I lit a candle today during the service at ERUUF (the first time I’ve ever lit a candle during the service before for a joy or concern).  Mine was a very special joy.

As a kid I didn’t love the Joy Sunday of Advent as much as I loved the others.  Peace was probably my favorite (little activist kid that I was).Joy was also the pink candle, and I had an aversion to pink.

As I’ve aged, Joy has risen in my esteem to where it now sits, as my favorite.  In fact, Joy Sunday might be my very favorite Sunday in whole liturgical calendar, right up there with Palm Sunday itself.  There are certain emotions that transcend the human experience, that allow all the conflicting truths of life to stand together and make sense.

I’ve gone through many years of my life where I did not know even a hint of true Joy.  But in the last year and a half of my life, that has really changed.  I have had more joy (and yes, perhaps more deep sorrow) since leaving Nebraska than I did in all the years I spent out on the great plains combined.

This reminds me of what has always been my favorite section of The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran:

Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.
And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.
And how else can it be?

The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.
Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter’s oven?
And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?

When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.
When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

Some of you say, “Joy is greater thar sorrow,” and others say, “Nay, sorrow is the greater.”
But I say unto you, they are inseparable.

Together they come, and when one sits, alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.

Verily you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy.
Only when you are empty are you at standstill and balanced.
When the treasure-keeper lifts you to weigh his gold and his silver, needs must your joy or your sorrow rise or fall.

Gibran's Mother - Painted by Khalil Gibran

It’s actually pretty neat, I’m going to try making homestyle baked potato fries later tonight.

It started over this last Christmas holiday, when I was playing around with Mariah’s dad’s electric guitars and amps in the basement.  Then, when I returned home to Durham, I started picking up my acoustic for more and more hours each day.  Weeks went by, months of solidly playing, and then low & behold, I started writing songs again!  Nothing special, just a little here and a little there, but things started going well enough to really make me want to keep going.

After a few more months I’m finally getting back to the point where I feel like I am as adept at guitar as I ever was.  (It was maddeningly painful to pick up a guitar I once cherished as an extension of my own body, and find that I was worse now than I was at 17.)   A few weeks ago I decided to start looking around for potential bandmates, and a little bit like magic, things have really fallen into place.  Tall Indian guy to put down beats, hit the low notes, provide the studio…   Short indie rockr girl to play the keys & synth and to hit the high notes…  mysterious drummer who is “down with playing whatever we come up with”…

Our band lineup hasn’t really solidified yet, and we haven’t even had a first “official” practice,  but things are looking pretty swell. Even if *this* band / lineup  doesn’t work out; what this experience has driven into me is how much I desperately want and need to be playing music again.  And I need to be playing that music not just by myself, and not just to Annabelle as she falls asleep.  I need to be back on stage, playing with and for other musicians. Durham’s music community was one of the reasons we moved out here, and it has proven itself to be as inviting and remarkable so far as I had hoped it would be.

Finally, I want and need to be playing electric guitar and putting down the acoustic.  The thing is, I want to make music people can dance to. I want to make music people will dance to.

So I’m officially starting a band, and we’re going to make you dance.

One of the members of our band plays the keytar. I can't tell you which one yet.

I had a lot of fun, discussed my potential future band w/ my potential future bandmates, and had some great discussions at Drinking Liberally, saw some great music (Pistil @ the Broad Street Cafe), and even played a little shuffleboard with the band afterwords at the Green Room.

What: Drinking Liberally, a weekly gathering of like-minded youngish progressives to share a few pitchers and talk some politics.  When George Bush was president we mostly commiserated, now we get to celebrate a little too.

When: This Thursday & Everythursday 8PM – 10PM [But especially this Thursday]

Where: Bull McCabe’s, 427 Main Street Durham NC

Why: Because it’s lots of fun, and because the progressive community is like a plant– it won’t grow without a weekly sprinkling of liquid.

Bonus Trivia: This week I’ve got a really exciting progressive online community project I want to talk with folks about.  It’s going to be pretty cool.  I’m also starting a band, so there’s extra exciting things to talk to me about.  

It’s Drinking Liberally Durham!

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Washing & Ironing: How To Iron A Shirt

This is a video I watched just recently, after a life time of bribing other people to iron my shirts for me.  It started in student Congress, circa age 15.  Before that I’d gotten my grandmother or mother to iron them, though the times I needed an ironed shirt were few & far between.  Since then I’ve bribed roomates, travelmates, and girlfriends into ironing my shirts in a futile attempt to avoid gaining this life skill.  Make no mistake about it, it’s not that I’m opposed to knowing, or think that ironing is women’s work.  Come hang at my house for a few weeks, and you’ll quickly see that dishes & laundry are 95% my chores.

But for some reason I just never wanted to learn to iron.  I think it’s because once I knew how to iron, I would feel a responsibility to only wear ironed clothing.  After all, as a classic OCD perfectionist, my permenent desire is for all things to be in their optimal state.  An unironed shirt is, by definition, in a sub optimal state relative to how I would like it to be.  I’m going to avoid this problem by laying down the law now:  there will be no ironing of anything besides my best t-rhits, dress shirts, flags, pants, iron-on-patches, and table clothes.  Everything else is out.

Tomorrow I’ve got a marathon ironing session scheduled in which our protagonist (me) irons every dress shirt and pair of dress pants in his closet.  Updates to follow…

Here’s how it worked

• I hate the cold, so it needed to not be cold.  (There go Chicago & Toronto, and NYC!)

• I love the seasons, so it needed 4 of those.  It would preferably snow once a year, but not a whole lot more than once. No slush accumulation at all costs.

• I love the ocean, so it needed to be close enough to one of those. Ok, I didn’t know if I loved the ocean yet, but I had a strong suspicion.

• I’m poor enough, so it needed to have a cost of living that didn’t priced me out from the get go (San Francisco I’m talking to you!)

• I grew up in a very diverse neighborhood of Chicago, so it needed serious diversity, and preferably a historical minority middle class.   I.E.– not just statistical diversity like Omaha had, but some high level of integration, both racially and economically.  E.G. black doctors and university professors living next door to white ones

• I like the small town feel, and I like walking and biking within a neighborhood, so it needed to be a town without a big car culture.  (There goes L.A.!)

• It needed to have excellent universities near by, because there’s a good shot I’ll go to grad school, and might even someday end up wanting to be a college prof.  Moreover, if I’m ever going to meet the smarter-than-me intellectual wonkishand self confidant woman if my dreams someday– having some good colleges near by would better my odds.

• It needed to have good affordable private schools, or good public schools since I’m raising a family.

• It needed to have a thriving music and arts scene, since playing music is my true true love and passion (and I still secretly hope to start a band and make it big.  Or at least have 5 minutes of mid-sized Indie Fame sometime)

• It needed to be a city that was going to grow and expand economically and demographically, rather than stagnate and wither, since the next few decades could be pretty hard on America (that ruled out the whole state of Ohio, 90% of Pennsylvania, and Michigan if they weren’t out already. It also ruled out Florida, Arizona, Louisiana. )

• I work in politics, so it needed to be a state that’s not so liberal everything is uber-establishment and corrupt (like IL or NY or CA) but not so conservative that only really crappy Democrats win, or dems can’t win at all (like SC, AL, KS, SD, ND, GA, NE…)

• Preferably it would be a state with lots and lots of close competitive elections, just so I always have job security. Metropolitan areas with off-year elections is a plus.

• I have a long term dream of owning a small plot of land (50-100 acres) about 15 minutes outside a city, having a couple dogs, and working from home.  This is like 10-20 years from now, but it still affects where I relocate.  I learned in Nebraska that I love the farm/ranch life; but I know from experience that I’ll die if I don’t have a big city within easy distance.  That’s why it needed to be a place where, if I’m making less than $100k per year, I can still afford to buy some land outside of the city without that land having to be 3 hours from the city. (There is affordable rural land within 15 minutes of my house right now!)

• There were more things I was looking at, but these ended up being the big factors.

When the dust settled and a few years had passed, I had a top 5 final contenders:

• Portland, OR
• Seattle, WA
• Austin, TX
• Nashville, TN
• Raleigh/Durham, NC

Nashville was only still in the running because of the music dream.  At the point I was moving, I wasn’t quite ready to commit to that dream over more practical and progressive options.  Having lived in Austin for a summer once before, I knew that Austin was really a bit too hot for me deep down.  Also, Texas politics has huge potential in the next 40 years… but not a lot of potential in the next 10 years, which are really the only ones I know for sure I’ll be working in politics (it’s a field people et burnt out on pretty easily).  I have pretty bad S.A.D. (Seasonal Affective Disorder), which kind of scuttled the Seattle idea.  Finally narrowed down to Portland or Raleigh / Durham– I chose East Coast over West Coast based on a pretty random factor.  I knew I had a better chance of getting my Brother & Sister (who I love dearly) to move out East (and thus be easy to visit) than to move to Portland or even the West Coast.  My brother in law has family out on the East Coast, and my sister has talked about moving to NYC in the past.  My actual brother might end up out here in order to be closer to Puerto Rico w/ my sister in law, or because either of the two of them could end up as proffesors at an east coast school (where most colleges in the United States are located).

If my brother and sister both ended up on the East Coast, and I was in Portland, that would have been terrible, so I decided to start the trend and come east first.

And now I’m here, and I don’t regret it at all.

You should come too!

Onwards from AKQA on Vimeo.

Specifically, I’m looking for a book that is les than 600 pages, more than 100 pages, written from an angle that would not be described as neoconservative or right-wing, and in the category of non fiction covering one of these 5 topics:

China:  Especially Mao through Now.  (Hey, that Rhymes!)  

South American history and politics from Simon Bolivar through the early 1990s (or even up to the present day)

I’ve always been facinated by Bolivar, but don’t know nearly enough about him.  I have enough knowledge to discuss the political histories of Columbia, Bolivia, Argentina, Brazil, and Chile pretty well– but would like a better deeper knowledge that ties various social movements and time periods together.  For instance, while reading about the tragic death of Mario Benedetti yesterday,   I realized I don’t know hardly anything about Uruguay or the dictatorship in the 70s.  

Finally, I would prefer a left-leaning book on the topic, though maybe one a little less left-leaning than the one Chavez gave to Obama.  

Recent political history of Africa, especially central, southern, and coastal Africa (i.e. not the northern more Arab parts– Egypt, Sudan, etc)

My African history is much more spotty than my South American history, so I’ve got a lot more to learn.  However, I’m more likely to visit a South or Central American country in the next decade… probably one of the reasons why I’ve read more about those areas than I have about Africa.  

Nonetheless, I want very much to plug this gap in my world knowledge.  If the right book is out there, I would really like to read it.  

I was at a house party for our neighbor’s across the street on Friday, and Dee (Rebecca’s husband) is from Senegal, and he had a bunch of friends that are also French-African expats.  Sitting and talking with them I felt especially conspicuous in my spotty knowledge of any African History outside of the arab north.  

The Soviet Union:  Especially the industrialization following Stalin’s rise, through the disintegration of the USSR.  

 I know the outline of this incredibly important period of Russian history, but not really the details.  

A book that looks at how life changed and evolved for the average Russian, and what the internal communist politics were from WWII – 1980s would be really interesting to me.  

Also, Stalin himself was an interesting figure I’d like to learn more about.  He was good looking as a young guy, I’ll give him that.  He and I also share the same 20-something facial hair style.  I guess of all the 20th century dictators, I’d rather share facial hair with Stalin in his 20s to Stalin in his 50s or Hitler at any point.  

India:  Especially the separation of India and Pakistan, and India’s political dynamics from M. Gandhi’s death until present day.  

Considering India is the worlds largest Democracy, and considering I’ve read more total words written by and about Gandhi than pretty much any other historical figure besides Jesus… 

 I know relatively little about Indian politics over the last 50 years.  If there’s a book that could get me up to date, that would be great (hopefully a recent book, since politics there are pretty fluid).  

And just to drive the point home:  Indian elections in the last few days have been fascinating to watch, and the landslide victory by the Congress party has deep historical roots.  

• The first reason is that I realized I don’t actually have a super strong handle on foreign relations, at least not in comparison to my seemingly endless capacity to talk domestic policy and wonk out at will.  In an effort to better balance the two, I figured I should try to change my reading habits for a while.  

• The second reason is that I’ve learned through trial and error that Annabelle vastly prefers to be read to about Foreign Policy than domestic.  When explaining single payer healthcare while feeding her peas a few weeks back, I had the whole cup thrown in my face before I got past LBJ & Medicare.  When talking school reform later that week she started abruptly screaming.  In contrast, she has listened quietly and smiled as I told her about historical tensions of southeast asia, the nature of US involvement in Columbia, and even fell asleep while I told her about Mongolia’s evolution over the last thousand years (falling asleep is the highest honor she gives only when presented with something she really likes).  

So I’ve read all the way through the last two issues of both Foreign Affairs and Foreign Policy magazine.  Next up:  maybe some books on China, Russia or something?