Pittsburgh welcomes the world and then is REALLY glad when the world leaves.

Well, we made it through the G20 mostly intact. A sad little group of self-styled "anarchists" did show up and misbehave enough to get tear gassed. The little nitwits broke the windows of evil capitalist giants like Pamela's Diner, an independent and lesbian-owned and operated local business. Good going anarchists. Everyone knows that those lesbians, with their Birkenstocks, flannel shirts, and pancakes, are out to take over the world! The protesters also broke the windows of a Boston Market that is right next to a major cancer-treatment facility, terrorizing the already traumatized families of cancer patients. Nice work kids!

Which makes me wonder, when did I get to be such a fuddy duddy? Oh, I know, it was when I had to stop living life theoretically and had to start living it for real. I've actually sat in that very Boston Market with a friend whose husband was getting cancer treatments. Yeah, the food is corporate and mediocre, but it serves food your kids will eat (which is a huge mercy when you're going through a life crisis) and it's a brief haven from the misery of the hospital. It makes me sad to think of those poor families sitting huddled in their booths - just trying to gather themselves together before they go back to the hospital where they have to be strong again - suddenly having shards of glass rain down on them. And it confirms my belief that it's never, ever a good thing when ideology trumps our humanity.

I'll stop grumping now, and here, for your amusement, is a link to my favorite photo from the G20. It's of a cute little anarchist trying to get reception on his corporation-owned and operated cell phone!

So having recently been through a town-brawl meeting with right-wing extremists and now the G20 with left-wing nut jobs, it makes me want to toss them all in a padded cell and lock the door!

My husband has finally given birth!

Afer twenty-five years of pregnant thought and six years of writing and rewriting, my husband's magnum opus is finally out! It really is brilliant. But don't take my word for it. Read what the reviewers say:

“No one does art history and the history of memory as sublimely as Kirk Savage. In this book of extraordinary research and widely accessible prose, Savage brilliantly shows how America's most sacred and visible public space has evolved.” (David W. Blight)

“Monument Wars is the best single work I've read on the idea of the ‘monument’ in American culture, the best single analysis and history of Washington's shrines.” (James E. Young)

"Now maybe he will stop dragging us to monuments all the time!" (Our kids)

Here's the website:
www.monumentwars.com/Site%203/Home.html

Vanilla Rice

As you know, one of our daughters is autistic. She's very bright, but has a really difficult time getting her words out. We've spent lots and lots of time carefully modeling speech for her, and teaching her what to say and when to say it.

Today my husband was making dinner and as he was getting the rice on, my super intellectual book-writing Ph.D. of a husband was riffing on the old Vanilla Ice hit and singing "I'm making rice, rice, baby. (Boom ba da boom boom ba dum) Rice, rice, baby." When dinner was ready, my autistic daughter comes into the kitchen and says "I want Rice Rice Baby!"

I'm really hoping that, at the school cafeteria, she'll rock it out to the lunch ladies and ask for "Rice, rice, baby."

Lucky

When I first met my twins, they were six months old, in an orphanage in Vietnam. They had inflamed eczema on their faces and, on their shaved heads, a two-day growth of spiky black hair poking up through the infected scabs covering the tops of their heads. You'd press on their little crusty scalps and puss would ooze out. I remember holding them proudly in our arms on the plane to the US and telling the stewardesses brightly "We just adopted them!" while they looked back at us with pasted-on smiles and deep pity in their eyes. Those babies were truly and seriously funky looking. And when we got home, we were told again and again how lucky they were - because they were a different race, from a third-world country, had been in an orphanage, and were, admittedly, kind of grungey at first. But I'd been trying to have babies for for a few years, had some miscarriages, and to me they were the instant cure for my broken heart, the happy ending to all my tears, splotchy infected little miracles, and I knew I was the lucky one.

They cleaned up pretty nice, didn't they?

They started talking (English) at seven months old, shortly after they arrived in the states. They learned to read and write very young, they draw astonishingly well, play the guitar with talent and flair, make mostly A's in school, and they're gay. Because of this last little detail, a lot of people have been telling me, once again, how lucky they are to have me as a mother. Yesterday was my birthday and, in a card she'd drawn herself, one of my twins wrote, "I owe you for everything I am today. I'll love you always." She was so embarrassed she had to run and hide while I read it. She is sixteen after all. But when I was sixteen, I think the deepest thing I had to say to my parents was "I'm going out. Can I have some money?" or "You just don't understand!" (It was the 70s. We had a generation gap to maintain.)

So I just wanted to say what a privilege it is for me to be the mother of these lovely, talented, kind young women. Just as it has been a privilege for me to know all the gay men and women I've known over the years. Because people who know that shit happens - that life doesn't always follow the script we're handed when we're kids, that "normal" is a myth - are the very best kind of people to have at your side through the ups and downs of life. They're the ones who don't get scared when things are rough, who stay with you every step of the way. Having people like that in your life, however they come to you, now that's lucky.

You'll laugh that hanky right off your ass

I don't usually do this, but I have found the most hysterical updating of the gay man's Hanky Code and thought you'd get a kick out of it. Here's the link:
Hanky Code update
It's at a blog called Another Little Disappointment, which I now plan to follow religiously, or irreligiously as the case may be!
Enjoy!

Summer's end

What an odd summer it's been. Because of the husband's broken foot we didn't do anything especially summery or vacationy, so it feels like nothing happened. But as I think about it, a lot was going on beneath the boring every-day surface of our lives.

In theory the biggest thing that happened was the teens "coming out." But really it was just a confirmation of what I've long suspected. I've got pretty hi-def gaydar, but even if I had been totally clueless, my lesbian friends (who, ever since the girls were in kindergarden, were saying 'You know, you might have some dykes on your hands there...') would have clued me in. So it's been less of an "event" and more a simple and welcome clarification.

The husband made full professor and an advance copy of his second book (more on that in another post) is in our hands, but that's what I've always known he could and would do. In a way, the biggest deal about it for me is that he lived to accomplish these things.

Which brings me to what, for me, the summer was really about - mortality. My mother is starting to fade - her memory is dimming and this woman who spent her life traveling the globe gets flustered now in new environments. My teens are growing into young women - they're falling in love, having girlfriends, and starting to think about college. They're almost fully cooked and ready to come out of the oven and make their own mistakes without me to cosset and guide them. And my husband, of course, still has his freaky incurable blood disease. So I see these fixed stars of my life - my mother, my husband, my children - as suddenly shifting, orbiting away from me. It makes me metaphysically dizzy. I went to talk to a therapist about it all and his advice was "You have to trick yourself into believing in the illusion of immortality again." Which I understand. You can't live each moment of your life in paralyzing fear that it will end. But Buddhism looks at the same set of circumstances and advises us to realize that impermanence is the true state of all things and that we should try to embrace it and find peace in the acceptance of that truth.

Honestly, I'm not doing very well at either approach. And since I am, as my husband tells me, "completely incapable of compartmentalizing," I've been grappling like Hell with all this. Which is why I've been less than normally communicative these past months. (Which is also a long-way about of apologizing for not commenting on your blogs as much lately!)

So what do you think? Does one try to dive back into the lulling youthful illusion of immortality, or does one look steely eyed at the passing away of all things and follow the stony path of non-attachment? Any advice or experience would be appreciated!

Town-brawl meeting

Apparently Betsey Ross is against health-care reform. Who knew?


My friends and I did have a few allies in the crowd.

As you know from my previous post, I'm really concerned about how the national health-care debate is being hijacked by the right-wing fear mongers. So I made my little posters and did what I thought was my civic duty and went to a town-hall meeting. Or rather, I stood in the parking lot outside a town-hall meeting. The meeting was at 3:00 PM and, apparently, people were lining up to get in at 7 AM!

So my friends and I stood in the parking lot simply showing our signs. I was yelled at, called names, followed, and harassed. I walked by holding my little sign and people yelled "Get a job!" (as if it is the mere laziness of the uninsured that causes their pitiful condition). I was told I was naive, deluded, and too sensitive (go figure!!!) and that our democratically elected president was a "clown" and a "tool" of variously "the communists," "Wall Street," and "Zeke Emanuel" (Rahm's brother). I also witnessed a white crowd blocking a bus full of black people, taunting them. When the police finally intervened so that the bus could leave, the white crowd shouted "Don't come back! Don't come back!" I have never been so ashamed of my country.

There were some funny (in a sort of WTF way) moments. At one point a man I was talking to said something about "Communist countries like Canada." I said, "Wait a minute! Canada's not communist." To which he replied, as if he was making a brilliant point, "But Cuba is!" Oh my country, my silly silly country.