She was desperate to escape her brother, who she says beat her and dragged her around by the hair.
[...]
"First day I saw her, I told the guy that we were relieving, 'I'm in love, I'm gonna marry her,' " Campbell [a Marine] said. Soon, the Iraqi outcast and the American sergeant were having an illicit love affair on the base.

They made it back to the Ozarks and did not live happily ever after.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95799727

Five things about my boyfriend

Fri, 17 Oct 2008 00:26:16 GMT

Army Guy is studying for a licensing exam, so I don't get to see him as much as usual. But absence makes the heart grow fonder. And I'm so heart-burstingly proud of him, both for his discipline and his general smarty-pants-ness.

Five things about him in particular that are awe$ome:

He said the icon that goes along with this post made him smile. He saved it to his desktop and named the file "cute girl."

He sent me a picture of a tree in the midst of fall-color changing, colored extra red by a firebox light.

Whenever I walk down the bike path near my house, I think about a night in the summertime when he told a story about being outside, feeling the breathing of the trees.

He sends me hugs and kisses via SMS.

He buys me comic books.

Dan Savage can be the gay friend and I'll be the sensitive poet

Thu, 16 Oct 2008 22:06:13 GMT

Dan Savage wants to be Sarah Palin's gay friend:

Via Feministing.

Link to the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leq3ydk5Ug4

I have nothing else useful to say about the election, except maybe this:

Neal Stephenson came to read from his new book Anathem a few weeks ago (see #5 here). During the Q&A period, someone asked him about modern politics. I can't remember the exact phrasing of the question, but I believe it was about what had most influenced 20th-century politics. Stephenson took a moment to think, and then he said Nixon's successful presidential campaign strategy that plays on the fears of the electorate.

Which still happens.

I'd like to point the finger at the excesses of the latest McCain/Palin fearmongering ("Who is the real Barak Obama?"). But fears play out in our camp as well: see here and here. Of course, from where I stand, I'm a lot more afraid of what would happen if McCain were president.

My biggest problem with politics -- and the reason I dropped out of the Debate Club in seventh grade -- is the inevitable distortion of truth that happens in the midst of rhetorical competition. As a poet, I'm very sensitive to language, and I believe firmly, strongly, deeply in the notion of a truth that lives outside of the individual's mind. Will, desire, competition, lust for power -- they all distort that truth, at least temporarily.

The Anglo-Saxon wic means exactly that: bending, twisting, shaping. My savage ancestors understood the magic inherent in the transformation of one thing into another; of a bundle of reeds into a wicker basket, of a battle over land rights into an epic struggle between good and evil. The wisest of those people learned to respect that power, and to temper their use of it. But pundits, reporters, campaign managers, press secretaries, and politicians wield that same transformational power. They bend, twist, and shape reality with their words. I just wish they'd burn some sage before they begin, and maybe add a "with harm to none, for the good of all" at the end of their speeches. It's supposed to be about the good of all, right? Not just the good of the winner's constituents and campaign contributors.

Meal Assembly Kitchens

Wed, 01 Oct 2008 11:42:26 GMT

I just heard a story about these things on NPR. It's a great idea, and not just for folks with kids. So I googled the term and found a few in the Boston area.

http://mealassembly.net/search2.php?doSearch=02110&submit=GO

Of course, they're all out in the suburbs. I guess us city-hip-yuppified folks are supposed to make do with Whole Foods.

I know there are some foodies on my Flist. Anyone ever use one of these things? Experience with them?

Tuesday five

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 22:49:44 GMT

Had a good, productive day at the (home) office. Killer cramps meant I didn't feel like a human being until around 10am, but thanks to the miracle of technology (if we don't understand how it works, does that mean it's magic?) I still started working before 8am. Of course, now I feel like I need to get just one more thing done before I can go, er, home.

I've lined up an editor for my ~~new~~ ~~first~~ chapbook. This is good because it'll never get published unless I have deadlines. I can has deadlines?

From our email exchange about the book:

ME: I'd like to get it out before December and the holidays -- it might make a nice gift to some folks, unless it's super-tacky to send off your own poetry as a gift.

HIM: I don't think it's at all tacky - either that, or I'm the tackiest mofo around.

I'm leading the annual open circle of the Women's Sacred Circle at First Parish Cambridge (UU). This is, I believe, my second or third year on the leadership council for the group. Our official church liason/fearless leader has been in the job for about three years. No one wants to take it over from her (especially me) because it involves sitting through interminable Program Council meetings where they debate things like where the table for the group raising money for the thing should go next Sunday. She's very happy, however, that I've taken over most of the planning of the actual open circle. We only open to new members once a year. Usually we get a pretty sizable number of newcomers in October, but not everyone stays. It's always a challenge making sure everyone feels welcome. By the end of the year, we all know each other really well. But it's only this year that I really feel like I'm deeply rooted in the group. It's like all kinds of family: sometimes they annoy the crap out of you, but you still love them.

Army Guy, mellowtron, and I went to see Neal Stephenson read from his new book Anathem last Saturday. The Harvard Bookstore put it on -- in my church, because my church is just that cool. I was the first one up in line and asked him a question about Snow Crash. In the back the book, he mentions that the book was originally conceived as a graphic novel and I wanted to know whether he'd ever done any other collaborations. In short, no.

The crowd was super-nerd-a-licious, which made the premise of the book (a monastic "mathic" order that studiously avoids exposure to ephemeral technology in pursuit of more eternal truths) that much more apropos. Behind me, kids were talking about Facebook and Netflix. Ten years ago it would have been about iVillage and About.com.

Two great questions: one about some kind of nerd religious movement called "The Singularity." Apparently, some dude is predicting there will be a Rapture of the Nerds, where we all transcend our bodies and upload ourselves into entirely digital spaces. Sounds about as likely as Gabriel blowin' his horn and the dead rising up from their graves. What I want to know is, who's going to maintain the servers? The rest of us, I guess, who'll be stuck behind reading old books and playing with ham radios.

Best question EVAR, though: "If you had to choose just one, would you teach your children to type or to write cursive?" The poor man was stumped. For a minute. Then he chose cursive, "on the theory that handwriting recognition will improve enough to recognize cursive."

My cursive is completely illegible. Of course, so is most of my printed handwriting.

How to become a professional programmer

Fri, 26 Sep 2008 19:03:39 GMT

Man, if someone had given me this list back in 1996, I'd have crawled under a rock or gone back to being a secretary. Sometimes you've just got to be like Snoopy and fly because no one said you couldn't.

Still, some good career advice for folks who are still in college and want to enter the highly lucrative, sometimes amusing, and wicked rockstar cool profession of... professional IT'ing. Among other perks, it usually means free access to software that costs like a BAZILLION dollars otherwise.

http://www.wikihow.com/Become-a-Programmer

On a related but completely tangential note, I wrote this little article for WikiHow a while back, and always forget where it is because I named it something kind of obscure:

http://www.wikihow.com/Perform-a-Cleaning-Ritual

I hope the undecided voters are paying attention to the blogosphere

Thu, 25 Sep 2008 17:03:45 GMT

From John Scalzi:

Honestly, I no longer know what to make of John McCain anymore. A man who has readily admitted he doesn’t know much about the economy makes a big show of bringing his presidential campaign to a grinding halt to rush to Washington to fix it, which seems a bit like a NASA auto pool mechanic declaring to all and sundry that he’s going to stopped making oil changes to rush to Florida to consult on the Shuttle.
[...]
he also suggests we cancel (or, “delay”) the presidential debate on Friday, and maybe the VP debate next week. You know, just to be sure we’re all focused on the economy, instead of, frivolous things, such as the fact that John McCain apparently hasn’t had a useful thought about the national economy since he married a heiress, and that Sarah Palin can’t be trusted to extemporize [...] without appearing like she’s [shoving her hockey-mom pumps down her throat].

Link to Scalzi's full post

And via yesthatthom, some Youtube videos of Letterman catching McCain in one WHOPPER of a lie. "Could McCain be so out of touch that he didn't realize that Couric, also on CBS, would be interviewing him in the very same building?"

Short versions, long versions, all funny-as-hell versions (when did Letterman switch over from the nutty younger late-night guy in a sweater to the Johnny Carson of our generation?). Watch them all here: http://yesthattom.livejournal.com/879499.html

On a more religious note, I can't get the Family Research Council (a.k.a. family fearmongers' council) to take me off their damn spam list. What began as keeping track of what the other side was up to has turned into a daily dose of hate in my inbox. Faithful America is a nice antidote -- a PAC that reclaims religious values from the far right.

I got fed up enough to send a strongly worded response to a particularly egregious email full of lies and half-truths. I'm sure it's falling on deaf ears over in Tony's inbox, though. Maybe it will amuse you, dear Intarwebs.

From a personal appeal for dough from Tony Perkins, President of this "Christian" organization:

I want you to hear something a California pastor said to me recently:

"If we lose, we go to jail."

It's just that simple, says Pastor Jim Garlow--if marriage loses in California, religious liberties everywhere will be next. [Funny thing, that: here in ~~Sodom~~ Massachusetts, religious liberties seem to be alive and well for Christians, Muslims, Jews, pagans, and others alike, gays can get married, and marriage as we know it is still intact.]

The fight for marriage in the states is our first priority.

But we can't take our eye off Washington, D.C. politicians. Your support is vital as we stand up to liberals who want to criminalize your religious speech . . . threaten the religious liberties of employers . . . silence conservative and Christian broadcasting . . . raise taxes . . . and impose taxpayer funding of abortion and embryonic stem cell research.

And my response:

Tony, this is an incredibly offensive letter. Christians have never
been sent to jail in this country for practicing the teachings of
Christ. Untold numbers of homosexuals, though, have been rounded up by
police, beaten, raped, and returned to the street without charges ever
being placed. Recognizing a loving, stable union between two people is
not an affront to marriage. Preaching hatred and intolerance is,
however, an affront to Christ's teachings. Shame on you, and shame on
your organization. Turn off your computer and read your bible.

If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have
love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all
knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do
not have love, I am nothing.
And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I
surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me
nothing.

1 CORINTHIANS 13:1–3 (NASB)

Happy Battle of Hastings Day

Mon, 22 Sep 2008 13:07:25 GMT

One of the most important events in the evolution of the English language was the Battle of Hastings in 1066 A.D., the victory of the Normans over the native Anglo-Saxon tribes of what is now Britain.

There's an excellent explanation of the effect of the Norman Invasion on the English language at The Writer's Almanac.

The Order of the Garter and the term honi soit qui mal y pense also comes from the time of the Norman Conquest. In A Witch's Bible Compleat, Janet and Stewart Farrar make a pretty convincing argument that William the Conqueror, his wife, and their descendants were practitioners of "the Old Religion" (for want of a better title) -- one in which a High Priestess wore a garter indicating how many covens she was the queen of, and one in which the king must die.

I don't make any guarantees about the scholarship of the Farrars. It is interesting, however, that the dropping of a garter should cause such a fuss in a medieval court. And bear in mind that history is written by the victors -- in this case, the followers of a religion that vilified and persecuted those who practiced the indigenous traditions that predated it.

You can take the girl out of the hippies but you can't take the hippie out of the girl

Mon, 22 Sep 2008 11:59:26 GMT

In Harvard Square, bustling from one thing to another, I hear a busker in Newtowne Market Park singing Neil Young's Harvest Moon. I wandered over to the grass and listened. Every song he sang, I knew the words to it. And I found myself singing the high soprano counterpart -- softly, mostly.

Until he started in on Simon & Garfunkle's The Boxer and I couldn't help but sing out, Garfunkel's high tenor part over the singer's lower one, not loud enough to drown him out or take him over, but he heard me. I hope he didn't mind.

The Boxer -- the song of all the young hopefuls who come to the city.

I am just a poor boy though my story's seldom
I have squandered my resistance for a pocketful of mumbles,
such are promises
all I suggest, still a man hears what he wants to hear
and disregards the rest, mmm hmmm...

When I left my home and my family I was no more than a boy
in the company of strangers
in the quiet of the railway station
running scared
laying low, seeking out the poorer quarters
where the ragged people,
looking for the places only the would know

Li li li, li le li li li li...

Asking only workmen's wages, I come looking for a job
but I get no offers
just a come-on from the whores on 7th avenue
I do declare, there were times when I was so lonesome
I took some comfort there, oo la le la le la la la...

Now the years are rolling by me,
they are rocking evenly
and I am older than I once was
and younger than I'll be but that's not unusual,
nor is it strange
after changes upon changes,
we are more or less the same
after changes we are more or less the same

Li li li, li le li li li li...

And I'm laying out my winter clothes
wishing I was gone, going home,
where the New York City winters are ableeding me
leading me to going home

In the clearing stands a boxer
and a fighter by his trade
and he carries a reminder
of every glove that laid him out or cut him till he cried out,
in his anger and his shame,
"I am leaving I am leaving" but the fighter still remains
He still remains

Li li li, li le li li li li...

Evidence for and against...

Sun, 21 Sep 2008 22:52:46 GMT

Evidence that the world is a wicked awesome place:

The Scooby Gang's van spotted near the courthouse

Evidence that it is not:

I tried to have an actual conversation with a McCain supporter today. Actually, it wasn't clear whether he was really a McCain support or just an Obama hater. Anyway, I tried. But there's a reason I resigned from the debating society. He was more interested in picking apart my arguments than having a real dialog, and I gave up on the conversation before it occurred to me I should have reframed the whole argument and asked him why he was a supporter of McCain. One is much more likely to be persuasive if one addresses the needs and desires of the person one is trying to persuade.

But that wasn't what happened. I think better with a bit of a time delay, which is why I am a good writer but not as good of an extemporaneous speaker. Also, I get my Irish up pretty quickly with issues that are close to my heart. Like, say, sending people off to die in foreign countries for the sake of questionable foreign policies. Or stripping women of access to decent medical care and reproductive services.

So I couldn't resist the little devil on my shoulder that told me, as I was walking away, that the best course of action would be to flip him the bird and tell him to kiss my ass. I'd done so well up until that point!

"That's why I'm not voting for Obama," he said. Wow, it's so easy to influence people to keep doing what they've already decided to do!

It's not because I flipped him off and told him to kiss my ass (young whippersnapper overpriveleged little white boy with a curved-bill baseball cap that he was); it's because he'd already decided to vote for McCain.

God/dess help us all.