Thursday, March 31, 2011

"God is in the details"

"God is in the details." ___Mies van der Rohe


This is one of those days.

Nothing but gratitude. I'm thinking about all the little things, those parts of life that can be a royal nuisance and irritating and downright disgusting. I feel very lucky.

The drive between my home and the Tattered Cover Bookstore where I sometimes sit with writer friends and talk (or write, but mostly talk) is spectacular. Long's Peak. Snow-covered Mount Evans. The snowy Indian Peaks. The streets are wide, well cared for, with lovely lawn banking the whole long curve through the Ranch.

Absolutely amazing friends. Patient, wise, kind, generous, healthy, inspiring, funny. What else? What more could one say?

Now, to clarify why this exercise seems important to me, consider this. I could have an ugly view, even in Denver, but we are lucky to be up high and enjoy the best. The Tattered Cover is an indie bookstore; who knows how long we can keep it afloat. Then what, we write at Denny's? Or Starbucks?

And friends. Wow. I am the whistle-blower persona non grata in my local professional community. One, count her, one pastor has the nerve to keep in touch with me. The rest, dozens, including several who were 'friends' up until they had to choose between standing with me or falling over when the bishop farted, feel the radioactivity still and not one of them, that would be zero, has made any overture of support or friendship in eight years. But I don't miss them. Honest. Why would I.

A wonderful community of writing friends has grown up around my ears and is the healthiest, sanest, kindest, most generous group of people I've ever been part of. Not perfect, but damn damn good. Not a practicing Christian in the bunch, save one. Interesting. For an introvert who has a penchant to need to hibernate, I feel very blessed by this remarkable abundance.

And bless its heart, the Social Networking community, old friends, long ago friends, shirt-tail friends, shirt-tail relatives, far-away friends, wise professors, people I've just 'met' and people who are friends of friends whom I'm friends with now because we got interested in what one another had to say. If not for Facebook, I would still be an isolated freak. And a blog. And the conversations and comments it generates. And even the folks who follow me, and whom I follow on Twitter. I haven't quite figured out what to do with that yet but it's a connection.

Then, we move on. It occurred to me the other day, that fifteen years ago I didn't even have a doctor. When I had to fill out that blank on a work emergency card I had no name to write down. I didn't need one. Ha! That was before Littleton. But this is the very cool cool thing:

I have exactly the right doctors for me. You have no idea how much I respect and enjoy my primary care physician. She's had a heck of a job and she has done it amazingly well. And then there is the phlebotomist. I get to speak Russian (what's left) with the woman who draws my blood because she is from Tadzikistan. Bonus!

And the dentist: I love going to the dentist. First, I've already mentioned the nitrous oxide, even for cleanings. And they are the best people, competent, kind, professional, and look for ways to help save me money. My therapists are the best. And now I get to drive up my very favorite road in all of the Denver area to her house. And she gets Simple Life magazine. I mean, how good is that.

The library is gorgeous and in a lovely location. The grocery store is even really nice. My friend gave me a whole bag of my favorite Danish cheese last week, Danish cheese!

I could go on and on. Perhaps I will. No, I feel so grateful. All of the daily errands, routines, caregivers, neighbors, the barrista's, the booksellers, the check-out woman at Target and the pflebotomist! It could all be a grind, unpleasant, stressful. And none of it is.

Details. Just the details. And all filled with grace. Either this is karma, payback for the hell I went through, luck, providence, or the grace of engaging people and places who make life sing. I'll take it.

And not for granted.

Posted by Jan Erickson at 4:55 PM

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

"I would like to thank the Academy"

There's a controvery raging on one of the blogs I read.

To acknowledge or not to acknowledge. If you published a book, did you include a page of acknowledgements? Or would you?

Who is on your list? Was/would it be short or long? How expansive is it? "I would like to thank my Freshman English Professor for being such an asshat because I knew I could prove him wrong, and I did." "I would like to thank my brother, Charlie, for stealing my bike so I stayed home and read instead." "I would like to thank my third wife for all the great material." "I would like to thank my faithful '75 Volvo for taking me to all the places I so eloquently describe."

I work with a number of creative writing textbooks everyday as I am at work writing a novel. They offer great instruction and information and I enjoy some of the exercises they recommend. "Try changing the gender of your lead character. What would that do to your story?" "Add a character who complicates the lead character's life in a way you hadn't planned for." "Reverse the positions of the antagonist and the protagonist." Some are more simple, "change your lead character's occupation, or age, or geographical locale." "Instead of your characters meeting at a restaurant, have them meet in an unusual place, a forest trail, a storage facility, a morgue. What does that do to your story?" In other words, mess things up. Create problems. Make the thing more interesting. I've made some fun changes in my story thanks to these prompts.

What I really enjoy, though, are the motivational ideas. "Buy yourself new shoes when you finish a chapter." (Not really.) "Take turns buying coffee, or a drink, for anyone in your writing group who finishes a chapter." "Write 1000 words and treat yourself to a five mile run." Maybe not. We all respond to different motivations!

This is the one that just caught my eye. To pump yourself up, design your novel's book jacket, write the acknowledgements page, write the NYT Bestseller list positive review. Or, in the spirit of "go big or stay home," this is my favorite. Imagine your Academy Award acceptance speech -- for best adapted screenplay.

I like this one best because it would give me the biggest platform to say what needs to be said, finally. "This is for all of the women and children whose trust has been violated by the church, for all victims of clergy sexual abuse, and for those who discovered afterward that they would be treated worse by the church hierarchy -- ignored, mistreated, scapegoated, even physically attacked -- as the powers that be sought to close ranks and protect their own. This is your story and it is one of your power, your getting a voice, and having the abuse of power stopped. " One day.

Thursday, March 24, 2011

"Accompanimento"

31 years.

31 years ago American-trained El Salvadoran rebels killed Archbishop Oscar Romero in the sanctuary of his church.

Why? For opposing the American backed fascist dictatorship at war with El Salvadoran rebels whom we lumped together with "the worst people in the world," Soviet-style communists. It was complicated. But not really that complicated.

We were on the wrong side. Our objectives were not in the least bit noble. We trained the El Salvadoran fascist army at the School of the Americas near Atlanta. We trained them to kill their own people for reasons that were ours, not theirs.

Perhaps you remember, it is such a long time ago, the four Roman Catholic nuns who were slaughtered too. For caring for the poor. Sounds sentimental in our day. But true.

Susan Brooks -- where are you? -- was a member of the congregation I served as pastor in the (downtown) Loop of Chicago. We had a reputation for doing things like this but Susan's decision was, to me, a supreme commitment and literally laid her life on the line.

After Romero was assassinated, the Lutheran Bishop, Medardo Gomez, was increasingly in danger. The Lutheran church devised a plan to help to keep him safe.

Accompaniment. The ministry of accompaniment. Being there. Walking along with. Susan went to El Salvador after a very moving service of commissioning at our congregation. Susan, you understand, was a beautiful inside and out, humble, quiet, lovely young woman from South Dakota. And she chose to move for a time to El Salvador and basically shadow Bishop Gomez. The premise was that the soldiers were not likely to risk killing an American civilian, so if Gomez was with Susan, he was safer. The ministry of accompaniment.

I think of it often. I have over the years. The work of walking alongside another who needs not to be alone, or vulnerable, or exposed. What a gift! I thought about that during my work with victims of clergy sexual abuse in the 1990's: if someone would walk with them. It was certainly a part of the civil rights movement in this country. It was important in the fight for equal rights for gay and lesbians, in claiming the rightful dignity for those with HIV/AIDS.

I think of Ann Hafften and her accompaniment of Palestinians on the West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem. I think of friends with cancer, depression, no jobs. We can accompany them. And now I am thinking of my old (well, from eons ago) friend, Andy or Andrew Larson, whom you can find here on facebook if you haven't already. He is engaged in a very important ministry of accompaniment. Andy walks along with Muslims. He is learning and then teaching about Islam. He is helping me, and others, to understand, respect, safeguard and love Muslims and their faith. He is building bridges, as we say, but as I read his blog and other reports, most of all I see him in the ministry of accompaniment.

It is no small thing. It is no small thing at all.

Susan on the dusty roads of El Salvador in the 1980's, bouncing, jostled, certainly uncomfortable, sometimes scared. But I remember she said afterward, "I received so much more than I gave." Which prompts me to wonder then, who is accompanying who?

=======

Let's shut down the School of the Americas so Jean Martensen doesn't have to chain herself to the fence on Thanksgiving weekend and get arrested for the umpteenth time, to protest. There's a petition posted to my (open) facebook page you can sign. Write a letter to the President. Contact - SOAW Media Updates salsa.democracyinaction.org SOA Watch is a nonviolent grassroots movement that works through creative protest and resistance, legislative and media work to stand in solidarity with the people of Latin America and the Caribbean, to close the SOA/WHINSEC and to change oppressive U.S. foreign policy that institutions like the SOA And pray for the Susan's and the Bishop's still out there, being hunted, risking it all, to try and stop the violence. Accompany them with your spirit, as they accompany the vulnerable, exposed, and generous people in creation. Peace.

Monday, March 21, 2011

Liar, Liar!

I am such a liar. How many days has it been? Two? I left the house. I swore I wouldn't. The Tennis Channel, if you remember, has come to live in my house. It is true that I have watched -- or fallen asleep watching -- hours of tennis over the past few days. In fact, I kept trying to watch the Indian Wells men's final and either had to leave or fell asleep (at 5:37 a.m.) several times and now, tonight, it was on again and I saw almost all of it -- but looked away at the last second. I missed the last point. So isn't that the way it is. We miss the last point. Or the best point. Or the point, period. What is the point? Now there's a question for you. What is the point? Pick one, you say. Well, how about this. Life is hard. Life is breast cancer and leukemia and babies born with half a heart. Life is lung cancer and getting laid off and being hit in the head. Life is tsunami's and wars and murder. Life is also Glee and floating on your back in the warm pool and exquisite prose and welcome praise. Life is restitution and reconciliation. Life is right and wrong. Life is loss and gift. Life is all of these things. Disappointment, change, reward, perfect tiny toes, brilliant new ideas, chaos, rescued Clydesdale horses who foundered are recovered and running in a green pasture. Life is it all. That's the point. And it's all one. We live within all of it. And one way or another, this is the real point: it's all grace. You have got to be kidding. Nope.

Sunday, March 20, 2011

There Is A Monster In My Bedroom

There's a monster in my room. It's not under the bed. It's not hiding in the closet. Or behind a door. There is a monster that appeared in my bedroom during the days I was on my Spring Spa Vacation in Minneapolis. It has a number as well as a name. It's number is 217. The name of my monster is The Tennis Channel. Just so it's clear, I'll not be leaving the house from now on. I have The Tennis Channel. This is now the third time I've seen Rafa beat Del Potro and next up, again, is the riveting match between Roger and Djokovic. It's after midnight. My monster stays up late and doesn't scare me a bit. I wonder how much more my novel characters are going to obsesss about tennis now. One of them is already a part-time tennis teacher, I hardly dare say pro because her students are not at a country club but show up in the local park. But, oh, the details I could include. Intricacies of racquet stringing. Having models made in plastic for custom orthotics. I'm missing a whole world of tennis paraphanalia. Let's be honest. I still bring my wood, Davis racquet along to the court. Tomorrow is the day before the first day of the rest of my life. The day before Spring. Or sometimes it is Spring. I haven't seen a daffodil yet so I can't be sure. But what I do know is that Spring means spring. I could just write about tennis and bore you all to tears. Or I could go out and play tennis and, so it goes, lose a lot of yellow balls in the dusty field beyond the courts. Time to tone up, tune up, get ready to move some more. I've been challenged by a 23 year old who thinks she can beat me. This monster is starting to get to me, though. It is helping me breathe in and breathe out, tennis, tennis, tennis. My high school ambition was to become a tennis pro. Funny how that turned out. But you're hearing it here first -- or second or third. It is never too late. The monster can stay here and inspire me when I want it but I AM going to get out there and beat the fuzz off those balls. And you can take that however you want.

Friday, March 18, 2011

So, maybe I was a spy.

What does that mean? Maybe I was a spy. A KGB museum has just opened in the Viru Hotel in Tallinn Estonia, my home away from home through much of the 1980's. It spied on me. Day in and day out. From the rising of the sun to the going down of the same. My coming and going. My waking and sleeping. My moods, my emotions. The grass withers, the flowers fade but the spying goes on forever. I ran the bath water, hard, if I had anything serious to talk about. I learned to dress in the dark to avoid the eyes watching through a one-way mirror. I told the mirror my secrets -- the ones I wanted it to hear. So, how complicit was I? Disinformation. Strategic information. "This is happening", (not). "This isn't happening" (though, really, it is). I opined on persons in hopes it would help them. I never talked anyone down, at least not knowingly. But who knows what could be miscued, misconstrued. I hope to God not. I did express my opinions on the frosty summit in 1986 between Reagan and Gorbachev, and the general inanity of the Soviet system. I wasn't a fan; that was very clear. I told the bugs and the mirror that I needed a towel, and one showed up. I complained about the weather and they fixed that too. (Okay, not even the mighty USSR could pull that off.) I said I needed a taxi at 8 and, sure enough, taxis appeared. My goal was to be a "human contact". To be the very best "human contact" I could be for the sake of the Estonian people. I gathered information about their lives, secrets, their break-throughs and victories, their heartbreaks, sorrows and needs. I was a camel, I brought them aspirin and batteries and literature and heaven knows what else I've forgot. Mostly, I gave them contact, friendship, encouragement with the so-called, as we called it then, "outside world." So now there is a museum at this hotel where I breakfasted alternately on Variant One, or Variant Two. More jam with Variant Two. Less cucumbers. This Viru Hotel with its famous unspeakable 23rd floor and head-sets and god knows what else eavesdropping equipment. So it has opened as a museum for a few hours a day, this Viru Hotel. I wonder if any of my old (misleading) notes are on display. I trust them not to have kept any photos. (Why, I wonder, do I trust them, an odd thought.) I was trying to decide if I wanted to visit it, the infamous Viru Hotel, to show it to my kids, maybe. To see for myself what I always knew, as assuming was knowing in many cases. I don't think so. I can only type and think about this stuff in the context of listening to favorite music (ironically, Russian). I don't think I could visit the repository of secrets again. Or don't want to. Why? To relive the worry? The anxious moments when a colleague blurted out a name or a factoid that could be trouble for one of our Estoniain friends. I wa never scared for myself. They could kick me out for all I cared. It was my Estoniain friends I worried over. Getting them in trouble. Keeping their names quiet. Not writing them down. Not being followed. But I know I was. Hell, I once turned back over my shoulder and gave my "spy" an ice cream. Bought two and gave him one. Just for the hell of it. Secrets. I am deeply troubled by secrets. Family secrets. Community secrets, church secrets. Intimate secrets. They are inevitably dangerous. They gulp air, they gasp at it, they seek any way they can find it. They corrupt. They are corrosive. Secrets. Better leave some alone? Or will they all find light eventually and we had might as well do our part to illuminate their dark corners? What do you think? What's the point of telling? What do we leave lie? You've heard it now. The extent of my spying. That's all. Years ago when the girls were small and I was hanging around with them at the playground, I would look at the other mothers from time to time and wonder how many of them had KGB files? How many of them had played hide and seek in narrow cobbled streets and, I think, won? Bought ice cream for the 'minder' who traipsed around behind me? Listened to my discussions with the mirror? I didn't put money on any of these other women having such a weird past. And I looked into my own unbugged mirror at myself and couldn't quite believe I'd lived that life either. Do I look like a spy to you?

Thursday, March 17, 2011

I'm Not Giving Up!

Give up?


I'm not giving up.

It is Lent. And even people who aren't particularly religious talk about what they are giving up for Lent. Ice cream, alcohol, shoe shopping.


I'm not giving up for Lent. That's right. I'm giving up giving up. For Lent. Forever.


The old old word that became Lent means "lengthening." There are lots of things in my life that need lengthening. And strengthening.


So I am adding rather than subtracting. Muscles. Discipline. Time to concentrate.


Some of us have already given up a lot. And not always by choice. In fact, I'm still grieving all that was stolen from me.

When so much has been taken, I honestly don't know what else I've got to give up.

I'm not giving up anything more.


Bring it on

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Last Call at the Red Rocks Bar

I am not much of a drinker.

On our recent trip to Cabo San Lucas I became famous as the Virgin Woman. I drank, maybe, twelve, fifteen virgin daquiri's a day. Every now and then I'd have the rum but you get the picture. Not a big drinker.

Which worries me.

This is my second "chick cocktail" here at the Red Rocks Bar, the second in, oh, about twenty minutes. I did ask her to put less rum in this second one. Drinking is supposed to be good for writers. Or at least good for writing. I've never tried it. But this is tonight and I need a drink. Or two.

Less than twenty-four hours ago I thought I was saying goodbye and leaving my daughter in Minneapolis to come home  >> tomorrow night. Then I looked at my calendar. Shit!  I was leaving today. You have no idea how much of a mess that made of me, to lose a  day with Kaia. We had no plans for today but we have a good time hanging out. Maybe we would have gone to pick up her bike. I would have watched her play soccer with her buds --- the pick-up international team at Macalester to which she is an honorable, if unusual, member. Blonde. American. And female. But she does great and it would have been such fun to watch.

Alas, I looked at my damn calendar. Send Dave a text message, "Am I coming home tomorrow???"   "Yes, at 7:20."  I found the Frontier confirmation email and sure enough. way more than the twenty-four hours felt taken. When you're with your kid you just never know what great wisdom, what wonderful insight, what hilarious tidbit you're going to get. But I sobbed for a half hour, I think she cried a little too, and we made the most of today.

Cuz that's all we ever get. For sure. And it is not the big fireworks moments necessarily that are the best --- although Rachmaninov and the massages and the red toenails were right up there --- but the little ones. The kind words, the small gestures. The living of the days.

I'm in Denver now. Closing down the Red Rocks Bar.

And.  Waiting for another surprise. Annika!

 How can I lose?  Leave one daughter only to find the other one flying in from Phoenix. Not a bad thing.

I just gave the server a 30 percent tip. And it's not the rum talking.

Life is good.

Sometimes very sad. I'll miss my girl like crazy.

But, here, right here, right now, is my girl.

Kaia and Annika, you two are the best. 

Let's close this place down.

Spa Paradise

We have had it!

A week of spa paradise. Massages with hot stones and warm oils. Chocolates with almonds. Foot wraps and whirlpools. Special work on chakra's, energy work, my friend calls it. Floating in a pool like a primal being. Steak. Salmon. Pasta. Fine wines. Working out on the fitness equipment in the gym (a little Utah Jazz eye candy didn't seem to hurt). Water. Sleep. Our cosmetics arranged geometrically on the marble counter,complete with hair tie perfectly surrounding the toothpaste tube. Room service. Beaudouin the doorman who made us feel completely at home. And the goldfish.

Rachmaninov's Second Symphony, carrot cake and more carrot cake. And wonderful music in the room. And great books to read. And some basketball to check on.

One could not live in such delicious pampering forever (though if they ever need volunteers...) but what a privelege to spend a week with Kaia making sure that she was detoxed and destressed and detached from the cares of life. No broken bones to see, no intubations, no heart-wrenching family dramas in the ER where she works.

"It's all about you" said the flyer she received and I think it was.

This is not decadence. It is not over-indulgence. It is attention. Loving, attentive care. Relief. Release. An honoring of our physical beings who work so hard for us. A giving back.

I learned a few hours after the  Japanese earthquake that my Japanese friend was having a massage when the "big one" hit.  She got on the floor under the table. She is now thinking of priveliege in terms of having enough toilet paper. And Spam. I'm going to catapult the Spam over and she stocked up at Costco.

Life is so weird. One minute we are luxuriating in a heavenly massage. Next moment, we are collecting iodine tablets. That's the way it works, the way it goes.

What I have learned is that I will lie on the massage table when I am able and leave the burrowing under it for the moment when that too is called for. I will ask for what I need and not hold back.

I will swing for the lines. Aim at the edges. The lines are there to be hit. That's where life is.

I don't want to not hear about what is 'out there' because of course it is beyond my reach.  Are you kidding?  I want to hear about it all, know about it all.  Imagine, vision, ask, try. Aim for the lines.

Thank you, Kaia, for being my spa buddy, for inspiring this in the first place, for being so wonderful that I would want to spend a whole week pampering and treating you to what feels and is and  definitely right.

Geez, am I lucky or what? 

Lucky.

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Tending My Dust

How many pounds of pressure per square inch do you think a very strong masseuse can apply to your lats (muscles, upper back) when she is bearing down with all her might? 

I don't know either but it occurred to me this afternoon to wonder.  "Where do you carry your stress?" the masseuse always asks. "Not quite in my shoulders," I told her today. "But down a bit, my lats, and in my upper arms," I said,  the muscles that are at constant alert for the signal to defend, to pop up and attack in self-defense. My back was being reconstructed from the inside out this afternoon during the best massage I've ever had ,

As I lay in a quiet room, a lovely mix of Goldberg Variations and cello concerti on the iPod, the scent of various herbal oils and lotions putting me at ease, a gentle breeze from the fan, the massage table itself warm and the blanket above me very soft, my neck set perfectly into place in the headrest, and the masseuse mauling my back in exactly the way I had hoped she would, it struck me.

This is not the normal way Christians spend Ash Wednesday.

No "ashes to ashes dust to dust" deprivation going on in there.

"Focus on your body," she told me. "Don't think about anything else, your work, your problems, driving in snow, the evils of the world. For this hour, focus on your body."

And I did.

My good body. No dust, no ashes.

Sparing the very brief interruption for the quick thought about Ash Wednesday.

I flashed to notice the contrast between the way I had chosen to spend this Ash Wednesday and the way I spent it for dozens of years. I'm at a spa. My daughter Kaia and I are enjoying a spa vacation.


Not a day for self-abnegation. Not a time for giving up, for subtracting, for being a worm. 

But a day, rather, to gift myself with the knowledge that, in God's image, I am perfectly and graciously created. And God called it good. And inspired some people to tenderly care for it such  that it feels even better. A day for healing. A day for being fully alive and claiming more freely the power of life and health and mortality.

I believe in sin, of course. And I believe I sin. And I believe that even if I get frozen like Norwegian Uncle Ned in a Tuff Shed up near Nederland, instead of buried or cremated, I'll still end up as dust. I'm not angel. No big prize.

But even while we take note of our limits, I propose we take a look at what links us to the divine. We are beings, we are mortal. We have been given a limited lifespan, true enough and that's what mortality normally means to us. But I contend that the gift is, we've been given mortality --- being!  We are beautiously and wonderfully made. We've been given life and bodies, real bodies, that require attention and love now.

Sin is not about what we do wrong, perhaps, as much as it is what we fail to notice. We're here!  We are embodied, enfleshed, as was God, in the image of God, so goes the story.

We are worthy of honor and respect and tenderness. Not just from others but first of all, from ourselves. I don't think it is possible to kneel and do the Ash Wednesday thing without first standing tall and claiming the glory of our mortality. And lying down on a table and be carefully attended to.

So, my respects to all of you who wear on your forehead today the sooty cross. I understand and respect what it is about. But my dust needed some tender care and some healing ministrations, a massage, a jacuzzi, perfect music, wonderful conversation, laughter, some excellent wine and a delicious dinner.

I know so much about sin and death. I am so privileged to learn more about life.

Saturday, March 5, 2011

Trickle Down Teachers

On your mark, get set, GO! This is simple. This is so simple my dog actually understands it. (And we don't have an especially gifted dog. Her only trick is sniffing around for leftover toast and after, oh, maybe three or four minutes, she notices it under her nose). So this is that simple: no sniffing required. The top 13 hedge fund managers in the United States earn an average of one billion dollars each. One of them took home five billion last year. We're looking at a total of 18 billion dollars income from these 13 guys alone. Real money. That money is taxed as capital gains, at a rate of 15%. If they paid at a normal rich person's income tax rate, they would pay more than 30%, or twice as much, taxes as they do. And, if they paid at that normal rate, around 30%, these 13 billionaires ALONE could pay the salaries and benefits of 300,000 teachers. I can say that again. If those top 13 billionaires who, among them, earn 18 billion dollars from their hedge fund hedging and funding, that is,from their work, would pay taxes at the normal public rate even that would fund the salaries and benefits of 300,000 teachers. BUT, since these 13 billionaires are only taxed at the 15% capital gains tax rate, which is less than half of what they would pay if they paid taxes at the same rate you and I do, they keep more than twice as much as they would have paid otherwise. Which is to say, you and I just paid these 13 billionaires to keep for themselves the cash we could use to pay for a few hundred thousand teachers. But hey, it's worth it right? They have gorgeous silver lamps, after all. And anyway, it's all going to trickle down. Right? Instead of pay checks from their school districts, some teachers get their salaries from a vending machine that says "Trickle down cash." A pretty clever idea. You can put in a dollar for a bottle of water or a bag of Doritos or, if you have the special chit, you can watch as your paycheck goes pflunk to the bottom of the collection bin where you have to do some fancy finger work to fish it out. That's that-there trickle down cash and we could not be more grateful. 13 guys are each already giving up 15% of their billion dollars (hold on, I need a calculator), or one hundred and fifty million dollars, also real money. Sacrifice, those capital gains taxes. Personally, I'd buy more Ding Dongs. The premise of those capital gains taxes, where the really rich pay a lot less percentage-wise than, say, teachers, is that their money is going to trickle down. These guys now have at least twice as much income to keep for themselves as they would have, were they burdened with a 27 - 35% tax rate, like just normal rich people. Think of it as an infinity pool. That means, according to the dog, her toast, and me, that instead of being able to pay for a mere 300,000 teachers salaries and benefits, they now could pay for as many as 600,000 teachers. Of course, they might want to pay for a few fire fighters or librarians or police or EMT's so it could get spread around differently. And that's on top of paying for all the other government people who get paid to be government people (including the people who did all this counting and collecting and non-collecting and voting and not-voting and eating -- lobbyists' dinners -- lounging -- on lobbyists' yachts. So maybe we're only talking 400,000 teachers. That doesn't even pass the sniff test. The point of this privileged, small tax rate is so their billions can trickle down. We can see where these billions need to trickle. So billions, start trickling. On your mark, get set, GO! (And could we please all get a lot more outraged about this, now?)

Chaos, in Theory

Chaos gets a bad rap. It’s not at all bad. Sometimes, in fact, it is the only way through. Take slogging through hell, for example. Or living a life overwhelmed by secrets and betrayal and deceit. There’s no rational way through that. If you find a path, you probably don’t want to be on it. So let’s try chaos.
Last time I checked, life was not straightforward. It did not go from here to there. It went nuts for awhile then meandered through a meadow of bleating sheep, then circled back and threw a mess of new junk in my face. It felt and looked like it was all coming apart. But sometimes, if you get lucky or dance in the moonlight or dare to twirl through shadows it comes together. As expected, no. But as an adventure – a crazy, disturbing and delightful, chaotic, and ultimately rich drama – yes. In theory, chaos is what makes life dynamic. I do wish at times for just a bit less whirling and a little more rest. But then I think, how boring would that be?