Saturday June 4 in Michigan

Fun weekend in Michigan this Saturday, June 4. The South Lyon Kite Festival is on from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Stories About Turtle Island in Lansing at Everybody Reads Bookstore starts at 1 p.m. Lapeer Celebrates the Arts is going on starting Friday, June 3rd through Sunday, June 5th. Enjoy Completely Oblivious at 2:00 p.m. in Lapeer. Motor City Pride Festival rocks at Hart Plaza in Detroit Saturday and Sunday. Get out of the house and have some music, storytelling, company and good food this weekend in Michigan!

Hysteria, Presence, Early Morning and a Heron

Awake at 4:42 is never a good plan. Unless you're packing for a vacation to the Italian Riveria, Lanzarote or, heck, anywhere. But I'm not. I'm just awake before light. Awake before light is not good for reading the news either. Today there's a book review on npr of Medical Muses: Hysteria in Nineteenth Century Paris. I bookmarked it for some other day, in folder Women because I don't have a WTF folder. J-M Charcot (what is it with French weirdness this month?) took photographs of, and drew, his patients in Saltpetriere Hospital in the 1870s. The excerpt heightens the macabre combination of mentally ill (or warehoused) women patients as art subjects and public sideshow exhibits; and a PhD in French literature wanting to write about this to put her work in context, and then lumping fibromyalgia, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and a bundle of other maladies in modern day hysteria equivalency status. I'm too tired to sort that stuff out, so here it is and I unbookmarked the review. I also made a WTF folder. Then an article about Presence Approach to caregiving dementia. Ah, geez. After I've done three loads of laundry, scrubbed upholstery, grocery shopped, prepared and served meals, cleaned, chauffeured, problem solved, searched for missing items, created the art due, all on 4 hours of sleep, I can form and train a Mindfulness Support Group to help me cope. Okay. Right after I....zzzzzzzz. The trick to living in the now is to actually have some now you're present in to live. This walking diary drawing is the now moment from this week. I was pretending I can identify birds at a distance by flight pattern. That's a goose. No, seagull. It squawked at me. Crow. That's a crow. No, seagull. It swung in a wide arc and flew directly overhead. Profile glimpse of the S'ed neck. A heron. A beautiful heron. I watched it until it flew out of sight, wings flapping like an Olympic rower. That heron is now the facilitator of my mindfulness support group.

A Three Story Life: VA Visit

Up at 0 dark thirty for the six month VA appointment. I haven't met Dad's new doctor, and once a year it's helpful to find out what the doctor is being told and not. Fact checking is a brilliant caregiver strategy I forget regularly. Every year it gets harder to tell the WWII veterans from the Vietnam veterans. The hats help. I got Dad a hat with his ship name, and Bikini Atoll on it, and it gets attention when he wears it, which is often. He was in the Marshall Islands for the A-bomb drop, his LST moved people and animals off Bikini to Majuro. He's one of few atomic veterans still alive. His doctor is very nice, she's a good listener, and I got to ask questions that Dad might not ask. There was a man in one of the waiting areas who had blood drawn and was probably on blood thinners as he dripped on his jacket, and had to get a new wad of gauze. Not as many younger veterans there today as the last time. After the hats for war identification - I noticed footwear. The WWII vets had on dress shoes or sneakers: the Vietnam era veterans had either cowboy boots, work boots or bigger work boots. God bless them every one! Brother Scott and I got to talk together, hold hands and decide we wanted kielbasa for dinner. Note: the glowy uniform - so maybe my childhood memory of a heroic aura is not so imaginary.

Turtle Island Stories

Everybody Reads Bookstore will be the setting on Saturday, June 4, for an open mic afternoon of sharing stories, music and good company to celebrate the land and ancestors of North America. Melissa Dey Hasbrook will share poetry from her soon-to-be book "Circle...Home." Barb Barton, songmaker will perform and storytell about how hummingbird came to appear on the logo of the Central Michigan Wild Rice Camp. I will tell of my meeting with painted turtle and the power and magic of nature. Please join us and share your stories and self.

A Three Story Life: The Golf Ball

Doing dishes (which I don't like) at 10 p.m. (which I don't like even more) and so I'm daydreaming with the stuff on the windowsill in the background, and I spy the golf ball. It's a Slazenger with a date on it and it's parked in an egg cup on the sill. October 27, 1996, Dad got a hole in one. That same day I got diagnosed with cancer. He likes the ball there, it's a good memory. When he notices it, he flips the date to the front. I have different feelings about that day, so when I'm dawdling doing dishes, and freak out when I see the date, I roll it back. And I smile. I hope he does, too when he turns it around again.

End Colonial Imperial Behavior

Rebecca Solnit posted a brilliant analogy comparing the DS-Kahn assault to the assault of colonial Europe on the globe. Her name was Africa, his was France. Her name was Asia, his name was Europe. His name is IMF: her name is every underdeveloped country in the world. We are living to see this change - slowly, painfully - and to reverse the evolution of colonial and imperial behaviors in the world, by countries and individuals. We've seen the results of the 1944 Bretton Woods Conference, and we'll see the aftereffects of the repeat in April, 2011. Bretton Woods gave power to American financial corporations; look at the speakers at April's conference and estimate the new thinking that appeared. The conference even went back to the same hotel. Power over must go. Dominance is not domination. Thank you, Rebecca Solnit for showing us succinctly.

Sex Positive Feminism

Confuse me once and it's my deal. Confuse me twice, and it's gobbledygook. Just short of balderdash. I don't know if sex positive labeling is bad for feminism (the idiotic nomenclature aside) but the comments on this article are interesting. With DS Kahn in the news, exercising his egotistical right to wield his penis, and some French media dismissing the whole horrible scene with "nobody died, did they?" I revisited the discussion in light of this ghastly behavior. I like sex as much as any humanoid, if I remember accurately how it goes. That's no one's business but mine. I do not define myself by my preferences, predilections or specific body parts. I insist that everyone stay the hell away from those body parts unless and until I invite sharing. That's it. No means no. Violence is violence. Forced sex is not sex; it's rape. Fondling without permission is assault. Class distinction has not one damn thing to do with whether a woman can be violated. French women bloggers have gone ziggity boom on the troussage de domestique Jean-Francois Kahn comment. Wearing a boa, high heels, make-up and a gravity-defying brassiere is not an invitation to attack. Neither is working as a maid in a hotel. But calling myself slut, bitch or any other demeaning label does not elevate my equality. I'm equal already. And I say when, I say how, I select wardrobe. Sexual cojoining is not a right bestowed on men, against the will of any other sentient being who happens to be in the vicinity of a predator. Voila. I am no longer confused. Whew.