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Just what I need when I have more layers of stress than a spanish onion - swine flu.  One of my greatest fears in life after jail is pandemics.  (I never should have read Camus’s The Plague.)  Yesterday, just to hike up my anxiety a few more notches, I got the information about Rowan’s Friday field trip - to a farm.  Where they will be able to pet the animals.  And Nathan will be taking a group of students to New York City that day.  I’m planning on sending them both shrink wrapped and soaked in Purell.  I have enough of it to do so because after the morning news yesterday I went to my local CVS and bought every bottle of Purell they had.  I’m not even trying to be funny - I really did.  You know there will be a shortage of the stuff in a matter of days.

Did I also mention that my kids are all sick?  Every one of them is couching and has a soar throat.  And Finn has a rash.  Do you get a rash with the swine flu?  If only the swine flu made you oink.  Then I wouldn’t have to panic with every sniff and cough. 

On the upside, I should get back to regular blogging because I won’t be leaving the house for the next six months.  And you guys won’t even laugh at me for wearing this mask.

Just the same, even computers are very germy things, and I don’t recommend wiping them down with Purell because then some of thhhe kkeyss ssticck.

My only hope is that the swine flu does not infect saints.  Or the families of saints.  If so we’re good.

Just the person I want designing my wardrobe: a repressed, frigid, self righteous, emasculating Republican.

Buying from her line is like a third vote for her sugar daddy:

I can think of a few people who will be lining up to get their pink cardigans and petal pushers though!

Oops.  Scratch that one!

I’m always appalled at the way our nation clings to other people’s agony, as if by dissecting every cell of someone else’s heartache we can protect ourselves from ever feeling that same pain.  Like maybe if we know what John Travolta ate for breakfast on the day his beloved son died, we can somehow be sure that we will never be the one to loose a child.  Or maybe we want to be in so many Hollywood minds as not to go out of our own, choosing to be voyeurs of other people’s pain as a way of denying what’s ailing us. 

I am not a voyeur.  I cringe and change the channel when the local news interviews the sobbing family of yet another policeman gunned down on the streets of Philadelphia.  I would much rather read a factual account of Philadelphia’s increased struggle with violence and murder, complete with statistics and comparisons to other dangerous cities made with a chart, than to eavesdrop on a person’s lowest moment in life.  Maybe it’s the Irish in me, my stoic refusal to show my own emotion, that prevents me from choosing to witness other people’s deepest feelings.  Maybe it’s part of my lifelong struggle to see raw emotion as anything other than weakness.  If I could get past that personal flaw I believe I would be a better friend, spouse, mother, writer, woman.

Or maybe I just don’t like to feel uncomfortable. 

I have had mixed feelings about the public outcry surrounding Rihanna and Chris Brown.  A part of me desperately wants to yank my head away from viewing their private pain, for it is so not my business.  But, thanks to Maggie and her pledge to make a difference, I am beginning to see how important it is for victims of domestic and sexual violence to speak out, to have a voice, to know that they are not alone, to find a way to get beyond the pain and shame, and to stand together in the effort to affect change.  I’m coming to understand that hiding domestic violence in the deepest corners of our darkest closets allows it to feed and to fester and to draw strength and to multiply into the pandemic that it has become in this country.

I am one of the lucky ones.  For no reason other than I have been blessed by fate I have never been the victim of physical or emotional abuse at the hands of another.  There was a time when I would have tried to take some credit for that, as if it could never happen to me because I am too smart, or too strong, or too proud, or too fill-in-the-blank, but my friend Maggie has taught me otherwise.  Violence does not pick and choose between the weak or strong, the wise or naïve, the wealthy or poor, the ignorant or educated.  It invades and attacks insidiously and indiscriminately.

It has been hard for me to click to Maggie’s new blog, Violence Unsilenced.  It has been a struggle for me to page down through the breath and blood and skin and tendon of these beautiful women who are just like me.  But I’ve learned that by reading their stories I am not exploiting them.  I am honoring them by listening, and I am raising my voice with them in an outcry for change.  

Maybe it’s time we all allow ourselves to feel a little uncomfortable.

“Fidelity”: Don’t Divorce… from Courage Campaign on Vimeo.

Emphasis on ALL.

I make my decisions about most issues with the simplest of litmus tests: how would I vote, what side of the fence would I stand on if my own child was being denied her/his rights?

It makes just about everything crystal clear.

You can sign the petition here.  Links courtesy of Eating Dust and Coconut Belly!

The other day I wrote about getting it totally wrong while trying to motivate a child, and then yesterday I read about fifteen year old Max Gilpin and his high school football coach, Jason Stinson.  Stinson will be the first coach charged with wreckless homicide for Max’s death from heat stroke.  At an August 20th practice the coach ellegedly refused the team water and told them they would run until somebody quit.  Max collapsed on the field.  His body temperature was 107 degrees upon arrival at the hospital.    He died three days later having never regained consciousness.

My heart breaks for Max’s family.  They are living every parent’s worst nightmare and their lives will never be remotely the same.  But my heart breaks for the Stinson family as well.  They too are changed forever and perhaps will carry an even heavier life-long burden than the Gilpins.  How many of us in the field of education have gone about motivating kids in an inappropriate manner?  I just wrote about committing the very same crime, although my actions created psychological rather than physical scars.

I think motivating a child to strive and to achieve is one of the most difficult things to get right as a teacher and as a parent.  We all fail sometimes: dampen a child’s spirit, damage a fragile psyche, extinguish a fledgling dream in our desire to maximize a potential, to ensure that a child has the very best shot at having their very best life.

So when we get it wrong, very, very wrong, should we be held accountable for our actions?  Many people are defending the coach because it was an accident and because denying water to athletes and pushing them beyond their breaking points is a common practice in the world of competitive sports.  Talk about a slippery slope!  It’s like Everest after a Vaseline rain shower.

This is a case of judgment, not intention.  We all need to have our own internal barometer of what is appropriate, rational, reasonable, in spite of what is accepted or normal.  Can you forgive those soldiers who flipped the switches on the ovens that burned 6 million Jews to death simply because it had become common practice?  Although a very harsh analogy, it makes the point. 

I feel the purest empathy for Mr. Stinson.  I don’t for an instant think he was acting maliciously or intentionally, but he acted in poor judgment.  Being put in a position to motivate a child is being given a sacred charge.  As a mother I give that sacred charge to professionals five days a week and I have to trust that they will use flawless judgment.  

I pray that Max’s life will be honored every time an educator or a parent thinks twice about the way they are treating a child. 

I promise I will do my best to honor him often.

I thought I was all over this.  Yes, I wanted him elected more than money, but once it was done I put that passion on hold.  As Helen said so well, just because I voted for him doesn’t mean I’m giving him a free pass.  Now it’s time to get down to work, put the money where that mouth is.  I’m hopeful, I’m excited, but my expectations are high and I’m paying very close attention.  The celebration for me will start after the promised change is in place, not before. 

That said, I’ve just watched the Obamas walk into St. John’s church and tears are already running down my face.  I think as a white woman I haven’t given enough weight to the race issue.  I didn’t vote for him because he was black any more than I voted for John Kerry because he was white.  But this morning it finally came into focus for me: racial barriers are crashing to the ground today, but the view without those walls will not look all that different to my generation.  To us it’s still and always will be a first, an exception.

The real change, the real shift in ideology will be in the brains and hearts of those who are toddling around at our feet today as we witness this historic dream-come-true.  It’s the generation who will choose to watch Dora today that will live with a different view of this world.

Finnian will spend (HOPEFULLY!) the next eight years, his most impressionable, honoring the very highest level of respect upon a black man.  He will take for granted a world where all men are created equal, where people are judged, of course, simply by the character of their actions.

I’m thrilled to witness the symbolic falling of the walls today.  I can’t help but get choked up at the pictures of the millions of people standing on The Mall in the cold, wave upon wave of Americans each there to pull down a piece of that wall and to toss it behind us.  But the fruits of this victory will ripen slowly, and I pray that in twenty years they will be very, very sweet.