Her name was Jeanne Hardey. She was a third cousin whose family I have never met. The obituary celebrating her fifty-three year old life which was ended this fall by cancer, was only discovered during a websearch for the order of nun to which her aunt Phyllis Braniff belongs.
The Braniffs are the celebrity family of Mom's extended relations because they once ran a commercial airline. Only oldsters remember Braniff Airlines. And only people in Louisiana will remember this cousin, Jeanne. A beautiful, Judy Garland face is pictured with her life story, and there, tucked in with particulars about a lifetime of good will, six children and a grieving husband, is the Braniff connection. Even failed business ventures live on in the hearts of third generation namesakes.
Most interesting to me is the medical practice she helped her husband build. There on his clinic website were links to everything good: local family services, natural family planning, mental health and general health links, even a DMV link. And then, there it was: ehd - Endowment for Human Development. I sat fascinated by ehd videos of a child at 2 month's gestation, captured by some sort of laparoscopic camera, heart beating wildly, hands waving, veins and bones fully visible through paper thin tissue. Now I need not consult Wikipedia for my Zygote updates anymore. EHD features panels full of developmental photos and videos for the full nine month term.
Thank you Dr. Hardey. Thank you Jeanne Hardey. I am impressed, transfixed and so very grateful for discovering www.ehd.org. Why, I am left wondering, does my "family friendly" physician not have an outspoken web presence like this man? I have a mind to patronize Dr. Hardey... how can I swing a visit to Moss Bluff, LA for my next batch of lab work ups?
Better yet, how can I help Dr. Millane here in Long Beach see his need to pony up and stand for something?? Oh, man. I'd rather hitch-hike to Moss Bluff than pursue that matter. CA doctors are so... blind.
Monday, November 22, 2010
Saturday, November 20, 2010
D.C. Dice'n It Up
The sales clerk at a downtown Washington D.C. Men's clothing store understood me. As he was ringing up DH's purchase, he asked why I didn't have an H&M bag to show for my time mucking around over there, right across the street. When I told him I couldn't patronize a store that was so blatantly selling sex, he nodded knowingly. We discussed the sick music, the in your face lingerie & skimpy hemlines, but not the fake nipples on the female manekins (but I would've, had DH been anywhere else: "yeah, why DON'T the male manekins have 'em? They must get just as cold standin out in those frosty east coast window displays..."). We bonded instantly. From there, my poor DH, proud owner of a half-off silk pullover, freshly wrapped in JosA.Banks tissue and nicely bagged, stood by helplessly as his wife and her dapper new soul mate talked politics like we knew our opinions mattered. Maybe some day, we'd be called in to produce invaluable testimony to some impending congressional investigation re: all that ills mankind. DH waited; so patient, so obliging.
It was inevitable, though. Mr. Salesman-the-Democrat and I had to disagree at some point, and, as his predilections leaned leftward, I learned he opposed unregulated homeschoolers. I was reduced to defending myself against government encroachment that he insisted we needed because somewhere, some evil mother is abusing the privilege of keeping her kids home from the neighborhood school house. I chuckled inside! I was tempted to out myself! That woman is me! Lazy, mean spirited, and for heavens sakes, a child abuser because I spanked a kid in anger MORE than once! Yes, my poor kids were definitely deprived of the Harvard education that was to have been their destiny all because I forged Bible into their heads instead of algebra. My bad.
Well, to change the subject and get back to a nice dispute about which we might once again agree, we said our goodbyes over the conclusion that ChaseBank does not deserve us, and that boycotting them is the least we can do to protest J.P. Morgan's complicity in the real estate meltdown. And Fanny/Freddy. And the Feds. And the consumers who thought they could get a Somethin4Nothin mortgage...
Ahhh. Washington D.C! Guaranteed to supply "Everyman" with a seven minute power trip via debate between shop clerk and shopper.
[Holy LORD... would that I will forsake my argumentative pride and name the Almighty NAME above all names as the only subject worth debating. Would that I might leave a fragrant spirit of healing in my wake, and not a divisive air of factionalism... Upend me, LORD, that I could see my way to hold discussions of IMPORT, and forsake these silly exercises in self importance. aMeN.]
It was inevitable, though. Mr. Salesman-the-Democrat and I had to disagree at some point, and, as his predilections leaned leftward, I learned he opposed unregulated homeschoolers. I was reduced to defending myself against government encroachment that he insisted we needed because somewhere, some evil mother is abusing the privilege of keeping her kids home from the neighborhood school house. I chuckled inside! I was tempted to out myself! That woman is me! Lazy, mean spirited, and for heavens sakes, a child abuser because I spanked a kid in anger MORE than once! Yes, my poor kids were definitely deprived of the Harvard education that was to have been their destiny all because I forged Bible into their heads instead of algebra. My bad.
Well, to change the subject and get back to a nice dispute about which we might once again agree, we said our goodbyes over the conclusion that ChaseBank does not deserve us, and that boycotting them is the least we can do to protest J.P. Morgan's complicity in the real estate meltdown. And Fanny/Freddy. And the Feds. And the consumers who thought they could get a Somethin4Nothin mortgage...
Ahhh. Washington D.C! Guaranteed to supply "Everyman" with a seven minute power trip via debate between shop clerk and shopper.
[Holy LORD... would that I will forsake my argumentative pride and name the Almighty NAME above all names as the only subject worth debating. Would that I might leave a fragrant spirit of healing in my wake, and not a divisive air of factionalism... Upend me, LORD, that I could see my way to hold discussions of IMPORT, and forsake these silly exercises in self importance. aMeN.]
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
HaikuOnDemand
Of all the side effects of a long-term home education lifestyle (my least favorite being the load of dysfunction raked up from the murky bottoms of our souls every day), my favorite was the bathroom graffiti wall. It's finally painted over, but bless their hearts, the leetle geeyls found dry erase panels to stick onto the wall above the toilet paper, and so lives on the tradition. They currently bear an homage to Augustine in the form of a Psalm 32/Ps 51 Tee Shirt slogan contest...
And before I erase the paen to rain that was scribed ("someone write a rain poem!" I implored) by D#2, or SLB (sweetlittlebird---she who used to sing warbly yet emerged into a steady voice), on yet another bathroom dry erase board above the counter, I will post it here for old times sake, as the 9 days of rain gave way to the usual warmish, no fun cause it's s'posed to be fall, Santa Ana blah.
RAIN HAIKU
WITH EACH DRoP, THE RAIN
PLAYS ITS SYMPHONY UPON
THE LEAVES AND SIDEWALK.
I hear she has a GCC dorm rep for fastest haiku on the floor. And a journal filled with more. Let me see!
And before I erase the paen to rain that was scribed ("someone write a rain poem!" I implored) by D#2, or SLB (sweetlittlebird---she who used to sing warbly yet emerged into a steady voice), on yet another bathroom dry erase board above the counter, I will post it here for old times sake, as the 9 days of rain gave way to the usual warmish, no fun cause it's s'posed to be fall, Santa Ana blah.
RAIN HAIKU
WITH EACH DRoP, THE RAIN
PLAYS ITS SYMPHONY UPON
THE LEAVES AND SIDEWALK.
I hear she has a GCC dorm rep for fastest haiku on the floor. And a journal filled with more. Let me see!
Monday, November 15, 2010
Three Month Old Zygote Pick Up Line
[from Wed last ...Hotel Web connection was scant.]
Election season stole my 3 month Developmental Milestone, overdue now by two weeks. But instead of tracing in words the mysterious knitting together of the 12 week old Psalm 46 life-appointment, I am caffeinated and dumbfounded tonite by what I think I saw on the tour bus tonight.
Heading over to the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum in six+busses for some aeronautic history, DJ spinning, flight simulators, Imax movie and piles of drink and food, hundreds of techie conferies traveled with buddies and workmates. Heading back to the hotel, I wondered at the different pairings evidenced in the seats ahead, behind & across the way: twenty something couples who'd just met, some drunk, most masking a slight ill at ease. That self conscious pulling-on-the-hair; tense hands on the seat or lap; a silliness to the conversation that the men want nothing to do with, but women just default to; an overly animated male couple holding intimate eye contact; I was trying to size all this up when I recalled the little gal on the wait staff who blanched when I asked her how long she had to stay for clean up tonite. She looked askance, cut across the aisle and hurried off. What did I say?? I was just empathizing! Sitting on the bus, it hit me. I've never seen Sex In the City, but did she think I was hitting on her? Do these kids think they're supposed to go home with a sex partner just 'cause they're drunk & dolled up for a party? Does a TV show really have so much power that a busload of singles (or not?) feel a compunction to hook up for the night just because Ferris Buhler's wife says it's OK?
The whole conference began to feel surreal. Maybe these professionals aren't looking to improve work productivity. Maybe they really believe that emulating TV characters will get them a TV show ending. I asked DH, and he thinks it's all in my head. Always paranoid, I am. Well, let's hope so.
I am impressed with him for not giving me the option of sitting out this little junket. God Bless my man for honoring his vows to a 25 year new marriage; and God help the thousand men who are here without their wives ...OR MOTHERS!
Election season stole my 3 month Developmental Milestone, overdue now by two weeks. But instead of tracing in words the mysterious knitting together of the 12 week old Psalm 46 life-appointment, I am caffeinated and dumbfounded tonite by what I think I saw on the tour bus tonight.
Heading over to the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum in six+busses for some aeronautic history, DJ spinning, flight simulators, Imax movie and piles of drink and food, hundreds of techie conferies traveled with buddies and workmates. Heading back to the hotel, I wondered at the different pairings evidenced in the seats ahead, behind & across the way: twenty something couples who'd just met, some drunk, most masking a slight ill at ease. That self conscious pulling-on-the-hair; tense hands on the seat or lap; a silliness to the conversation that the men want nothing to do with, but women just default to; an overly animated male couple holding intimate eye contact; I was trying to size all this up when I recalled the little gal on the wait staff who blanched when I asked her how long she had to stay for clean up tonite. She looked askance, cut across the aisle and hurried off. What did I say?? I was just empathizing! Sitting on the bus, it hit me. I've never seen Sex In the City, but did she think I was hitting on her? Do these kids think they're supposed to go home with a sex partner just 'cause they're drunk & dolled up for a party? Does a TV show really have so much power that a busload of singles (or not?) feel a compunction to hook up for the night just because Ferris Buhler's wife says it's OK?
The whole conference began to feel surreal. Maybe these professionals aren't looking to improve work productivity. Maybe they really believe that emulating TV characters will get them a TV show ending. I asked DH, and he thinks it's all in my head. Always paranoid, I am. Well, let's hope so.
I am impressed with him for not giving me the option of sitting out this little junket. God Bless my man for honoring his vows to a 25 year new marriage; and God help the thousand men who are here without their wives ...OR MOTHERS!
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Emergent B'Smergent
The following is from my Catholic cousin's blog, pinewoodcastle.typepad.
I've copied it here in order to advocate more contemplation of Scripture and in spite of my criticism of my Catholic brothers and sisters. While I maintain they are in error believing in works-based salvation, they are not to be dismissed simply because their adoration of Christ differs from mine. We worship the same Saviour, and honestly, in some cases, their devotion to the bearing of spiritual fruit make my reeking banana peels look fairly knotty.
Not that YWH's holding a competiton, or anything...
"Carlo Carretto, a leading spiritual writer of the past half-century, was a hermit in the Sahara desert for more than a dozen years. Alone, with onlythe Blessed Sacrament for company, milking a goat for food, and translating the Bible into the local Bedouin language, he prayed for long hours by himself. Returning to Italy to visit his mother, he came to a startling realization:
His mother, who for more than 30 years had been so busy raising a family that she scarcely ever had a private minute, was more contemplative than he was.
Carretto drew the right lesson. It wasn’t that there was anything wrong with what he’d been doing as a hermit. Rather, there was something wonderfully right about what his mother had been doing as she lived the interrupted life amidst the noise and incessant demands of small children. He had been in a monastery,
but so had she.
Our home and duties can, like a monastery, teach us that. John of the Cross once described the inner essence of monasticism this way:
'But they, O my God and my life, will see and experience your mild touch, who withdraw from the world and become mild, bringing the mild into harmony with the mild, thus enabling themselves to experience and enjoy you.'
John suggests that two elements make for a monastery: withdrawal from the world and bringing oneself into harmony with "the mild."
Certain vocations offer the same opportunity for contemplation. For example, the mother who stays home with small children experiences a real withdrawal from the world. Her existence is monastic. Her tasks and preoccupations remove her from the centers of power and social importance. And she feels it. Moreover her sustained contact with young children (the mildest of the mild) gives her a privileged opportunity to be in harmony with the mild: to attune herself to the powerlessness rather than to the powerful.
The demands of young children also provide her with what St. Bernard, one of the great architects of monasticism, called the “monastic bell.” Bernard told his monks that whenever the monastic bell rang, they were to drop whatever they were doing and go immediately to the activity (prayer, meals, work, study, sleep) to which the bell was summoning them. He was adamant that they respond immediately: If they were writing a letter they were to stop in mid-sentence when the bell rang. When the bell called you to the next task, you were to respond immediately, not because you want to, but because it’s time for that task and time isn’t your time, it’s God’s time. For him, the monastic bell was a discipline to stretch the heart by taking you beyond your own agenda to God’s agenda.
Hence, a mother raising children, perhaps in a more privileged way even than a professional contemplative, is forced, almost against her will, to constantly stretch her heart. For years, while raising children, her time is never her own, her own needs have to be kept in second place, and every time she turns around a hand is reaching out and demanding something. She hears the monastic bell many times a day and she has to drop things in mid-sentence and respond, not because she wants to, but because it’s time for that activity and time isn’t her time, but God’s time. The rest of us experience the monastic bell when our alarm clock rings and we get out of bed and ready ourselves for the day, not because we want to, but because it’s time.
The principles of monasticism are time-tested, saint-sanctioned, and altogether – trustworthy.
But there are different kinds of monasteries, different ways of putting ourselves into harmony with the mild, and different kinds of monastic bells. Response to duty can be monastic prayer, a needy hand can be a monastic bell, and working without status and power can constitute a withdrawal into a monastery where God can meet us. The domestic can be the monastic."
- Father Ron Rolheiser
- - - - - - -
["...However, just be sure, my dear children: there will be no negotiating on abhorrent belief in purgatory, praying to Mary and/or dead saints, the immaculate conception, and transubstantiation..."
Now, two years later, one child is an Eastern Orthodox hipster, more Catholic than the uuberest of Catholics; another is dating Catholics, and the third is... still not baptized and dating a not-very-un-ex-Catholic.
Oh, can a mother's grief be any more complete?]
*I imagine Rolheiser'd been pursuing the amalgamous AA BigBook, wherein is found the Famous First of the TwelveSteps, tho I can't be sure.
I've copied it here in order to advocate more contemplation of Scripture and in spite of my criticism of my Catholic brothers and sisters. While I maintain they are in error believing in works-based salvation, they are not to be dismissed simply because their adoration of Christ differs from mine. We worship the same Saviour, and honestly, in some cases, their devotion to the bearing of spiritual fruit make my reeking banana peels look fairly knotty.
Not that YWH's holding a competiton, or anything...
"Carlo Carretto, a leading spiritual writer of the past half-century, was a hermit in the Sahara desert for more than a dozen years. Alone, with only
His mother, who for more than 30 years had been so busy raising a family that she scarcely ever had a private minute, was more contemplative than he was.
Carretto drew the right lesson. It wasn’t that there was anything wrong with what he’d been doing as a hermit. Rather, there was something wonderfully right about what his mother had been doing as she lived the interrupted life amidst the noise and incessant demands of small children. He had been in a monastery,
but so had she.
A monastery is not so much a place set apart for monks and nuns as it is a place set apart (period). It is a place to learn the value of powerlessness* and to learn that time is not ours, but God’s.
Our home and duties can, like a monastery, teach us that. John of the Cross once described the inner essence of monasticism this way:
'But they, O my God and my life, will see and experience your mild touch, who withdraw from the world and become mild, bringing the mild into harmony with the mild, thus enabling themselves to experience and enjoy you.'
John suggests that two elements make for a monastery: withdrawal from the world and bringing oneself into harmony with "the mild."
Certain vocations offer the same opportunity for contemplation. For example, the mother who stays home with small children experiences a real withdrawal from the world. Her existence is monastic. Her tasks and preoccupations remove her from the centers of power and social importance. And she feels it. Moreover her sustained contact with young children (the mildest of the mild) gives her a privileged opportunity to be in harmony with the mild: to attune herself to the powerlessness rather than to the powerful.
The demands of young children also provide her with what St. Bernard, one of the great architects of monasticism, called the “monastic bell.” Bernard told his monks that whenever the monastic bell rang, they were to drop whatever they were doing and go immediately to the activity (prayer, meals, work, study, sleep) to which the bell was summoning them. He was adamant that they respond immediately: If they were writing a letter they were to stop in mid-sentence when the bell rang. When the bell called you to the next task, you were to respond immediately, not because you want to, but because it’s time for that task and time isn’t your time, it’s God’s time. For him, the monastic bell was a discipline to stretch the heart by taking you beyond your own agenda to God’s agenda.
Hence, a mother raising children, perhaps in a more privileged way even than a professional contemplative, is forced, almost against her will, to constantly stretch her heart. For years, while raising children, her time is never her own, her own needs have to be kept in second place, and every time she turns around a hand is reaching out and demanding something. She hears the monastic bell many times a day and she has to drop things in mid-sentence and respond, not because she wants to, but because it’s time for that activity and time isn’t her time, but God’s time. The rest of us experience the monastic bell when our alarm clock rings and we get out of bed and ready ourselves for the day, not because we want to, but because it’s time.
The principles of monasticism are time-tested, saint-sanctioned, and altogether – trustworthy.
But there are different kinds of monasteries, different ways of putting ourselves into harmony with the mild, and different kinds of monastic bells. Response to duty can be monastic prayer, a needy hand can be a monastic bell, and working without status and power can constitute a withdrawal into a monastery where God can meet us. The domestic can be the monastic."
- Father Ron Rolheiser
- - - - - - -
["...However, just be sure, my dear children: there will be no negotiating on abhorrent belief in purgatory, praying to Mary and/or dead saints, the immaculate conception, and transubstantiation..."
Now, two years later, one child is an Eastern Orthodox hipster, more Catholic than the uuberest of Catholics; another is dating Catholics, and the third is... still not baptized and dating a not-very-un-ex-Catholic.
Oh, can a mother's grief be any more complete?]
*I imagine Rolheiser'd been pursuing the amalgamous AA BigBook, wherein is found the Famous First of the TwelveSteps, tho I can't be sure.
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Capital Capitol
Praising God for John Michael Talbot and Pandora, and, seven days post election day, for His enduring WORD, Jesus, who can still my heaving breast with promises that He loves California and won't let her fall into the cold, mean seas just yet. I do not love CA that much, and rather brashly protest her too many Democrats who vote like a robotic union machine, aiming the state straight for annihilation and heaping more ruin on her rubble while the rest of us wonder how to salvage the mess.
But a few pairs of walking shoes and some magazines thrown into a suitcase later, we are in the nation's capital attending an OpenText conference at a pornicious hotel in National Harbor MD. God bless my man. He requested the Adult fare off our TV, and when we entered room 8-215, he checked this time. (Remember the Alamo at September's Westin? A hurried departure at 11:59PM will not soon be forgot...) It was still there upon the TV menu, so he grabbed the phone and dialed the "Consider It Done" line. It got done.
No TV has emitted since that moment, the times and seasons calling for more hymns & less HGTV. The LORD of Hosts and Hearts wants to still my complaining spirit, so with no kitchen and bath remodels to behold, I can train my mind on 'importanter' matters than having my own bathroom: a seven month backlog of unstudied sermon notes and an artsy new journal to chronicle them in --a BD gift from she who still calls me friend.
The monuments were wind whipped yesterday as the Mister & I prayed round the National Mall, chased a squirrel half up a tree when it tried to pinch my sunglasses case, and drank cocoa next to Constitution Pond. It's all to one effect: tears lept out when "Battle of the Bulge" came into view on the WWII Memorial, sure that the supply of valorous, duty bound young men who will stand in the gap for a righteous nation will soon run out. Victoria's Secret, MTV, cable porn, prayerless schools full of sexting children seem to indicate one thing: righteousness is dead in America. With respect to Rory and Nick, fine soldiers and valor filled, what's left to fight for? Bigger happy meals? Vomitoriums on every corner? A thong on every female?
We head for Old Town Alexandria now, and while I will not freeze with my man's warm belly fat to snuggle into whilst the water taxi speeds us across the Potomac, I will have to put away my tears, with time only for pondering I Cor 3:22 +/- which speaks to those self possessed, power seeking metro riders living off over-taxed citizens, paying heed to unspoken rules of public decorum: speak only if the one asking is elected to a position of power or makes more money than you. All others deemed invisible.
"Let no man glory in men. For all things are Yours... and ye are Christ's; and Christ is God's."
But a few pairs of walking shoes and some magazines thrown into a suitcase later, we are in the nation's capital attending an OpenText conference at a pornicious hotel in National Harbor MD. God bless my man. He requested the Adult fare off our TV, and when we entered room 8-215, he checked this time. (Remember the Alamo at September's Westin? A hurried departure at 11:59PM will not soon be forgot...) It was still there upon the TV menu, so he grabbed the phone and dialed the "Consider It Done" line. It got done.
No TV has emitted since that moment, the times and seasons calling for more hymns & less HGTV. The LORD of Hosts and Hearts wants to still my complaining spirit, so with no kitchen and bath remodels to behold, I can train my mind on 'importanter' matters than having my own bathroom: a seven month backlog of unstudied sermon notes and an artsy new journal to chronicle them in --a BD gift from she who still calls me friend.
The monuments were wind whipped yesterday as the Mister & I prayed round the National Mall, chased a squirrel half up a tree when it tried to pinch my sunglasses case, and drank cocoa next to Constitution Pond. It's all to one effect: tears lept out when "Battle of the Bulge" came into view on the WWII Memorial, sure that the supply of valorous, duty bound young men who will stand in the gap for a righteous nation will soon run out. Victoria's Secret, MTV, cable porn, prayerless schools full of sexting children seem to indicate one thing: righteousness is dead in America. With respect to Rory and Nick, fine soldiers and valor filled, what's left to fight for? Bigger happy meals? Vomitoriums on every corner? A thong on every female?
We head for Old Town Alexandria now, and while I will not freeze with my man's warm belly fat to snuggle into whilst the water taxi speeds us across the Potomac, I will have to put away my tears, with time only for pondering I Cor 3:22 +/- which speaks to those self possessed, power seeking metro riders living off over-taxed citizens, paying heed to unspoken rules of public decorum: speak only if the one asking is elected to a position of power or makes more money than you. All others deemed invisible.
"Let no man glory in men. For all things are Yours... and ye are Christ's; and Christ is God's."
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
American ZygVote
Oh, dear God. Change the heart of this people. Change my heart. Why do I imagine that one precinct and sore feet a new nation will make? Only by your grace, Holy LORD. Open our eyes to what we must do to safeguard 230 years of artful, ordered singularity.
Find your people able and willing to just vote already.
Amen.
Find your people able and willing to just vote already.
Amen.
Monday, November 1, 2010
All Saints Day
a nice blog about lovely matters... u kno, God's judgment, child abuse, elections and the like... all obliterated by blogspot's lousy text editor, not allowing UNDO after a text cut axed the whole page.
Thanks alot.
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