fishy activities

Here are some photos of my lovely fishies! Today I bought a beautiful piece of Chiyogami paper and taped it to the back of the tank for a nice contrasting background. Eventually I will do some paintings of these fishies, after I have gotten used to taking care of them, and all the things I hadn't bargained on set in (like changing different parts of the filter every month, two months, and three months, feeding schedules, and the feeling that I will wind up killing the poor sods by some act of carelessness). Only the other day when it rained to beat the band, the power went out and the filter ran dry for an hour before I realized what had happened. And you can't just add water willy-nilly, but de-chlorinate it, make sure it isn't too hot or cold, and all these other details. It was much easier taking care of a betta, but it was pretty boring too. One can't have other fish in the tank or it will kill them, and putting more than one of their own kind would also result in death for one or both. It makes one wonder how they survive in the wild. "This rice paddy ain't big enough for the both of us!" Do they just hide all day and then have melees at night like a bunch of gangbangers? But I digress. Fan-tail goldfish are quite tame in comparison.

I have approached the tank as a sort of wet still life setting, and have really enjoyed arranging the gravel (in blue, to make the fish's orange pop out nicely), choosing rocks for them to hide behind, and setting some smooth stones in a pattern as well. The smoother stones are from our trip to Canada with dear friends, and I found so many perfectly round rocks in Lake Huron to take home with me. Also, there were several fossils that are now proudly displayed under water. The larger rocks came from D's labor-intensive garden digging. There was a quantity of quartz that his shovel found (painfully) as he dug dirt for our borders. He would have been more than happy to get rid of the rocks forever, but I salvaged the prettiest ones for the tank, scrubbed them thoroughly, and now they look lovely as a home for my fish.

all-consuming predictions

Well, I knew it. The price of oil has dropped a lot in the last week or so, and some are saying it's because Bush has lifted the ban on offshore drilling. I have predicted, as I did last election cycle, that the price of oil will continue to drop so much that people will again be lulled into voting Republican. The urgency to act will leave the masses, and they will not want a change in status quo and keep voting people into power who will continue to coddle our enemies as we suck up vast amounts of oil.

Don't get me wrong here: I like McCain a lot. He's been through hell and managed to get a tremendous amount done in an atmosphere of partisan vitriol. I like the pro-life plank of the Republican party, and that was essentially the only reason I voted for the person I now deeply regret supporting. It felt like picking through the garbage to find the least-rotten apple there, one I might manage to get one good bite of before hitting mush. That bite is long gone.

Though McCain is all right, I had to shake my head in frustration when he proposed more drilling recently, echoing Bush's position exactly. Sure, McCain proposed a hefty cash reward for some sort of environmentally-friendly engine design, but I see that, and the drilling proposal, as just one more feeble ploy that politicians have been waving for thirty years. Every single election since Carter, the price of oil and American consumption have been hot-button issues, and each candidate makes the promise of better efficiency standards, more hybrid development, less dependence on corrupt repressive governments for our lifeblood, etc... But it's all a big joke. Nobody wants to change the way things have been done for 70 years, and though their star is falling, big car manufacturers wield a tremendous amount of power still. Not to mention the behemoth oil companies that make more money than most third-world countries ever will. Yeah, they're really concerned about the people they are gouging. You just wait: if they decide to back McCain those prices will go down, and stay down, until he wins the election.

I know it's difficult to get out of a rut that was formed so long ago. I know people don't feel like there are any viable alternatives to gas-powered cars, and right now, they're right. But it's not like this is a new problem. What I don't understand is the shock, the surprise, that oil is so expensive, that rich people would want to stay rich, and that maybe--perhaps--buying big-ass cars for 10 years straight would affect the market. People bought the SUV's, and car manufacturers obligingly provided more. No one said Boo about any gas crunch, and things continued to escalate. It's like the morbidly obese person wondering why they're so fat all of a sudden. It wasn't sudden; it was the fact that they ate four Big Macs a day for 10 years.

I don't like the rhetoric of "going green"; carbon footprints and scare tactics, guilt trips for using a plastic bag, and loads more reasons to feel smug about how enlightened one is compared to those witless bastards who shop at Wal-Mart. People will say I am not being fair, and that people are merely concerned that we are destroying the planet and want to do what they can to curb the relentless slide into a befouled future. I get that, and I am really concerned about how disposable everything is and how little everyone seems to think, period. But we cannot truly destroy the planet. We can, and probably will, make the planet unfit for human life, but that's entirely different. As D says, we're not saving the planet, we're trying to save our own asses.

All during the 90's the mood was one of never-ending prosperity, and our consumption rose to fit the upsurge in wealth. There was not a call for restraint, a hearkening to conscience about people in other countries who were being exploited to feed our demands, and life went idly by until September 11. Americans realized with a shock that they were not the only people on Earth, and even more unbelievable--many of those people did not think America was the best durn place around. Then the Baby-Boomers hit 60 and realized that they were indeed mortal, and that no amount of Viagra can raise them out of their coffins. This new sobriety was then transferred to ecology: hey, if I can age, shrivel, and die (sure I sang about dying before I got old), and I am so terribly important and influential (I did change the world in the sixties, you know!), perhaps I am also causing the death of the Earth by my attempts to achieve immortality through consumption! Quick, everyone! Stop being so selfish! Put away that SUV and buy a bike! I had a feeling the world would end when I took that final breath, but now I know it's true! I have scientific proof! Polar bears, look at them! It's really hot in the summer! Oh, this is all Bush's fault! Let's get out those peace t-shirts and beads we wore when we changed the world the first time, and stand in the grocery stores and point at people who ask for plastic bags!

It's kindof amusing to think through all of this, as bitter as it is (and ungracious, I know). Even with a load of scientific proof that the world's resources are depleted and deteriorating, I am still finding it very hard to believe, considering the ridiculousness of the messengers. I understand why people don't want to be Christians--just look at us! We're absurd in every possible way, socially backward, take ourselves too seriously and manage to mangle every good teaching we've heard. This new hysteria for ecological concern just feels like another evangelical tent-revival, with polar bears instead of snakes, and reusable plastic bags instead of bibles.

I have, I think, a far more practical reason for wanting to develop more alternatives to oil than melting ice caps and increased sunburns: I don't like the idea of pouring money into countries that hate our guts. Period. It is very poor stewardship on our part, to dig ourselves (or actually, not dig ourselves) into this mess, when we have the biggest talent pool in the world of engineers, inventors, and innovators. It would have been easy, even when Carter was in office, to build a Manhattan Project for alternative fuels, a place of focused energy and willpower and cash, to release ourselves from the tyranny of OPEC. But no, even in our "malaise" we did nothing. Though that really was par for the course in the Carter era.

Aren't I being contradictory here? First I say we shouldn't drill for more oil, then I say it's all a bunch of hooey that the Earth is collapsing anyway, right, so what does it matter? I think there should be more of an attempt to find the middle ground in this mess, wherein the truth may reside. It is a popular practice to take one small alarming fact and explode it so that one can make a point. In doing so, all other opposing facts or caveats or speculation are brushed aside, leaving the public with the stark contrast of good versus evil. That may be extremely effective when explaining things on a 30-second newscast, but it drives people like me--skeptical, cynical and jaded--further away. I would love for someone to say "You know, we don't know what the outcome of all this consumption will be, and can only guess as to the causes for cataclysmic events around the world, but what we do know is that taking these steps would help ease the suffering of others, would save money after an initial output, and bring more balance to our available resources." If such a person would say such a thing, they would receive the combined force of both factions' hyperventilating hatred, a small price to pay for truth.

new photos

Hi everybody! Check my Flickr page for new (and old) additions to the mass of photos. On the side are categories to click on. Because of some unfortunate events (namely, D putting his phone in the washing machine) I have a new cell phone, and he downloaded all my pictures so he could use my crappy phone instead. Incidentally, I recommend never ever getting a "Chocolate" phone, which was a triumph in marketing but not design. Anyhow, there were about 80 pictures from all over the country, which are an interesting chronicle of the places we went last year--or the places I went and forgot to take my camera. I especially enjoy one of A and my grandfather, and A at the helm of a fake ship in Baltimore as huge snowflakes fall all around him. The weather was incredible that day.

In other news, I now have four new living creatures to take care of: fan-tailed goldfish. One is a calico named Dottie, and the other three are bright shiny orange ones named Sunshine (a's favorite), Argent, who has a silver scale on its side, and Fanny. Not terribly original names, but they are quite beautiful and peaceful to watch. I hope they will become frequent subjects of paintings in the near future. Pictures to come!

reluctant heroes

A and I just saw Prince Caspian at the cheapo movie theater (11 bucks for tix, popcorn, gummy bears and water), which had great style but very little substance. I described it to D as a Rembrandt painting that someone cut into pieces and reassembled; you still see brilliant bits of painting but you have no idea how the pieces are supposed to fit together. Things happen, people know things but shouldn't by the time other people get there, Lucy was supposed to have gone to Aslan (but how? when? how did she know she should have come to him?) and all the crap hits the fan with a daring raid on an impregnable castle... All of these things that departed from the book I would not begrudge if they made sense. And Aslan said, "Nothing happens the same way twice," twice. Kindof contradictory, no?

Aslan and the four Pevensie children are seen as great ones who abandoned Narnia to the Telmarines, and then the Pevensies also mope around waiting for Aslan, who seems not so powerful or awe-inspiring, and kindof comes in at the end when things are at their most desperate (just like...ummm...last movie? who said things don't happen the same way twice?). The majesty is not there, the sense that Aslan really is in control and could wipe everything away with a flick of his paw. He's not a pacifist but he certainly isn't son of the Emperor over the Seas.

What really irks me about movie adaptations of inkling literature (the Inklings being Tolkein, Lewis, et al, friends who met in a pub and read their nerd-lit to each other and fawned over Wagner and Norse mythology)--what irks me, I say, is the fact that every male character in the movie versions is extremely reluctant to take their place of authority, to respond to dire need, to act sacrificially or resist temptation. Every man in the Lord of the Rings movies was severely tempted by the Ring, or were too wuss to take their places as Isildur's heir or to offer to go to Mordor without first hemming and hawing and making other plans. In the Narnia movies, it's always the animals that are pushing Peter to accept his role as king, or he's charging ahead with a bad plan and getting testy when he's called on it. In the books, it's often mentioned that the kids wouldn't have been recognized by their schoolmates after being in Narnia for a few short hours, that their deference for each other and their confidence in their roles are solid. There's very little that is intimidating about any of the kids in the movies, except perhaps Susan's badass chain mail/metal bustier ensemble and Peter's sword. Edmund does a good job unsettling King Miraz, but in the book he is silent and looks much older than his years.

Confident, unselfish men are almost completely missing from these movie versions of books whose main characters embody those same qualities. I watched a bit of The Fellowship of the Ring a couple months ago, and I got so annoyed I couldn't keep watching--if only the sound were off, it would be wonderful. But every line was a version of "mehhh...I dunno if I shoulllld...mehhh he's not strong enough...mehhh I can't really do anything to help." The only people with cajones are Arwen (a girl elf) and Bilbo, for relinquishing the ring. Aragorn acts like a drifting teenager who's mad at his girlfriend's dad, and Gandalf is a pot-smoking scuzzball who couldn't magic his way out of a paper bag. Ugh. I'm just pissed off, can you tell? I loved the spectacle of these movies, the battle scenes and the photography and music, but on second and third watching (and after listening to the books on CD 10 times) they just pale in comparison to the books, and get major characters completely wrong in their motivations and gravitas.

It comes down to this: there are very few real men in the movies. I'm sick of pansy-ass reluctant boy-child protracted adolescents. I want a King, dammit! A real king who takes up his crown and his sword, knowing the risks and still leading his people. Someone who will set aside their desires for a greater good, and will keep on his mission even if he is the only one left alive. Someone who has an identity, who has gone through a rite of passage, and has been confirmed as a Man and a leader.

There are very few meaningful or healthy rites of passage for anyone now; if you're Jewish, you at least have something with your Bar Mitzvah, if you're in a gang you have to commit petty crimes and get beat up, but what else is there? No girl I know has a solemn ceremony when they get their period for the first time, no boy I know goes out into the woods like the Iriquois and comes back after being in the wilderness for a season. Instead we get Will Ferrell and Adam Sandler, and leave unselfishness and heroism to comic book movies and cartoon characters (like Wall-E, a superb movie and one of the most endearing characters I've seen in ages). Surely no one in real life could possibly delay gratification, act with a conscience, and defend and cherish those weaker than himself or an idea greater than himself. That would be asking a bit much. Yes, it is a bit much, but it's the least I expect from someone who wishes to earn my respect.

the mural

My church has a preschool, where my son has attended for 2 years. I don't do anything much in the way of PTA or anything, but I thought it would be nice to do something for them that was unique and fun. A friend of mine is in charge of part of the children's ministry, and asked if I could think of a way to spruce up the place we called "the sunshine hole," a circular space near the preschool entrance where kids can climb, which has a teeny window above. It was getting pretty ratty, dusty etc, so I thought it would be really fun to turn it into a true sunrise, and use kids' handprints on the wall as the beams of the sun. So we did. The day we did the prints, a photographer came to take shots of these other murals (which are AWESOME!!!! noah's ark, but like you've never seen it!!!), and my friend asked him to take a few shots of the kids and I. I had just gotten over the food poisoning bit, and wasn't wearing makeup...but the kids are as cute as ever. And A hammed it up bigtime, sheesh. Check out the rest of the photos here.

lego maniac

I've mentioned Legos quite a lot lately, as they have been one of my main occupations when A comes home from camp. Snoopy has a house now, and my stalled architectural aspirations have been re-ignited as I design modern homes for the motley assortment of Lego minifigs that live in A's room. He keeps himself busy making space-ships for Darth Vader, a throne for the emperor, and what he calls "new sets" of Legos. He'll put a bunch of figures together, make a car or a black box that looks like the thing in Mecca (but it's a volcano, mommy! can't you see the red on the bottom?), and that's a set.

I truly enjoy the organizational challenge of having these legos around. I think I have always enjoyed sorting things, arranging things by size or time period (I love timelines), and the Container Store is really unfortunate to not have a closer location than DC, as the rows and rows of plastic boxes, bins, shelves, and organizational systems have me drooling. I really do enjoy the simple pleasures. Plastic boxes. Wow. A thrill a minute. Anyway, when A decides that he will be a human wrecking-ball for the creations I've spent hours on (an exercise in the grieving process. I'm doing well), I'll gather all the pieces and sort them into more and more specific groups, so the next building project is much more satisfying and easier to complete. Bringing order from the chaos, one brick at a time. Neurotic nerds, unite!

A and I made this smugglers' hideout with lots of castle pieces. There's a beach with hammock and palm trees, a secret boat entrance where barrels are loaded, a watch-alligator and an extensive network of stairs and lookout posts, along with a prison cell complete with lava and snakes for any government agents who stumble on the location.Here's my asymmetrical home of the future/70's. A triumph of glass-walled construction.And here's A in his element, with the lovely box my dad and I made so long ago for lego storage.

post-party decompression

It's like post-partum depression, but not sad. I have very little voice left after laughing myself silly, cheering every time someone came to the door, and taking care of A, who has a cold and has generously shared it with me. The house isn't a mess like it normally would be after a party, since a very kind friend helped clear away the beer bottles, stuff the fridge with leftovers, and helped me wrap the debris of the amazing mushroom-house cake my friend Steve made. Wow, it was cool--and tasty! Icing windows with the little hearts on them, perfectly-shaped mushroom cap with curvaceous chimney, green coconut grass, a party smurf with cake outside the door, and an icing tree stump with a tealight inside. Pictures to follow!!

Thank you to everyone who came to my smurf-tastic 33rd birthday party, and sent good wishes and treated me like a queen yesterday! I had so much fun seeing friends from all different areas of my life meeting each other and drinking strangely-flavored beer (peach? blueberry? I'm still not sure what I think about them...), and goggling at the amazing cake. I'm going to have a great time shopping too, with the birthday loot that will supply me with yarn, books, and yummies from Trader Joes for quite some time! And tomorrow, I'm going to enjoy wearing another Lella original, an awesome orangey-red skirt with turquoise underlay (is that even a word? underskirt? the orange has a lacey construction, which lets the turquoise peek through. A picture is worth a few thousand dumb words...). Anyway, it looks kick-ass. My friend C came early to hang out and help get the house ready, and brought some lovely day-lilies that contrasted so nicely with all the blue/green serving stuff. My friends and family are amazingly creative, and it's a joy to be with them. Sigh. Thanks Mom, for bringing me into the world these 33 years ago.

The garden (dahling)

D has worked his fingers to the bone (or nearly so) in the last three weeks, digging, shoveling, arranging brick edgings around nearly every part of our house, and sweating like a pig in a skater t-shirt. He says he enjoys doing all this yard work, and I have to believe him. Just like I enjoy shoveling snow I guess...he's a weird one, my husband. I'd rather have his version of weirdness any day.

Talking of which, the 25th of July will be our 10-year anniversary. We've been weird and nerdy together for 15 years, and friends for 20, so we know each other pretty well by now. When we first started dating I was sure we'd wind up killing each other, as we are both so competitive. But I learned early on that I am more likely to lose any game I play with him, and I'm mostly ok with that...mostly. We no longer play Dr. Mario together because I don't want to have to call the police and explain what I've done. So, ten years ago we were getting ready to walk down the aisle, and celebrating the fact that we would finally be in the same zip code after 5 years of long-distance dating, long-distance phone bills, long-distance wedding plans and anxieties and very sketchy email connections (AOL was nearly the only option, and a pretty pathetic one at that). It's got to be so much easier, and cheaper, to keep in touch now. I have not a little bit of envy when it comes to college students studying abroad who can just hop on the internet and chat with their loved ones for free. But I saved all of D's letters to me, many of them becoming more and more like found-object art pieces over time. He wrote me on Dunkin Donuts bags, a college brochure (which spelled his name Duran Dicom, his robot doppelganger), Color-Aid paper (evil stuff we used in Freshman Foundation classes. Gives me the shivers), and of course, sketchbook pages. And a bit of TP as well, apologizing for not writing so often and giving me leave to vent my frustrations by sending his letter down the porcelain highway. I didn't, but it was a near thing.

All that time apart prepared us well for so many challenges. We had to make an effort to communicate as much as possible, and now I miss him if we have a day without a long conversation. We had to resolve conflicts quickly and without a lot of face-to-face time, because we wanted to enjoy the little time we had together and not spend it re-hashing old grievances. I had been so horribly jealous of him when we were just friends, because he had all this success with seemingly little effort, the scholarship I wanted, the confidence (some would have said arrogance) to do his work without fear, the professors who really were excellent at Pratt, and conveniently went on sabbatical when I started attending the school...I was so mad, but at the same time, I could never stay mad at him for anything. It was really annoying, because I wanted to resent him somehow and then he'd do something incredibly generous and kind, and all the bitterness would crumble. It helps to be totally besotted with someone in this situation, sortof smooths the rough edges, but even now when I know he's human I can't stay mad at him for longer than a day. And when we were dating, we didn't have any secrets from each other, knew all the dirt and the pain and regrets of the past, so now we don't hide the truth, even if it's embarrassing or if it makes us look like morons. It's lovely to know that some other human being knows all this horrible stuff you've done or thought and still wants to share a bed with you. Gives me hope, and a glimmer of how God sees us as well. So, happy anniversary D, and I pray for many more.

yet another nicolosi gem

Here's an interview with Barbara Nicolosi, who was my favorite speaker at the Transforming Culture Symposium in April. Here are some gems:

But what happened, of course, too, was a huge movement after Vatican II for everybody to become like Thomas Merton in the Abbey of Gethsemane. Rip out all the statuary and lose the colors and symbols and just have white walls. Well, that’s probably OK for Cistercian monks who live in complete silence and have no distractions, but we lay people really need the sensory helps to stay focused at Church! Somebody should have thought it through better before allowing the terrible iconoclasm of the 1970’s and ’80s to eviscerate our beautiful churches.

The other day I was in a really old beautiful church in the South, in Baton Rouge, and there was something beautiful in every corner. And when I started to get distracted from the homily, my eye over here caught this beautiful shrine to St. Joseph. And then I paid attention again, and then I got a little distracted again and I was looking at the beautiful station of the Cross right next to me. And then I was back. But it was the beautiful things that kept pulling me back into the Mass. If you have white walls, your people are just going to substitute their own images from their workaday and family worlds.

Also, the zeitgeist of the Baby Boomer heyday was egalitarianism. Anything that smacked of elitism or tradition was perceived as a negative. And the arts became a tool to make people feel a sense of belonging. So, any art that required mastery of craft was suppressed in favor of whatever was easily accessible by the masses. It was stupid thinking, actually, because nothing makes you feel a sense of belonging like experiencing the beautiful.

About raising kids:
The best spin I can put on Christians ducking down in caves of their own making today is the desire to protect their kids from negative influences. However, from a pastoral standpoint, the emphasis needs to be not on protecting our children. The emphasis needs to be on preparing our children. The fact is, your little kid is not going to become a disciple when he’s 18. He’s a disciple when he’s 6 to his kindergarten class. And he needs to be comfortable in his moment, which is a 24-hour news cycle, visual image dominated Internet world.
...
So by raising Christian kids in a “safe” cave by shutting out the culture in the hope that they’re going to be unscathed, what we actually do is we create useless, impotent disciples for this modern time. They would be great disciples for 1827. But the fact is, they cannot enter into this moment. They can’t read and enter into dialogue with the signs of their own times.

She also mentions giving hopeful screenwriters this list of 100 most influential novels, to see how many they have read. On average, they've only read 7. I have read (ahem, ahem, polishing fingernails on sleeve) 34 of these, plus sizable bits of about 10 others. I don't feel super-proud about that, though, because a lot of the ones I started just didn't capture my imagination. Like Orwell. I can't stand him. And Cooper. Ugh. I don't do well when something is required reading.

How did you do with the list? Any book club ideas?