aNN pITTMAN

Four Square

2012-01-26T14:01:00.007-06:00

Four Square, written and directed by Manual Zarate will open tomorrow as a part of Austin's theater festival: Frontera Fest. I attended a couple of Frontera fringes (short plays) last year never dreaming that this year I'd be performing in a fringe myself.

Alongside actors *Ben Wolfe and *Douglas Taylor, I play Beverly, a girl with a limp and a bit of a slur who's in her mid-thirties, and standing at a bench-less bus stop.

"But that's all you get."

The long fringe (just over an hour) is comedic at times and tragic at others as the audience watches three people wrestle (literally?) with stories of love and loss in their past.

Truth be told, "we're all a little unfinished," which is why most viewers can relate to at least a small bit of this dark piece that seeks an answer to "why people love someone one day and then the next they don't."

We do the best we can when darkness falls. We learn the stories behind the stars; catch some music at a club. We walk by the lake, crack a joke, take a trip, take off our shoes... whatever. We let go.

And in letting go we sometimes find that we can see the sunrise in the morning.

Four Square is playing...

Friday Jan 27 at 7pm,

Sunday Jan 29 at 4:15pm,

Wednesday Feb 1 at 7pm and

Saturday Feb 4 at 9:15pm.

Tickets are $10 and may be purchased through Hyde Park Theatre. Long Fringe performances are at the Blue Theatre in East Austin. All ticket proceeds from Four Square go to The Creative Fund which exists to fund new and innovative performing arts programs at any venue in Austin.

And, in case none of the aforementioned interested you, this team will be travelling to SCOTLAND to perform at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August of 2012. Yes, I am dying a little bit... scratch that... a lot a bit... inside.

*denotes member of Actors Equity Association

Mini-Me

2012-01-06T14:10:00.002-06:00

One of my friends sent me this stating, "I found a lost archive of Ann as a child." It's not me, but it could have been. I remember asking for legos as a gift and giving Santa the disclaimer, I know they are for boys, but I really want some. Sure enough. There they were under the tree Christmas morning! I also remember going to one of my parents adult parties where a bunch of kids who barely know each other get thrown in a room with the host kids' toys. I found the boy's G.I. Joe castle-bunker thing, so I added my She-Ra right into the mix and couldn't have been happier!

Twelve for 12

2012-01-01T17:50:00.002-06:00

Twelve Great Songs to Start Off 2012...

Not As We by Alanis Morisette
The New Year by Death Cab for Cutie (or as my mom once called them, the Dead Taxis)
That Year by Brandi Carlile
Passing Afternoon by Iron and Wine
Our New Year by Tori Amos (or Pretty Good Year!... so hard to decide.)
Did I Ever Become by The Krusty Brothers (Waterdeep)
In the New Year by The Walkman
It's the End of the World As We Know It by REM (duh, hello 2012!)
Bitter End by The Dixie Chicks
Waiting Out the New Year by The Whiskey Priest (instrumental)
The Cave by Mumford and Sons
My Dear Acquaintance (Happy New Year) by Regina Spektor

And here's a freebee to the first song on my imaginary album... you'll have to find the rest yourself (although Regina's & Death Cab's videos have made it on my blog in New Years Past).

2011, A Review

2011-12-28T17:10:00.006-06:00

So it's the end of 2011. Let's review.

In case you are curious, here are the ten most amazing cats (according to Animal Planet). My favorite is the barking cat, though I do love me some inter-species communication!

And it was a pretty amazing year for me too.

I played Eva Peron in Evita, chorus girl #8 in Stop the World I Want To Get Off and Amalia Balish in She Loves Me in Georgetown, Austin and Wimberley, Texas. I wrote some things and sometimes spoke what I wrote to large groups of people... once in Guatemala... and once at my grandpa's funeral. When I wasn't singing or writing or preaching, I was changing diapers; nannying is my day job. I vacated in Colorado, at Disney World and went home to St. Jo Mo a record three times this year (and none of those was Christmas!). I turned 33 and threw myself a Jesus Died When He Was My Age Birthday Party. I had a boyfriend for a while and spent the rest of the time dating republicans, millionaires and men much older than me. I don't know what I was thinking either. And then I had a tonsillectomy. A rough ending to an exciting year.

Ugh that was horrible. Think about kittens... christmas... puppets! Let's see what Jibjab has to say about 2011.

Yeah, that doesn't make me feel much better. And when I look at the most infamous oopsies of 2011 (according to Yahoo), I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

So back to animals. Here's the top 10 Animal stories of 2011 (according to Huffington Post).

In theater, here's the 10 best things on Broadway (according to the Hollywood Reporter) that you can feel free to take me to see anytime in 2012 :)

And speaking of art, here's the 14 most inspiring looks (according to Fashion Gone Rogue) of 2011. O to be beautiful and have someone paint my face and let me wear amazing costumes. Le sigh.

Are you getting all health conscious since the New Year (and its resolutions) are right around the corner? Check out the 10 most amazing biomedical advancements of 2011 (according to New Scientist)

Speaking of breakthroughs, the NRDC emailed me this, thanking me for the work I did (donations made, petitions signed, letters written) to help make a world of difference in 2011 :)

But damn we still have a long way to go.

Not even mentioning the environment, Reuters has the most depressing overview of 2011 though their layout is pretty cool. (The only positive thing they dipicted was Britain's Royal Wedding).

But never fear! Because I believe that hope prevails, that love wins, Google's overview is probably my favorite... :)

Merry Christmas 2011

2011-12-25T21:26:00.007-06:00

This has been a strange Christmas.

A Christmas of firsts.

Strange firsts.

In honor of the first strange Christmas here is a website with awesome (and sometimes blasphemous) nativity scenes. Here's my favorite...

And the one that most made me go... "Wha...?"

And for my strange Christmas of firsts, this was my first Christmas away from my family. Yep, my first Christmas not in St. Jo Mo with Mike & Carol in 33 years. Whoa. Santa's been down that chimney a lot of years, but this year, the tracking sheets arrived with *Emergency! Re-Route! * Papers all over them.

Why am I not in St. Jo Mo you ask? Where have all the slightly sad, tongue in cheek posts about life in Missouri and Christmas at the Pittman household been? (Exhibit A... Exhibit B...)

They were traded for a trip or two to the hospital.

Because of frequent (three this year) bouts of tonsillitis and my new career of performing (I was only without throat ailments in one of the three shows I did this year), my doctor decided that 20 years of tonsillitis was enough and we scheduled a tonsillectomy. Unfortunately, this is not an easy surgery for adults. Apparently 33 years old is like 97 in tonsillectomy years.

So despite the fact that my surgery was the 15th and the nurse said I could still go home for Christmas since home was near a hospital, I did not get to go home this year because for my first major surgery, there was a major complication.

Of course there was.

My sister, an ENT surgeon herself, aptly noted (after the fact) that because of she is a doctor, there was bound to be a complication. It's Murphy's law. So while Murphy was clearing his throat, I started bleeding from mine. I threw up a blood clot the size of a golf ball if you want the gory details. So skipping the ER, I went straight back into surgery where they sutured me up. Awesome and horrible. All wrapped into one.

They said this didn't really delay my recovery, but losing that much blood after already losing about 10 pounds on a liquid diet, and I felt like I was back at square one. No talking. Major pain meds. Mucho sleeping.

And no singing.

For the first Christmas (ever probably), I didn't sing. Not one note. For the last, probably 15 years, I've gone caroling, been in Christmas choirs, sung at Christmas parties or at somebody's church for Christmas. Usually Wyatt Park's Christmas Eve service. But not this year. Not even a carol from the choir or the pew. This little strange bird was silent.

And alone.

Did I mention this was my first Christmas away from home?

I know, I am such a baby.

But thanks to modern technology this was my first Skype Christmas as well. Christmas Eve we opened our one gift as usual, and as usual, Amy, Emily & I got jammies. With fuzzy sweaters. Nice!

We arranged a time (12 noon since mom had church this morning) when we would open presents Christmas "morning." I was to be at dinner with a family here in Austin at 2pm so we thought that would suffice. As always, mother delayed us with work in the kitchen which I unfortunately would not reap the benefits of this year. But we soon got started with stockings. I got tights and make-up for my theater kit and jewelry. Amy & Emily got Mary Kay, Sephora and jewelry.

Then we moved on to Santa gifts I got skinny jeans (to wear with boots - don't confuse me with those oh-so-hip-hipsters) and 2 adjustable window screens, and hair hot rollers (also for my theater kit). And we had drawn names to ease the burden on the three girls (none of whom make very much money) and added in Grandma this year. I had Dad and had worked hard on a frames of six pictures from my father (and mother's) production of Stop the World I Want To Get Off back in the 60s at William Jewell and my production at Austin Playhouse earlier this year. Unfortunately, communication lines had gotten crossed and my package had been addressed to mom and when she opened it I burst into tears because the one thing I was supposed to do this Christmas (since I didn't get to go home or sing at church or do any of the other Christmas favorites) got fouled up (and let's face it, I was emotional anyway). So I started crying.

My sister's boyfriend Jesse saw me crying on the computer first, but I could tell he didn't know what to say and eventually the rest of them caught on and then the round of apologies began and the "I like it's" started, etc. etc.

I eventually got over it.

But then 2 o'clock hit and though we weren't quite done, we finished quickly and said our good-byes. I wore my comfiest outfit ever (some people eat comfort food, I wear comfort clothing) complete with arm warmers, a jingle bell ring, my favorite Charlie Brown Christmas tee-shirt and a fuzzy hat. My sister said I looked ridiculous. I prefer precious.

So I headed off to lunch where I ate my first Christmas meal free of meat. This year I decided to be a full out vegetarian. No more being polite and eating meat at dinner parties or at Holiday feasts. It's been about 10 or 11 months now. Thanksgiving was my first major holiday meal and I made it through! But this was my first Christmas meal sans meat!

Truthfully, I cheated a little.

I figure the gravy was probably made from meat, but since I'm a full-fledged vegetarian now and I can only eat soft foods, my choices were really limited. So I filled up on mashed potatoes and gravy, cooked veggies and a soft croissant. Yumilicious. Food. Is. So. Good. And it had been So. Long. My pants were falling off me I'd lost so much weight. And then dessert: coconut cake, moist and amazing. The jeans are fitting a little better now :)

It was strange being with other families: visiting their homes, eating their meals, listening to their stories. While we may have visitors to our home every Christmas (who hasn't made the trek to St. Jo Mo for some holiday or another, really?), I rarely am the visitor, the outsider, the guest. And that was different... to be welcomed rather than to be the one with open arms. I admit. I liked it. I thought it would make me sad, but it made me feel special to be invited into someone else's sacred tradition.

I drove around the city I live in from friend's house to friend's house and it was weird. A day that is so special because it is the one day every year that my entire family is together: all five of us, but I was in Austin, in my place of ritual. So it was strange looking at the city through the lens of the Christmas lights.

And one thing I see in Austin every day, I never see in St. Joe. Or at least, never on Christmas.

A homeless man.

Standing on the side of the highway with his cardboard sign, his backpack, and his dog. Because I worked in a downtown church for 5 years and interacted with homeless people on a daily basis, because I know Austin's statistics on people who beg for money on the sides of roads versus people in shelters and agencies, I never give money to the people I pass in my car. If they approach me, I explain that I donate money to Caritas or Salvation Army or the Trinity Center if they'd like to seek food or shelter there, they can. But today when I saw the man with his dog, I grabbed all the coins from the tray in my car and rolled down my window. Because for heaven's sake, it's Christmas. And as far away as I felt from home this day, at least I have a home of my own and a home for my family and I can't imagine Christmas without one. Since today was my first day driving in 10 days and I have no real food in my house, there were no bottles of water in my car or pb&j sandwich wrapped in tinfoil. I had nothing to give him but those coins, but hopefully that was enough.

It was a Christmas of firsts. Firsts from and firsts for. And strangely enough, I survived. And I may have even liked it.

So Merry Christmas. From Austin... a first.

Happy Thanksgiving 2011

2011-11-24T23:28:00.007-06:00

"For Anna Catherine on Thanksgiving"

by Samuel Hazo

The first girl in generations, 

you came when the century clicked

We studied you

as our particular event, 

our small surprise, our bonus. 

Months earlier, I prayed 

that you'd be born intact 

and healthy, and you were. 

Today I wish you beauty, grace, 

intelligence—the commonplace 

grandfatherly clichés.... 

What makes us crave for those 

we love such bounties of perfection? 

Life, just life, is never 

miracle enough no matter 

how we try to church ourselves.... 

Squirming in my arms, you save me 

from my tyranny of dreams 

with nothing but your version of a kiss 

and the sure, blind love of innocence.

from nines to zeroes to plus one.

Capped on a pallet, you flexed your toes

and let us count your fingernails.

First holiday in Austin with the family... Mom, Dad and Grandma. A thankful day indeed!

She Loves Me!

2011-11-21T13:08:00.004-06:00

In high school sometime after we got our licenses, my best friend, Moxi and I were driving somewhere, probably to Kelly's just outside of town, or maybe to Dominic's in the Country Club Village, or on our way to Savannah... who knows. But I remember being on a highway and Moxi putting a CD into the player in her car (we always took her car because it was relatively new, had air conditioner, and a CD player... I drove a 1980 Buick Century with none of those - or any - amenities). It was the 1993 Broadway Revival of She Loves Me. Theater was not just a hobby but probably a passion for Moxi and me. We did shows at Central High School together and even some at Robidoux Resident Theater, I think. Mox was always getting new CDs of musicals, and her parents often took her to see professional shows in Kansas City, Chicago or New York (and sometimes let me come along - Phantom of the Opera National Touring Company circa 1995). So Moxi put She Loves Me in the player and immediately began skipping to her favorite songs. "Listen to this guy's voice!" "How cute is this song?!" I remember as we were either leaving or arrive at our destination, we had to pull over alongside the road to listen all the way through the best song on the CD, "Vanilla Ice Cream."

Fifteen (or perhaps more, but who's counting?) years later, and I am singing that song onstage in the Wimberley Players production of She Loves Me. I drove to Wimberley several months ago to audition, knowing that the lengthy commute (often over an hour) and the lack of financial reimbursement/compensation for the performance (it's a community theater) were two strikes against it. But there seemed so many good reasons to do the show, I couldn't help but audition. Wimberley is a very quaint, hill-country town. My best friends Chris & Michelle were married in a creek in Wimberley, and I often visit their family who live around the area. The commute, while long, is pretty, once one has developed an appreciation for the hill-country landscape of gnarly bushes, cacti, alpacas and longhorns :) The town itself has lots of local shops and restaurants and when my family flies in this week, we'll stay three days down there in a cabin to take in the town. Additionally, my good friend (and husband in Evita), Jim Lindsay, auditioned for the show too. It's one of his favorites and I knew it would be fun to be onstage with him again.

Plus, I love the show. She Loves Me is a delightful adaptation of the French play, Parfumerie, written by Hungarian playwright, Miklós László,. Other adaptations of the script include movies, The Shop Around the Corner, In the Good Old Summertime, and You've Got Mail. And all of these hearken back to Shakespeare's Beatrice and Benedick.

So depending on which version of this story you're familiar with, I play Margaret Sullivan, Judy Garland and Meg Ryan, or any number of women starring in Much Ado including my favorite, Emma Thompson.

Last weekend marked our opening and the audiences really seemed to enjoy themselves. Here are a few pictures from our dress rehearsal...

Also, local Austin radio station, KOOP interviewed Jim (who play Georg), Dawn (the director) and me (I play Amalia) last week. You can catch us on their show, Off Stage and On the Air around minute 40. This is the same program on which I did promo work for Evita, but I didn't sing this time around. Jim and I did do a short scene from the show though!

So, this holiday season, journey to Wimberley and back into the thirties with She Loves Me, a delightful romantic comedy starring Austin actors, Jim Lindsay and Ann Pittman! Opening November 18th and closing December 11th, She Loves Me runs weekends, Fridays and Saturdays with 8pm shows, and Sunday matinees at 2:30. Directed by Dawn Youngs, with book by Joe Masteroff and lyrics & music by Sheldon Harnick and Jerry Bock, She Loves Me also features Celeste Coburn, Derek Smootz, Bill Claussen, Guy Ben-Moshe, James Springer, Ryley Wilson, Ari Pickett, Amber Randolph, Cindy Forsyth, Molly James and Elisa Nieto.

If you're in the Wimberley area, you can buy tickets at the Wimberley Players website or by calling 847-0575.

Happy Halloween!

2011-10-31T18:11:00.002-05:00

The Head and the Heart...

2011-10-27T23:27:00.003-05:00

My first day of class at William Jewell College in 1996, the professor announced that Moses and that whole 10 Commandments business never actually happened, and then assigned us to read 60 pages in a three-ring binder-of-all-binders textbook that he and another religion professor were writing together. My professor smiled, laughed and sent us on our way.

And that pretty much sums up my Jewell experience.

I was shocked at what I didn’t know about the Bible (or rather, what I had spent years asking the church about, but never received any answers for).

I was shocked when I met students from small towns and conservative backgrounds here at Jewell who thought that women couldn’t do the same thing as men, that women didn’t belong in church leadership.

I was shocked that I couldn’t have a good Christian boy in my dorm room past 10pm on weeknights, and I was shocked when that same good Christian boy (and many others after him) sent all my romantic ideals sprawling after breaking my heart.

But I was kind of naïve back then. Perhaps I still am.

I started calling God “She” at some point during my junior year at Jewell I think. I did it mostly to prove a point to my male classmates, to make them feel as estranged by the gospel as I sometimes felt. And sometimes when I would read whole passages of scripture out loud, I substituted all the “he’s” with “she’s,” but mostly that was just to drive my point home. If Jesus could be hyperbolic (remember that whole if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off story?) then so could I.

Once I got to seminary I actually got called out once by a professor for some over the top feminist comment I wrote in one of my papers. “I think you’re citing this source just to be dramatic,” he wrote in the margin. Perhaps I thought, as I flipped through my paper, noting that he gave me an “A” anyway.

I was kind of dogmatic back then. Perhaps I still am.

The world we live in is a startling place. If one thing isn’t surprising you, it’s surprising someone else. And what seems status quo to someone else is shocking the socks off you. Cause we’re all at different places on our journey and the curious part about journey is we don’t even end up at the same destination. My grandfather was baptized by immersion in my parents’ Baptist church when he was 89 years old despite the fact that he grew up in the Methodist church and continued to attend the Methodist church after his Baptist baptism. My second cousin is a UU (pronounced youyou), a Unitarian Universalist despite the fact that for years she taught on a religion faculty and called herself a Christian. A woman I went to seminary with dropped out halfway through our time there, converted to Judaism, and then married a rabbi. Albert Camus, arguably one of the greatest existential thinkers and nihilists of modern time is said to have converted to Christianity on his deathbed.

The funny thing about the journey is that we don’t all end up at the same place.

I wrote a friend once, “Do you think it’s possible to believe in Jesus but not believe in God?”

“Well,” she responded, “Most people who abandon one tend to believe in God but let go of the Jesus stuff. But you’re not most people and that’s what I love about you.”

Why am I telling you all this? Why tell the stories of those who have left the faith, confused the faith, added to the faith, subtracted from the faith? Shouldn’t Jewell have hired me to come give you clarity, insight, hope, maybe even a little God-breathed Holy Spirit?

I was asked to speak tonight about the head and the heart. How do we reconcile intellectual Christianity with emotional Christianity? Are they compatible? If so, how do we balance the two? How do they influence and inform each other?

While I enjoy speaking from a specific text and equally enjoy speaking on a given subject as both give me time to wrestle with my thoughts juxtapose them with academia, ask how that relates to my personal experiences and then wonder at the role that beauty plays in it all, this subject of “the head and the heart” really threw me for a loop.

And then I remembered something another religion professor said to me my second year at Jewell. “Christianity should be like a three-legged stool,” he said, “the Bible, your experience, and Christian tradition” (or what I would call, community) “should all three inform your faith.”

A three-legged stool.

And if we apply this head and heart thing to the stool analogy, then the head or academia would be Scripture: our stories, our laws, our literature. And the heart would of course be our experiences. And if that’s the case, then the two elements of our faith that we’re talking about tonight are insufficient in and of themselves. Using this metaphor, our stool would only have two legs.

So I turned to the text.

The Jewish shema, or Deuteronomic code, found in Deuteronomy 6 is a prayer and admonition that sums of the Torah and its teachings, sums up the law. If anyone asks a Jewish person to give a testimony of their faith in 10 seconds, this would be a possible starting place. “The LORD our God, the LORD is one,” it reads. “And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.”

If you’ve never read Deuteronomy 6:4-9, it will at least sound familiar to you because it’s the latter half of this that Jesus cites when he is cornered by the Pharisees and others who ask, what is the greatest commandment of all. Each of the synoptic gospels records a similar response.

In Matthew, Jesus states, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind” (22:37). And in Mark he says, “you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength” (12:30). And in Luke 10:27 we read, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbour as yourself.”

As Luke 10 demonstrates, Jesus and the man talking to him, add, “Love your neighbor as yourself” to the “love your God with your heart and mind” part of the Deuteronomic code. Matthew and Mark do the same: “‘you shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets,” writes Matthew (22:39). And Mark says, “‘you shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these” (12:31).

In John we don’t get quite the same stories in quite the same fashion. In John, Jesus doesn’t reference the Shema, he simply tells his disciples, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another” (John 13:34).

So in reflecting on these texts, I wonder if this whole head and heart conversation is missing something… what if it’s missing our hands? What if the question of intellect and emotion isn’t leaving out part of the equation? What if the best Christianity is practiced when it’s a combination of our heads, our hearts and our hands?

There were Jewish scholars like Nicodemus who snuck out at night to have theological conversations with Jesus. There were broken-hearted women who came to him seeking acceptance and love. There were sick, bleeding and ostracized people who needed a little dirt and spit rubbed into their wounds. And to each Jesus gave his mind, his heart and his hands.

And perhaps, so should we.

Some of us make great medical missionaries, we build houses with the best of them, we can teach sewing and farming and other sustainable economic options. We know how to use our hands.

And there are some of us who can go into the rich, white, suburban classrooms where the teenagers have everything their hearts’ desire (clothes, cars, collagen, cocaine, all the best colleges calling on the phone) and offer those teenagers hope, that indeed, despite all their stuff, stuff that will eventually expire, there is grace, that indeed, there is a God who loves them apart from it all, loves them as they are with or without the purse, with or without their ability to perform.

And there are some of us who can look at the night sky and name all the stars and constellations and clusters, and give a name to the Wonder who created them.

The hands, the heart, and the head. Some of us are better at one over another, but truthfully, we need all three to survive. And it’s all three that Jesus asks us to engage.

Love the Lord your God will all your heart and mind, and love your neighbor. Love God with everything that you are, and take care of the people around you.

Your heart, your head and your hands. I don’t know where you’ll end up if you engage all three. I can’t quite even tell you where my faith will lead me. All I can do is remind you to be gentle with one another, for you never know where your neighbor is in the head, heart, and hands journey. And be gentle with yourself too. The world is a scary, shocking place, and if you haven’t discovered that the world will hurt you, you will soon enough, and you will discover that you do your fair share of hurting others too. But with a balance of our heads, our hearts, and our hands, we stand a better chance of being the whole and healthy people God longs for us to be…

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your mind, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and for heaven’s sake, love your neighbor as yourself.

Deo Fisus Labora.

Rev. Ann Pittman

William Jewell College "Mosaic"

October 27, 2011

When Americans Occupy

2011-10-27T09:44:00.006-05:00

When Americans occupy Wall Street or anywhere for that matter, it is unclear to me why is it okay for this to happen. Aren't we supposed to be a civilized nation? Why is it okay to treat our own citizens like this?

Can someone please explain to me why this is happening?

Furthermore, I have a question for rich people.

Perhaps it is okay for you to oppress your fellow Americans. To call us names and tell us if we just had more drive, a greater perseverance, we could be wealthy too; to ask us to bear the burdon of the tax load while your second and third vacation home gets off scot free, but in the grand scheme of things, keep in mind that someday you may be held accountable for all of this: for the way you treated us when we tried to exercise our right to freedom of assembly and our right to petition the government. And in the grand scheme of things, keep in mind that we, the American poor, we the American middle class, we the American upper middle class, are the 1% ourselves. So what does that make you compared to this...

Shame. On. Us. All.

500 Words

2011-10-26T14:24:00.001-05:00

The heart breaking makes a sound, I never knew could be so beautiful and loud, fury filled and we… collide.

The heart breaking makes a sound.

Sometimes it’s loud, like a freight train’s horn as it rattles by you sitting in your car facing the tracks. Sometimes it’s softer like the sound of your roommate’s glasses under your left foot when you jump from the top bunk to the floor.

Loud or soft, it makes a sound.

It’s nice when it’s loud. You hear it, and your professor hears it, and your mother, and even your 82-year-old grandfather who won’t wear his hearing aides hears it. And this is comforting. Most everyone will give you space to pick up the pieces… grief has struck and everyone knows it takes time to put your heart back together.

When the sound is softer, managing our hearts becomes a little trickier. We may not even recognize that the crack, that little pain, those wide eyes with the fluttering lids symbolize the breaking of our hearts, our ideals, our paradigms… ourselves.

I did a lot of laughing when I came to Jewell. I loved, loved, loved college and my gluttony for this new chapter of life was not without cause. I was getting a great education, making fabulous friends, eating delicious desserts at every meal…

But for as much as I loved my first year at Jewell, it did not pass without a tear or two. For “Responsible Self” I turned in a reflective essay to Dr. Walters at the end of the semester: a 17 page, size 9 font, personal novella about my struggles (sorry Mark!).

Life which had seemed so fun to explore, so easy to discern, so manageable became convoluted, complicated, and more confusing the further away from home I traveled.

You know what I mean.

You watch 60+ wild, beautiful animals killed after their owner set them loose and then committed suicide; you see the rebellions in Libya, Egypt, Syria, the cost of which we hope is worth the freedom; you read about the middle class marching on Wall Street and beyond, not welfare families, but people like us seeking justice in this shallow, selfish economy; the 13^th anniversary of Matthew Shepard’s death passes and you know we’re still not done hating the gays; and to top it all off, you can hear your suitemate throwing up her food every night and you struggle whether or not to tell someone.

The heart breaking makes a sound, I never knew could be so beautiful and loud, fury filled and we… collide.

Take hope.

The God who gives us the Ozarks and cherry pie and Arrested Development is the same God who gave Abraham a promise, the Hebrews manna, and Israel a Messiah. God has not left us without hope. The Spirit moves among us like a crisp breeze, breathing sustenance into fatigue and life into death. And we… collide… with God.

And in that collision the depravity and the divinity get all jumbled together and we begin to see it all is sacred so long as God is with us on the journey. So long as God is at home in our hearts.

Amen.

Rev. Ann Pittman

William Jewell College Chapel

October 26, 2011

Grandpa's Eulogy

2011-10-24T10:39:00.004-05:00

It will be the past 

and we'll live there together.  

Not as it was to live 

but as it is remembered.  

It will be the past. 

We'll all go back together.  

Everyone we ever loved, 

and lost, and must remember.  

It will be the past. 

And it will last forever. ("Heaven" by Patrick Phillips)

In my first memories of my grandfather, he is always outside. He is on a tractor mowing acres of grass on a farm in Minnesota. He is reeling back and casting into a lake to pull out a fish much bigger in his imagination. He is sitting in a chair on a porch or in a garden watching my grandmother pick green beans off a vine or maybe raspberries off a bush. He is emerging from cornfields with the husks waving high above even his head. He is on a beach in Hawaii in a photo he’s brought back to Missouri; he’s reading a book on a beach. He is outside, living.

"This is what you shall do,” Walt Whitman once wrote. “Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body."

My grandfather was outside living.

He gave me some fossils when I was a little girl, some old fossils I suppose he had kept in his science classroom, but once retired, he passed on these little treasures in an old cigar box: a leaf imprinted in stone, a piece of petrified wood, and I kept those fossils in the cigar box and in my bedroom knowing that they connected me not only to my grandfather who loved science and nature and this beautiful world we live in, but they connected me to something much greater, much older, much bigger than even he or I could imagine… they connected me to the Creator.

My grandfather was outside living. But he didn’t just love the land, he loved animals too. I’ve heard stories of the farm in Minnesota and raccoons you could pet, and domesticated ducks named Ike and Mayme, and the old black and white photos of some cat grandpa loved, or Liza who used to lay at his feet near his favorite chair. My Aunt Milly describes the critters that were always kept around the house or in the yard or in Grandpa’s classroom: little mice, salamanders, guinea pigs, snakes and all kinds of interesting things. I can remember as a child, driving back up to the farm from Missouri to Minnesota, if ever we would spot a turtle alongside the road, my grandpa would pull the car over, get out to inspect it, and if it wasn’t a snapping turtle, we were often allowed to keep it, or at the very least play with it for a few minutes in the tall grass alongside the highway.

My grandfather father spent much time living outside and much time living outside himself.

Maybe it was his understanding of science and nature that summoned forth a reverence for the Creator of all things. Maybe it was his sense of connection to all things created, the handiwork of God that inspired his faith. But my grandfather was a faithful man, a man who lived outside himself.

“We’ll take the bill,” I can hear my grandpa announcing to the waitress, loud enough that my mom and dad could hear and later loud enough that I could hear so that none of us would be tempted to lay a hand on the little white slip of paper that would be delivered to the table where we were dining. He was insistent on providing for his family, not because he was the man of the house or out of some acquiesce to a sensationalized gender role, but because he adored his family, because he wanted to make sure that we were all cared for, that we knew we were loved and supported.

His prayers would have been enough though.

“I’m praying for you,” he said to me almost every time I would leave or arrive in St. Joseph for a holiday or vacation. “I’m praying for you,” and I knew he was, more than I (the minister) was praying for him, I’m sure. Even the last time I saw him, when he could barely speak and rarely would put his teeth in which made communication even more difficult, he said to me, and I could understand him, “I’m praying for you.” I can remember my grandpa praying, years ago, at the table in his dining room on Sunday afternoons when we would gather for lunch after church. He would pray for all of those who weren’t with us there in that moment, wherever they were. And I knew he was talking about John and Ardys in Duluth and Ann and John in Honolulu and Milly and Mike and my cousins in Columbia and especially my aunt Gloria in Hawaii. Sometimes he would cry when he came to this part in the prayer. And I never knew why someone would cry right before lunch in the middle of the afternoon. At that time in my life I didn’t understand what it meant to do something you loved, to be somewhere you were called, even if that meant leaving the family you needed. But my grandpa understood that. And while he always wanted each of us to be happy, he voiced in his prayer the desire that all of us would be together in spirit, wherever we were.

His prayers would have been enough, but that’s not all he gave us.

Grandpa loved each one of his children and grandchildren exactly as we are. This kind of love should be a fine art. To allow another person to be fully themselves and to love them without expectation or judgment is a rare trait to find. In a world that spends so much time telling women and men to be skinny, athletic, successful, one-of-a-kind, valuing independence and perfection while at the same time pushing us all toward one generic prototype, we as a people have forgotten what it means to live communally, to live as the body of Christ letting the hand be the hand and the large intestine be the large intestine. J In a world that would rather report on what multi-millionaire just got married instead of what mother just worked three jobs to put her kid through college, my grandfather never asked anything of any of us other than that we be ourselves.

He was so careful to tell every one of us that we were loved. And he always treated people with respect and dignity. My cousin Ruth writes, “One thing that comes to my mind when I think about Grandpa is how he always seemed to accept me as I was. No matter what color my hair was or what crazy trend I was into, he always treated me with love and kindness. I remember when I was a teenager someone in the family commented negatively on how I was wearing my hair. Grandpa jumped in to stand up for me and said (in a matter of fact tone) ‘Well I like it how it is!’” J Similarly, my youngest sister, Emily recalls, “Every time I left grandpa he was always sure to tell me to ‘keep doing what you're doing!’ and would always let me know just how proud he was.”

And my grandfather was nothing if not forthright. While he didn’t always say much, if he had something on his mind, you can bet he was going to say it. And in a family full of Maker women, I suppose you’d have to learn how to be heard. My father recalls one of the first times he was having dinner with the Maker family. Of course, he joined my grandfather as the only man at the table. And as my grandma and the three daughters chattered on and on about the day and school and dinner, my father describes watching my grandpa ask for someone to please pass the butter. Being on the far end of the table, my father couldn’t reach the butter to pass it to his future-father-in-law, and being new, he didn’t feel it proper to tell one of the girls to listen to their dad. But grandpa kept asking and the Maker women kept right on talking until finally my grandpa shouted, “I said, ‘Pass the butter!’ Dagnabbit!” J As my Grandfather grew older and communication became even more difficult, we discovered that Grandpa only spoke when he felt like something was really worth saying. Usually this too was at the dinner table... and often had no relevance to the conversation at hand because my grandfather couldn’t hear well, and was pesky about putting his hearing aides in. So while the rest of the family would be discussing the price of sweet corn or the new candidate who just joined the political race, my grandfather would suddenly bellow out, “Are you keeping Austin weird, Ann?”

“Yes Grandpa, I’m keeping Austin weird.”

“Good, I’m praying for you.”

His prayers would have been enough, but that’s not all he gave us.

For a while in the late nineties I think, my grandfather began wearing a little gold angel on his lapel. Like the politicians who speak mindlessly from their podiums about liberty and freedom with their little flags pinned to their jackets, so did my grandpa wear his angel, but thoughtfully, to remind him of who he was and who was in control. One afternoon when I was home from college one weekend, he gave me and my sisters little gold crosses on clunky gold chains. The necklaces were not delicate or fancy, but then again, neither is the gospel, and I think my grandpa knew that. He knew the unending generosity of God and that too much generosity, too much compassion, too much truth-telling eventually led Christ to the cross. And handing us those crosses was his way of handing us his faith. A man of few words but a great many actions, the cross was a symbol of the lifestyle my grandfather had chosen and the faith he hoped we too would embrace, wear around our necks, lay against our hearts. I’m wearing that necklack today.

My grandfather touched many people’s lives. Beyond his wife and his three daughters and their partners and his eight grandchildren and little Jacob his great-grandson, my grandfather touched the lives of students over the years, of people at the church and in his Sunday School class, friends at the senior center and the archaeology society.

My Aunt Gloria tells of how proud she was that the city of St. Joseph called her father, “the expert” when dinosaur bones were found nearby. My grandfather’s expertise and compassion and inclusivity touched the lives of many people.

And we all touch each other in so many different ways. Sometimes figuratively, sometimes literally. Marge Piercy in her poem, The Tao of Touch writes:

What magic does touch create

that we crave it so. That babies 

do not thrive without it. That  

the nurse who cuts tough nails 

and sands calluses on the elderly  

tells me sometimes men weep 

as she rubs lotion on their feet. … 

We touch each other so many 

ways, in curiosity, in anger, 

to command attention, to soothe, 

to quiet, to rouse, to cure.  

Touch is our first language 

and often, our last as the breath 

ebbs and a hand closes our eyes.

We all touch each other in so many different ways literally and figuratively. And that’s part of the great choice we are faced with in this world. What difference will we make? Who will we be? How will we treat others?

When asked what the greatest of all commandments was, how the law, the all encompassing life of the Jewish people could be summarized, Christ answered, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.” (Matthew 22:37-40)

And so as we go forth from this sanctuary today honoring not only a man but our memories. Those memories are testimonies to the life my grandfather led. He lived life abundantly under the influence of Christ’s sacrificial, all encompassing love. And it is abundant life, that is offered to us as well (John 10:10). The life my grandfather embraced was a life in love with God and a life that loved God’s people, no matter who they were.

May we too inherit the legacy of living life outside and living outside ourselves… Amen.

Murdock Robert (Bob) Maker, may he rest in peace

2011-10-18T17:00:00.003-05:00

It will be the past

and we'll live there together

Not as it was to live

but as it is remembered.

It will be the past.

We'll all go back together.

Everyone we ever loved,

and lost, and must remember.

It will be the past.

And it will last forever.

My grandfather, Bob Maker, passed away last Sunday, October 9, 2011. He was a really wonderful (if occasionally grumpy) man and he will be missed. I mean who will we warn not to eat the popery at Christmas? ("It's not a cinnimon stick, Grandpa!")

The obituary that he wrote himself is pretty great if, as my mother said, a little exaggerated. :) You can read it in the St. Joseph News Press Gazette. His other obituary was published in the Lake Crystal Tribune, but they don't have a website for that up there in rural Minnesota. His funeral will be Sunday October 23rd at 3:30pm at Huffman United Methodist Church in St. Joseph, MO. I and Rev. Jacobs have the honor of officiating the service.

This is a great picture of my Grandpa and Grandma here in Austin (at Threadgill's) in 2006. It was his birthday...

...And this is my favorite picture of the Maker family because it's how I remember everyone from when I was a kid.

I fly home on Saturday and expect it to be a very fun, if weepy, time of celebration. That man had life, spunk and a little spit in him! What an amazing person my grandpa was...

(initial poem titled "Heaven" and written by Patrick Phillips)

One Year Later

2011-10-05T14:02:00.011-05:00

Summer sunlight

glitters on the water.

Sweet colors of fall

drift down and land

on my new woodpile.

Winter is full of snow

and cold, but inside

the woodstove glows.

Then spring again

Our lives pass away.

It's been one year since I quit my professional job, and to be a self-employed actor, writer, speaker and... nanny.

One year.

One year ago, I wrote this blog which began... "the day my job ended, I flew to Disney World..."

And one year later, I flew back. I ran/walked my second 5K through animal kingdom (and as this year I was prepared, I ran as the Red Queen of Hearts from Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland).

However, I passed on the offer to yet again run 5 miles later that evening as part of the Wine & Dine Half Marathon Relay. I gave explicit instructions to Sam and Lynnette to protect me should my adrenaline rush or any euphoria from the Magic Kingdom delude me into agreeing to do so (because I knew the Davidsons would play paper/rock/scissors for who would run that night and I knew I'd get volunteered!). While Lindley seemed less enthused about her run this year in the kids races (I guess Disney isn't always the "happiest" place on earth), the rest of the weekend was a blast and I love spending time with the oogly Ogles and the definitely a little cray cray Davidson family. Thanks again guys for including me in your family reunion. Being adopted by families is the best.

One year ago to gain steady (ahem) income I began nannying for one of my best friends who had beat cancer just a few months earlier... so we thought. But cancer's a bitch, and it came back with a vengeance as you may remember. One year later though and my friend beat cancer a second time and survived her bone marrow transplant and just last week (Wednesday Sept 28th to be exact) she found out that her scans were clean! I gave her a necklace that evening that I'd bought for her with wishful thinking at the Pecan Street Festival the Sunday before. It read, "I Kicked Cancer's Ass." Awesome. And she did.

One year ago I got my first boyfriend (you knew it was coming) since I don't know, like 2008. He was pretty swell, and I did love him dearly. Relationships are hard though, and one year later, we were done with that one. (Yes, I kept the nose ring).

One year ago I began auditioning in and around Austin to begin pursuing an acting (dare I say it?) career. At my second audition I was cast as Eva Peron in Evita, at my seventh audition, I was cast in the chorus of Stop the World I Want to Get Off at my first professional theatrical performance since 1997, and at my twentieth audition, I was cast as Amalia in She Loves Me which opens November 18th with the Wimberley Players. Theater is hard work and despite multiple callbacks, several "we hope to work with you in the future," and even one "wow, you have a wonderful voice, now could you sing that again and pretend to be a gazelle being chased by a lion," 17 rejections is still a lot of rejections. Fortunately, I've been doing theater for over 26 years (my first voice-over was for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest when I was six years old). And I've directed, produced, and choreographed multiple shows in those 29 years and I know that not being cast is (usually) nothing personal. The director has a vision, and you either fit it or you don't. So I keep looking to mesh my dream with someone else's... and three times in one year, that happened. I consider myself a pretty lucky woman.

One year ago I committed myself to more writing, more speaking, more... creating. I called it Operation Strange Bird and since then, I started an author fan page on Facebook (please *like* me!). I flew to Santa Fe to officiate my best friend's wedding. I flew to Colorado and wrote a book (which I promptly decided was horrible). And I flew to Guatemala to speak at a pastor's conference in Queltzaltenango (funded entirely by Crazy Carol Pittman, the Missouri Baptist Convention and the Guatemalan Baptist Convention) about art & faith (feel free to read my notes on storytelling and claiming beauty). It was an amazing (if short) trip and I learned so much and met some freaking amazing like the little girl whose toes were eaten off by rats. I wrote almost every day for 30 days taking the Trust Me Ralph Waldo Emerson challenge. I started writing more openly about my view on politics especially with regard to it's interaction with the church and religion. I preached at a church here in Austin (read the sermon if you want), and October 26 & 27 I will preach at my Alma mater, William Jewell College! I sang at a gala and in churches and for funerals and was hired to officiate a second wedding via a "need a minister?" website reference. I met with a very gifted Internet guru who people would have paid thousands of dollars to get an audience with to talk about a Strange Bird website. All in all, while no one is beating down my door to hear me preach or dying to front me money for a book deal, I am making progress. Baby steps, they say.

In the past year, I've gone home to Missouri four times. Wow! (Thanksgiving, Christmas, for my vacation and when my grandpa got sick). And I'll be home again in a few weeks (when I speak at Jewell) and again at Christmas. I LOVE MY FAMILY! Going home is awesome. I wish everyone could do it more often.

To help pay the mortgage (because nannying, acting, and preaching aren't terribly lucrative), I rented out my second bedroom, thank goodness, because the month I quit my job, my roommate told me she was moving back to Houston. This was great for her, but scary timing for me. Since then I've welcomed three more amazing women to 5406 (and had to say goodbye too) and one year later (tomorrow in fact), two more roomies will move in (I hope they like Halloween!...).

Like you, I said goodbye to a decade, and on 1-1-11 I remembered the past and I mondo beyondo-ed the future. I learned how to live life apart from the church and the church learned to live without me :) In general, I wrote a little and thought a lot. I had very little money and just enough money. I gave much away (mostly books) and took much in (mostly beauty). My faith has broadened as the less secure I felt, the more I depended on God. And my friends, well, I made lots of new ones: Hildreth, Wendy, Taylor, Angela... and I was reminded that sometimes you get by with a little help from friends, and sometimes... with a lot of help. Thank you Chris & Michelle, Lynnette & Sam, Cathy & Ken, Josie & Jay, Jane & Bill, and Bethany, Amy, Melanie, Nicolette, and all the others...

What a year, one year later.

("Our Lives Pass Away" by David Budbill)

Happy Birthday, Carol!

2011-09-26T10:54:00.005-05:00

Hey everyone, it's my mom's birthday!

I won't tell you how old she is (mostly cause I don't want to do the math), but she's still a cutie, eh? She's a retired French and Latin teacher who now works part-time as a children's minister at the church I grew up in. She's been married to my dad for over 40 years (yeah, I didn't want to add those numbers up either). And together, they make a pretty sweet couple.

Carol loves art museums, traveling, reading, theater, jewelry, going to the pool, eating delicious food, going to movies, and cooking (or if she doesn't, she sure does it a lot). She also loves my grandparents whom she helps take care of. Here they are last month at their sixty-something-th wedding anniversary. Whoa.

And if that weren't enough, she also loves her three daughters...

But really, who wouldn't?

Happy Birthday, Mom.

Thinking and Other Fun Things

2011-09-13T18:41:00.003-05:00

I like interesting videos. Especially ones that make my mind go places it hasn't gone before. So today's post is merely a post of interesting videos I've watched lately. Most of them come via my friend who used to write haikus. Scan thru them and see if there's one or two that interest you...

This first one is a video posted by an Australian TV show that recruits ad agencies to sell "things" people would never really sell or buy for that matter like say "An invasion on New Zealand" or as this episode shows, "A Ban On All Religion." Wow. While I (and most of them) obviously think this is a horrible idea (and an assault on human rights), it was interesting to me to see the two angles the ad agencies took to "sell" this "product." Check it out...

This second is spoof on one of my favorite movies of all time, originally owned on VHS (though I do lack the DVD version - for shame!). It is the opening scene of Disney's version of Beauty and the Beast as told by a gay man. It is titled "Bonjour, Girl."

And then there's the counterpart, "Advice for Young Girls From The Little Mermaid" by Second City. Or what a feminist hears when she hears Ariel sing. "My best feature is my voice so I sold it for plastic surgery :)"

This final set of videos arrived in my inbox the same day that I posted my thoughts on literalism and the Adam & Eve story. I guess evolution was in the air. The first video is the Miss USA 2011 contestants and their responses to the question, "Should evolution be taught in schools?" The second is a spoof of this legitimate (if startling video) titled, "Should math be taught in schools?"

Because the first video is long, I'll recap for you...

Best Response: Miss Vermont.
Worst Response: Miss Georgia even though, yes, "we're smarter than ever these days."
Dumbest Response: Miss Indiana who thinks we should leave the decision "up to the government... leave [evolution] out of the equation." We don't understand what you mean either.
Most Ridiculous Response: Miss Kentucky who said, "You can't ever have too much knowledge on any subject but I do feel evolution shouldn't be taught in schools." Are you even listening to yourself.
Miss Missouri: I got bored. You don't represent me. Quit being so wishy washy and SHOW ME what you're made of.
Miss Texas: Really? Science is just "something extra for kids to know about"? Obviously the heat has messed with your brain.
And Miss Hawaii... What is "creationtism"?

The spoof is short. But awesome.

Enjoy!

Donde Esta Yogi the Bear?

2011-09-06T22:30:00.011-05:00

Or maybe it's Smokey the Bear. Somebody the Bear. We need somebody to help us bear this burden.

The fires in Texas, specifically in and around Austin are awful.

Just. Awful.

And super scary.

Friends keep calling and texting and messaging me, "Are you okay?" and "I know you tend to freak out anyway, so I can't imagine you in a natural disaster..." or "Is it near you?"

I and my home are okay, for right now, but fires are dangerous. This video is 50 seconds long. Look how much ground the fire covers in 50 seconds.

The fires here have been burning for 3 days.

We've lost (at the latest report) all but 100 acres of Bastrop State Park. That was one of the only shaded hiking parks in the central Texas area. A very unique place. Gone. Well, the park's gone. But the fire isn't. Check out this website showing where the current fires are located in Texas. And this one shows the smoke concentrations. The news reported that astronauts in the space station can see the Bastrop fire smoke.

So can we.

That is Austin's downtown skyline (yesterday) taken from Mount Bonnell in West Austin.

The last report I heard said that over 700 homes had been affected (destroyed) by the fire. The human casualty list is very low (only 2 dead I think), which is good, but it's still a really sad, sad story.

Here's a picture from today...

Crazy. You can't imagine what it's like driving on the highway, going to work or coming home from the grocery store and seeing the smoke.

The major parts of Austin that have been hit are Steiner Ranch (where many really rich West Austiners live), Bastrop as I mentioned, Leander, and today we added a fire on Parmer near Mopac.

The amount of land that has been burned by fire in Texas this year is equivalent to the state of Connecticut. CONNECTICUT. What? What's worse, our govenor, Rick Perry (who is running for President), cut funding to our fire departments 75% this year. Yep, this was not helpful. FEMA, please come quick.

On the other side of scary though, people are being so generous. We've had volunteer fire fighters, Bastrop had to evacuate an animal shelter, I've seen posts by people on FB offering up stalls on farms for people who are trying to figure out what to do with their horses, people opening homes and bedrooms, it's really great. And Facebook has been wonderful for that.

If you want to know how to help, there are lots of places to look...

If you live in the area...

Austin Pets Alive has most of the animals who were in the Bastrop shelter. Foster an animal!
KUT lists where you can donate items for victims of the fires. So does KVUE. (I've heard the firefighters need socks). My friend (and former student!) Anna Taylor made a google map of all the places you can donate stuff. You go girl.
The Distribution Center for displaced people in Bastrop has been calling for volunteers. So contact them if you're free.
And you can help by feeding firefighters Wednesday 3:30-6:30 at the Bastrop Civic Center too!
Or if you own a business, how can you help others? U-Haul is offering 30 days of free storage for fire victims!

Or you can call or donate money to...

The Austin Disaster Relief Network
or the American Red Cross of Texas
or the Central Texas Fire Relief Emergency Fund.

Additionally, you don't have to be in the area, but there's a call out for lawyers too. If you can take calls and help answer victims questions, contact delaine@austinbar.org.

Overall, the Facebook Central Texas Wildfire Recovery page seems to be really helpful for people wanting to help :)

So that's the scoop. I'm fine, but others are not.

Elderly Protesting

2011-08-29T19:13:00.006-05:00

I'm kind of obsessed with elderly (or at least old-er people) who protest.

I admit, I google image them.

But look at these people?! Don't you just want to be their friend?

Cause I do.

On Adam & Eve, Or Why No One Would Be Shocked If We Could Read From Left to Right

2011-08-23T15:30:00.005-05:00

Adam and Eve weren't real people.

Why?

The Bible tells us so.

Let me back up.

Recently published by NPR, this article discusses the Evangelical trend of late in "not believing" Adam and Eve were real people. Evidence cited relies heavily on science (mapping the human genome and evolution) to which the rest of the world (non-literalist, non-Evangelicals) says, "Duh."

I too say, "duh," but I don't need to be a scientist or take a biology class or even read scientific articles or to know that.

All I have to do is read left to right.

And so do you.

Which means that anyone completing, I don't know, how about the second grade, should be able to tell biblical literalists that Adam and Eve aren't read people. Because "the Bible tells me so."

Here's why. Get out your Bible.

Genesis Chapter One starts off with a void and then we get some order and God makes a bunch of stuff in a fairly systematic way, it's even ordered systematically: Day One... light... it was good. Day Two... sky... it was good. Day Three... seas and plants... it was good. Etc. You get the picture. And the pictures of Days 1-6 were probably hanging up all over your Sunday School classroom as a kid. Super.

Fast forward (Day Four: sun & stars, Day Five: animals & birds) to Day Six when God creates humanity. I'll go ahead and cite this directly instead of just summarizing so we're all on the same page...

Then God said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.’
So God created humankind in his image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.
God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.’ God said, ‘See, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.’ And it was so. God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

Okay, Day six, God created humanity (italics mine): male and female it says (i.e. both genders) at the same time. Hmm. Cool. Day Six: humanity. And while we don't know how many men and how many women, humanity is definitely plural. And just to make sure we get it, the text says, "Men and Women God created them."

(P.S. This will be an general overview of Genesis 1-4 for the purposes stated above; if you're wondering about stuff like "let us make humankind in our image" that will require another blog. Or hire me to come speak, teach or lecture on the topic of Creation or Genesis at your church, school, or convention!)

Day 7: God takes a nap (that's a Pittman paraphrase).

Then Genesis 2:1 says, "Thus the heaven's and the earth were finished..." and the reader recognizes the story drawing to a close. God takes a breather (It's exhausting being that powerful - have you seen Harry Potter?!). And it's a good - pardon me - very good story.

But then in Genesis 2:4 we read, "These are the generations of the heaven and earth when they were created." Okay, I know, the reader thinks. I just read that.

But then a new story starts. Or starts over maybe.

And all of the sudden we're back at the beginning when nothing existed and we find ourself reading, yep, you guessed it, a second creation story.

Again, to let you read the text directly...

In the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, when no plant of the field was yet in the earth and no herb of the field had yet sprung up—for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was no one to till the ground; but a stream would rise from the earth, and water the whole face of the ground— then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being. And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put the man whom he had formed. Out of the ground the Lord God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

So we appear to have started over. And the chronology of this creation story doesn't match the first one. Remember the first one? Really organized, right? (Day One: light, Day Two: sky, Day Three: vegetation, Day Four: celestial beings, Day Five: living creatures, Day Six: humanity). Well this second creation account tells the story a little differently. If we had to ascribe an order (though the text doesn't lend itself well to that) it might be: 1. Water (Streams & Rivers) 2. A Man 3. Trees and then here's the rest of the text

Then the Lord God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner.’ So out of the ground the Lord God formed every animal of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all cattle, and to the birds of the air, and to every animal of the field; but for the man there was not found a helper as his partner. So the LordGod caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then he took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man.

So we add 4. Animals 5. A Woman to our list.

Wow. That sounds nothing like the first creation story we just read. I mean there are some similarities; God is in both stories, trees and animals are in both stories, people are in both stories, but that's about where the similarities end.

And my two lists... Day 1-6 (From Genesis 1:1-2:4) and Events 1-5 (From Genesis 2:4-22) are neither in the same order, or (based on what God says) created for the same reasons.

How do I know this? Because I can read from left to right.

Please note that I have thrown in nothing that the average 2nd grade reader could not tell you.

I haven't mentioned that the word for "God" used all the way through Genesis 1:1-2:4 is "Elohim" or that in Genesis 2:5 the word for God changes to "Yahweh" which is used for the remainder of the chapter and several of the following chapters. Neither have I told you that the groups of Israelites who used these separate words for God lived hundreds of years apart. Neither have I mentioned that the group of people who called God "Elohim" were priests who loved order and systematized theology and probably would have read the first Genesis account in worship kind of like you recite the Lord's Prayer or the Apostle's Creed. Neither have I told you that the people group who called God "Yahweh" lived during the exile when all the things God promised them like a land and a people and a Temple (remember Abraham and those promises a little later in Genesis?) are all gone and they have to find God somewhere else. Lo and behold, they find God in their hearts! God was with them all along! God is not in a land or living in a Temple, God is with us - hallelujah! So in the creation story they write, God is with Adam and Eve on the earth. God walks. God talks. God makes a mud pie. God is "immanent." God is with the people.

I didn't tell you all the things I would have told you if I was teaching a class on Genesis 1-2. All you had to do was read the Bible yourself, from left to right. TWO STORIES. And any literate second grader could have told you that.

So what does it mean then when NPR reports that Evangelicals can "no longer believe the Genesis account?" "No longer believe it?" I want to ask. "Why not?" If the people who put the book of Genesis together (And no, Moses didn't write the Torah i.e. Genesis thru Deuteronomy. That'd be pretty miraculous considering he dies in Deuteronomy. Again, please put two and two together by reading left to right) intentionally put two creation stories right next to each other, then maybe the point of the story(ies) is not the literal how (order of creation, how long it took, etc.) the world was created.

And if that's not the point then we need to ask some new questions.

Like, "What do the creation stories teach me about God?" "What do they teach me about God's relationship with men and women? What do they teach me about how I should treat the world God created? What do they teach me about the purpose of existence?" In which case, based on what you answer these questions with, the statement "no longer believe the Genesis account" takes on new meaning. Do I "believe" what the Genesis creation stories teach me about God? Well, they teach me that God was so powerful that merely speaking a word made life come into existence (1st creation story), they teach me that God loves me so much that God got down in the dirt and created me with His own hands (2nd creation story)! They teach me that God is sovereign, powerful, and kind of freaking awesome (1st creation story) but not so cool that God can't come on down here to earth and be with me and talk through things with me (2nd creation story). Do I believe Adam and Eve were real people? No. Do I believe the Genesis accounts? Yes.

But maybe you don't. Okay, so let's keep going. I call this section "Further Proof That Adam & Eve Don't Exist Thanks to My Ability to Read From Right to Left."

So according to the second creation story which keeps going (it's several chapters long), Adam and Eve get pregnant and have a son. Aw... so sweet. And then they have another son. And we begin to read about the first nuclear family. Super. I just love it when people get married and have babies and live happily ever after.

Except this family doesn't. Sibling rivalry rears its ugly head even in a family who's parents got to freakin' walk and talk with God Herself in the God (except God is described as male in Genesis 2, but I like to be inclusive). These two kids, Cain and Able are like PKs on steroids. And one thing leads to another and Cain murders his brother, Able.

And tries to pretend like it doesn't happen.

I'll let you read it for yourself...

Cain said to his brother Abel, ‘Let us go out to the field.’ And when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him.Then the Lord said to Cain, ‘Where is your brother Abel?’ He said, ‘I do not know; am I my brother’s keeper?’ And the Lord said, ‘What have you done? Listen; your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground!And now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. When you till the ground, it will no longer yield to you its strength; you will be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth.’ Cain said to the Lord, ‘My punishment is greater than I can bear! Today you have driven me away from the soil, and I shall be hidden from your face; I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth, and anyone who meets me may kill me.’ Then the Lord said to him, ‘Not so! Whoever kills Cain will suffer a sevenfold vengeance.’ And the Lord put a mark on Cain, so that no one who came upon him would kill him. Then Cain went away from the presence of the Lord, and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden.

God, being God, knows exactly what happened, but here in this story God tries to give Cain a little grace and let him fess up to what he did. He doesn't. So God calls him out on it. And then, realizing that you can't hide from God, Cain starts to freak out. "My punishment is more than I can bear! I'll be a vagrant, I'll be like those men who stand with a cardboard sign underneath I35. It'll be awful. And anyone who meets me may kill me!" Yes, this is a very flawed world we live in where eye for an eye is still the preferred road toward reconciliation. But that's not the point. The point is, anyone who meets me might kill me... anyone who meets me... anyone. Anyone? If we take this creation story by itself (i.e. skip Genesis One) and if we read it literally, then anyone is only Cain's parents, right? A literalist has to say that anyone would be only Mom and Dad, Eve and Adam. But that's obviously not who Cain is referring to. He speaks of being exiled and being afraid that his past, his story, will follow him and people won't want a murderer living among them. His life is in danger from other people in the world.

Hmm.

And here's the second major setback for literalists. If they can find someway to get past two creation stories, now they have to get past Four people becoming three people becoming lots of people populating other cities.

And a second grader could tell you either the author didn't know what she was writing, or there's some other point to the story.

Again, I didn't point out that the early Israelites were shepherds and in a battle between shepherds and farmers (if you are the shepherd and you're telling the story) who would you say God would favor (i.e. who's offering would God like the most). Neither did I point out that the first few chapters of Genesis reflect lots of similar etiological explanations (Why don't snakes have legs? Why is childbirth painful? Why do we raise sheep? Why do people speak lots of different languages? Where did the rainbow come from? Etc.) Neither did I mention that there are several other very similar creation stories pre-dating the second creation story with slight variances. And I didn't mention that the slight variances the Israelites probably put on those stories - and retelling them as their own - have major theological significance (ex: in the Babylonian creation myth, humanity was created to be servants to the gods - the Israelites re-tell the story claiming humanity was created at the climax of God's creative genius and God called us very good). I didn't do any cultural exegesis of the text or delve into the Hebrew language or anything. I just read from left to right. And that's all anyone has to do to understand that the people who put the Bible together (inspired by God) didn't mean for Adam and Eve to be read as real people. They didn't put these stories next to each other for us to choose to triumph one over the other. And they didn't mean for them to be scientific evidence of the creation of the world.

Are you with me?

So when NPR quotes Fuzale Rana as saying "I think this is going to be a pivotal point in Church history because what rests at the very heart of this debate is whether or not key ideas within Christianity are ultimately true or not," I'd have to ask, what do you mean by true? Because the truth I ascertain from these two creation accounts and their subsequent stories is not how the world was literally created. That truth isn't even offered. Unless of course you're referring to how the world was created in a different way... i.e.... how it was created in love, in tenderness, in a very colorful, creative way. And if that's what you mean by truth, then NO, I don't think science is a threat to key ideas within Christianity. Because it isn't science's job to interpret events, only we can do that. And through storytelling and imagination, the early religious leaders put together the stories their people had collected about the beginning of the world and beyond, and finally in written form, these stories were passed on and on and on and eventually to us.

So let's do these ancient texts the service of reading them. From left to right. And over and over again. And let's stop talking about whether or not the earth was created in 6 days and whether or not Adam and Eve were real people. Their stories are real in our hearts and our minds as we do our best to walk with God here and now.

And that, indeed is very good.

Three Times Over, Five Times Over, Ten Times Over...

2011-08-21T15:02:00.004-05:00

Texts: Exodus 1:8-2:10 and Psalm 124

The text for today told in the first and second chapter of Exodus is the story of a paranoid political leader, and his three attempts to stave off his fear. It is also the beginning of a story of yet another political leader and his ten attempts to give hope to the people of God.

This is a story about fear and a story about hope.

But before we jump right in, let’s remember where we are. It’s always important to remember where you are. I remember where I was the last time I was with you. It was over a year ago in the spring of 2010 when the air was cooler and the grass was greener and water was still served in restaurants. J And while the weather was more pleasant, your pastor had just resigned, so you were starting a new chapter of your own story here at Sanctuary and I was asked to come and preach and help you tell it. Unbeknownst to me at the time, in just a few months I too would resign from my job across town at the church where I was ministering. And now over a year later, I’m back here with you, and I remember where you were then and what I was on the brink of, and now it is later and we are both ready for something new.

So to remember where the Hebrew people were, let’s go back to the beginning. Not the very beginning – we can skip Creation and Adam and Eve and other fanciful stories with towers and floods and whatnot. Let’s start with what scholars consider recorded history with the story of a man named Abraham in the land of Canaan.

He was the first of the Judeo-Christian Patriarchs and we meet Abraham late in life. After a visit from some angels and quite an ordeal with his wife Sarah and his servant Hagar and then some more angels and a bunch of promises from God, Abraham finally fathers Isaac: the son of the covenant. After a troubled childhood (that’ll happen when your father says God told him to kill you) Isaac grows up and marries his cousin Rebecca and with her fathers twin sons. Jacob is the younger of the twin boys, and after marrying the love of his life (and her sister), Jacob actually wrestles with God in the desert and lives to tell about it. And those are our patriarchs: Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and their counterparts: Sarah, Rebecca and Rachel.

Just as Jacob had a favorite wife, Rachel, so he also had a favorite son, Joseph, which is always a family recipe for disaster. And Joseph was a cocky little so n so and wasted no time reminding his brothers that Dad loved him the most. Pushing the limits of sibling rivalry, Joseph’s brothers sell him into Egyptian slavery, and following quite a surprising series of events including job promotions followed by stints in jail and a propensity for correctly interpreting dreams, Joseph is eventually appointed chief political advisor to the Pharaoh!

Unfortunately, Joseph’s brothers are still back in Canaan where there is a terrible drought and subsequent famine, but in Egypt where Joseph works, food has been rationed and provisions are plentiful. Eventually Joseph’s brothers and their extensive families make the move to Egypt where they are accepted not only into the Welfare system, but forgiveness accompanies food from Pharaoh’s number two whom they are humbled to learn is their long lost brother.

What a story. And of course, reunited and relocated in Egypt the now huge family (that started with just Abraham and Sarah in the desert) lives happily ever after…

Until…

Until we turn from the final page of Genesis to the first page of Exodus and discover that a couple hundred years later the current Pharaoh, Rameses the Second, has never heard of some advisor named Joseph who worked for his late great-grandfather, nor does he care, because Joseph’s family has grown and now Rameses’ got a huge city-group of unhappy foreigners… living off his land… right near the border… right next to the main political highway. Rameses is nervous. And as politicians’ first priority tends to be self-preservation, Rameses decides something needs to be done. The minority is becoming the majority, and if these Hebrews were ever to gain any sort of political clout, Pharaoh would be in real trouble. So he devises a plan.

Plan A: give the Hebrews a much harder work load, so their spirits as well as their bodies will become downtrodden and weak. Good plan. Rameses appoints taskmasters to govern the Hebrews’ working conditions and hires architects to design the great monuments. Brilliant. It’s a win/win for Rameses. Plan A is set in motion.

But oppression doesn’t stop people from carrying out natural human tendencies when they’re off the clock. If anything, it makes the embrace of a loved one even more essential! Pharaoh’s plan backfires and the first baby boomer generation is born.

So Rameses devises Plan B: hire two Hebrew midwives to kill every male born to the Hebrew women. Fewer men means less chance for organized rebellion, while still keeping enough women around to ensure slaves. And for some reason, Pharaoh thought this would be a viable option. I don’t know why he thought that two Hebrew women would kill anyone’s infant let alone the babies born to their own neighbors’ -their own people! - but perhaps Rameses figured that with enough money or enough threats, these women would have no problem carrying out his orders.

But they did have a problem with it. And their reverence for God surpassed their reverence for Pharaoh. Apparently so did their sense of morality. Not only do the midwives continue assisting in births and refrain from killing the newborns, but they flat out lie to Pharaoh about it devising the best story they can muster! “O great Pharaoh, divine ruler of Egypt, have you seen the Hebrew women?... They’re huge! You’ve got them working just as hard as the men out there in Goshen and quite frankly by the time we receive word that a woman’s water has broken, that kid is already out and napping and the women are back in the fields!”

And for a politician who already sees other races and ethnicities as essentially different from his own, Pharaoh believes them, so he puts together Plan C.

Plan C: Pharaoh turns again to his own Egyptian people and orders them to kill any Hebrew baby boy that they see anywhere in Egypt. Kill him by throwing him in the Nile. Because enough is enough. The Hebrews are growing too numerous, the threat is too great, enough is enough.

Enough is enough.

Now Pharaoh knows he will win because throwing the boys in the Nile not only ensures their physical death, but their spiritual death too. One tradition of Egyptian theology embraced by royalty and wealthier Egyptians taught that when a person died, their spirit circled the world and then returned to their properly preserved body where it would help the body to live eternally. This of course explains the Egyptians extreme care in mummification and in placing provisions and modes of transportation in burial tombs. So when Pharaoh throws those babies in the river, he assures that the spirits of those newborns would have nothing to return to which, in Pharaoh’s eyes, secured his safety not only for now but also for the hereafter.

Enough is enough.

Fear wins. Cultural diversity loses. And an already oppressed people now become victims of genocide.

Egyptian politics circa 1500 B.C.

Oh how we’ve matured in 3500 years.

… Except for the Crusades issued by the church at the turn of the first millennium, which claimed the lives of millions of non-Catholics.

… Oh and except for the genocide of the Armenians by the Turks sparking the First World War.

… Oh and except for the Holocaust which claimed the lives of over 6 million Jews and ushered in yet another World War…

… Oh and except for the 400,000 dead and over 2 million displaced Darfurians (and still counting) that nobody seems to remember because it’s an election year here in America and it’s much more important to argue about how Adam & Eve should be added to our history books and whether or not two, loving, monogamous (gay) people can get married.

But other than that, we’ve learned well from those who have gone before us.

But I like this story. I like most of the Hebrew Bible, even the hard stuff, the dirty stuff. And it’s gonna get pretty messy here in a couple of chapters. I like this story because in the midst of an ugly Plan B, we meet two women: women with names, women with occupations, and as a reader I am forced to notice, to stumble over the words really, as their story unfolds. And these two women, Shiphrah and Puah become history’s first recorded characters in a case of civil disobedience.[1] Before Socrates, Aquinas or Locke intellectualized a moral law above the governing law,[2] and pre-dating Thoreau’s disapproval of slavery, Ghandi’s defense of the Indians, Bonhoeffer’s grieving of the holocaust, or Rosa Parks and those damn bus rules, Shiphrah and Puah disobeyed Pharaoh and let the Hebrew children live. And with a little imaginative storytelling to cover their tracts, who knows how many lives Shiphrah and Puah saved.

It’s a great story.

And it leads us into an even better one. In the midst of Pharaoh’s terrible genocide, we read about a baby, sentenced to death, but destined for life.

And we meet three more women who will thwart Pharaoh’s plans: a mother, a sister and a daughter. None of them are named (though we later learn the mother is Jochebed and the sister is Miriam), but all are integral to the saving of the child and thus the saving of a people.

As any mother would be desperate to do, this clever woman saves her son via the very means of his impending death. She puts him in the river. Brilliant! Who’s going to look for a beautiful baby boy… alive… in the river? If the story weren’t already couched in such tragedy, the irony would be almost laughable. And away the basket, or arc, flows. Yep, the word translated “basket” is actually the same word, translated arc, that we read about in Noah’s story.[3] Only written in these two texts, an “arc” saves both Noah and baby Moses, but I’m getting ahead of myself because at this point in the story the little guy has yet to be named.

Running alongside the river though, through the cattails, around the rocks, and avoiding the oozing mud (I admit, I picture Missouri’s rivers and ponds when I tell this story), is the sister of the newborn, anxious to see what happens to the arc holding her innocent brother.

As Goshen (where the Hebrews lived) was close to the capital of Egypt at that time, and as the current would have it, that little arc washes up near the place where Pharaoh’s daughter is bathing. Seeing the treasure stuck in the reeds, she opens the arc to find the baby inside and immediately knows what has happened. How could she not? Then from the reeds emerges a young Hebrew girl, potentially punishable for gazing upon an Egyptian princess bathing, but when the girl offers to fetch a nursemaid for the baby, the Pharaoh’s daughter agrees. And typical of nursemaids given to babies adopted by Mesopotamians (according to an ancient legal text such foundlings were adopted and educated to be scribes) the princess offers the mother wages for her services. Pharaoh’s daughter is both compassionate and fair. To find a baby in the reeds and a young girl right beside it with the quick offer of knowing a woman who can nurse the child, it’s not hard to put two and two together. And so, the princess gives the baby back to his real mother for a little while longer (certainly longer than Jochebed would have had him should any other law-abiding Egyptian have come across the newborn) and the princess pays Jochebed for her services. But, as the story must go, after the baby is good and healthy and eating solid foods, he is returned to Pharaoh’s daughter who names him Moses.

“Because I drew him out of the water,” Pharaoh’s daughter says. Which is a play on the Hebrew word “to draw out,” an appropriate interpretation since it is the Israelites who wrote this story. But “Mose” is also a common Egyptian word often used in naming Egyptian royalty meaning “is born.”[4] Because I drew him out of water… he is born. “Mose.” “Is born:” a beautiful pronouncement by a daughter against her father’s law that all “must die.”

It’s a good story. But it might be one that the Israelites had heard before.

Sometime around 2300 B.C. the Legend of Sargon of Akkade was written and it is strikingly similar to the Hebrew story of Moses. It reads:

Sargon, the mighty king, king of Akkadê am I,

My mother was lowly; my father I did not know;

The brother of my father dwelt in the mountain.

My city is Azupiranu, which is situated on the bank of the [Euphrates],

My lowly mother conceived me, in secret she brought me forth.

She placed me in a basket of reeds, she closed my entrance with bitumen,

She cast me upon the rivers which did not overflow me.

The river carried me, it brought me to Akki, the irrigator.

Akki, the irrigator, in the goodness of his heart lifted me out,

Akki, the irrigator, as his own son brought me up…[5]

You can see the similarities… both Moses and Sargon’s parents are lower class, both are birthed in secret, both enclosed in a basket of reeds and bitumen and placed in a river, both retrieved and adopted in kindness.

But there are differences too. Sargon grew to be a great king (so he tells the story), governing people, besieging cities on the sea, and he has a lineage of leaders behind him. And while Moses did govern the Hebrew people while wandering in the wilderness, helping them settle disputes and squabbles, Moses never made it to the promised land. Not only does Moses not get to retire in the land of milk and honey, he doesn’t even get to cross the border.

Because quite frankly, the story of Moses’ birth isn’t the story of an epic hero insofar as Dreamworks or Cecil B. DeMille would like to tell it. It’s a story about God.

It is God who saves Moses and it is God who in just a few chapters will rescue the people from the oppressive Egyptians. I hate to ruin the end of the story for you, but it is God who will harden Pharaoh’s heart, because God knows just how difficult the wilderness journey will be for the Hebrews. They need to know that the God who takes them there is powerful and able to save. It is the Hebrews who need convincing, not Pharaoh, so God sends Pharaoh the plagues and the Egyptians a message of hope ten times over. And they follow Moses out of Egypt.

If the midwives Shiphrah and Puah were still alive, I wonder what they thought as they were crossing the red sea.

Maybe they were thinking what the psalmist penned in chapter 124 read earlier today… “Blessed be the Lord, who has not given us as prey to their teeth.  We have escaped like a bird from the snare of the fowlers; the snare is broken, we escaped with our lives.”

Or maybe they were still laughing about how the Pharaoh bought their tall tale. J

Exodus 1 and 2 is a story of fear and it is a story of hope. Three times over, Pharaoh governed through oppression to placate his fear. Ten times over God governed through sovereignty and provision to encourage the Hebrews’ faith.

And in between, five courageous women worked against a priesthood of a Pharaoh, a policy of paranoia, and an edict of death… and a little boy was born. Escaping genocide, he was raised by a princess, cursed with a stutter, and fled Egypt only to be asked by God to return.

Three times over, five times over, ten times over…

Moses “is born.” Is born. Is. Born. And fifteen hundred years later, the great I Am is born amidst a Jewish priesthood of oppression, a Roman policy of paranoia (not peace) and yet another edict of death. “I Am” took flesh and was born a baby but he too escaped, oddly enough, to Egypt, to one of the first places where God said, it is time for my people to be free.

It is time for them to be born again.

And maybe its time for us too.

Amen.

Ann Pittman

Sanctuary Church in Austin, Tx

August 21, 2011

[1] Exploring Exodus: The Heritage of Biblical Israel, by Naham M. Sarna p 25.

[2] “http://science.jrank.org/pages/8660/Civil-Disobedience-History-Concept.html" Civil Disobedience - The History Of The Concept

[3] “tebah” or ark. Journey Through the Bible by Rebecca Abts Wright p6.

[4] Understanding the Old Testament by Bernard Anderson p 51.

[5] Public Domain. Scanned at http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ancient/2300sargon1.asp

Le Petit Prince SHOES!

2011-08-13T15:18:00.005-05:00

When's the next holiday?! Cause I want these!... (Women's Size 6, Syle II with Navy stitching).

THIS is pair of shoes I initially found that made me drool and commit the sin of coveting...

... but apparently they're made by a Brazillian designer and were released in 08 or

09 so I don't think I have any hope of ever securing a pair (and trust me, I've spent almost 45 minutes on the Internets trying to find them!)

All of this started of course because I was researching Halloween costumes (I'm VERY BEHIND this year). I'm interested in going as She-Ra Warrior Princess of the 1980s cartoon series...

Cindy Lou Who of How the Grinch Stole Christmas circa 2000...

or a feminine version of Le Petit Prince....

However, no such costumes, adult or teen, exist for Le Petit Prince, so I would have to make-shift a costume for myself. Not a problem. But a lot of creative work. And it was in researching what other people have done to make themselves look like the Little Prince that I came across the shoes.

Sigh.

How long 'til Christmas?

On Freedom of Religion

2011-08-12T13:40:00.012-05:00

On Freedom of Religion, or One Thing the Baptists Got Right.

I had the following conversation on Facebook the other day (names have been omitted)...

And if that's too small for you to read, here's a recap:

FRIEND: We've taken God out of our schools and the the Christian beliefs that this great country was founded are getting pushed more and more out of areas they are needed the most.

ANN: Just because the law won't allow one religion (Christianity) to be the official religion of the public school system doesn't mean God isn't in schools. What if the government decided Hinduism should be the main religion in school and every morning there was a prayer to Krishna over the intercom and little statues with food offerings for them outside the cafeteria? There's a reason we have separation of church and state. If you want your child to attend school where Christianity is overtly practiced then send them to a Christian school. Our founding fathers were indeed Christians, but their theology was more deism and in NO WAY resembles the Christianity (especially the conservative Christianity) of today. Furthermore, they founded America because they were being persecuted for their religious beliefs in England and wanted to create a country where anyone could worship freely... so...

YEARS ago (in blog years it was, like, way back at the beginning of time) I posted an email I wrote to a minister/friend who asked me about the Christian right and why I thought they got it wrong. This was during the re-election of Bush when things were really getting out of hand. I made the following argument about Freedom of Religion:

We live in America, a country that is founded on free rights for everyone. I love this. I hate it though when people call us a "christian nation." We are not a christian nation and perhaps shouldn't be. I know the conservative christians are gasping now, but hear me out. Christian nations don't allow for dialogue among people of different views, christian nations have a history of oppression (the crusades, germany in ww2, england with regard to ireland, etc.) - why would we want to live in a nation like that? God created us with free will - wouldn't he want us to live in a world that allows for that? Plus, in America, I can talk freely with my hindu and muslim and atheist friends about my faith, and they can talk to me about theirs. We can dialogue and discuss what we have in common and what makes us distinct. The Muslim faith is growing across the world and in America. If you have a school where a muslim or a hindu is elected student body president, do you want his prayer to be prayed for your son and all the other students? If you want prayer in school then you better be ready to be more accepting of all types of people and all types of prayers (and time for dialogue to develop!!). But most people wanting prayer in schools want "christian" prayer in schools. They have an oppressive, exclusive agenda. Besides that, look at our models for people who pray. I don't care if George Bush says he prays every day. So did Hitler!!

I pretty much have the same opinion now. Maybe this is because I'm a liberal (so the slurs are slung), but maybe it's because I'm a Baptist.

You see, Baptists were founded on several guiding distinctives among which are the following: priesthood of all believers, autonomy of the local church, soul competency, and separation of Church and State.

Non-Baptists or people not familiar with protestantism may wonder at a couple of these distictives, but "Separation of Church and State," we are all familiar with (or should be - do they still teach that in schools? Cause I'm pretty sure Gov. Perry tried to take it out of Texas textbooks), as it became part of our Bill of Rights, thanks to, you guessed it, Baptist John Leland (though Jefferson received most of the credit).

Here's some other notable Baptist "fighters" from way back when. From the BJC website (the Baptist Joint Committee works in Washington to secure freedom of religion for all people): After establishing the first Baptist church on English soil, Thomas Helwys (1550-1615) authored a seminal treatise on religious liberty, A Short Declaration of the Mystery of Iniquity (1612), and sent a copy to King James I. In his inscription, he wrote: "The king is a mortal man and not God, and therefore hath no power over the immortal souls of his subjects to make laws and ordinances for them and to set spiritual Lords over them." For his trouble, Helwys, along with his wife, Joan, was severely persecuted. He later died in Newgate Prison.

Wow. Persecuted just because he wanted to do a Baptist church plant? And then he died in prison.

And check out this Baptist... Roger Williams (1603-1689) came from England to Massachusetts Bay in 1631 preaching and teaching "soul freedom" - the notion that faith could not be dictated by any government authority, but must be nurtured freely and expressed directly to God. He advocated a "hedge or wall of separation between the garden of the church and the wilderness of the world." The theocrats in Massachusetts were so offended that they kicked Williams out of the colony. He trekked to what would become Rhode Island and founded a city he called "Providence," because he judged that God's providence had directed him there.

And here's where my FRIEND gets it right. While many of the early colonizers fled England because of persecution, many turned right around and began persecuting their neighbors whose (variation of protestantism) faith was different than theirs. Because we never learn. Because history repeats itself. Because the oppressed when he receives power often becomes the oppressor. We demand rights for ourselves and then turn around and trample on the rights of those around us.

Thankfully, Leland, Jefferson and Madison were discerning enough to establish freedom of religion as an essential right due to any man or woman (of course, these rights would be reserved for men and women of the "Caucasian" persuasion, but no one's perfect).

Part of what established who these early Baptists were as advocates and protesters and people who spoke out on behalf of their fellow young Americans was their convictions as Baptists. Articulated by Baptist historian Walter Shurden, Baptists are unique in the Four Freedoms they embrace:

Soul freedom: the soul is competent before God, and capable of making decisions in matters of faith without coercion or compulsion by any larger religious or civil body
Church freedom: freedom of the local church from outside interference, whether government or civilian (subject only to the law where it does not interfere with the religious teachings and practices of the church)
Bible freedom: the individual is free to interpret the Bible for himself or herself, using the best tools of scholarship and biblical study available to the individual
Religious freedom: the individual is free to choose whether to practice their religion, another religion, or no religion; separation of church and state is often called the "civil corollary" of religious freedom

Now you understand why I wonder if I believe in separation of church and state because I'm a freedom-lover or because I'm a Baptist. The big picture: you get to decide your own faith and how to practice it. I can't deny you that right nor can the state.

Awesome. Amen.

On the other hand, this sucks. What Martin Luther set in motions hundreds of years ago when he demanded (among 98 other things) that the common person have access to the Bible herself is the folk religion (arguably the religious right) prevailing in America today. In other words, this not very Biblical "pull-yourself-up-by-your-own-bootstraps, God-helps-those-who-help-themselves, love-your-family-hate-your-enemy, I-can't-tell-you-the-Ten-Commandments-but-by-God-it-better-be-hanging-in-the-courthouse" Christianity modeled by the religious right is a direct result of Luther's insistance that the biblical scholars (who also happened to be horribly corrupt church leaders) get out of the way and let each person meet God where they are. Check out this article on "phantom Biblical passages" where culture has corrupted what the Bible actually says, or doesn't say.

In other words, soul competancy... religious freedom...? They're a double edged sword.

But that's just what the Baptists believed.

So what was the predominant religion of our forefathers? Well, according to Benjamin Franklin's autobiography (thank you Billy Jewell Bible School "Responsible Self" class 1996): My parents had early given me religious Impressions [Roman Catholocism], and brought me through my Childhood piously in the Dissenting Way. But I was scarce 15 when, after doubting by turns of several Points as I found them disputed in the different Books I read I began to doubt of Revelation itself. Some books against Deism fell into my Hands.... It happened that they wrought an Effect on me quite contrary to what was intended by them: For the Arguments of the Deists which were quoted to be refuted, appeared to me much Stronger than the Refutations. In short I soon became a thorough Deist. Revelation had indeed no weight with me as such; but I entertain'd an Opinion, that tho' certain Actions might not be bad because they were forbidden by it, or good because it commanded them; yet probably those Actions might be forbidden because they were bad for us, or commanded because they were beneficial to us, in their own Natures, all the Circumstances of things considered.

You still with me?

And how about Thomas Jefferson? Well, you've probably heard of the Jefferson Bible... Our third president's cut and paste version of the text (explicitly leaving out Jesus' miracles). While I don't have a biography of him on hand, Jefferson's move through religion (he hated the Catholic church, thought clergymen to all be corrupt and rejected most Christian doctrine including the doctrine of the Trinity) was generally based on his belief in Jesus as a Moral Teacher and God a material (not Spirit). In private letters, Jefferson refers to himself as a "Christian" in 1803, "a sect by myself" in 1819, an "Epicurean" later that year, a "Materialist" in 1820 and finally a "Unitarian by myself" in 1825. Most scholars would just classify him as a Diest who liked to cut up his Bible.

Needless to say, he was too liberal (in the true sense of the word - as such I, truth be told, am not) to attend the Episcopal Church of America at that time, let alone Willow Creek or The Potter's House or Saddleback or Salem Lutheran Church or Wasilla Bible Church or Trinity United Church of Christ or Wyatt Park Baptist Church or even First Baptist Church of Austin Texas.

Do I need to go on? John Adams - Unitarian. Alexander Hamilton - Evangelical Presbyterian who tried to start "Christian Welfare Societies" for the poor. James Madison - attended an Epsicopalian church (but most scholars consider him a Deist as well). George Washington - wouldn't take communion and never mentioned Jesus Christ in any of his writings. Considered a Deist but since he left virtually no writings in which he wrote about God, church, theology or religion (twice in his life he commented on a sermon), we don't really know.

So what then, about the founding father's faith do you FRIEND and all other people seeking to get back to those times, is so appealing? The fact that they picked and chose what they wanted to believe despite orthodoxy (although most conservative churches do a similar thing) or the fact that they intellectualized and internalized their faith, brooding over it, writing about it, and wrestling with it? The fact is, they believed that faith should be the choice of the people, paid for by the people and attended freely by the people so much so that they believed it is an essential right afforded to every human being and protected and ensured by the government.

Amen. On Freedom of Religion. And why I think the Baptists got this one right.

So. Cool.

2011-07-26T14:09:00.004-05:00

Literally.

I'll take a lime-flavored popcicle please.

"We've got to make solar feel simpler than people see it today," says Patrick Crane, the chief marketing officer for the California-based solar leasing outfit Sungevity.

Read the full article here.

HARRY!

2011-07-23T12:36:00.002-05:00

Finished. I finally saw the second seventh movie and it is finished. I can't believe it. Some things I JUST KNEW were going to happen and other things surprised me. But I don't want to spoil it for you in case you haven't read the books (I haven't) or seen the final flic. Wow, though. I'm happy to report I wasn't traumatized afterwards like I was after the 6th movie (note: The Windy City, Harry Potter, and The Importance of a Glerb). 7.2 was pretty awesome (and pretty sad) and I kind of want to see it again.

J.K Rowling. Thank you for being the first woman to write a series as widely read and radically followed as Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. I'm so pleased, I might go back and actually read the HP books after all.

In the meantime, enjoy this fun flic recap of Harry Potter in just 99 seconds.

1848: First Convention for Women's Rights

2011-07-22T13:59:00.003-05:00

Over 160 years ago this week, the first convention for Women's Rights was held in New York. Read the overview below (as summarized by NPR) and try not to get too angry or laugh too hard at the appalling and ridiculous responses published by men in the press and the pulpit. Because history always repeats itself. And so, my question is, who are our "women" of today? Who are not worthy of certain inalienable rights? Who have we made sub-par, indeed sub-human today?

"We are sowing winter wheat which the coming spring will see sprout and which other hands than ours will reap and enjoy." Or in other words, what are you sowing (or throwing away), for which future generations will either gratefully revere you, or with a sad, pitying laugh, bury in the recesses of their memory?

"Do something big for something good," my pastor always closes each service with. Do something big for something good.

1848: the first Convention for Women's Rights opened in Seneca Falls, New York.

When Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the rest of the convention's organizers arrived at the Wesleyan Church on the morning of July 19, they found a small crowd of men and women already waiting outside. The turnout was encouraging, but it called attention to a problem: The church was locked and no one had a key. The sun was blazing and the women were getting uncomfortable; even their summer attire, with its framework of corsets, bustles, and hoop skirts, weighed upward of 25 pounds. The men were feeling the effects too, in their starched collars and coats. Someone boosted Stanton's 12-year-old nephew through a window, and he unbarred the church door from the inside so people could find relief in the shade. Once that was resolved, the organizers turned their attention to another sticky wicket: the men. They had been invited to the second day of the conference, but not the first. Finally it was decided that they should be allowed to stay, since they were already there, but they were asked not to participate in the discussion. An hour later, at 11 a.m., the first women's rights convention in American history got underway.

The seed had been planted eight years earlier, in the fertile ground of the abolitionist movement. Lucretia Mott and her husband were traveling to London to attend the World Anti-Slavery Convention. Aboard the ship, they met a pair of newlyweds — Henry and Elizabeth Cady Stanton — who were also on their way to the conference for their honeymoon. Once in London, the six female delegates, including Mott and Stanton, found that they would not be seated and could only attend the conference behind a drapery partition, because women were "constitutionally unfit for public and business meetings." Mott and Stanton were outraged, and together they agreed that they really should organize their own convention.

It didn't happen for eight years. Stanton got down to the business of running a household and raising the children — the first three of which were boys — in her home in Boston. Mott went back to her home in Philadelphia and her work as a Quaker minister and public speaker for the abolitionist movement. When the Stantons moved from Boston to the small town of Seneca Falls in the Finger Lakes region in western New York, Elizabeth missed the intellectual stimulation of the city. She began to think again about the rights of women. She met Mott again on July 9, 1848, at a tea party in nearby Waterloo, and there she poured out her frustrations. She and the other women — all Quakers, except for Stanton — resolved that the convention for women's rights needed to happen, and soon, while Mott was still in the area. The convention would be held at the Wesleyan Church in Seneca Falls. Built by abolitionists in 1843, it wasn't a fancy building; it was plain red brick, unadorned by architectural embellishments, and didn't even look like a church. But it met the two main requirements of the organizers: It was big enough, and its doors were open to the cause of women's rights.

On July 11, they ran an unsigned announcement of the convention in the Seneca County Courier, a weekly newspaper that went to the farms of Seneca County. It read: "A Convention to discuss the social, civil, and religious condition and rights of women will be held in the Wesleyan Chapel, at Seneca Falls, N.Y., on Wednesday and Thursday, the 19th and 20th of July current; commencing at 10 o'clock A.M. During the first day the meeting will be exclusively for women, who are earnestly invited to attend. The public generally are invited to be present on the second day, when Lucretia Mott, of Philadelphia, and other ladies and gentlemen, will address the Convention." Three days later, former slave and abolitionist Frederick Douglass also ran a notice in his paper, The North Star, in Rochester.

On July 16, just three days before the convention, the five organizers sat down at a mahogany tea table in Mary Ann M'Clintock's parlor to draft their resolution. M'Clintock suggested using the Declaration of Independence as a model, so they changed a few words to suit it to their needs. "All men are created equal" became, of course, "all men and women are created equal," and so on. Stanton took the document home with her, and over the next couple of days, she drafted what she called a Declaration of Sentiments. She included a list of 18 "injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman," and a list of 11 resolutions calling for religious, economical, and political equality. The ninth resolution called for women to be given the vote, and Mott was not in favor of it; she was afraid that it went too far and would undermine the rest of the demands. "Why, Lizzie, thee will make us ridiculous." Stanton held firm, and the resolution stayed in.

Though the convention had only been publicized over a small area, and with only a few days' notice, 300 people — 40 of them men — turned out in the 90-degree heat. The first day was largely spent in reading and discussing the Declaration of Sentiments, although it was broken up by the reading of a humorous article written by Mott's sister Martha. Stanton took the podium for the evening session, and she compellingly placed the struggle for women's rights in the tradition of the other progressive reforms like the temperance and anti-slavery movements. The second day saw voting on the grievances and resolutions; the grievances passed unanimously. As for the resolutions, they passed unanimously too — except for the ninth, the demand for the right to vote. Stanton defended its inclusion, believing that "the power to make the laws was the right through which all other rights could be secured." Frederick Douglass also spoke, saying, "In this denial of the right to participate in government, not merely the degradation of woman and the perpetuation of a great injustice happens, but the maiming and repudiation of one-half of the moral and intellectual power of the government of the world." Eventually, the resolution passed, and one hundred people — 68 women and 32 men — signed the Declaration of Sentiments, after two days, six sessions, and 18 hours of discussion, talks, and readings.

Reaction in the press and the pulpit was mostly negative. The New York Herald published the entirety of the Declaration of Sentiments, intending to mock it. Stanton took the pragmatic view that any publicity was good publicity, and remarked: "Just what I wanted! Imagine the publicity given to our ideas by thus appearing in a widely circulated sheet like the Herald. It will start women thinking, and men too; and when men and women think about a new question, the first step in progress is taken."

The Oneida Whig wrote: "This bolt is the most shocking and unnatural incident ever recorded in the history of womanity. If our ladies will insist on voting and legislating, where, gentlemen, will be our dinners and our elbows? Where our domestic firesides and the holes in our stockings?"

Philadelphia's Public Ledger and Daily Transcript declared: "A woman is nobody. A wife is everything. The ladies of Philadelphia ... are resolved to maintain their rights as Wives, Belles, Virgins and Mothers."

And the Albany Mechanic's Advocate claimed that equal rights would "demoralize and degrade [women] from their high sphere and noble destiny, ... and prove a monstrous injury to all mankind."

In response, Douglass wrote in The North Star: "A discussion of the rights of animals would be regarded with far more complacency by many of what are called the wise and the good of our land, than would be a discussion of the rights of woman."

Later in her life, Elizabeth Cady Stanton wrote in her diary, "We are sowing winter wheat which the coming spring will see sprout and which other hands than ours will reap and enjoy." It would be 72 years before women would be granted the right to vote. Only one of the signers of the original Declaration of Sentiments was still living in 1920. Charlotte Woodward, who had been 19 and working in a glove factory in 1848, was too ill to cast her ballot.

Having Survived the Stomach Flu

2011-07-14T10:58:00.001-05:00

Having survived the stomach flu this week, I felt this poem was appropriate.

"Joy" by George Bilgere

Today I sit on the sun porch
with my body, just the two of us
for a change, the flu
having left me for someone else.

I'm thinking about how good it is
to have been sick, to have been turned
inside out. Until we are sick, says Keats,
we understand not. and for four or five days
I understood. Fully and completely.
There was absolutely no ambiguity,
no misunderstandings of any sort whatsoever.

For awhile I thought I'd never get better.
I'd be that sick eagle, staring at the sky
on a permanent basis. But
we're living in the age of miracles:
another jetliner smacked into New York,
only this time nobody got hurt. A black guy
thoroughly fumigated the White House.

And this morning I woke up
feeling like a little French village
the Nazis suddenly decided to pull out of
after a particularly cruel occupation.

The baker has come back to his store
and everything smells like warm baguettes.
The children are playing in the schoolyard,
the piano bars along the river
have thrown open their doors.

And here you are, with coffee
and an open blouse, and two cool breasts
from the land of joy.

Love Languages

2011-07-11T12:49:00.003-05:00

So, my friend, Bethany (who I've written about on here before), sent me this today because she knows my "love language" (the way I understand someone loves me - receive love) is gift giving.

Awesome.

I blame my father. He started it. My other love language is verbal affirmation. But that's probably because I'm an ENFJ.

If you're curious to know the other three love languages, they are... acts of service, physical touch and quality time. In general, people receive love in one or two dominant ways and give love in one or two ways. Sometimes those overlap (I both give and receive gifts as acts of love), sometimes they don't. The trick with your family, friends and partners, is figuring out how each of them "hear," "feel," "know" that they are loved by you, and to be sensitive to how to communicate that best to them (for them - not for you).

So Bethany, thanks for the email (a gift in itself). I'll be sure to hug you the next time I see you to tell you thank you and I love you too!

Trash Dunk

2011-07-08T14:58:00.002-05:00

This gives a whole new meaning to the phrase "Sic 'Em Bears." My friends are trying to decide if this decreases the value of their (our?) Baylor degrees... I would like to remind them that Baylor hired Kenneth Starr as their President last year. So, yes.

“With its great tradition in the Christian world and its growing international reputation as a research university that continues to care deeply about undergraduate education, Baylor is poised to have an increasingly expanding global impact.”

Apparently research for the semester was on pyro-technics... (warning: video is rated R for language)

Tosh.0

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Web Redemption

Clergy Health

2011-07-04T15:35:00.003-05:00

Or lack thereof. Check out this article. Thanks to Wes Eades, PhD, LPC, LMFT for the heads up on the article. You can find him and other resources at the Waco Partnership.

Be healthy.

No matter who you are.

But especially if people have elected you to represent God to them or at least speak to them on behalf of Her...

For the Fourth

2011-07-04T07:56:00.001-05:00

"This is what you shall do..."

by Walt Whitman

"This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body."

Know Thyself

2011-07-01T18:46:00.002-05:00

Um... what the...?

This cat is BARKING, yes, as in, like a dog, until it turns around and sees it's human with the video camera and then it finishes out it monster cry with a MEOW.

This is like 10 seconds long and is cray cray. Watch it.

Day 30

2011-06-30T23:22:00.002-05:00

I took the Ralph Waldo Emerson's Trust30 challenge to write every day for thirty days. If you follow the blog then you know that this is only my 12th blog of the month, so I obviously came up short, but I'm okay with that. Sometimes it's advantageous to be short :)

Truthfully, I started off pretty strong, but what I discovered was that writing a blog, one like A Birthday and a Boy or Oh Baby took more than one day. I'd write for two hours one day and then finish editing for another two hours the next day. And then I was already a day behind on writing! Additionally, there are just some things one can't put on the blog. And for that there is the journal.

So I don't feel too bad about not posting every day for 30 days for I did spend much time writing, even if the readers didn't always see the results.

Additionally, the mark of a good writer is a good reader, and I did put more effort into reading during those thirty days as well. I worked on several books and plays over the month: Unprotected Texts, The Lion In Winter, You Mean I'm Not Lazy, Stupid or Crazy, and When God Was a Woman. Granted, most of these are more academic than literary, but that's okay. Jonah's Gourd by my favorite Zora Neale Hurston is on the docket for the next read.

All in all, I'm not beating myself up over "not writing" every day for 30 days. It was a good push and I did get out some stories I'd had inside me that had wanted out for while now. And it was nice to have the prompts to read (or promptly delete) as a few of them did inspire some thoughtful reflection on my part.

So thank you Emerson and thank you authors of the 30 days of prompts. And I leave you with, again, the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson...

I must be myself. I cannot break myself any longer for you, or you...

Day 26: Who I Don't Want To Be

2011-06-26T23:38:00.002-05:00

The past few days prompts have been pretty interesting. Today's asked...

I do not wish to expiate, but to live. My life is for itself and not for a spectacle. I much prefer that it should be of a lower strain, so it be genuine and equal, than that it should be glittering and unsteady. I wish it to be sound and sweet, and not to need diet and bleeding. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Think about the type of person you’d NEVER want to be 5 years from now. Write out your own personal recipe to prevent this from happening and commit to following it. “Thought is the seed of action.”

To which I would respond...

I don't want to be a bitch. (Sorry, Grandma.) But surely you know what I mean. Opinionated, strong-willed women who have experienced a fair amount of grief in their lifetime grow older and experience more stress (or maybe just loneliness) and as a result often become, well, bitchy. Their spunk for life, their loud-mouthed passion, their outrageous laughter deteriorates into crass bitterness, long-winded soapboxes and hateful fist-waving. Their sense of self or that chip on their shoulder became not something that helped them funnel their passion for truth and beauty into good work but rather something that burdened their walk weighted with empty space.

All good preachers are called to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable, so I know that what I say often offends, but I don't want to turn into a bitter old biddy.

And in five years I will be 38. Prime age for getting cranky. Especially if I'm still single and without children. But I'm not complaining now mind you. I just would someday like to say that I have a partner in life. And that I love him. End of story.

And unlike Emerson, I would like to be both genuine and glittering, equal and unsteady, but perhaps we just have different interpretations of what those words mean.

I would like to be genuine. To be myself. To still be the eclectic (eccentric) high schooler who had friends in every clique at school. To still be the curious college kid, learning and teaching, re-thinking and re-imagining, always expanding and growing. To still be the silly and ironic grad student, demonstrating academic integrity while sometimes demonstrating in the streets. To still be the welcoming minister... young, female, and with a nose ring.

I would like to glitter... literally. With my nose ring and my nail polish and my excessive collection of bargain-shopped shoes.

I would like to be equal. To be courageous with truth, compassionate with goodness and defensive of beauty.

I would like to be unsteady for only then am I at the mercy of a God who is full of surprises.

But I would not want to be a bitch. I don't want to take all I have been given, all I was created to be and allow myself to degenerate into an unappreciative, prideful, middle aged woman who has forgotten who she is.

Lord willing... and the creek don't rise.

The Search for the Missing Clue!

2011-06-21T22:56:00.012-05:00

So you may have read my blog about my boyfriend and my birthday in which I describe why receiving gifts is a love language of mine. I blame my father who "spoiled us as little girls with presents hidden in the pockets of trench coats, sitting in the carseats when we opened the door, discovered at the end of treasure hunts with clues wehad to decipher to find." In the comment section of that blog, my father offered his rebuttle:

Writing: Day one. Beautiful, revealing, touching, self centered, delightful and of course...as always, written with wit and style.

Clue # one. If you look inside a book on page thirty three perhaps you'll find a gift so special that the Bard would say, "love can be found in many places, but the best come in small surprise packages.

Love you,
Dad

Great... (she muttered with a suppressed smile).

Assuming that he hadn't planned that far ahead and left a small surprise package in the Shakespeare books on my bookshelf when he had been to visit in early May before my birthday, but not wanting to risk arriving in St. Joseph in mid-June, devouring my father's thousands of books only to discover that page 33 referenced a book in my own library, I took down my Complete Works of Shakespeare and turned to page 33. Nothing. So I'd have to wait til I got to Missouri.

Several weeks later I found myself in Missouri. Oddly enough, my father found himself in Texas. I was on vacation visiting my parents and grandparents (as a nanny, you vacation when your nanny family vacations) and my father was at work at the National Debate Tournament.

He wasn't home to watch me, but that first morning that I awoke, I started in my bedroom, which had been his former office over 20 years ago, and perused every shelf of books (22 shelves in that room) for Shakespeare books. Having googled, "love may be found in many places but the best come in very small packages" and found no play or book citing this quote, I planned on checking every Shakespeare play, but was betting on an anthology.

Nothing.

From my room, I moved to the official library of theater books in the den (only 15 shelves in there but they're much longer, but they're also mostly alphabetized, so I was counting my blessings).

Nothing. Dangit.

So I moved to the third library of books in the living room (13 shelves but scattered with photographs and plates on stands - subconversation: why plates on stands? - so not as many books).

NOTHING.

I was puzzled. Surely the reference to the bard was to the most famous bard in Shakespeare, but if it wasn't, if it was to some obscure "other" theatrical bard then I was screwed. I just don't know my theater that well. On the other hand, maybe my father forgot. Maybe he read the blog, thought he'd leave me a little clue and then, well, forgot to. Life is busy. He had to retire and prepare his kids for nationals. It could have slipped his mind.

So I facebooked my father. "I have looked on page 33 of every book about Shakespeare or written by Shakespeare in both my house and yours. And you can imagine how long that took... but I got nothing. Another clue please?"

When he returned from Dallas, he came into my room and reported that "it" was still there and that I obviously hadn't looked hard enough. "Two gentlemen could find it," he mumbled as he walked off.

Grr.

Okay. So Two Gentlemen of Verona, the play or in an anthology. So I went through every Shakespeare book in the house. Again. And lo and behold, I did indeed find clue number two on page 33 of one of many Shakespeare anthologies (found in the living room to be exact - and I promptly moved it to the den where it belongs).

It read:

It's about time, I thought you'd never find this. Your clue finding skills are slipping.

Now where to go for Clue #2.

Another book... perhaps an old shoe.

When you find this note you'll giggle with glee

Cause then you'll be ready for Clue #3.

Hmm. Possible hints in the clue: Book, Shoe, Glee. Book, shoe, glee. Book... shoe... glee.

In my sister's room where I sleep when I'm the only child at home (her bed is a double and the most comfortable bed in the house - and yes, I still only have a twin bed in my room!), there are a pair of Amy's old tap shoes probably a size 5 in little girls. I ran to the room and grabbed the shoes. Nothing inside. Flipped them over. Nothing taped to the bottom. I remembered a favorite framed poster or painting of my sister's with an old pair of ballet slippers on it. I searched the house, but the painting was gone. They must have given it to Amy at some point.

Hmm.

Let's go with the book reference. What about a book about a shoe? Brilliant. Old Mother Goose! I found the book of nursery rhymes in my bedroom (in case you hadn't noticed, that's where all the random books are stored) but no "There was an old woman who lived in a shoe..."

So I went for help again.

"Now dad, here's where I've checked so far. I'm oh for three on books and shoes. Do you and mom have the DVD of Glee by chance...?"

He just laughed and said no. And he mentioned how proud he was of how clever this clue was. "Take some time off. Look again tomorrow."

So I did. Frustrated, I quit for the day and mom and I probably went over to Grandma's to play dominos that evening. I don't remember. What I do remember though, is what I dreamed that night. I dreamed about that damn clue! I dreamed I was searching the house for the clue and that indeed mom and dad had Season One of Glee and I found it in the cabinet and found the next clue inside.

I woke up disappointed.

Dad had to go to Savannah High School to finish up some things that night and mom had to go to work, so I spent the morning revisiting the clue. "I'm really proud of my cleverness on this one..." my father had said, so I looked harder at the clue.

Some other words began to pop out at me. "Slipping" and "giggle" in addition to "book" and "shoe" and "glee." Holy cow, I've got it. Cinderella. In Into the Woods, Cinderella slips and falls every time she enters the stage which is a reference to the golden slippers she's wearing with her ball gown (needed by the Baker's Wife to reverse Rapunzel's Witch's spell... I'm digressing). Amy and I were both in that and loved it. How clever! I was giggling now! And off I ran to the DVD cabinet to find Into the Woods.

While it was there, another clue was not. Hmm. Up to the theater books again and my figured perused the S section. Sondheim. Into the Woods, there was the score. But there was nothing in it but my father's old markings. Okay... Back upstairs to the hallway of memories where my father has pictures hanging of all his old shows. There are five pictures of Into the Woods, the last show he directed. I played the Witch (don't even start in with me on type casting cause my sister played the Cow), so I checked the picture frame of me first. But after moving one by one to each, I found no clue.

Defeat.

Ugh.

So I posted on my family's private facebook page. "Amy, Emily and Mom, where are all or any references to Cinderella in our house? I've checked the Into the Woods pics in the hallway, Sondheim's script in dad's theaterlibrary, inside the DVD case of Into the Woods, there is no Cinderella Disney VHS, there's nothing in a book of fairy tales in my bedroom. HELP. Any other things in our house that reference Cinderella?!"

They were no help. I had less than 24 hours left and I was only on clue number two. This was not good. But my father did write on my wall... Okay, here is a clue. You have already been so close you were nearly burned by the clue."

Sonofa... So I checked all the frames again and the DVD and the Sondheim script and Amy's shoes... and there, tucked UNDERNEITH the tap of the shoe was the corner of a sliver of paper. Seriously dad? Could that have been more obscure. And could it have been the FIRST PLACE I CHECKED and I MISSED IT?!

"Well it's about time," the next clue read. "What happens when Noah and your birthday collide?"

A biblical reference! I've got this one.

So I began looking for the Bibles. However, as part of my Father's Day gift to my dad and part of the reason I came home in June, I promised to help him move his office from work back home. This required going through his old study (my bedroom) and getting rid of books, making piles of books to go through, give away, sell in the garage sale, etc., moving books downstairs to where they belonged. And I'd already collected all the Bibles and made mom choose which ones she didn't want or need anymore (likewise, I made my dad go through all his dictionaries and do the same - there's no need for 15 dictionaries in one house). Afterwards, I'd boxed them up and put them in the garage sale pile.

DANGIT!

So I opened back up the boxes and in each Bible I turned to Genesis chapters 4-11. Nothing. Hmm. Not in a single one of the Bibles. Strange.

"When Noah collides with your birthday..."

Well, Noah had an arc, and ships sometimes wreck. So maybe that's the reference. My grandfather had painted a picture of a boat in a sunset that was hanging in the living room. I checked it. You got it. Nothin'.

ANIMALS! Duh. I love animals and Noah had tons of them (two of each in one version of the story and seven of each in the second - yes, there's more than one version of the Noah's arc story). So I ran back up to Amy's room and checked Binky, Emily's old stuffed bear that she loved. That and my Raggedy Ann doll are about all we've got left. Nothing.

So I asked mom for help. She had no clue (pun intended) I had even spent the week looking for clues and now here it was, 4pm the day before I was supposed to leave and again, I was coming up empty handed.

My father watched us brainstorm on the couch from his easy chair and laughed. Finally he said, "Stick with the numbers..."

"Is that a clue?!" I demanded.

Animals went on 2x2.

The flood lasted 40 days ("and nights" my father threw in).

Your birthday is 5...18... 1978.

518 ships?

UGH. Frustrated, we decided to quit for a while and go see a flood of our own: the Missouri River. Afterwards, while dining at a new local restaurant in St. Jo Mo, we returned to the clue.

"There's a chance you've got the wrong Noah," my father suggested.

"What?!" I demanded. "The wrong Noah? I don't even know any other Noahs. At least, not any famous ones."

So I thought and thought and then again returned to Glee. "Noah Puckerman! Puck on Glee! His first name is Noah!... But you don't have the Glee DVDs, we've been down that road before." My father got his biggest laugh yet on this deduction.

"Honestly. I don't know any more Noahs," I announced. "I'm turning to Google."

My father wasn't happy with this option, but it was almost 8pm and I was to leave the next morning. So I grabbed my iPhone and stuffed a little more ravioli in my mouth. "F...a...m...o...u...s...N...o...a...h..."

I scrolled past the Noah and the Arc entries and then read... "Look it up: Noah Webster's famous dictionary..."

"The Webster's dictionary guy's name was Noah?" I asked incredulously. "Who knows that?!"

"I did."

"I did," my parents both reported. Turns out my father had given my mother the hint of "wrong Noah" earlier in the evening and she'd guessed the correct answer right away.

"Oh no," I said, suddenly remembering something. "I already packed all those dictionaries for the garage sale too!"

With my parents in stitches we drove home and I began going, yet again, through the boxes of books already twice packed now for the garage sale. And in the largest Dictionary of them all, on page five hundred and eighteen I found my final note.

"That's better. Are your bags packed?"

All that work and the game was finally over.

Who knows how many hours I wasted (waking and sleeping) trying to figure out those clues. But my dad got a good laugh at my expense. And is was fun... most of the time. But the best part was after returning to Austin, finding one last little note in my... packed bags of course.

My dad loves me and loves to torture me.

And for the first time in my life, I think I'll be able to wait for my next birthday.

Six Degrees and a Couple of Encounters

2011-06-18T22:49:00.008-05:00

Several weeks ago, I stopped by Thundercloud Subs on South Congress to grab dinner before a show. Having just dropped my nanny charge and her mother off at the downtown Metro-rail, I had time to kill before I had to be at the theater. T-cloud was close by, not too expensive and I love tuna sandwiches, and I'd brought my computer so I could work on some things while I ate and killed time. The tricky part about this particular Thunder, however, is the parking. One must parallel park on the street (no problem), then walk up the stairs and down the sidewalk to get to the restaurant. Unlike most fast food joints, you can't just park and go inside. So when I saw the man with the shopping cart approaching on the sidewalk at the top of the stairs, I knew I was stuck.

Since the stickers on my car say "Cool People Care," and unfortunately I care what people think of me, I didn't want this hobo to think I was a snob or a hypocrite if he read my bumper. Plus, like I said, I had time to kill. So when he asked me if I had fifty cents, I said no, but offered to buy him dinner.

"Do you want something to eat? I'm on my way to Thundercloud now, I can get you a sandwich."

"I just want coffee."

I'm surprised I discerned that as the man mumbled and was difficult to understand. "Okay then, I'll get you a coffee."

"Do you speak Spanish? Habla Espagnol?"

"Um... no sir."

"My name's Pablo."

"Okay, I'm Ann. I'll grab you a coffee."

Thundercloud Subs doesn't sell coffee. But the guy behind the counter who handed me my food in a plastic box (and no, I did not tip him) said there was a coffee shop down the street. So I paid for my tuna (on top of a salad instead of on wheat bread, I decided) and left. Once outside, I explained to the man I would have to walk down the street to get the coffee.

He asked me for 50 cents.

"No, you may not have fifty cents from me, but I will buy you a coffee. Wait here."

So I walked further down the sidewalk to the coffee bar with dark heavy curtains lining the windows and video games inside. I approached the bar with my salad in a box and my wallet and asked for a coffee.

"What size?"

"Regular."

"Latte or an extra shot of expresso."

"No."

"Save room for sugar or cream?"

"I don't know. No."

They must have thought I was crazy. And because no one had to clean up after me and I took the coffee to go, I handed over the two dollars for the coffee (good Lord!), didn't tip, and left.

"I thought you'd forgotten about me."

I hadn't, I assured him, and set the coffee down next to him on the table. He was still sitting outside the sub shop. He tried to give me a clock out of his shopping cart and then tried to offer me a pocketknife, both of which I declined. Then he asked me where I was from and lo and behold, his ex-wife had been from Missouri. And did I know where Kearney was? And had I heard about the Jesse James festival? He's a hero there, you know.

He's not. He robbed banks. And legend has it the first person he killed was a kid skipping classes from my Alma Mater, William Jewell. He did manage to clean up his act and lived, reformed, in my home town, St. Joseph, Missouri (45 minutes from Kearney) until one of his "friends," shot him in his home for the reward money. We've dug his decaying body up three times to verify stuff about him (God knows what!). I know Jesse James, he was not a hero.

"Hmm... no, I'm not familiar with that festival."

"Do you speak Spanish?"

"No."

"What's your name?"

"Ann."

"I'm Pablo... Where are you from?"

It went on like that and at some point in there, he began shaking my hand profusely. Of course, all I could think about was that I had to eat my dinner soon and to not panic about the germs. Two people entered Thundercloud Subs and smiled as they passed by me and the hobo holding my hand. I finally freed myself.

"Do you have 50 cents?"

"No, but look here, see, I bought you a coffee," and gestured to the untouched beverage still sitting on the table.

"Oh!" He seemed startled as though he'd forgotten about it and reached his hand out for it but instead just pushed it off the table and onto the sidewalk below. And onto my favorite pair of shoes. "I'm always doing that," he mumbled.

"Okay, well, I've got to go," and I escaped back inside Thundercloud Subs to wash both my hands and my shoe. "Did you see that?" I said to the employees and the couple. "He spilled that coffee all over!" I was incredulous and retreated to the bathroom. When I emerged, one of the employees was outside telling the man he needed to move along.

I too headed back outside. "I'll see you later, okay? Nice to meet you."

"What's your name?"

"Ann."

"I'm Pablo."

"Yes, I know... Goodbye!"

Fast forward several weeks and I had another interesting encounter, quite unlike this one, but interesting nonetheless.

It was Memorial Day weekend and my friends, my dog (she has her own life jacket) and I had been canoeing on Lady Bird Lake. Bailey has his own canoe and while this was a fun excursion complete with birthday candles and a Jesus night light (don't ask), the downside to Bailey owning his own canoe was that we had to get that canoe from the lake back to his house. And of course he doesn't use a car.

But he is an engineer and he has built a wheel and cart contraption that fits inside the canoe when we're... well, canoeing... and that once unloaded and put together, will serve as a sort of cart for the canoe. And after lugging it out of the water, raising it onto the wheels, avoiding the poison ivy, and running it (oh. my. god.) up a huge hill, Bailey, Catherine, my dog and I were on our way home.

"Oh look, there's the woman I ran into this morning on the way down to the lake," Bailey remarked. And as soon as she saw us, she recognized us too... or rather, Bailey and the canoe.

"Ooh you're back. Hold on now, just wait there. Oh and look, you've brought your dog! Let me run inside and get my camera, my sons are going to want to see this."

She returned, took our picture, learned our names, explained about her surfer sons. The woman appeared to be around my mother's age, and was probably retired or maybe only working part-time. The house behind her was old, not newly remodeled like much of its Zilker neighbors, and the yard was unkept. She asked Bailey if he'd ever surfed and inquired about his occupation. Bailey sort of only works when he wants to. He basically gets paid to make stuff... dog toys, high heel shoe holders, canoe carts, whatever.

"And what do you do?" the woman asked turning to Catherine and me.

"I'm an English teacher in Dallas," my friend responded.

"I'm an actor here in Austin," I said.

"Really?!" she exclaimed. "Well my father was a theater professor at UT. You've got to come inside and see this."

Sure enough, after parking the canoe, Bailey, Catherine, I, and yep, my dog, followed the woman into her dead parents' house. Inside, she pointed out boxes of files and written works by her father and his brother, piles of books and some still shelved. She'd already taken most of her father's book to the UT library, but much still remained.

"Those are his books on sexuality," she pointed to several creatively titled books on the top shelf. "He and my mother were very experimental for a while. Theater people, you know. They like to experience and understand every feeling people have. I've been reading my father's diaries and he was very explicit about his encounters."

It was an amazing house. One whole wall was pictures her dad had cut out of magazines, photos, yearbooks, whatever, of colleagues he worked with, friends he had, etc. And the books! Cat and I were in heaven. "I want to live here and help her sort all this," I whispered to Cat.

"I just want to sit and read," she replied.

"This is a book my father wrote," and the woman handed it to me. Hodge. "My dad was Francis Hodge." Sure enough, when I returned home to St Joseph last week, I checked my own father's theater library and found Dr. Hodge's book. Holy cow. What were we doing in that house?

The woman, who had introduced herself by that point, took our names and emails and Bailey's business card (who carries their business card in their swimsuit?) and said she was in town working on the house from California. She'd be returning there soon, "but the next time I'm in Austin, we should all grab a beer. Or maybe I can catch one of your shows!"

"I hope so!" I replied and we returned to lugging the giant canoe back to Bailey's house.

It's not every day that you encounter a man who's partied 45 minutes from your hometown, celebrating the life of your home state's most infamous criminal. Neither is it every day that you are invited into a stranger's home who's father authored a book that sits on your own father's library shelf. It makes this overpopulated world of almost 7 billion people (and still growing more and more by the minute) seem just a little bit smaller. And it makes this violent, war-ridden, fear-driven, hate-fueled world seem just a little more friendly.

And to that I'll raise a spilled cup of $2 coffee.

Or maybe a canoe.

Missouri and a Sense of Place

2011-06-16T12:35:00.004-05:00

I woke up this morning to rain. Straight-forward rain. The rain that isn't from a storm, just a passing thundercloud. The kind of rain the lawn service will continue to mow straight through. Straight-down rain.

We don't have that often where I live in Texas. Or if we do, it doesn't feel the same. Here in Missouri, it is cool. It is May and the windows are open, and I slept with a breeze blowing through all night. It is just sprinkling now, at noon, and the mower has packed up and left after his 20 minutes of work and with his 20 dollars of pay. Lying in bed, with the wind blowing, and the rain trickling, I am reminded of closing my eyes as a child and listening to the rain forrest around me. The raindrops dripping and dropping from leaf to leaf, the birds tweeting and singing and making all sorts of noise, but soothing noise, repetitive noise, and I wonder if that's how we originally learned music. As a child though, all that ambient noise sounded just like the "rain forrest" sounds you heard on CDs at those earthy stores in Kansas City that I didn't really understand much except they must have been started by someone who liked to travel. There's no need for sound machines while you sleep here or white noise bunnies placed next to cribs. Not when you lie in bed in Missouri.

In Texas the birds where I live are hideous. Mostly grackles, and they squawk. And because they're not beautiful like a toucan or a peacock, their noise is obnoxious, loathesome even. And while I've had a sprinkling of cardinals in my yard in Texas this spring, it's mostly grackles that one encounters, half deformed from fighting with car tires in the parking lot of grocery stores, pecking at bits of food that have fallen and fried on the smoldering asphalt and squawking and biting at each other, fighting over that generic brand of spaghetti noodles that must have slipped out of someone's cart and been run over by someone else's car and left scattered across the parking lot for the grackles to fight over. Then they fly (if their wings still work) up to the branches of the small trees littering the lot to squawk and shit with the hundred other grackles up there scaring adults and children alike as we scuttle with our groceries underneath.

It's like being in an episode of The Birds.

But it's not like that in Missouri. How it got so peaceful here, I'll never know. I remember the fighting, and the "Get dressed!"s and "That's my barbie!"s of childhood, and the "You ruined my favorite shirt!"s and "I can't believe you read my diary!"s of adolescence. But then all the girls grew up and moved out and learned how to clean up after themselves (except with men and for that they always seemed to come home for help cleaning) and got jobs and dogs and managed both alongside a mortgage and a car payment.

Now you come home and the floors have been redone. You've never seen anything so shiny as these hardwood floors. Even that spot where your sister's bunny peed it's acidic urine all over the floors is gone. And the ceiling that always leaked rain and probably asbestos onto your head during thunderstorms (markedly different that today's brief downpour), it got fixed too, so now there's no spray painting over water stains on ceilings and no hanging posters over places where the wood has rotted. And that spot of cherries on the ceiling that marked where the trash flew everywhere after mom threw it at you because you were fighting over who got the "nicer" sheet of drawing paper as you sat in front of the television, preparing to mimic Bob Ross's lovely watercolor, that's gone too.

My point is that it's cleaner here now, calmer. And one feels safe. Much safer than during childhood even though now one knows that natural disasters and failing economies and adulterous husbands and salary-cuts and mental health disorders all make the world a much scarier place than the masked men under the bed and monsters lurking in the closet and the study room ghost ever managed to conjure up in our imaginations. So while reality has settled in, so has my sense of place in this house and quite frankly, here it has endured. Here perseverance has prevailed.

"It'll get hot here," mother warned when I remarked at how wonderful it felt stepping off the plane at 6 o'clock to be greeted by 87 degrees of heat instead of the hundreds I left in Texas. "Yes, mother but it's June. And still spring. And in Texas its been in the triple digits since May. It won't get that hot here until July." And it will. July and August will be miserable here in Missouri and everyone will be either at the pool or in their office buildings. But by July and August in Texas, we'll have been oppressed by the heat for four straight months, with one or two more to go, and morale will be down, and unlike everyone else in the world who loses weight during the summer, we'll have put more on because there's no exercise to be done when it's 107 degrees outside and the pools feel like bathwater only muggier and even driving from your home to the gym is ample time to dehydrate if you've not had a full 8 ounces before braving the scurry to the car and the rolling down of the windows and the blasting of the AC.

Yes, it'll get hot here, but only for two months. And then the season will change and the rain will fall again and the leaves will turn and new smells and scenery will startle your senses into remembering again that life is changing and we must be aware.

I love my house in Texas. I love my life there. I love my dog and two cats and my boyfriend and my budding acting career and my quirky friends. I love my black, older neighborhood and my toyota corolla with it's "cool people care" bumper stickers and bluebonnets. I love that almost anything I want to buy in Austin I can buy either local or organic. I love that we have whole neighborhoods of "green housing." I love that there are more theaters there, professional and community, than I can keep track of, and that original art can be found on every coffee shop wall. I love the tattoos and the piercings and the mohawks and the liberals and the bicycles, hybids, smart cars, metro-rail, buses and the "dillo."

But I love my parents old house too with the coal bin and the original wood floors (newly polished) and the bookshelves built into every room and the doorknobs that fall off the doors and the attic and the basement and the study where the ghost lived that I moved into when Emily grew old enough to need her own room. And I love the trees that are taller than our two-story house and the fact that it rains at least once a month and I love the flowers and rock gardens and bushes that bloom and grass that grows green without the need for perpetual sprinklers. I love the four seasons and the violent storms and the soft rains and quiet snows and sleeping all night with the windows open.

I love that finally Missouri gives me a sense of place.

Middle Class

2011-06-16T11:23:00.005-05:00

Middle-Class Blues

by Dennis O'Driscoll

He has everything.
A beautiful young wife.
A comfortable home.
A secure job.
A velvet three-piece suite.
A metallic-silver car.
A mahogany cocktail cabinet.
A rugby trophy.
A remote-controlled music centre.
A set of gold clubs under the hallstand.
A fair-haired daughter learning to walk.

What he is afraid of most
and what keeps him tossing some nights
on the electric underblanket,
listening to the antique clock
clicking with disapproval from the landing,
are the stories that begin:
He had everything.
A beautiful young wife.
A comfortable home.
A secure job.
Then one day.

Sometimes I wish I was middle class. Sometimes I don't. Mostly I just wish I could sit on the front side of the curtain on airplanes. So. Unfair.

Day Nine Prompt

2011-06-09T23:44:00.003-05:00

To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, that is genius. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

What is burning deep inside of you? If you could spread your personal message RIGHT NOW to 1 million people, what would you say?

BE HONEST. and BE YOURSELF.

I'm reminded of a poem that I didn't write, but that I love: God Says Yes to Me. And a sermon I preached several years ago, a little sad and a little beautiful: One.

Be honest, and be yourself.

My Theory of Tippability: Why It's Not All Relative

2011-06-08T20:49:00.004-05:00

Tonight, I'd like to write about tipping. Not cow-tipping. Restaurant tipping. Or rather, fast-food restaurant tipping.

I kind of have a pet peeve and I feel torn about it.

But first, a little background. I used to work in a restaurant. So I know how to tip. I know what it means to tip. I know who tips the most (Lovers and other Waiters), who tips the worst (Christians, Teenagers and PWT) and who tips to the penny (Asians).

I also know that when I worked at a restaurant, I made $2.13 and that's not because I'm a hundred years old and that's what minimum wage was back then. I'm only 33. And this was just after Y2K, so minimum wage was well over four dollars. Yet, I made $2.13 and hour. And yes, there were days (Monday lunches) where I never got one table and therefore walked home with less than minimum wage.

Most days though, we did fine considering the restaurants I worked in were in Waco. Actually, I should take that back. One restaurant I worked in was fine. The other was... well, not fine.

We'll call that restaurant, Chochkies (my second Office Space reference of the week, hmm...) to protect the guilty. While Chochkies didn't make me wear flair (because the restaurant I worked at wasn't actually T.G.I. Fridays, but somewhere very similar), they did make me wear all white tennis shoes, which I had to purchase, because who in their right mind owns all white tennis shoes besides grandmas and nurses? So right there I'm out $40 or so for those damn white tennis shoes. But I'm missing my point.

My first week at Chochkies, I didn't make much money and so on the final evening of that week, I worked until closing. The shift leader was sweeping the carpet (weird, I know) and a family of seven came in to eat. "You can have 'em" she said, and I was so thankful. I couldn't believe she'd given me a table of seven! She must have been taking pity on me since I'd been complaining about not making much money. Maybe I'd been underestimating these people I worked with at Chochkies...

The table ordered, ate, paid their bill (split checks three ways, I think) and got up to leave. I scurried to the table to begin busing it since it's late and I too wanted get home and that's when I saw their tip: $2.

"Seriously?"

I said this out loud. As in, not to myself, nor in my head.

This may be why when my family heard I was waiting tables to make money during grad school, they laughed.

A couple of the people from the table turned around when they heard me. "Two dollars?" I said, shocked and defeated, and let's admit it, a little defiant. One man fumbled in his pocket and threw down another dollar or two. And then they all left.

"What the hell?" I complained incredulously to my shift leader. They left me less than 10% on a table of seven people and a bill of almost $70!

"I know," she said nonchalantly. "That's why I let you have that table. Hispanics always tip bad."

And there you have it. My first (but not last!) encounter with racism in Waco, Texas, and my first of many "lessons" on tipping and waiting tables. I called my mother that night, traumatized. "She can't say that," I whispered into the phone. "It's so racist!"

And I'm pretty sure that in defiance I took as many "ethnic" tables as possible for the next week.

And then I quit.

Turns out Applebee's, oops, I mean Chochkies, and I weren't a good fit (I also couldn't stand my managers). So I moved on to a local Wacoan restaurant with a slighter different clientele, and I began serving customers there. "I need a Coors for me and a Coors Light for the little lady... oh and a dozen oysters."

All that to say, I know how important it is to tip at restaurants. When you get paid $2.13 an hour by the restaurant, your salary comes from the people you serve. Which is why you want to give good service. Everyone should know this. The managers of the restaurant know it (they adjust the prices of the food knowing that part of what the customer pays goes to the servers), the cooks know it (they're paid by the hour, which is why they can yell at the waiters all they want and not get in trouble - they don't get tipped), the waiters know it (obviously, it's their paycheck), and hopefully the customers know it.

So, if you can't afford to tip when you go out to eat at a sit-down restaurant, don't go at all, because tipping is part of the package.

But I've digressed again. This was supposed to be a post about fast-food restaurants.

You see, I was in line recently at a local chain sandwich shop that had a drive-thru window. I ordered in front of a screen showing me my options, I pulled forward and paid for my sandwich (extra for the pickle slices) and received my sandwich wrapped in paper and stuffed in a plastic bag. I drove away from the window and continued on my journey.

I did not put a tip on the line that said tip when I scribbled my John Hancock at the bottom of the credit card receipt. Because I think it's wrong to tip at fast food restaurants... for two reasons.

One: you're not really getting service.

Two: it's racist.

Let's start with the service as it's easier and less controversial. Maybe.

When you go out to eat at a sit-down restaurant, you are usually escorted to the table, seated, brought your drink, told of specials, answered any questions, given recommendations, your order is taken, you receive complimentary bread, your food is cooked to your desire, it's put on a plate and made to look nice, it comes with specialized condiments on the side, it's delivered to your place setting where you are given additional utensils if needed, in a few minutes you are asked how it tasted, do you need anything else, you receive a refill on your drink, more complimentary bread is brought to your table, your asked if you'd like dessert or an aperitif, your empty plates are cleared, leftovers boxed, and your bill delivered. After you leave, any remaining plates are cleared, washed and set out to dry, your table is wiped and sanitized and any salt, pepper, sugar or ketsup is replaced if necessary.

At a fast food restaurant, you walk up to the counter to order, you pay, you receive your food wrapped in paper or cardboard, you pick up your own condiments, you leave.

That's not service.

No one waits on you, no one washes your dishes, no one refills your drinks, and if you're lucky the table you sat at gets wiped down at the end of some kid's shift. And those people don't make less than minimum wage. So in my opinion there's no need to tip. Whether you're at a local chain sandwich shop that charges extra for the pickle or whether you're at Starbucks, I think tipping for that "service" is dumb.

The other reason I don't like to do that though, is because I think it's racist.

And it's racist, because we're not consistent with our "fast-food" tipping. Think about the places that put tip jars next to the register. (First indicator you shouldn't be tipping. if you're paying at a register, you're not getting tip-worthy service. You just had to stand in line for someone to punch in numbers and take your cash. Give me a break). Starbucks, Ben & Jerry's, sometimes Quizno's, Thundercloud Subs, Freebirds, Amy's Ice Cream (local chains here in Texas), or a local coffee shop in your town. Now, think of other places that give you food wrapped in paper or coffee poured in cardboard, i.e. "fast-food" places, that don't have tip jars next to their registers: McDonald's, Wendy's, Taco Bell, Hardee's, Long John Silvers... you get the picture.

Now, think about who works at Starbucks, Ben & Jerry's and Thundercloud Subs and where those restaurants are usually located... and now think about who works at McDonald's and Taco John's other such chains and where they are located.

You may have guessed I'm poor. If I were rich, this might be a different post. I'd tip anywhere there was a tip jar just to share the wealth. I also vote democrat for similar reasons. But because I'm poor, I have to pay attention to my money. And if I don't have enough to tip at a sit-down restaurant, then I buy fast food. And I've no intention of tipping at such places because I think it's wrong to tip at restaurants where wait service isn't offered. And I think it's wrong to tip at restaurants where the kid behind the counter is either the daughter of that lawyer who goes to your church because you're ordering from the Starbucks at the end of your block in your predominantly white, middle class part of town, or it's that kid with all the tattoos who wants to be in a rock band so they dropped out of college and they're working at a local sandwich shop cause it's local and that's awesome, and mom and dad still foot the rent, because well, there's always a fall-back plan for poor people in their twenties who come from middle or upper class families who can pay the rent until said hippie or skater or musician finds their way or goes back to school.

I'm generalizing, I know. And maybe that makes me as "ist" as my shift leader at Applebee's.

But I don't think those people in those neighborhoods reeeally need the money. They need the money, don't get me wrong. They're college kids or graduate students, or people in their twenties who lost their job and now need a gig that comes with health insurance (thank you Starbucks), but they don't need the money like the people who work at McDonald's on the east side of Austin. The people who work fast-food on this side of town may think they world owes them something, but they're not going to put out a tip jar to show it.

And that's what frustrates me. The people who really could use the extra cash, that 50 cent tip for the coffee in a cardboard cup or that two dollar tip for a sandwich wrapped in paper aren't going to get it. They'll take their meager minimum wage check home and hand it over to their parents, or cash it and head to the dollar store (where for some reason it's legal to buy expired! food), or they give it straight to the bank who's threatening foreclosure on their two bedroom home housing three kids and their grandmother)...

I had an argument with a youth from Westlake High (one of the wealthiest parts of Austin) once about kids from Johnston (a school in the poorest part of Austin that closed the year before). He thought that dealing drugs was stupid (I agreed) and that those Johnston high teens have other choices they can make in their lives. They don't have to sell drugs, they choose to sell drugs, was his argument.

"What if their parents don't make enough to support their family?" I asked him. "What if they don't get enough to eat at their house? What if they want their younger siblings to get a Christmas present this year unlike the year before?" "What if their parents give them the drugs to sell and they don't know any better or know life apart from selling drugs to make money?"

"It's their choice," was his final answer.

I guess he's right. They could go get a job at McDonald's and work for minimum wage and take home $100 after 20 hours a week (on top of school) instead of getting $200 for 30 minutes of "work" early one Saturday morning.

But this isn't a post about drug dealing or the hard choices facing teens and young adults. It's a blog about tipping.

And my bottom line is, it pisses me off that Starbucks and Thundercloud Subs ask for or expect tips (and admittedly sometimes I do tip at these places just because they make me feel so guilty like I owe them something above and beyond the bill for my tuna sandwich with lettuce and tomato, add pickle, on wheat wrapped in paper and put in a plastic bag). And it pisses me off that we comply and don't stand up for or demand tip jars at other fast-food joints on behalf of other poor people. I think it's classist and racist, and I think it's wrong.

There you have it. Ann's Theory of Tippability. Stay tuned next week for Ann's Diatribe Against the FDA or Why the Eff Do We Sell Expired Food to Poor People?

Day Seven Prompt: 5 Years

2011-06-07T11:17:00.004-05:00

There will be an agreement in whatever variety of actions, so they be each honest and natural in their hour. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

What would you say to the person you were five years ago? What will you say to the person you’ll be in five years?

To the Ann of five years ago, 28 years old, living in Austin, TX in the year 2006, having just bought a house two months previous and preparing for her upcoming ordination into the ministry I would say: take more vacations and guard your heart. Trust your intuition, unfortunately, you'll be right about most of the men you date. And don't be a pansy. Stand up for yourself. Sue the guy who sold you the house. You'll need the money someday.

To the Ann of 2016, age 38 and counting, I would like to say: I'm sorry if I screwed this up for us. Do the best with what I've left you. We'll make it through. All we've got is each other. The past, and the present. The future is what we make of it.

Day Five Prompt

2011-06-05T12:57:00.006-05:00

Life wastes itself while we are preparing to live. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

If you had one week left to live, would you still be doing what you’re doing now? In what areas of your life are you preparing to live? Take them off your To Do list and add them to a To Stop list. Resolve to only do what makes you come alive.

Bonus: How can your goals improve the present and not keep you in a perpetual “always something better” spiral?

Part of agreeing to write for Trust30 includes receiving "prompts" from other "Authors" across America. I'm starting to figure out that most of these prompts are written for, I don't know, secretaries who are secretly super talented and are wasting away their ability to translate some African dialect into English so that some remote tribe can communicate with the rest of the world that their water is polluted and can someone please bus in some filters or something? without which this tribe would surely perish and thank God that secretary realized her true abilities and stepped up to bat to recognize her gifts and share them with the world.

Something like that.

Obviously I'm not a fan of the prompts. They make me feel like I'm at in High School or at a self-help seminar. Office Space explains it best...

[Peter, Michael, and Samir are chatting as they hang around the printer]

Peter: Our high school guidance counselor used to ask us what you'd do if you had a million dollars and you didn't have to work. And invariably what you'd say was supposed to be your career. So, if you wanted to fix old cars then you're supposed to be an auto mechanic.

Samir: So what did you say?

Peter: I never had an answer. I guess that's why I'm working at Initech.

Michael: No, you're working at Initech because that question is bullshit to begin with. If everyone listened to her, there'd be no janitors, because no one would clean shit up if they had a million dollars.

Samir: You know what I would do if I had a million dollars? I would invest half of it in low risk mutual funds and then take the other half over to my friend Asadulah who works in securities...

Michael: Samir, you're missing the point. The point of the exercise is that you're supposed to figure out what you would want to do if... [printer starts beeping] "PC Load Letter"? What the f*ck does that mean?

I took this writing challenge as a discipline to write daily and write about stuff and stories that are buzzing around in my head that I'm not taking time to write out properly on paper. So I haven’t been following the prompts. But quite frankly, if I had one week left to live, as today’s prompt suggests, I wouldn't sit down at my computer and write those stories out then either.

I actually hate this question. I get what it's meant to achieve. But what I would do if I had one week left to live is consume. Consume, consume, consume. And give, I'd do lots of giving too.

First off, I'd eat out for every single meal, because if I've got one week to live, then I've got money to eat with and I'm not eating one more Amy's organic gluten free pot pie if I've got one week left. The alternative is eating at friend's houses which is okay too. I'd eat at Chris and Michelle's and have Johnson cook some of my favorite meals of his... one of his soups, or his salads, or fish tacos. Point being, I'd eat good food. And I wouldn't worry about calories. I'd have dessert at every meal. And I wouldn't worry about what will clog up my arteries and what's damaging my liver. I'd consume and I'd enjoy it. Mimosas for breakfast, Bloody Marys for lunch, Grapefruit Martinis for dinner and beer on the porch later that night.

Secondly, I'd spend time only with people I love who give me energy. Unfortunately the list is so long of people I'd want to see in that last week, it wouldn't all get done. And that would suck. So I guess in that last week I'd have to double my Pristiq prescription so I wouldn't get sad that I couldn't fit in everyone I love, I couldn't see them one more time or hug them or jump up and down that I'm so happy they're my friend.

If I had a boyfriend, he'd stay at my house every night and we'd go to bed holding hands and we'd wake up holding hands and he'd sleep on the couch for the night I have the girls over for one last slumber party which would happen several nights since there's several groups of girls over the years that I'd want "one last girls' night" with.

I guess, to go back, I'd spend the first morning getting everything ready, for when I was gone, I mean. I've already got all my passwords to all my accounts written in one place and I've already got a will (I'm a little OCD and tend to obsess over death more than most people anyway). But I'd write out my funeral, how I'd want it to be. How there would be NO HYMNS to be sung at it and how the pastor to officiate must please, for the love of God, not use any male pronouns to refer to the Holy One. Of course, this prompt didn't suggest that I would die after than one week and live would go on without me, but if it's everybody's last week too then that would just cause a serious clusterfuck, so let's just assume it's only my last week and move on. I'd show my parents or my sister or maybe Lynnette or Kate Spencer where all my writings are. Where the journals and sermons and hidden blogs are all located just in case someone wanted to finish all those documents titled: My Book and Book # 2 and The New Book that I have scattered around on my computer, honest attempts at making a difference and doing what maybe I'm called to do, but half-heartedly stored away because they weren't good enough, weren't smart enough, and nobody likes me that much anyway.

And I'd bequeath my stuff. The important stuff. Who gets what work of art and which charity I would prefer to get my clothes, shoes, couches, car, electronics, etc. And I guess this would have to extend over into the last day too because after I've eaten out for every meal for a week and bought plane tickets to Missouri and back, I'd have to assess how much money was left and either write checks to the charities I most value or jot down how much each one gets so my parents can figure that out when I'm gone.

But other than that morning of organization, and other than eating delicious food for every meal, I'd just want to be with the people I love. I'd probably ask Hollywood if I could get a sneak peak of the final Harry Potter movie so I can know how it ends. And I might watch Moulin Rouge one last time, or if that feels too sad for my last week, maybe Little Miss Sunshine or Into the Woods (but only if my sister was there). I'd go dancing at Gruene Hall or the Spoke, but I'd rent the place out so that the bouncer that I put at the door says who gets in and who doesn't so all those schmarmy dancers aren't allowed in and to regulate how crowded the dance floor gets. I mean, Cinda and I need room to dance, people!

I guess there is one thing I'd do that only I can do. I'd get my friend Stephen or maybe if there's no limits on this last week, some legit recording studio in Nashville or New York to record me singing songs from musicals I've done in the past. "Honey Bun" from South Pacific, "Last Midnight" from Into the Woods, "I Don't Know How To Love Him" from Jesus Christ Superstar, "I'll Tell You What I Think of Him" from King and I - though, maybe not, cause I hated that show, "Pharoah Story" from Joseph, "Soon It's Gonna Rain" from The Fantasticks and I'd get Justin to sing the Matt part, and then maybe a song from the shows I did where I didn't have the lead or shows I did as a kid, or in High School like "Happily Ever After" from Once Upon a Mattress, "Shoeless Joe" from Damn Yankees (both characters I played in High School), "If Ever I Would Leave You" from Camelot (Amy and I were in the chorus of this when my dad directed it - God, that was a fun summer), "The Color Purple" from The Color Purple because I sang that several times at FBC and my mother heard it and loved it, and so did the church, especially Jeanie Spencer. And just because I love the songs, I'd probably do "Defying Gravity" from Wicked, "I Am What I Am" from La Cage Aux Folles, "Rain on My Parade" from Funny Girl, "Maybe This Time" from Cabaret, and of course, the song I've been singing on stages and in showers since I was a little girl, "On My Own" from Les Miserables. And I don't know if my family would want to have this CD. I'd make it with my dad in mind, since he directed the first musicals I was in as an adult, but he may not be into that, I don't know. I know Amy would listen to it though, and she'd burn Brent a copy, so at least two people would have a little something I left behind.

But other than that, I'd eat and drink, and watch the final Harry Potter, be with the people I love and allot my remaining few dollars to charity.

And that, Trust30, is what I'd do if I had only one week left.

Oh Baby!

2011-06-02T23:14:00.014-05:00

Today I thought I would write about babies. And if you're sick of hearing about them, I don't want to hear about it, because I'm pretty sure I've got you beat.

From February 2009-January 2010, in just 11 months I welcomed Zoe, Laurel, Lila, Tessla, Lindley, and Arianna into my life. And those kids came to my closest friends. That doesn't include Cane, the Bauer twins, Frannie, Annajean, Win, Edward, Noah, or Marylin most of whose birth annoucements or Christmas cards decorate my fridge. Neither does it include Dillon, Carly, Corbin, Everett, Ace, Roxie or James who were born in the year after that. And neither does it include the two babies my therapist had in the two years I was seeing her. I started off making each kid a photo album on Facebook, but that quickly digressed to a "Babies album" as I just couldn't keep up.In 2010, before I quit my job, one of the steps I took to make sure I was emotionally healthy (because I was not very healthy at that time) was to swear of all baby showers. Cause I mean seriously people, who attends 18 baby showers in two years? That's ridiculous. And if you add in wedding and bridal showers, I was attending a shower for some joyous occasion once or twice a month. That's just too much happiness for one single girl to bear.

And that's the thing about babies and weddings, everyone wants you to be happy for them. And somewhere inside, you probably are.

But truthfully, it gets old.

Imagine 18 of your friends buy a Honda Hybrid. By the time 11, 12, and 13 roll into the driveway, it's old news. You're tired of saying congratulations, and tired of still climbing behind the wheel of your Toyota Corolla. Add to that society's stigma against unwed non-moms suggesting that women are only fulfilled when they're married and bearing children, and suddenly, you've got a single un-mother in her thirties who's a little confused in the head.

Now I know what you're thinking. Statistics say it's the norm now to get married in your thirties. But guess what friends, those statistics came out of New York, and I live in Texas. And while adopting babies from Haiti are all the rage among conservatives (thank you earthquake mission trips) and adopting babies from China are all the rage among rich people (thank you Sex and the City), there's still a stigma attached to adoption. "They must have had problems getting pregnant..." "Well, I heard she..." Virtually no one adopts just because they want to adopt.

Except me. And I'm dating a man who wants to have (or have his wife have) kids because of his own personal experiences with adoption. Great. But that's a post for another time.

So back to the babies.

I didn't mean for this post to be a diatribe against child-bearing adults or their prodginy. I wanted to talk about Tessla, my nanny charge and some of the other beloved babies in my life. But talking about her requires first admitting a few other things.

Truthfully, now, I'm doing a lot better with the whole baby thing. If I get invited to a shower (and of course, I've got one to attend next weekend), I no longer break out in hives. But some people are so ignorant of the way society talks about women and child-bearing, it drives me crazy! For example, here's a conversation a friend of mine had with her supervisor five months after her daughter was born. In their monthly meeting, the supervisor asked my friend, "So, has being a mother changed the way you view counseling or the way you relate to your patients?"

"No," she said.

Awesome. "Thank god," was my response. Thank God it didn't change the way she does her job because to say so suggests a certain enlightenment or change in perspective or fulfillment afforded women who have children. Furthermore, it denotes a level of inadequacy in women who don't have children.

Like: because I'm not a mom, I somehow can't relate to the world in my full potential.

And it's not that I don't think having a baby should change you. It should. But everything you experience in life should change you (hopefully for the better, or at least for a wider-

worldview). The idea that women are only really complete or cognizant or edified or illumined or whatever once they've had children has got to go.

But again, I've digressed, so let me try a third time.

Disclaimer: for those of you who aren't moms, I am not writing this blog to be a smug-pseudo-mother. And if you're as fed up with the baby talk as I was, you have my blessing to stop reading now. (However, the BEST smug pregnant woman song/skit can be found here written by two comedians in LA who've also appeared on shows like Gilmore Girls, Pushing Daisies, Scrubs, and Million Dollar Baby. It's awesome. And you've got to see it. But don't watch it if you're pregnant and emotional or if you have no sense of humor). Again, I am not writing this blog to be a smug-pseudo-mother. I'm writing this blog about the babies in my life and about my job, and I am currently employed part-time (32-40 hours a week) as a nanny. And I want to write about how ridiculously delightful my little charge is. But we must start at the beginning...

First off, there was Zoe.

When I met Zoe, the first words out of my mouth were sung: "Welcome outside of your mother's womb, I know it is frightening but now there's more room." (from "Welcome" by Lori Chaffer off her album 1Beginning) My acquaintances and friends had been having babies off and on since college, but this was the first one to really come into my inner circle, to change the lives of two people I called my best friends. And like Adam did when he saw the wonder of Eve, so did I upon holding Zoe Hilel: I sang. Her father, Peter, watched me and said it couldn't have been a more appropriate response.

Then came Laurel. Literally, out of her mother's vajayjay and onto the bed. I saw it. I was there.

I was supposed to be there for her mother who wanted women surrounding her at her daughter's birth. I was there as her friend, her sister was to take pictures, and her mom was to gush at her first grandbabby. However, Michelle's laboring went so quickly and she was such a champ that she talked herself out of believing she was really in labor for like 6 hours (the only time I will ever know more than Michelle when it comes to childbirth was that day. I knew she was in labor and that baby was coming, and when the doulah finally arrived she confirmed my suspicion and whisked Michelle off to the midwife clinic immediately). So when she finally got to the birthing center, that baby was out in like 20 minutes. Her sister missed it, her mom missed it. So there I was, trying to capture the crowning of the head on camera. I was watching Michelle push so hard that tears came out of her eyes, though I wouldn't say she was crying, I was watching the birth of a baby, something I've feared for years and it was going so quickly and so seamlessly that when Michelle sort of burped that baby out onto the bed, (the actual move from the birth canal out into the bedroom is very fast) I thought for several months afterwards that hell, I could do that too someday!

I changed my mind after Lila came into the world. Somewhere in there I acquired the reputation of being a baby photographer, so when the first couple I ever married asked me to be there for their daughter's birth, I said sure! Laurel's birth was wonderful and exciting and I'll never forget it. This woman who feared giving birth more than the boogieman suddenly heard herself saying, I'd love to help out at the birth. And good thing too. For while Patrick and Angela also chose to give birth at a birthing center, it was a much longer and more painful process.

Fortunately, I'd been at all of Chris and Michelle's meetings with their doulah (not sure how that happened except I practically lived at their house over at 5209). So as 9 o'clock became midnight and midnight turned to 2am, and their midwife just sat there watching from a chair, I began to take as active a role in helping that baby get out as Patrick did. "Let's try squatting," I suggested. "How about the shower?" "Tie this cloth over the door, close the door, hold on and hang from it. Let your body relax." "Let's try the tub now," anything I could remember Chris and Michelle's doulah telling them, I offered to Angela. She was in so much pain and was so tired. I finally napped somewhere in the wee hours of the morning so that when the pushing began around 4 or 5, I was the only one refreshed enough to get through it. Angela fell asleep in the 30 seconds she had between every contraction. Patrick looked exhausted and just lay on the bed beside her. And the midwife crouched down near her feet poking and proding and doing whatever they do to make sure the baby is okay. I saw things I was never meant to see that night and decided then and there that my first intuition about adopting had been correct. I was not designed to bear children. How in the world we got that little alien out of Angela's stomach is beyond my comprehension, but I now knew I would not be getting myself in the same predicament.

Because then I had to go home, get dressed and preach a sermon in big church.

Now that was a night.

When Lindley was born, I got to spend lots of time with her considering she lives in Nashville. I flew out to see her when she was 2 months or so and spitting up more than any creature I'd ever seen. Then again on my 32nd birthday, I was in Nashville for the Festival of Homiletics (a preaching convention) and appropriately so, she's the first baby I ever took with me to a conference. And like a child after my own heart, she cried when the organ played and quietly listened during the sermons. Her parents met as worship leader and pastor at a camp some seven years prior and her mother and I had been best friends (and cohorts in crime) at seminary, so I felt an obligation to introduce her to the theology of Tom Long, Lauren Winner, A.J. Levine and Will Willimon. Plus, her parents needed a babysitter that day.

I admit, by the time Tessla was born, I was getting a little tired of the babies. Plus, I was worried about how my poorer friends were gonna pay for those little monsters... diapers, baby wipes, cheerios, clothes they outgrow in two weeks. They're expensive little suckers. But Tessla was sweet just like the others and her parents seemed happy.

Then when she turned three months old, the shit hit the fan and everything changed. Her mother got lymphoma and went through chemo-therapy and lost all her hair and got sick but got well and finally everyone relaxed. Then I quit my job and she asked me if I wanted to nanny for Tessla for a while, so I agreed. And then, when Tessla was eleven months old, we found out the cancer came back.

But I've written about all that before. And this blog isn't about mamas, it's about babies, so let me tell you about Tessla.

First of all, she's way smarter than me.

She knows a ton of sign language. Now, some of this I taught her and some of it she learned from Baby Einstein, but check out her vocab: eat, more, please, thank you, milk, water, juice, cereal, all done, mommy, daddy, Aunt Heather, Uncle Marcus, Ann (and she made up the sign for me!!), baby, help, ball, story, library, garden, shoes, cat, dog, bird, fish, tree, play, bath, sleep, pacifier (she made that sign up too) and... I'm sure I'm forgetting some.

She can even make sentences. One day we were playing at Chris and Michelle's house, and their daughter Laurel, who is almost two now, began crying and throwing a fit. Tessla looked at me with wide eyes and made two signs one right after the other: "baby" and "asleep." I interpreted her to mean "the baby is sleepy," or perhaps "the baby needs to go to sleep." Either way, I was pretty proud of that first sentence.

And she can verbally say lots of words with her mouth too. I think her first words were dirt (her father is a landscape architech), cat, dog (which both her parents, aunt & uncle, and I all have), da da, shoes, roar (she loves lions), yellow, uh oh (she got that one from me), yeah, no, apple, banana (which she says by sticking her tongue out the side of her mouth and saying yayaya), pickle and mama. Those are the big ones. Now she blabbers all the time, and I just pretend to understand her. Sometimes she talks to me and looks at me like I should be able to understand her, and other times she talks to herself, laughing at her own jokes and having a grand old time.

She smiles and sometimes laughs when it's time to take a nap and I (finally) put her in her crib. She's a child of routine and when I put her down for a nap I change her diaper, close the bedroom curtains (this is when she recognizes what's coming next and begins to giggle), hand her the pacifier, place her in the crib, lay the blanket on top of her, turn on the sound machine, say goodnight, and close the door. She loves it. All my mommy friends hate me. Even at my house if she's ready for a nap and I don't seem inclined to put her down anytime in the near future, she'll walk to the bedroom that she sleeps in and bang on the door until I go open it for her and ask if she's ready to go to sleep.

She's a hoot. And I could seriously post a thousand pictures of her on here, but I'll spare you. Again, I don't want to be a smug nanny.

But I did want to tell you a little about my life and my job and the babies in my life. And tell you I'm happy and healthy and hoping all my patience won't get used up on Tessla and the others in case I do ever get to adopt my own children someday. And I want to apologize if I skipped your baby shower at some point over the last two years. But trust me, you wouldn't have wanted this old hag there anyway. I'm a cat lady. I smell funny.

A Birthday and A Boy

2011-06-01T23:09:00.012-05:00

He was late. I wasn’t surprised. He is often late. He’s unorganized, loves to sleep, and lives out of town. It’s forgivable, but annoying.

I calmly applied make-up to my starting-to-show-my-age face. I would turn 33 at approximately 4:10pm that day and wanted to look my best despite that to celebrate the day of my birth, my friends and I were mostly exercising, beginning with kayaking on Lady Bird Lake. But you never know when will be the perfect opportunity for a photo, and since my boyfriend who was also to be joining us was late, I applied make-up to my already hardening face.

It’s not like he didn’t know what time to be there. After all, I had sent out three detailed emails with the schedule in the days prior to my birthday. Weeks before, he and I had agreed that he would take the day off, we discussed the festivities to be planned, and I sent out reminder emails to the parties involved with explicit instructions on what time to be where and with what in tow.

This is what happens when a woman who’s OCD dates a man who’s ADD; inevitably one of them ends up overcompensating either with organization or minute attention to inordinate detail. Because I’m the one who’s OCD, I had them both covered.

Not only that, but I’d gone over my birthday wish-list with him so there would be no repeat of Halloween or Christmas (neither of which near-catastrophies I care to rehash now). The list was, of course, posted on my blog for the whole world to go over, but since he rarely reads my blog I knew that was a base I needed to cover. Additionally, we’d gone to visit several stores that had clothing or other items I fancied, and had perused the merchandise together. We’d even gone to my favorite piercing salon that sells (real!) diamond nose rings which avid readers of my blog will remember I have been coveting now for years.

But the morning of my birthday, he was late. So late, that I left without him for the lake.

“Don’t cry,” I told myself. "Don’t let him ruin this day. You get to choose your own attitude; you choose how to respond to this." Michelle called to ask where I was. “I’m close,” I responded, “but the boyfriend’s not with me.”

He called when I had almost reached the kayak rental booth. “I’m at your house.”

“I’m at the lake.”

“Should I grab your bike?” (We were going to bike, after kayaking, to Opal Divine’s on 6^th Street).

“I guess.”

Chris and Michelle were waving as I began down the path toward the lake and the long row of kayaks. “Happy birthday!” they cried, cheerier than normal.

“You can ride with Michelle and I’ll kayak by myself,” Chris said, relieving any anxiety about me now kayaking alone. “I’m sorry about poopy-head.”

“Poopy-head’s on his way.”

Chris and Michelle are real troopers. They’ve seen me go through more men and been more accommodating and supportive and hospitable and a million other adjectives that describe what the best friends of a serial dater must find themselves embodying lest they perish in the process. They’ve been cordial to the ones they’ve hated and grieved the ones we loved and lost. They would make the most of this for my sake. And we would all be in the water together.

“Don’t worry, I won’t start the clock til you enter the lake,” the guy with the newspaper working the kayak stand told us. He’d managed to pick up on the fact that it was not only my birthday but that we were killing time trying on different life jackets and posing for pictures with paddles while waiting for my boyfriend.

“Thank you.”

The boyfriend arrived shortly thereafter. He was anxious and visibly frustrated. And his clothes weren’t exact kayak appropriate, but part of the tardiness had been that he wasn’t able to finish his laundry. I tried not to be short with him, but found my usual biting criticisms chomping at the bit when trapped in a small kayak in the middle of a huge lake with a boyfriend who was an hour and a half late and kept paddling a different direction than I wanted to go.

But we had a great time despite the minor grievances. We even got to see the last few minutes of some repelling dancers rehearsing off the side of the old Light and Power building. Yes, there are people in Austin who do synchronized repelling and spinning and leaping while 200 feet above the ground, or better yet, above water.

After returning the kayaks when our hour was up, we hiked back up to the cars and got out the bikes to pump the tires and be one our way. However, the tube was punctured on my bike. So Chris and Michelle headed on (since we were behind in the schedule and were meeting people at the restaurant) while boyfriend and I decided what to do. We chose to throw the bikes back into his jeep and just drive to Opal’s.

Lunch was super. Gabe, Bethany and Tessla were there waiting, and once our waitress spotted us, I ordered my favorite drink (a Texas Red), my favorite appetizer (the Divine Quesadillas) and my favorite meal (a Tuna Sandwich on wheat with no onions and of course French Fries). Yum! Of course, I checked in those of us without privacy settings on Facebook, and uploaded a picture of the delicious beverage. Plenty more pics (hipstamatic and regular) were taken of Tessla gobbling down her mac ‘n cheese. And the quote of the day was delivered by Gabe: “Ann, have you ever considered rapping?”

Awesome. Not even going to give you the context.

Once full, we decided it was time to head to our next activity: stuffing our stuffed bodies into swimsuits to lay out by Chris and Michelle’s apartment pool. We said good-bye to the Chances who had to return to work and we took off, Chris and Michelle on bike and boyfriend and I in our cars.

“Let’s head to a bike shop to get a tube for your bike first though,” he suggested and I complied. We found a local bike store and once inside began perusing the items. We quickly found the tube we needed and then had to hold each other back from buying everything else we might ever need for a bike. That store was very dangerous.

“I don’t have a bike lock.”

“You need a new seat.”

“I love these pink handles.”

“Let’s ask about bike pumps.”

In the end, we left the store with a tube and a bike pump, despite my objections. “Why do I need a bike pump when the only time I ride my bike is when I’m with either you or Chris, and you both have pumps I can use?” But he bought it anyway because sometimes he’s just as bull-headed as I am.

When we got out to our cars, he handed me the tube and bike pump and said, “Happy birthday,” sheepishly shrugging his shoulders and managing a smile.

Oh my god, he didn’t get me a real present.

“Thanks,” I said, and hurriedly closed the door on my car and blinked a few times before pulling out of the parking lot and heading on to Chris and Michelle’s.

My heart sank. He didn’t get me a present.

He bought me a tube and a bike pump which I didn’t even want. He bought me a present he wanted. Wanted me to have, but still - something I didn’t want or need. I’ve been talking about the importance of this birthday for a month and had the whole day planned, pro-actively, to make sure I spent it doing things I enjoy with people I enjoy, and he showed up an hour and a half late and couldn’t plan ahead enough to buy me a real present, something meaningful that suggested he cares?

I was dying. While I know presents are not the point of birthdays or holidays, they are nevertheless important to me. I’m a gift-giver. I love picking out things that are special that I think people will like and when I have money, I buy those things, write a little card, and give the gift. I love it. And I love receiving gifts the same way. It’s my love language. I blame my father who spoiled us as little girls with presents hidden in the pockets of trench coats, sitting in the carseats when we opened the door, discovered at the end of treasure hunts with clues we had to decipher to find. But right now, I was blaming the boyfriend. My no good, never on time, couldn’t plan ahead if his life depended on it, lazy ass boyfriend who I know just slept all day on Monday and even came into Austin on Tuesday for a voice lesson (and could have just swung by Parts & Labor my favorite store to grab a tee-shirt or necklace), didn’t get me a present.

I got a bike tube and pump that he bought in front of me and handed to me at the car.

I have to end this, I thought. I can’t keep getting disappointed at every holiday. Hell, we broke up once over Christmas, why not break up for good on my birthday?! Seems sadly perfect! It's just that I can’t keep doing this. I know I’m high maintenance, but I’m not that horrible of a person. All I want is for him to take off work one day and show up on time with a present in his hand. Surely some boy somewhere likes me enough to bring me a present on my birthday!

My mind began reeling through the dates I’ve had over the last few years. None of them very notable and none of them lasted very long. Then my mind moved to sadder more far away places, and played over the men who made it into the small corners of my heart and left a little bit of themselves inside. I grew more frustrated and even frightened. “All I want is a diamond nose ring!” I cried out loud in my car choking back the tears. Is that too much to ask?

I felt like Sandra Bullock in While You Were Sleeping. All she wanted was a stamp in her passport that said “Italy.” All I wanted was, well, a nose ring. And love. I guess we both wanted the love presupposed behind the stamp and the stud.

We arrived at Chris and Michelle’s and I got out of my car resigned to the fact that I would have to break up with the boyfriend… tomorrow. No sense ruining today with that. I mean, I’d bought us tickets to the theater for later that night! I was just going to have to put on my game face and get through the rest of the day.

“I got you one more thing at the bike store,” the boyfriend said, getting out of his car. “While you were in the bathroom.” He handed me a small box. “It’s a patch kit.”

“Thanks,” I replied, un-enthused, and opened the trunk of my car to get out the cooler for the pool.

“Open the kit.”

“Why?”

“So you can see what’s in it.”

I was so pissed. I pulled open the box. Why did he have to show me how the patch kit works right now? I don’t care about this! Could he be more clueless?

I pulled a little plastic bag out of the kit.

“What’s that?” he prompted me.

“A pin.”

“No…”

I looked again, and against my will, a smile began to creep onto my face. “Is it a nose ring?” I asked, incredulous. He began jumping up and down, pleased not only that he’d pleased me, but surprised me too.

“But I’m so mad at you!” I said, smiling through my shame. “I thought…” I trailed off.

I thought. I thought. I thought. All I ever do is think. I analyze and over-analyze and assume that people will never change and that I’ll never find love. Not that love comes in a 1/8 caret stud that gets shoved up one’s nose, but it’s the symbolism of the matter. I assume and judge and exhaust myself while hope battles despair inside my brain and resignation wins in my heart. Or because I can’t stand to be made a fool, I end up alone again.

But not right now. Right now I am not alone. I may feel a fool, but I'm not alone. Right now I may be a repentant and embarrassed girl who will cry if she wants to on her birthday, but at least I’m with a man who, as it turns out, loves me anyway. A man who loves me despite my lists and organization and obsession with holidays. A man who loves me enough to hide a real diamond nose ring in a bicycle patch kit while I’m in the next car over practicing my break-up speech.

No wonder they say fools fall in love...

Trust Me

2011-05-31T23:54:00.002-05:00

You may have noticed the new icon on the right of my blog. Trust 30. It's a challenge set forth by The Domino Project in honor of Ralph Waldo Emmerson's 208th birthday. Participants will write for 30 days to hopefully inspire ourselves to be honest visionaries, reflecting and creating direction for our own futures.

Additionally, each day, I'll receive in my mailbox and inspiration thought or essay by one of 30 authors chosen to speak to this challenge. And the fun part of that is, one of the featured authors is my friend, Sam Davidson whom I have written about and referenced numerous times on this blog.

Finally, The Domino Project is releasing a collectible edition of Self-Reliance that looks really sweet. But unfortunately, they only made 100 books and they're all gone. :( So you'll have to read my work instead, I guess...

It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

So we're off. Thirty days of writing. Starting June 1st. Go.

Perry May Parry for the White House... Stab Me Now.

2011-05-27T15:37:00.005-05:00

So the man who, as recently as 2009, said that it was conceivable the Texas may secede from the Union (um... the United States of America) provided things in our government led by the abominable President Obama didn't change soon, is now potentially running himself for President of the Union he believes so strongly in that he may lead us Texans to abandon.

Potential announcement here as recorded by Austin's own Statesman.

What a dumbass. Sorry, Grandma. But this guy is a real jerk. He's screwed up so much for Texans that he can't do much more damage here, so he needs to move on to bigger and better governments to manage and people to ruin.

I seriously loathe this man. We've only ever agreed on one thing: Arizona's law allowing racial profiling, I mean, law to ensure that their precious state wasn't being invaded by aliens (of the Mexican persuasion) was wrong and immoral. But that's the only nice thing I have to say about Governor Perry. And since Grandmother taught me that if I can't say anything nice to not say anything at all, I'm stopping there.

33 Wishes... sort of.

2011-05-08T20:59:00.005-05:00

It's here. Better late than never, eh? This is my Wish List for my 33rd Birthday which will be upon us in eight days. While my therapist suggested I register for gifts like women would for weddings or baby showers (debunking the idea that the community only helps provide for a woman if she's getting married or having a baby), I'm not ready for that. However, I will categorically share my wish list in three parts: What I Want, What I Need and... Be My Patron. Check it out...

WHAT I WANT

Gift certificates to Parts & Labor (my favorite local store in Austin), Creatures (another local Austin treasure - it and P&L are located on South Congress just south of Riverside) or Anthropologie!
Full sized sheets for my bed (with two queen sized pillowcases) in neutral colors: white, cream or beige with minimum 400 thread count.
A curved curtain rod like this one (double rod!) at Bed Bath and Beyond or this cheaper one.
A new shower head like this one (also found at BB&B) with a "finger pause button" for when you're shampooing, shaving, etc. (awesome!)
a blender (for margaritas and smoothies - would like to try some new healthy alternatives) and maybe a vegetarian smoothie cook book (P.S. don't tell anyone I asked for a cook book. I'll never live it down).
a bar stool like this one at Ikea in black.
Other things I love... Books!... Candles!... Cool Belt Buckles!... Earrings and Rings!... Shoes (size 6)!... Scrapbooking stickers and stuff!... and Fingernail polish: one day a month or two ago I just decided that for the first time in my life, I wanted to wear bold, bright nail polish. But not your normal red or pink or brown. I want fun colors!...

WHAT I NEED

New size 6 tennis shoes for walking, jogging and exercising (haven't had a new pair of in years and am running another 1/2 maraton relay in October).
Fillings on six teeth (approx $200 a tooth)

So this final section is things I would like to have but can't currently afford. They are things that, if I lived in the 1800s or early 1900s I could maybe get or do because I am artist and I would possibly have a patron. That patron would sponsored me and my art allowing me time to write and perform and not worry about how to pay the bills...

BE MY PATRON

Headshots by Claire McAdams. $250. She's local, she's young, her work is amazing, and I really need a good headshot for auditions.
Dance classes at Ballet Austin in Ballet, Modern or Broadway Jazz. They sell "Class-cards." For a 4 class-card it's $60, an 8 class-card is $110, 12 classes is $150, 16 is $190 and a 20 class-card is $220.
My hair returned to it's more natural and more likable red-brown color (I'm still currently sporting the leftover blonde Evita hair now with two inches are dark roots!) I go to "gypsecowgirl" at Topaz Salon on South Lamar. $120-160.
Buy me a day to write. I earn $15/hour babysitting (and work 8-10 hour days) and approximately $10/hour acting (if I get cast in a show that pays!). So, buy me a "writing day" for $120 and I'll take a day off work and devote 8 hours to working on my book or buy me a writer's block for $40 and I'll devote four hours of a weekend to writing (either way, you'll get your name in my list of thank you's when/if the book is published!).
Voice lessons... in addition to getting another Masters in Minority Literature, I'm also considering another Masters in Vocal Performance. If so, I have to have the recommendation of a vocal coach to even apply to schools. And that costs money. Depending on the teacher, between $50 and $100 a lesson...

Born This Way: my song and my tee-shirt

2011-05-03T13:35:00.002-05:00

If you're a fan of Glee, then hopefully you caught last week's episode (Season 2, Episode 18) about loving yourself as you are and living life to the fullest. My friend, Sam, has been all up on following your dream, living the life you always imagined, and being your best. From getting married to dying for a dream, Sam is always asking his readers to be uniquely them, to create from that conviction, and to simply get serious and live life, or maybe to seriously, simply live.

I too have been trying to do that in my own life. I quit my job last year to do theater full time (check that off), write more (picked up the pencil, but no check mark yet), and get more speaking and preaching gigs (ugh, I can't do this on my own... feel free to pick up the phone for me and hook a sista up) in addition to being more available to my friends (I'm a nanny for one of my bestie's - well, actually her 17 month old daughter - who was twice diagnosed with cancer last year) and my family (I hope to attend more graduations, retirements and holidays from here on out). Check and check on those.

But it's hard to live life to the fullest. Sometimes there are doubts. Sometimes there is self-pity. Sometimes there is self-deprecation. And sometimes there is the stopping of living life fully all together.

Glee sort of tackles that this week. Much of it has to do with image issues and self-loathing typical of teenagers, but certainly not limited to them (I mean, have you seen my nose? or how about my super round face? or my ass?!). However, another, more challenging aspect of last week's episode began to tackle bigger prejudices. Boldly, Glee has taken on homosexuality and bullying. And it's not just a tipped hat to the gay guy who dresses nicely and sings in the choir. One of the a gorgeous, Latino, cheerleaders is a closet lesbian. And one of the top football players is homosexual. But in addition to these prejudices, now Glee's taking on mental health disorders as School Counselor, Emma, discovers her OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) is a little OOC (out of control).

So when Rachel (the star of Glee Club) decides she wants a nose job so she can look like Quinn (the former captain of the Cheerio Cheerleaders), Mr. Schu steps in. And everyone makes tee-shirts confessing what they wish were different about them, what they've been ashamed of before, what they've let plague their thoughts so that they couldn't be who they were born to be. And we get an array of shirts:

After first writing GINGER, confessing her embarrassment at the color of her hair and the critiques it brought her in High School, Emma finally changes her shirt and writes, OCD. Mr. Schu writes BUTT CHIN, Brittany writes I'M WITH STUPID with an arrow pointing up to her brain and Puck writes the same with an arrow pointing down to his... dumbstick. Finn writes CAN'T DANCE, Mike writes CAN'T SING, Tina writes BROWN EYES and Mercedes writes NO WEAVE. In addition, they sing songs by reject artists who didn't make it as far as they really should have. They sing songs about claiming who you are. And of course, they end the episode performing Lady Gaga's "Born This Way" and wearing their tee-shirts. Check it out.

So that got me thinking, what would be on my tee-shirt? And what song would I sing? It was easy to find an answer to the latter. I'd consider 32 Flavors by Ani DiFranco, Beautiful by Christina Aguilera, but would probably pick I Am What I Am from La Cage Aux Folles, which has been my favorite song since I was a little girl and paraded around my parents house performing it until someone told me to shut up and quit singing for God's sake.

As for my tee-shirt? Well I've already mentioned my ski slope of a nose, my round face and matching bottom. But there were other things too... WEIRD maybe. I learned to embrace it as a child (or at least put up a good front) when I would respond, "Thanks, I take that as a compliment," whenever one of the kids in grade school would say, "You're so weird." In college, I learned to write, CLINICAL DEPRESSION on my metaphorical tee-shirt and at the advice of a therapist, chose to let God use me and my illness to help other people through hard times instead of resenting life and closing myself off to it. But now, maybe now I would write PERFORMER. Because for as impractical as it seems, and for as long as I've tried to just keep it a hobby, for as long as I've pushed it to the back burner because really, I'm an academic who should quit meddling in the arts... because now, it's just what I want to do. I am a singer and an actor and an actor who sings and a singer who acts. And I love performing anywhere, in churches, on the stage, in bars or clubs, at children's birthday parties (I would totally dress up as Mary Poppins or the Little Mermaid and crash your kids bday!). But owning that is hard. So is owning WRITER. So maybe that would be on my tee-shirt too. I write and write but I never publish. I set goal after goal of getting out a book but always find some reason to let it go. Everyone writes better than me, has more to say, employs better metaphors... whatever. You name the excuse and I've used it. So maybe WRITER would be on the shirt.

When I started writing this blog, I wasn't sure what would come out. I figured I'd write about how I love the song "I Am What I Am" and how I'm always afraid someone will find out I have a mental health disorder and will look at me differently. But I guess that's another perk of writing, it exposes how we really feel. And right now, I want to write. And perform. And I'm taking big steps (if hard steps) in one (do you know how many times I audition but am not cast?), and little steps in the other (at least I'm publishing my blogs!).

But maybe if I keep learning from art (Yes, I just called Glee art. Get over it.), I'll muster the courage to wear my shirts proudly, and eventually retire them for their irrelevance. And maybe I'll go to Curtain Call or some other open mic night one evening in Austin and sing "I Am What I Am" (even though I'm a girl and I'm not gay). And maybe one day I'll make theater my profession. And maybe one day I'll write a book, and go to Barnes and Noble and see it for sale on the shelf.

But in the meantime, maybe I'll just get used to saying, I was born this way... and smile... and mean it.

Stop the World, I Want To Get Off!

2011-05-02T21:08:00.005-05:00

I started crying. About three minutes before the show ended. I never cry in live theater. The audience may think I'm crying (that is why they call it acting), but in neither real life or theater, can I turn on the tears. They're either there or they aren't. And this weekend they were. Saturday night. And then again at the Sunday matinee after my parents flew back to Missouri.

You see, I'm performing as a Chorus Girl (#8 to be exact... if you line us up alphabetically) in Austin Playhouse's production of Stop the World I Want To Get Off. And my parents met performing in this show 44 years ago at William Jewell College.

"The funny thing about a circle is, it has no beginning and no end," Littlechap concludes. And as I sat there onstage behind him in my 60's, Brittish, half-plastic, hemline-well-above-my-knees costume, my normally dry eyes swelled with tears and I hoped no one would notice as the mood would quickly shift and I would have to be all smiles for the final scene.

My parents were watching their daughter perform roles they had played themselves 44 years ago when my father was young and agile and my mother ironed her hair straight. This was before thoughts of marriage, parenting or grand-pet-parenting was even a reason to pause or cry "stop the world!" altogether.

They never imagined me and I never imagined myself playing a role in this show before their eyes. And the circle keeps on going.

Here we are, Chorus Girl and Littlechap 2011 and Littlechap and Chorus Girl 1967...

I don't actually like the show. I probably shouldn't say that because now you won't come see it. Don't get me wrong, it's conceptually compelling, the music is classic and the it's a nice history lesson (as history will always repeat itself lest we learn from it), but it's a show about a man, Littlechap, who basically embodies everything I hate about men. It's a sexist, racist, period piece that is ultimately a comedy as it tells an (albeit too late) redemptive story of a man realizing the folly of his grandiose dreams, insatiable lust, superficial successes and wasted relationships. (Please stay tuned for a post entitled, "A Feminist Response to Stop the World, I Want To Get Off, or Why Not All Men Are Grasshoppers.")

The show actually turns 50 this year (I must have a knack for doing timely shows... remember The Fantasticks last year on its 50th Birthday? or Inherit the Wind on the bicentenary anniversary of Darwin's birth in 09?) And it is not a show to be seen by the faint of heart. And by that I mean, if you don't have an appreciation for this type of theater (think Roar of the Greasepaint, Smell of the Crowd or even The Fantasticks for that matter), then you may not understand this work of art. Similarly, if you're not well versed in history (or if you're under 65), most of the jokes, references and cultural stereotypes will be over your head. In other words, unless you're a theater freak or a history buff, you may not love this show.

But, the performances are wonderful in case you do think you'd appreciate this fun musical. Rick Roemer as Littlechap is superb and as my father said, "the role is so easy to overact, but Rick did a beautiful job and showed much honesty with the character." Angela Davis as Evie (and Anya, Isla and Gennie) has amazing accents and characterization for all her roles. And, quite frankly, I'm pretty awesome as Chorus Girl #8. :)

To buy tickets (HALF PRICE for STUDENTS!!) to this super show at one of Austin's premier professional theaters, grab them online or call the box office at 512-476-0084.

Famous songs from the show are "What Kind of Fool Am I?," "Gonna Build a Mountain," and "Once In a Lifetime." Famous people to play these roles include Joel Grey as Littlechap. And, of course, it was made into a movie in 1966.

Stop the World - I Want To Get Off! debuted on The West End 50 years ago, is set in a circus, and tells the timeless tale of Littlechap, a clown who conquers the world but loses himself. The story will be told through song, dance, drama and the artistry of the Austin Playhouse acting company. The show is a cherished musical classic - a boundless, shameless, and humorously entertaining production. (Yes, I stole this piece of promo from the website.)

And if you need a little help with context, here's some helpful cultural and historical reminders...

Lumbered: to walk or move with heaviness, awkwardness or clumsiness, slang for imprisoned or burdened, used as a euphemism for being "screwed" (but not in the good way).
Quid: slang for the brittish currency (the pound).
Fag: slang for cigaratte.
Stalingrad: one of the bloodiest battles during WWII in which the Allies defeated Germany and secured the eastern world from their control. It's name was changed to Volgograd in the 60s during de-Stalinization of the country.
Neuremburg: location of Allies military trials prosecuting prominent members of the political, military, and economic leadership of the defeated German Nazis.
Butterfield 8: an oscar winning movie where Liz Taylor plays a call girl.
Presidents: Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1953-1961. John F. Kennedy, 1961-1963.
Luftwaffe: generic German word for air force.

Again, to buy tickets, grab them online or call the box office at 512-476-0084. And maybe this little fool will see you there...

He Is Risen! He Is Risen, Indeed!

2011-04-24T11:40:00.003-05:00

When Tessla (my nanny charge) and I were on a walk earlier this month, we passed by a colorful driveway. And while we often get the free viewing of chalk art by the children and grandchildren in this Cedar Park neighborhood, I couldn't help but pull out my phone and snap a picture of this driveway.

As the chalk drawing admonishes, Happy Easter! And please, pay no mind to the spaceship further up the driveway. I'm sure that was not intended to be a commentary on the validity of Jesus' resurrection or his later ascension. Although since the FBI released information this month regarding the circular disks and alien bodies found in Roswell, NM, who knows?! Maybe after leaving the Milky Way Galaxy, Jesus stopped by the Pinwheel Galaxy. I guess that'll just have to be one of those questions we ask God when we finally meet Her. (It'll be right after I ask Her about mosquitoes and red fire ants. I mean really. What was She thinking?)

Anyway, Happy Easter. He is risen. He is risen, indeed.