Sleep. Writing. The Inauguration.

I wonder if I would find it easier to finish this novel if I'd had a decent night's sleep. I wonder if it's too late to get Plum to sleep through the night. She has no interest in money (given the current economic conditions in my house, this is a good thing), so I can't pay her, she's immune to pleas and tears, and she's too young to be bribed by chocolate. Because I have a five year old, I know (hope/pray) that one day soon she will stop waking up at 5am, but I don't know if I can wait until that day. Also, even if she sleeps, I've become so habituated from almost 6 years of being awake at night I don't know how I'd ever go back.

Does the world look differently through the eyes of the well-slept? Are the streets shinier, the flowers brighter? Is it like when I put in my contacts, only sparklier?

On a different note. I, apparently along with every other person who voted for Obama, would like to go to the inauguration. But when I wrote my plea to Senator Feinstein, going into detail on the last time I was at an inauguration in DC (protesting Bush's occupation in 2000) and how I'd dragged my children to snowy Nevada to charm some actual Republicans, all I got back was an autoresponder telling me I was a sucker and that the tickets were all spoken for. I'd grab my ball gown and just go anyway, staying with my good friends Xan and Cheranne and their lovely son Kai (who by the way, wouldn't be able to adopt if they lived in they lived in Arkansas), but I'd rather this be the first time I was actually invited to a DC official event instead of just protesting one.

From the Battle in Seattle to the White House

I've been thinking about the large-scale successful community organizing that I've done and what made it successful. I keep coming back to the similarities between the 1999 protests in Seattle against the World Trade Organization and Barack Obama's election on Tuesday. While the differences were the two are obvious--one was an example of large scale direct action protest against the powers-that-be, the other was a centrally-organized disciplined movement to get a particular person in a traditional position of power--the similarities are also striking.

In both cases, there was a recognition of the need for people to be given responsibility to organize and lead direct action. In Seattle, we were "affinity groups" who made our own plans, and also trained other affinity groups were using the same language and information. In the Obama campaign, individuals could organize fundraisers using the site, make calls and knock on doors alone or with a group, get trained, and make personal decisions about if and where to travel to a swing state and what to do there. There were roles for lawyers, writers, artists, and children. Similarly, though no one could call the Battle in Seattle "centralized," information on what to do and how to do it was readily available. Communication centers operated 24/7 where people could get trained in everything from legal observing and emergency medical assistance to how to bolt cutting.

Equally important, the stated goal in each case was both specific and broad-able to be summed up in a single sentence: "Stop the WTO" and "Obama = Change." This allowed for the broadest possible coalition building, the Teamsters and Turtles alliance in Seattle, and the broad coalition of labor, young activists and progressives, African-Americans, Latinos, women, working, and middle-class people who propelled Obama's victory on Tuesday.

What that broad victory means is that of course, when it comes to the details, folks are going to be disappointed. Many of us were likely voting for very different things that we each called "Obama." Andas I learned from Seattle, that's ok. This moment is just this moment, this amazing beautiful triumphant moment. It can not be replicated exactly. It can only be savored, learned from, and then tucked inside for the next battle.

Waking Up. "The Gears of the Universe Have Shifted."

Woke up Wednesday morning at Circus Circus Hotel in Reno. After working at the precincts until 7pm, we'd come home and watched Obama's victory speech and then fell asleep in front of the tv. It's 5AM and Luna is awake, staring at me. She whispers, "Obama really won!" and then goes back to sleep.

The first moment I can remember when hope and history rhyme. All the organizing and writing work that I have done my whole life to this point has been to put brakes on abuses of power and to ensure there was some written record of people's resistance. Obama's victory is a true victory, the closest I have ever come to seeing the world that I inhabit reflected in the White House. I am dazed, fragile, elated, and awed. And I also continue to believe that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Today, tomorrow, this week, I want only to celebrate what we have done. I don't want to hear the naysayers, I don't want to yet try and influence decisions. I only want to walk around this city and feel what it is like knowing that I voted along with the 70 million Americans of every color, gender, age, sexual orientation, and physical ability. We will not be able to fix all the destruction that has been wrought in the past decades, but we can at least contain it and move towards creating a culture, a country, that truly supports its people. Next week, I promise to roll up my sleeves and begin the work again. Today, just breathing feels like celebration.

Tell me your thoughts, reactions, emotions today.

Tiny Changes at the Last Minute

I am at the sink, washing the dishes, my shirt wet wear my belly is up against the lip of the sink, looking out at the scraggly black crows that roost on the neighbors roof and thinking life is harder than it needs to be here, in this city, this country, this neighborhood.

In an effort to change our planet’s destructive course, I am trying to make tiny changes at the last minute. For example, this week, I tried to not add any more plastic to our house. None. I just wanted to go for a week without buying plastic. That seemed relatively easy. We don’t buy much plastic to start out with. But it proved impossible. I needed batteries, the batteries only came in a container with a hard plastic cover. We needed groceries. I had brought our own cloth bags for putting the groceries in but forgot to bring my own plastic bags to put the bulk items in. Not buy oatmeal, or not buy it in bulk and buy the more expensive tin made out of other non-renewable resources, or just use a freakin new plastic bag already. Then there’s the problem of yogurt. All the yogurt seems to come in plastic containers, of which we already have 10,000 of at home. My lovely friend Maria makes her own yogurt, which solves this problem. However, I still haven’t figured out how to take a shower every morning and get out of the house with a one year old and a five year old by 8:15 so I’m figuring yogurt making might be beyond me.

As I said, I know this is a little thing, something most people don’t have the time or resources to worry over, but it infuriates me that I can’t even do this one thing. I tried a week without a cell phone. That worked fine, except that I spent too much of the time worried that something happened to one of my kids and no one could reach me to tell me about it. I am working really hard (so far unsucessfully) on figuring out how to get Plum to doctor’s appointments in San Rafael, Luna to school in Oakland, and me to work in Berkeley without driving so much.

Sometimes it seems like the tiny changes don’t work. Like I just need to throw the whole urban life out the window and start over somewhere else. Preferably in a country with health care. Other times that seems like giving up, and I feel obligated to keep slogging through.

The Horror, The Horror

Today's repulsive low point can be summed up by my Google search:

"killing maggots by flushing down the toilet, effective?"


Just be glad I'm too nauseated to post a picture.

Good Kids, Bad Kids, and Sarah Palin

It's hard for me to even write the name because I'm going from obsession to overdose on Sarah Palin, with not much in between. Everywhere I go, it's what people are talking about and everyone seems to see in her their own version of their worst nightmare. Plum's physical therapist, Anat, from Israel, is reminded of Hitler. For another friend, watching the crowd cheer for Palin was like watching a lynch mob. For me, watching her was reminiscent of the worst parts of junior high, combined with memories ofa summer when I got lost in Italy and ended up stuck in a monastery in Tuscany with the meanest prettiest sorority girls the state of Georgia had to offer. Probably the only helpful thing my mother told me during junior high was that, no matter what happened, the rest of my life wouldn't be like junior high school. And it better not be. So I'm sending Obama the money I was saving for Luna's braces (her dentist had told me I better start now), driving to Nevada during election weekend to drive voters to the polls, phone banking, fundraising, and looking for more effective ideas. We might have to outbad the baddies. It was the only thing that worked in junior high and, despite what my mother said, things haven't changed as much as I was hoping they had.

Oh, the good kids bad kids thing is a different story. It will have to wait until the next post. Once I get all worked up about Palin, I can't switch gears as easily as I thought I could.

My-Kind-of-Jewish Day Camp

It’s the end of summer and for many other parents that we know their summers seemed to involve some kind of learn about/celebrate your heritage summer camp. We have friends who sent their girls to a two week camp designed for Japanese-American kids to learn about their Japanese heritage. The kids learn how to make sushi, write their name in Japanese, wear a kimono, and make daruma dolls, where you color in one eye when you make a wish and another when it comes true. Two of our friends went so far as to start their own multicultural summer camp, becoming the only Jamaican-Canadians in upper Illinois, that we know of anyway. Another friend sent her daughter to Camp Kee Tov, where they learn Hebrew songs, celebrate sabbath on Friday night and learn the meaning of ruach, which is apparently something like team spirit.

I went to Camp Kee Tov when I was ten and I remember little except waiting for the bus with my friend Ericka, tie-dying our t-shirts, and singing “The Cutest Guy I Ever Saw,” along with some songs about the Israelites. I also remember that our “bunk” was called The Flying Zions, a name that horrifies me now given the Israeli-imposed apartheid in Palestine. I’m surprised my parents, who couldn’t tell a ruach from a roach, sent me. But I can understand the appeal of sending your kid to some place to learn about their cultural history. Too bad it’s so difficult to separate nationalism/propaganda from cultural appreciation.

I started thinking about what kind of camp Luna and Plum would go to if there was a camp that was going to give them insight and training into their particular parents culture. Both my parents are the fleeing-immigrant most-of –the-family-dead kind of Jewish. My dad’s family was from Germany and my mom’s from Russia and Poland, but the traditions they passed on weren’t the speaking Hebrew and lighting candles kind. Day One of the summer camp would have to be devoted to the skill of arguing. Prizes would be given for the longest running argument, the best argument, the most outrageous argument, and other obscure categories. Besides verbal skills, body language would be taught, including eye rolls, lip pursing, and, for advanced students, the dismissive glance.

Day Two would be making food for at least 30, even if you only have a table of four. Making sure there is enough food is a very serious part of my family’s cultural background. We pack for emergencies, which means if we’re going to the park for a couple of hours we bring enough food so that we’re covered if we can’t get home for a week. Day Two Electives could include “Overpacking a Bag,” “The Intricacies of Olive Oil,” and Rice: How Much is Too Much.

Day’s Three through Five aren’t set yet, but would likely include Worrying at Both the Individual and World-Wide Scale, “Passing, Pretending, and Other Ways of Getting By,” and “Male Answering Syndrome: Not Just for Men Anymore!” The details will get worked out closer to the time. Historically, my family doesn’t plan too much.

Of course, if they spend a week at my family’s day camp, they’ll have to spend a week at Jason’s family’s as well. It will make a nice contrast. While my family’s day camp will be held somewhere in the desert, Jason’s family camp would have to be in some icy mountains. Descended from Swiss-Danish stock on his mother’s side and English/Italian on his father’s, the Northern European side seems to have won out, culturally speaking. Since Jason’s family actually knows how to make a lot of things, their summer camp would involve more traditional camp activities: animal petting and perhaps shearing , weaving, and some time spent framing a barn. Evenings might be devoted to the art of communicating without saying anything or even moving your face too much. Table manners will be encouraged and plate sharing discouraged. But as at their other camp, they’ll be plenty of food. As befits the grandchildren of a former Dairy Princess, cheese will play a central role.

My children will likely return from their two weeks of cultural-heritage appreciation slightly dazed. Their may be some challenges reconciling all their new skills in their daily lives. When to burst into impassioned tears and when to throw out an icy stare? What to have for a snack, tofu or fodue? But isn’t that what many kids have to do anyway? Navigate conflicting cultural expectations , figure out what works when, and figure out, somewhere in the middle of it all, what fits right for them.