Today I can't remember where I read (or heard) "commit to the pour," but it has to do with how to pour liquid from a container that has no spout, like pouring wine from one glass to another. If you are tentative, the liquid runs down the side of the vessel from which you are pouring and dribbles all over the place. But if you "commit to the pour" and tilt the glass over further, with confidence, the liquid pours into the other glass with no spilling. It feels counterintuitive to do this, to … [Read more...]
Attempting Alignment
Which sounds very much like jousting at windmills. And, really, isn't that what we all want to do? To pursue our passions? A few years ago I learned of a book, One Word That Will Change Your Life. A friend of mine had shared how he selected a word for himself each year. I then tried it with my "tribe" - our group of close friends who usually spend New Year's Eve together at the lake. We're doing it again this year. My friend Lisa brought a "What's Your Word?" kit so that we could each pound … [Read more...]
Under the Lemon Glaze
My mother quickly became famous for her pound cake. And by famous, I mean everyone in our church liked it. It is a sour cream pound cake. She has the recipe committed to memory and can whip one up at a moment’s notice. In her retirement, she joined one of Atlanta’s oldest chapters of PEO (a philanthropic education organization) and made her pound cake for their auction. Now she does it every year. Her cakes sell for upwards of $50. More recently, she makes two for the auction. Growing … [Read more...]
Diatonic Chords: My Melissa Etheridge story
We had the opportunity to see Melissa Etheridge in concert last Thursday night at the ACL Moody Theater in Austin. I can't tell you how many times I've seen her in concert. No, actually I can. I can tell you exactly how many times. Like many of the women I know--and millions of others--I can also tell you vivid details about moments of listening to Melissa Etheridge's music. I wasn't a rabid fan, following her every move, attending every appearance. But when I have seen her live, it is … [Read more...]
Cranberry Stains and the Fabric of our Lives
Thanksgiving week makes me think about cranberry stains and fabric, about fabric as a manufactured thing. It's impossible to forget the schmaltzy cotton industry commercial selling us/telling us that cotton is the fabric of our lives. There are those who malign the manufactured-ness of the Thanksgiving holiday itself. My social justice activist friends deconstruct the premise and the marketing—the manufactured, sanitized, dominant-culture version of what we are told Thanksgiving should look … [Read more...]
Against Forgetting
The week before a work conference in Miami Beach I had been tip-toeing my way through Carolyn Forche’s 1993 anthology Against Forgetting: Twentieth Century Poetry of Witness. I say tiptoeing because it’s hard to read. The book is arranged chronologically into the following sections: The Armenian Genocide (1909-1918) World War I (1914-1918) Revolution and Repression in the Soviet Union (1917-1991) The Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) World War II (1939-1945) The Holocaust, The Shoah … [Read more...]
The Metaphor Breaks Down
The day after the GOP sweep of Texas, and the country, I was confronted with three instances of ovarian cancer: the death of a friend of a friend, a recurrence for a friend who had been disease-free for two years, and the hopeful prognosis of a friend just finishing her first course of chemo. Ovarian cancer is the only thing that makes me feel more angry and helpless than the election outcomes do. In each case my outrage is largely due to my inability to change what will happen to the women … [Read more...]
A Blog is Born
Today I am setting up my new blog. It will be a work in progress for a while. Perhaps I should have titled this post "A Blog is Gestating." More soon; stay tuned. … [Read more...]