All shall be well: thoughts on changing the world in 2012

On a wall in my house hangs a fading, framed newspaper clipping from 2008 with the headline, "Change has come." My friends on the political right have had a good deal of fun deriding that claim in recent months, and much as I admire my president, I'm tempted to chime in myself with "plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose."

Just to balance the equation, it should be noted that in the closing hours of 2011, Politifact presented a report card on the Republican presidential candidates. When the big prize goes to the guy who only lies 75% of the time, it's not exactly cause for celebration.

Don't mistake me. This isn't a partisan post, and it's not about shadenfreude. The problem's systemic. Will the face of politics change any time soon? Nah. As Eddie Izzard likes to say, it "tastes of human, sir!"

And that's the problem.

I'm a deeply political animal. I care about social justice issues. I still believe the old adage that the test of a civilized society is in how it treats its most vulnerable citizens, and I still agree with Gandhi who, when asked what he thought about western civilization, replied, straight-faced, "It would be a good idea!"

But I'm stuck. I'm stuck in the widening gap between my ideals and an unsustainable deficit, between what I like to think of as humanity and our all too evident humanness. I'm stuck watching the train-wreck that occurs when Nietzsche's warning is ignored--again, and again, and again. "He who fights monsters should see to it that, in the process, he doesn't become a monster."

It doesn't work to "take arms against a sea of troubles" if, in doing so, we abandon the very things we are fighting for. The need for expediency is, perhaps, the oldest of the "old lies": we must torture in order to get the upper hand against a regime that violates human rights; we must impose a death penalty to show that killing is wrong; we must lie and cheat our way into a place of political power in order to fix the mess that other liars created.

Really? And how's that been working for us so far?

In the classroom, I'm frequently faced with knee-jerk, sound-bite answers to complicated questions. The most challenging part of my job is opening spaces where students will dare to think, truly question, crack open the door of an inner prejudice just a little to let some air and light in, so they can attempt to work out complicated responses to a complex world for themselves. Why is it so hard for them to imagine nuance? Why is it so hard for all of us?

It's easy to point the finger at the pants-on-fire politicians and to rave about how bad they are. What's harder is to admit that the politician we disagree with has shown an admirable commitment to his marriage and family, the one we love and who had a great handle on the economy treated his wife like crap, and the one whose faith--or lack of it--we can't understand might have some ideas worth considering. When we refuse a complex world of nuance, we force our politicians into playing caricatures of their true selves--and then, of course, we beat them up for giving us the government we deserve.

I'm not going to stop voting. I'm not going to stop caring. And I'm not going to stop arguing for what I believe is right anytime soon. But I begin to suspect we can only change society as we change ourselves... and that happens slowly, haltingly, sometimes with laughter, sometimes with tears, as we return to the place of integrity again and again, remember who we truly are.

I was chatting with friends the other evening about my crazy youth, when I abandoned my career and flew out to Romania after the revolution, determined to make a difference, to change the world, or at least some part of it. Who did I think I was: Batman? Mother Theresa? The greatest thing I learned was that change is slow, and incremental, and grindingly difficult.

In 2012, I'm not looking to change the world through grand gestures or partisan politics. Instead, I'm going looking for it in all my favorite places: in the middle of lakes, through the wisdom of poetry, in the laughter of friends and the colors of sky, on empty, wooded trails, and in challenging poses on my yoga mat.

From those spaces, I hope to come back to engage in my complex world with just a little more balance, just a little more integrity each time than the time before... That's how I'm going to try to change the world in 2012. It's only a practice--I make no promises.

The last word of 2011 goes to T. S. Eliot in this extract from "Little Gidding" in which he tempts us with "A condition of complete simplicity / (Costing not less than everything)." Yes, please!

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always—
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

Don't you just want to smack their heads together?

For the first time in my life, I'm beginning to feel some sympathy for my primary school teacher Miss Bland's preferred method of solving conflicts. She would haul arguing students to the front of the class, warn them that she was going to "smack heads together in a minute," finish her lesson, and then calmly do as she had promised.

I remember one time, my adversary and I thought we could outwit her, and we "made friends" quietly and worriedly as we waited by the blackboard where Miss Bland kept her long-distance missiles (otherwise known as chalks and erasers, objects which frequently found--and left!--their mark on student foreheads).

When Miss Bland finally turned to us to mete out punishment, we told her it was all over, and we had already said sorry to each other.

"Good!" she told us, and then whacked our heads soundly together anyway, leaving a ringing in our ears that lasted all through playtime.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not advocating the whacking of children, but I'm starting to wonder about the whacking of politicians...

Picture of Harry Reid and John Boehner: By JIM KUHNHENN. Featured in Huffington Post article "John Boehner, Harry Reid Debt Ceiling Plans Create Stalemate In Congress."

Veggie Delight

I recently joined a local community garden and am growing my own organic leek and potato soup. Fun times watching my garden grow, working in the dirt at sundown alongside the pro's, learning about the beneficial effects of mulching, dried molasses and worm poop.

Pop by around June and the soup should be just about ready. I wonder whether the loving care lavished on each individual leek slip over the weeks and months to come will translate into taste... My mum told me recently, "You do know they won't come out looking like soup, don't you, dear?" Yes, mum!

Gardening, it seems to me, is rather like fishing or dry stone walling. It's only partly about the activity itself, and only distantly related to the end result. Mostly, it's about having a reason to be out in the open, enjoying the moments as they tick by more slowly than they do in other places...

"Garden as though you will live forever." (William Kent)

♥ Happy Valentine's Day ♥

I almost stopped my car in the middle of the road and cheered today when I heard this interview with Matthew Alexander on NPR. Alexander and his team were responsible for the capture of two major figures in the leadership of al-Qaida, one of them the notorious Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Given the rhetoric we so often hear on popular news channels, you'd be forgiven for thinking this guy would be all about the end justifying the means. But think again. The words that almost got me a ticket today: "I don't care if torture works a hundred percent of the time. I'm not going to use it because it goes against the very principles that I signed up to defend." I received some fun messages and delightful adjectives on this romantic day of days, but Alexander's was the one that made my heart sing.

"Well, I won't be one to tell you that torture never works. I've had friends who have given me examples of when torture did work, but I don't care because to me this isn't about efficacy. We have other things that work a hundred percent of the time like chemical weapons and flamethrowers. We don't use them.

"And the reason we don't use them isn't an efficacy argument, it's because it's against our morality, or because the laws of war have determined that they cause unnecessary human suffering, and we've outlawed them. And there's no exceptions to that.

"I think my big disappointment is the shift in priorities from an America that stands for principles to an America that stands for security. My oath of office, when I took it as an officer in the United States military, didn't mention security. It mentioned allegiance and defending the Constitution, which prohibited torture when we ratified the convention against torture and other provisions within the Constitution."

You can buy the book here. Thank you, Mr Alexander, you made my Valentines Day! ♥

(Pictures courtesy of St. Martin's Press and via NPR.)

On cats, cars, snow, and Super Sissies

Crazy weather and football fever hit Dallas together this week. Schools and colleges were closed Tuesday through Friday as ice and later snow brought the metroplex to its knees as it was gearing up to host Sunday's Super Bowl.

The cat that lives on our porch has been having a chilly time of it. After weeks of refusing all approaches and offers of food, it condescended to accept a blanket yesterday but is otherwise unmoved. Apparently, those big macho footballers in town for the Super Bowl are not quite as hardy as SuperCat. Playing outdoors at SMU was just too much for them to face, poor things! "It's a little too cold for me," linebacker Clay Matthews said (ESPN). Oh please!

Mind you, I'm staying indoors today after yesterday's little adventure saw me skidding down a hill, bouncing off curbs, and spinning 180 degrees before sliding to a stop facing oncoming traffic--I was narrowly missed by a truck behind me that also lost control but managed to slip past me onto the sidewalk. I've about had it with automatics. This wouldn't happen with proper cars with gear sticks!

Meanwhile, anyone else have a problem with the fact that bad weather and rolling blackouts meant two hospitals lost power this week but the stadium for the Superbowl was kept at a balmy 72 degrees?

Are you listening?

Enjoy your day off, but don't forget where it came from. Following a week which brought "a high volume of hypercharged rhetoric over whether hypercharged rhetoric contributed to last Saturday's shootings in Tucson, Ariz" (Linton Weeks, NPR), a reminder of Dr. King's dream seems not only appropriate but desperately needed.

"Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline." Thank you for your life and legacy, Dr. King. I hope enough of us are still listening...

Can you beat this? Should you have to?

Good Lord! Can you beat that? Aldi's egg box has a Bible verse inside it. ?!?

(I'm waiting for someone to quote Matt. 11:30: "His yolk is easy..." ) Seriously, though, folks, separation of church and supermarket much?

Can you imagine the uproar if the egg boxes started preaching from the Koran, the Bhagavad Ghita, or Steven Hawking's Universe? Should there be a religion warning on the outside of the egg box? Discuss...

Go ahead: make my day!

November 2--election day--is my birthday.

For my 42nd, you gave me a new president. Thank you ♥

All I want for my 44th is Bill White in the governor's chair.

Early voting begins today--when you vote early, you can vote at any location, so click the link below and find somewhere convenient near you.

I'm feeling lucky, punks. Make my day!

Early voting locations

How to spot a Republican

A repost from crooksandliars, Fri, 06/11/2010 - 12:50 — BaScOmBe:

A woman in a hot air balloon realized she was lost. She lowered her altitude and spotted a man in a boat below. She shouted to him, "Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago, but I don't know where I am."

The man consulted his portable GPS and replied, "You're in a hot air balloon, approximately 30 feet above ground elevation of 2,346 feet above sea level. You are at 31 degrees, 14.97 minutes north latitude and 100 degrees, 49.09 minutes west longitude.

"She rolled her eyes and said, "You must be an Obama Democrat."

"I am," replied the man. "How did you know?"

"Well," answered the balloonist, "everything you told me is technically correct. But I have no idea what to do with your information, and I'm still lost. Frankly, you've not been much help to me."

The man smiled and responded, "You must be a Republican."

"I am," replied the balloonist. "How did you know?"

"Well," said the man, "you don't know where you are or where you are going. You've risen to where you are due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise you have no idea how to keep, and you expect me to solve your problem. You're in exactly the same position you were in before we met, but somehow, now it's my fault."

You say potato...

England and the US have been famously described as "two nations separated by a common language" (variously attributed to Oscar Wilde and Winston Churchill, depending on which unreliable website you choose to believe). I think the cultural differences may actually run a little deeper than mere semantics, as I tried to explain to my friend Richard the other day on facebook.

Politics aside...

Meet Hassan Khalif Salih, Chairman of the Human Rights Network in Hawieja Province, Iraq. Hassan is one of a group of Iraqi leaders here in the US as part of the Department of State's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs International Visitor Leadership Program. A group of us met at my friend Susan's house tonight to talk about grassroots civic engagement--and to eat delicious halal food and share our stories.

Coming from Great Britain, an Imperialist country with a shameful history of colonialism, I'm not a supporter of invasions in general or the 2003 one justified by those elusive (some might say imaginary) weapons of mass destruction in particular. However, as I love to tell my students, I frequently learn most from those whose positions are very different from my own. This evening I learned some very positive effects that regime change had for ordinary Iraqis.

Hassan told me that prior to the 2003 invasion, groups such as his--which exists to safeguard human rights in Iraq and to lobby on behalf of political prisoners--simply could not have existed; they would never have been allowed. After Saddam Hussein was toppled from power, hundreds of civic action groups, small and large, organized and not so organized, began to spring up everywhere as citizens discovered a new freedom to take part in grassroots activism. Hassan, who is from Hawija, a poverty-striken area in Kirkuk Province which is a source of much terrorist activity, saw an opportunity to put his lawyer's training and deep concern for human rights into action, creating the now seven-year-old Human Rights Establishment.

Hassan and his fellow guests, Bashar Al-Mandalwy, founder and manager of the Journalistic Freedoms Observatory, and Hamid Hussein Safar, Director of Media and General Relationships at the Wasit Electoral Commission, offered us a fascinating perspective on what regime change meant for civic engagement in Iraq. More than that, they offered us the hand of friendship.

"See you WHEN you come to Iraq," Bashar the Iraqi journalist told my daughter Joy, the politically active US high schooler. All politics aside, such friendships forged over falafel and black tea give me great hope for our world...

LipSticking

I think it's probably best if we all just ignore the pink splodges, although I would like to mention that considering how fast it comes off your lips and gets onto the lid of your non-fat caramel latte, Clinique lipstick has amazing stickability once washed and dried with a load of clothes.

I always knew it was a good brand. What I didn't realize was that in order to get it to stay on your lips all day, all you need to do is apply it with liberal amounts of hot soapy water and then dry it with hot air for 40 minutes till it hardens and sets.

It's a great money-saving discovery. Do it that way, and you probably only need to apply it once more for the rest of your life. Helpful hint: choose a shade you can live with--for EVER!

Prune surprise

Today, I discovered that pruning shrubs has a great deal in common with plucking eyebrows. You start small, intending just to tweak a little here, pluck a little there, tidy things up a bit, but it's so hard to know when to stop, isn't it? After you've evened up one side, the other side doesn't look quite right, so you tweak a little more here and pluck a little more there, and pretty soon you're looking altogether quite surprised!

That's all I have to say about my front yard right now except that it's probably a good job that the sun went down when it did, forcing me indoors to confront the laundry. Joy tells me, apropos of nothing, that there's a reason people aren't supposed to cut their own hair. Meanwhile, I worry about Tree Top Joe's feelings next time he passes down my street with his shears. Perhaps there's a reason he charges $40 a snip, and perhaps there's a reason I can barely tell he's been. Perhaps that's the whole point!

Wonderful

For my beautiful daughters and my wonderful friends on my 43rd birthday. Thank you for being. You rock my whirled. xoxoxoxo

Congratulations, Mr President!

President Barack Obama was announced Nobel Laureate for Peace today "for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples."

"Obama has as President created a new climate in international politics. Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play. Dialogue and negotiations are preferred as instruments for resolving even the most difficult international conflicts. The vision of a world free from nuclear arms has powerfully stimulated disarmament and arms control negotiations. Thanks to Obama's initiative, the USA is now playing a more constructive role in meeting the great climatic challenges the world is confronting. Democracy and human rights are to be strengthened.

"Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future. His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world's population." The Nobel Committee.

This morning at Bat Nha...

On my mind and in my heart today are the monks and nuns at Bat Nha who were forced out of their monastery and shoved onto trucks this morning in the pouring rain--400 young monks and nuns and 100 lay people. They are seen in the picture to the right taking part in a tea meditation ceremony in more peaceful times.

Please consider writing your representatives in Congress and asking them to send a letter of inquiry about the situation to the Vietnamese Government. It is vital that those in power in Vietnam understand that the international community is watching.

Find who to write to by scrolling down the left-hand side of this Blog and sticking your zip code in the "Hassle your reps" box. Whatever your belief or worldview, please consider giving 30 minutes to the cause of peace today. Thank you for being. xox

More on Bat Nha here: http://helpbatnha.org/

Namaste!

I heard an interesting article on NPR this morning; apparently, houses of worship are risk sites for H1N1.

Holy water, offering the sign of peace, kissing the Torah, ritual washing, and sharing of prayer mats all came under scrutiny.

A Jewish Rabbi is suggesting the implementation of "Buddhist bows" at his temple. What a delightful interfaith idea. Namaste!

Teaching with Twitter

Dallas Telelearning featured an interview with yours truly this month on the subject of "Teaching with Twitter." You can read it here. Apparently, I am a social media guru. Goodness! Does that come with a hat?

White girls running...

In my doctoral studies, we're wrestling with the interesting problem of how to be fair-minded critical thinkers. Many of us can argue a strong case about a subject on which we're knowledgeable or about which we're passionate, but to be fair minded means having the integrity not to skew the facts or give in to the temptation to select only the evidence that supports our own position. To be fair-minded also means I need to try to wear the shoes of those who offer differing views of the world from my own and to look at their ideas and data in disinterested (not to be confused with uninterested!) fashion.

This is easy to say and very difficult to do. Our perspectives are frequently so much a part of us that we don't see them. Let me offer a short story to illustrate my point.

Yesterday, I was driving in Dallas with my daughter Joy when she pointed out, "Oh look! A whole line of white girls in pony tails running!" She thought this sight was rather peculiar and funny. The world we live in is rich and diverse, and to see a group of only white girls who all looked the same was odd and somewhat amusing--they looked like a row of Barbie dolls bobbing up and down as they crossed the park.

For completeness, I should mention that Joy is a white girl who frequently wears a pony tail. What I pointed out to her was that seven years ago she would probably have said, "Oh look! A line of girls running!" The first seven years of her life were spent in a small village in Cumbria in the north of England. The population was entirely white--so white that it couldn't see the whiteness of itself.

This is parallel, to me, to those who tell me they don't have an accent or a cultural background. The truth is we all do, but when we live only with those who speak and behave like ourselves, we simply don't notice it.

Thinking with fair-mindedness, to me, begins with acknowledging my own blindness and struggling forward, hands held out, feeling for clues...

The opposite of love

Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor and Nobel Laureate, said this: "The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference."

Be the change, people!

Patriotic irony

On this day of days, July 4, when as a dual British/American citizen I celebrate my country's liberation from the tyranny of (ahem!) my country, I am reflecting on the double-irony that "My Country 'tis of Thee" is sung to exactly the same tune as "God Save our Gracious Queen." Perhaps if I simply hum, I can feel whole again!

This is where I come from

This is where I come from. This is what I sometimes miss... the rough edges of the earth, the way light and shadow chase each other across the valley floor, the browns and greens of home.

Happy Birthday, Aung San Suu Kyi

64 today. Behind bars. We remember you!

Read about 21st century hero Aung San Suu Kyi here.

Application of learning

It's good to know the things we teach in the classroom are not only understood in terms of lesson material but useful in the everyday lives of our students. I've introduced Twitter in class this summer, and it's been fun watching the Tweets roll by.

My favorite student Tweet from last night: "Now I know how to use pathos n logos to get to date many hotties."

Ha ha ha

I have created a monster!

"Did I Miss Anything?"

Did I Miss Anything?

Question frequently asked by
students after missing a class

Nothing. When we realized you weren't here
we sat with our hands folded on our desks
in silence, for the full two hours

Everything. I gave an exam worth
40 per cent of the grade for this term
and assigned some reading due today
on which I'm about to hand out a quiz
worth 50 per cent

Nothing. None of the content of this course
has value or meaning
Take as many days off as you like:
any activities we undertake as a class
I assure you will not matter either to you or me
and are without purpose

Everything. A few minutes after we began last time
a shaft of light descended and an angel
or other heavenly being appeared
and revealed to us what each woman or man must do
to attain divine wisdom in this life and
the hereafter
This is the last time the class will meet
before we disperse to bring this good news to all people
on earth

Nothing. When you are not present
how could something significant occur?

Everything. Contained in this classroom
is a microcosm of human existence
assembled for you to query and examine and ponder
This is not the only place such an opportunity has been
gathered

but it was one place

And you weren't here

by Tom Wayman
From: The Astonishing Weight of the Dead
Vancouver: Polestar, 1994.

Digging my friends

Only a philosophy prof. is likely to turn up unexpectedly at your door with a shovel and a trunk full of canna lilies and start digging in the front of your house--all the while expounding to your daughters on the quality of your dirt, the meaning of life, and the importance of knowing about Pablo Neruda.

Lizzy later posted on facebook, "I love my mom's friends." Yeah. Me too! All of you. Thank you for being xox

Read Liesl's blog at http://www.clottedcognition.com/ If you're a student who liked me, you're gonna love her, so take her class already! One of these days, we're gonna get that learning community together, Liesl--maybe with a service learning component involving community gardens?

Introducing Joy's Poetry Pants!

Joy added some of EAP's Bells to her poetry pants. It's a new fave. She made me read the whole thing to her immediately I staggered in from the lake. It's long, but how could I refuse when she'd vacuumed?

...in a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire,
In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fire,
Leaping higher, higher, higher,
With a desperate desire...

The poetry pants fade in the wash, but Joy re-scribes them in lessons if the teacher is being dull--the more boring the lesson, the more interesting the pants. Participial phrases always produce great creativity!

"The Guest House"

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī
جلال‌الدین محمد رومی

6 October 2001--a memory

today, a five-year-old, with dancing eyes and dripping hair, splashed through puddles to the edge of the muddy world and looked on her first rainbow, laughing Nearly nine years ago, but it seems like yesterday--the day Lizzy saw her first rainbow. Joy, Lizzy, and I had been playing with mud and sticks down by the river. Racing up the fields to get home, Lizzy stopped and looked up. Her mouth was wide open and she was laughing. "They're REAL!" she yelled. "I didn't know they were REAL!" Happy Birthday, my beautiful teenage daughter--13 today. Wow!xoxoxo

Hail to the chief!

To take a step without feet...

A little something from my friend Rumi with which to say goodbye to a year filled with:

... joy... trees... pain... clouds... anger... flowers... hilarity... daughters... lakes... thunder...

challenge... sunshine... friendship... softness... wind... shouting... snow... remorse... silence...

leaves falling... songs... birth... self-pity... rocks... politics... rainfall... kisses... hard work...

laughter... hills... bravery... worry... the ocean... divorce... daffodils... sunrise... hugs... guilt...

dogs... goodness... nightfall... rainbows... god... bread making... mountains... music...

hope...

This is love: to fly toward a secret sky,
to cause a hundred veils to fall each moment.
First, to let go of life.
In the end, to take a step without feet...

Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi.

Not a party

It wasn't a party. No, it definitely wasn't. It was more of an old-style "at home" without the Victorian dresses and endless talk of the weather--and of course we took mulled wine instead of tea!

Some favorite moments:

Fred singing a sultry rendition of Joni Mitchell's Twisted while we all clicked our fingers to the beat.

...My analyst told me

That I was right out of my head

He said I'd need treatment

But I'm not that easily led

He said I was the type

That was most inclined

When out of his sight

To be out of my mind...

Anne reciting from memory The Cremation of Sam McGee:

There are strange things done in the midnight sun

By the men who moil for gold;

The Arctic trails have their secret tales

That would make your blood run cold;

The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,

But the queerest they ever did see

Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge

I cremated Sam McGee...

Other choice fragments of the evening: Gary getting lost down the Labyrinthine mind of Louis MacNeice...Lizzy playing "Snowflakes" and Joy playing "Rhapsody"...a little recitation of Coleridge and a touch of Edward Lear...Lizzy reading my childhood favorite "Somewhere" by Walter de la Mare...Joy doing her best Eddie Izzard impression...the funny tale of how two of my favorite people--Gary and Fred, that's you! x--found each other eventually after a disastrous first not-meeting that gives new meaning to the term "blind-date"...great conversation...lots of laughs...

No, no, it wasn't a party. I had to cancel that, but somehow it didn't seem OK to let Boxing Day pass unmarked, so it was just a gathering of four or five friends, a little mulled wine, and yummy, quirky food including the newly invented Boxing Day Pie.

If all this sounds like your private idea of hell, you had a lucky escape, but if, like those who gathered, you think it just might have been rather wonderful, all is not lost. We're planning a redux evening with a reading of The Importance of Being Earnest.

As host, I'm shamelessly bagging Lady Bracknell right now (Bagging, geddit?):

"I do not approve of anything that tampers with natural ignorance. Ignorance is like a delicate, exotic fruit. Touch it, and the bloom is gone. The whole theory of modern education is radically unsound. Fortunately in England, at any rate, education produces no effect whatsoever."

Download your copy of Oscar's masterpiece here, and choose your character. If you're reading this: you're invited!

Oh! Oh! Oh!

I have been invited to an Epiphany Party. I was musing aloud about what such a thing could possibly be when Joy came to my rescue: "I expect it's a gathering of people who stand around going, "Oh!" and "Oh!" and "Aha!" she told me with a wicked glint in her eye.

"O, O, O!"

What a lovely surprise I had this Christmas morning; a Secret Santa left an Obama plant on my doorstep! It's definitely one of a kind. The pot is made of chalkboard, and there's a piece of chalk tucked into the ribbon. Growing on the twigs are pictures of Obama, including one of him sitting under a portrait of Mohammed Ali and one bearing the slogan: "Pointy headed professors for Obama!"

Is someone trying to tell me something about the shape of my cranium? Hmmmmm?

In the middle of preparing for their own holiday, someone had an idea, put it together with great care, and snuck it onto my doorstep so it would welcome me on Christmas morning as I took out the trash. Whoever you are, your thoughtfulness and fun smiled my world. Thank you! x

It's been a tough old lead-up to Christmas in many ways, but it's also been full of little lovelinesses. My mum arrived from England only to end up in the hospital. I had never been inside the doors of Parkland before, and all I can say is I've fallen in love. Expect to see a post soon on how to become a "Friend of Parkland." I watched people off the street wearing blankets receive the same courtesy and care as the best dressed and sweetest smelling of patients (that's you, mum!).

Parkland is your basic Ford model of hospital, not your Honda Element. The wheelchairs are metal and have no cushions, and my mum spent most of her first day alongside rather a lot of inmates from the county jail who were chained to their trolleys and wearing nifty striped gear.

The eventual journey to a shared wardroom was a hoot. Mum was parked on a clearly labeled "launch pad" to begin her trip, and as Joy explained, grinning, to her Gran: "In a few minutes, they'll push a button, and you'll shoot up through the ceiling!" The journey was, thankfully, a little smoother than that.

Here are some Santas--secret and not so secret--that I want to thank this Christmas:


The doctors and nurses of Parkland. Mum is safe at home, having a snooze after the Christmas morning unwrapping, thanks to you.

My daughters. Joy and Lizzy, you have been incredible, shopping till you dropped on Christmas Eve and helping get the house warm, welcoming, and Christmasified for Gran's return. You worked all day after hours spent at the hospital the day before. Not a complaint was heard though I know you were exhausted. Your silly jokes, nutty songs, kindness, and endless patience with the process kept us all going. You are the two most beautiful people I know.

Our secret policeman. I don't know your name, but you snuck Lizzy and me the secret way from Parklands emergency room through to Children's Medical Hospital ER and out the other side because their canteen was open late, and they had cheese! (Texas hospitals--and not just the public ones--are where vegetarians go to starve!)

Anne Savidge. My hero, my friend. You stayed with mum all day Christmas Eve so the girls and I were free to get ready for Christmas. Joy and Lizzy didn't get Thanksgiving on the right day because I was in a different--posher!--hospital with a dear student. Though there was never a word of complaint on either occasion, I was determined they would get their Tofurkey dinner on time this time. Thank you for helping make it happen.

Though I run the risk of going on and on and on and sounding like a very bad speaker at the Oscars, I have to say thank you as well to all the lovely friends who stayed in touch with me through some of the scary times during the last few days and who sent messages and made offers of help. You are all my Christmas.

Finally, to my lovely secret santa, whoever you are: THANK YOU X


"O, O, O: Merry Christmas!"

WHAT WE'VE ALL BEEN WORKING FOR...

God bless the President-elect of the United States of America!

Water, water, everywhere

My new favorite place to swim: Lake Grapevine. Out in the middle of the waters, you can lose yourself for hours. It's the next best thing to being in the sea--and much, much warmer. I should have been a fish...

Reasons to be cheerful...

I'm proud of my adopted homeland tonight. Barack Obama has secured the nomination. No matter how little you have, donate something to his campaign now:

Contribute!

Congratulations! You're a history-maker.

A Road Less Traveled By

This speech will be talked about for decades to come. It will be taught in universities. It will be remembered as a pivotal moment in a country's history. I hope it is remembered as a road taken, not an opportunity missed. The transcript is here, and an extract is below:

"We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.

"We can do that. But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change. That is one option.

"Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, 'Not this time.'"

Take the road less traveled this time, America, because here is the astonishing news: "At 11:00 on a Tuesday, a prominent politician spoke to Americans about race . . . as though they were adults" (Jon Stewart).

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
From "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost.

You can make a contribution to the journey here. Then find out how to get involved locally here.

So let the waves come; they will anyway

Water. I’ve loved it for as long as I can remember. As a troubled teen, I used to sit for hours on a huge rock lodged in the middle of a river and watch the water slipping softly by on both sides. There was something unspeakably soothing in its constancy. When it hit obstacles, it simply ran around them. It was infinitely gentle, absolutely unstoppable.

When I grew up, I moved to live near the sea and later to the beautiful English Lake District. From an early age, my children played in, around, and on the water too. I used to walk them home from school via our river where we would often stop to paddle or mess about with mud and sticks. In the holidays, I would take them camping by the beach at Whitby or rowing on Ullswater or Buttermere.

When we came to Dallas just over five years ago, we brought very little. You cannot carry a house on your back when you cross an ocean. There were the children’s toys, some clothes, a few of our most treasured books—and a small yellow dinghy that has been gathering dust in the garage for far too long. It’s hard to say why I would bring a dinghy to Dallas, but there it is, a message, a reminder.

Today, I unearthed it from its dusty hiding place and took it out to White Rock Lake with Lizzy who is always good for a lark. Joy rolled her eyes and stayed home; at 13, she is both too old and too young to mess about in boats.

Finding my dinghy, rowing out onto the water again, was like unwrapping a present sent to me from a younger—and perhaps wiser—self. Life has been a little choppy of late, and there have been days and weeks when I have felt the water has been almost over my head. I have felt that I was, as Stevie Smith put it so well, “not waving, but drowning.” It has been hard to breathe at times, and I don’t fool myself that there aren’t more of those times to come. But today, in the sunshine, with cold, wet pants, bare, muddy feet, and laughing birds wheeling overhead, I remembered that water has always been my friend.

So let the waves come; they will anyway.

Lizzy and I laughed as we sat in the middle of the lake in less than dry condition, reciting lines from one of our favorite poems by Edward Lear:

The water it soon came in, it did,
The water it soon came in;
So to keep them dry, they wrapped their feet
In a pinky paper all folded neat,
And they fastened it down with a pin.
And they passed the night in a crockery-jar,
And each of them said, ‘How wise we are!
Though the sky be dark, and the voyage be long,
Yet we never can think we were rash or wrong,
While round in our Sieve we spin!’
Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
And they went to sea in a Sieve.

Lizzy looked down at her damp feet and, for the first time, questioned the efficacy of the pinky paper all folded neat. We agreed it probably hadn’t worked very well.

Hanging with Senator Chris Dodd

Senator Chris Dodd stopped by the law offices of Kelly and Witherspoon Sunday evening with Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano. There was no fanfare. They just wanted to come by and encourage the local volunteers who have been campaigning so hard in the last few weeks--among the hardest workers, as usual, were Joy and Lizzy, proudly pictured here with the Senator.

Senator Dodd is a lovely, gently spoken, inspirational figure who reeks of integrity. He thanked us all for our work and told us a little about why he's supporting Barack Obama. He congratulated me on my first vote as a US citizen.

Both Senator Dodd and Governor Napolitano let us know we get to rest for a day after the primary, but then it's back to work for the long, hard haul to the White House. Anyone who thinks the next step is going to be easy is fooling themselves, they told us. When the Democratic party gets together around Obama's candidacy, THAT's when the big guns will come out.

I believe it, but I'm also encouraged by the way some moderate Republicans (Obamicans, they call themselves!) have been reacting to our candidate. They see him as an inspirational leader that America needs. And they didn't just tell me that. My two new Republican friends told countless voters too as we phone banked together through the day.

In other news, it was slightly disconcertibng to be followed around a Fiesta parking lot by CBS news this morning who stuck a mike down my shirt and listened in as I talked to voters and flyposted leaflets--before being asked to leave by the manager who didn't disclose who he was supporting in the primary! The guys told me the segment would be on the news this evening. I don't know whether it was, but I enjoyed my chat with the reporter once the mike had been removed and I could once more think straight. He hasn't voted yet but will be doing so on March 4. He's not sure whether he'll go back in the evening to caucus. And no... He didn't tell me who was getting his vote!

Volunteering at the Fort Worth Rally

I kept my daughters off school on Thursday, as you can see (left, at the top of the picture).

We have been volunteering locally at weekends for the Obama campaign and received an invitation to help at the Fort Worth Convention Center rally where thousands of people were expected to come and hear the Senator speak. We arrived six hours before the event, as requested.

Joy and I got separated from Lizzy early on. She called us gleefully from the main floor where she was acting as a runner and helping seat disabled visitors. Joy called her sister a "punk" under her breath; she and I were stuck outside helping get satellite trucks parked and keeping others away. Told we would not be forgotten and then (it seemed) promptly abandoned, we stood in the exhaust fumes of ABC and Faux news vans with two other volunteers and did our job faithfully for hour after hour.

Now, I'm a campaigner for hope, but I think I'm a realist too. My new friend, Ada, was adamant someone would come back for us eventually, but I began to try to let my co-workers down gently. "You know," I said, "I'm sure they mean well, but they have hundreds of volunteers to coral, and thousands upon thousands are pouring this way. The number of jobs they're working on in there will keep multiplying. We need to face the fact that we might not get in. Heck--the four of us are the only volunteers here who haven't even been able to get our credentials. We have nothing to prove we're in any way connected to the campaign--and now they've locked the doors for the bomb sweep."

But even at hour three, Ada was adamant. "The press director said he'd come back and get us. We're gonna be just fine. This is a campaign of integrity," she told me firmly. "They'll keep their word."

I had no doubt Brandon, the busy press director who left us with the trucks, meant to keep his word, but he had a lot on his plate, what with the Secret Service (who I tried to wave away at one point thinking they were visitors parking in my Sat truck spots--whoops!), the growing press crowd, and the sheer volume of logistics he had to juggle. I wasn't holding my breath that integrity alone would reach as far from the center of action as a side road full of trucks and cables where four slowly roasting volunteers waved on the traffic and dreamt of the possibility of a restroom sighting somewhere in the distant future.

...which all goes to show that I have a lot to learn about hope...

Just after hour three, back came Brandon to the rescue. The police were closing the road, so we were no longer needed to act as human traffic signs. He hadn't forgotten us. He walked us through every security check point, informing even the Secret Service that "These four are good; they're with me." He thanked us for our work and told us we were getting the best seats in the house. Then he politely but firmly argued us through every official until we were sitting on the risers right behind where the Senator would speak--with a bird's eye view behind the screen to where he would arrive backstage too. Though Lizzy had been giving me regular bulletins by phone throughout the day, it was a relief to her old mum when she was allowed through to join us too.

All in all, we had an incredible day, and of course being so close to our hero, Obama, was pretty cool, but it's sometimes not the obvious things that have the most impact. Lizzy had particularly enjoyed petting the Secret Service sniffer puppy and working the elevators, and Joy told me it was Brandon (pictured left) who was her new role model. We ran into him picking litter in his suit after the event was over, and Joy got her photo taken with him. He seemed surprised that she singled him out; it was a shame she never got to tell him why. He was in charge of so much, she told me, but he remembered the little things--like us! That's the kind of person she wants to be when she's all grown up and working in the White House.

In the picture at the top of the post, Lizzy (11), is standing in the middle at the back in the brown T-shirt. Joy (13) is to her right, and I'm to her left. Oh, and the cool-looking dude in the foreground... That's the next president of the United States of America!

Making history one Google map at a time

My daughters and I spent the day volunteering in downtown Dallas for Barack Obama's campaign. I had thought we would be there for an hour or two, but the girls just didn't want to leave. Lizzy (11) worked on signs and on the phones, helped orient new volunteers, and kept the call-sheets straight, and Joy (13)--who was having trouble with her voice because of a cold--provided printed and written directions to canvassers who walked and talked in various precincts.

After three hours, I suggested that Joy (above right) might want to go home since she's been unwell. "Nah-ah," she told me, hoarsely but with a huge grin: "I'm serving my country; I'm making history one Google map at a time!"

Lizzy (left, and right, working the phones) was equally immovable. We stayed another couple of hours at the Kelly & Witherspoon Law Center before I enticed them home finally with a promise that we would stop off at Obama Dallas on the way and that yes, we could volunteer at HQ on Friday night and be back at the law offices phone banking on Saturday morning. To say I am proud of my daughters' commitment would be the understatement of the year.