MotherPie

Blooming in My Mother's Garden...

Purple iris that can probably trace their heritage to my great-grandmother's garden or before that (and yellow, and multi-colored). Roses by the doorstep.  Pansies in full bloom, still standing. Daisies in one corner.

These are the flowers that are blooming in her beds.  Her car smells of mulch.  Her doorstep holds the fragrances of roses. Her garden makes her house so happy.

I found the best of spring at the home of my youth and the landscape of my past.  Oklahoma is a sweet green at the moment.

Besides the art of nature, the art of the Oklahoma City Arts festival is a joy to share.  My favorite artist exhibiting? Oklahoma treasure Bert Seabourn.

No Burial Without Permission...

Just so you'll know, you have to have permission.  Found in Carrollton, Texas on an old cemetery fence.   I'm looking for spring and the fake flowers on the graves, plastic, they were, don't count in my quest.

An American Trilogy...

Looking out of the hotel window in Houston, Texas, I caught this threesome.  It seemed so American to me, a church steeple between the American flag and Transco Tower.  So without further words to expound on this imagery, I'm off to shop at the Galleria, just across the street.

Motherhood: A State of Always...

A is for Always, because that is what motherhood makes you.  Always changed, Always a mom.

Twenty five years ago I held my firstborn child in my arms, discovered what unshakable bonds motherhood creates and wondered, about six weeks later, when "things would return to normal."

Just as quick as I wondered that thought, I realized that the State of Normal had changed. Motherhood creates a new normal, a new forever state of being.  Just like I wondered what this child would look like, what this child would be like, I remain amazed, always amazed, how she has grown up. 

A is for always, the state that motherhood creates.  Always entwined, always there, always, always and forever, a mother. 

Literature's Best Last Lines...

After my new book club in Santa Fe discussed the decline of literature and how 10,000 Suns was a good story, but not good literature, I decided to start my own personal litmus test for literature.

Here are some of my favorite last lines from classic literature:

"....After all, tomorrow is another day." ­-- Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind (1936)

This is not the scene I dreamed of. Like much else nowadays I leave it feeling stupid, like a man who lost his way long ago but presses on along a road that may lead nowhere. ­--J. M. Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians (1980)

Yes, she thought, laying down her brush in extreme fatigue, I have had my vision. ­-- Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse (1927)

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.--F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (1925)

Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you? ­--Ralph Ellison,Invisible Man (1952)

Go, my book, and help destroy the world as it is. ­--Russell Banks, Continental Drift (1985)

...you must go on, I can't go on, I'll go on. ­Samuel Beckett, The Unnamable (1953; trans. Samuel Beckett)

In your rocking-chair, by your window dreaming, shall you long, alone. In your rocking-chair, by your window, shall you dream such happiness as you may never feel. ­--Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie (1900)

But I reckon I got to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she's going to adopt me and sivilize me and I can't stand it. I been there before. ­--Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885)

`It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.' ­--Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities(1859)

Are there any questions? ­--Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale (1986)

It was a fine cry--loud and long--but it had no bottom and it had no top, just circles and circles of sorrow. ­--Toni Morrison, Sula (1973)

(For more, see Kottke.org's list of the 100 Best Last Lines from Novels.)

Now I'm keeping track of the last lines from the books I'm reading. 

From Junot Diaz's Pulitzer Prize Winner, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, (2007) "He wrote: So this is what everybody's always talking about! Diablo! If only I'd known. The beauty! The beauty!"

Political endings?  If the Iraq War was Literature, Petraeus might have the best last line: "Tell me how this ends."

Hospital Chart Notes...

HOSPITAL CHARTS notations from actual charts

1. The patient refused autopsy.
2. The patient has no previous history of suicides.
3. Discharge status: Alive but without permission.
4. She has no rigors or shaking chills, but her husband states she
      was very hot in bed last night.
5. While in ER, she was examined, x-rated and sent home.
6. She is numb from her toes down.
7. The patient is tearful and crying constantly. She also appears to
      be depressed.
8. Patient had waffles for breakfast and anorexia for lunch.
9. Discharge status: Alive but without permission.
10. Occasional, constant infrequent headaches.
11. Rectal examination revealed a normal size thyroid.
12. Examination of genitalia reveals that he is circus sized.
13. Patient has two teenage children, but no other abnormalities.

14. The skin was moist and dry.

15.  Patient was alert and unresponsive.

Do Death Differently: Eco-Coffins

Cardboard coffins are the ecological way to go and are part of a growing market trend in the death industry.  In the U.K. there are woodland burial sites that do the dust-to-dust bit.  Eco-coffins is a firm providing these but I don't know what options are here in the U.S. 

The chemical preservation and metal coffin trend is slowly changing in the U.S. as cremations take more of the funeral market.

So... I think this is the way to go if you're not yearnin' for an urn.

Life Behind the (Perfect) Picket Fence...

Family life is never as neat and perfect as it is packaged up to be.  What you see from the other side of the fence, as an outsider looking in, is not the messiness and chaos, for the most part.  In fact, a good family struggles to overcome circumstances and situations and hopefully, can struggle together and make it through tough times better for it all.  Presenting wholeness is presenting hope and faith and positive outlooks.

Airing dirty laundry?  Shoot, with closed windows and the demise of the clothesline, it isn't even metaphorical anymore.  I used to be that no one aired anything publicly or privately. Then it was "let everything hang out."  Reality shows?  Even those are edited.

The picket fence for bloggers and teenagers is an interesting question, as far as boundaries go.  For me, I choose to keep my family and their matters mostly all private.  New York magazine has an article about students at Horace Mann in NYC, how they posted derogatory things about teachers on Facebook, how teachers discovered them and confronted the issue and how the whole affair sorted out.  The student who was responsible for the comments is now Student President and teachers have been forced to resign for invading the Facebook territory.  The letters this week to the magazine about the article are evident of the hot buttons being pushed with schools under pressure to get students into top colleges, the ability of teachers and administrators to discipline students and the issues of boundaries and privacy with public postings on Facebook.

As mothers we have a job to protect our children and our family and that instinct runs deep.  Children are growing up in a different world.  How this sorts out, I wonder.

   

Obama & McCain: Selling Connections

These two campaigns are reflecting a cultural shift that is going unnoticed. How the power of this bottom-up social/cultural movement might play out is another thing. The group has become important but in a different way than just the parties. Belonging and connecting...  The times now are calling for collaboration. 

Last February Obama supporter KChristie noted that Obama reached his goal of one million people contributing to his campaign. At the time he was  inspiring the cry, "Yes We Can" and meanwhile McCain was saying, "My friends this, my friends that". 

Reminded by Jill that giving money to causes increases happiness, I was and I've been thinking in terms how when you give to something (time, talent or money), you establish a connection. Obama is marketing empowerment by encouraging these connections.  (I've writtten about how we is the new me).  Networking, especially to those younger, means clicking.  So I checked out Obama's website and it opens with the line, "Get Involved." Obama is marketing connections. McCain's website opens up with a big Donate Today red button.  There is a big difference between this.  Look at Obama's words.  Obama uses ownership in his requests (like that, right, from back in February). Clicking further, it isn't until the second page that you get the ways to connect with Obama.  Obama's Organinzing Fellows -- "a new generation of leadership that believes, like Senator Obama, that real change comes from the ground up," just takes a click to apply to the network.

It is the selling of this idea of connection that is going to be the most relevant factor of this campaign.  MoveOn originated this idea of clicking to connect with the Dean Campaign. You can't have tone-deaf leadership, or leadership by responding to polls alone --  there has to be management of bottom-up ideas and an ability to manage top-down AND bottom-up.  Full collaboration.  The management of the WE.

W. Bush's first campaign used the political influencer ideas of Italian theorist Antonio Gramsci to use "influential others" (this idea is behind the idea of small church groups leaders who establish networking and connection within the larger body) and the Amway pyramid marketing ideas for bundling large donors. Still, though, this was doing top-down influencing.  Howard Dean's campaign was revolutionary in that it inspired bottom-up connecting.  Obama is merging the two.

Media stories are covering the money but they are missing how Obama selling the connection idea.  WashingtonPost got the topic for these connections.  Obama is also using Bush's bundling techniques but one of the important things is that the idea of authority from the top-down has changed to a group idea (if you are a mom, you've seen this through your kids' group projects ad nauseum in school and peer editing rather than teacher input on papers).  It is through owning, networking and connecting from the bottom-up that is the cultural shift. Columbia Journalism Review looks at the fundraising with Obama and touches on this topic but I just think no one gets this idea of the power of the we.

Obama logo generator? Obama is connecting with creatives notes Paul Schmelzer, inspiring play with imagery and the connection of ideas. I wrote about Shepard Fairey's Obama Poster  and viral ideas that connect.

Well, the power of the we and connections will play out one way or another...

related posts on communication tools of campaigns:
The Art of Words: Campaign Visuals
Word Art: Talking Points
Obama & Clinton: Connecting

California's Napa Valley...

Robert Mondavi's winery, no longer owned by the Mondavi family, is one of the centerpieces of Napa and I think that the yellow flowers blooming on the vines there are California's state flower? 

After being a snob for French wines, I must say that I recommend California wines and a trip to the Napa Valley to anyone.  My Napa Valley photos are up on Flickr.