For the Survivors

When I heard my grandma had finally died, I hung up the phone and just waited. I don't cry very often, so when I started crying a few minutes later, I had to ask myself what it was for. And it wasn't that she had finally died; we were all there at the end, especially Mom, Jules and the nurses, who worked tirelessly to help make Grandma comfortable during her final days, which was a hard, hard job. I'm glad she's finally at peace.

But it wasn't Grandma's death that made me cry; it was remembering her life. She was like a second mother to me. I remember staying at her house on so many school nights, and she'd make steak and baked potatoes for dinner (one of her favorites) and we'd stay up and watch TV and play Boggle. In the morning to get me ready for school, she'd holler "Hey Laelie, time to get u-up Laelie," in a singsong voice. She took me to voice lessons, piano lessons, clarinet lessons, Basque dancing, and was my emergency rides to school-- in a service she called FART, short for Ferron Area Rapid Transit. She was at recitals, games, school plays, all of it.

And it's remembering those things that makes me cry. But I realized that they're not tears of sadness like the usual sadness when someone dies; the pain of being separated from your loved one, to know you'll never see them again. It's not that. The tears are from the nostalgia of remembering my life with Grandma, and what a big difference she made. They're tears of happiness and being blessed to know and love such a great woman who really was a very GRANDmother.

People say death is a part of life; but grief? Grief is a part of love.

What is grief? It's different things for different situations. For the survivor that lost a spouse or a child, someone who was ripped out of our lives and ripped out of this world, it is the pain of attachment. It's a feeling of helplessness, of disorientation, of confusion, of loss. It's the untimeliness and surprise of it all that gets us. But when my Grandma died after being completely immobile for two weeks, almost bedridden before that, and very frail for the last year, it was no shock, so it was easier for me. Maybe that was because I wasn't there for the diaper changing, the late night crying, and the general disarray and pain. But for me the pain was remembering my childhood. It reminds me of the Ben Folds lyrics, "everybody knows, it hurts to grow up..." and it does. But with the pain of change comes laughter and love. And that's exactly what I remember about Grandma-- laughter and love.

From Base Camp at Yosemite

Here we are . . . the mountains on all sides of us, cliffs rising so high it hurts your neck to see above them. The group is pretty diverse-- 1/4 of the group is international students (which is awesome). Last night we had to sleep in the parking lot while we waited for spots to free up. There's a huge boulder in the middle of camp, as tall as the second-floor window in Hayman. Everyone's got their camp chairs, and I have a mug of rum and coke. Life is good.

Free Write - 5 things wrong with America

1)      We have to pay a ridiculous amount for health care.  Free public health care would

2)      Underpaid and undervalued public education system

3)      Racism and discrimination in the criminal justice syste

4)      Rampant Capitalism.  Sure, folks should be rewarded for working hard and succeeding.  But Americans seem to forget that we're a community that should watch out for each other.

Top Problem: Health Care

When we declared independence from England, as a pillar of our new country we professed to care about “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”.  Liberty and pursuing happiness are (supposedly) guaranteed by our politics, but there aren’t really any governances on providing our citizens with health.  Social programs are remedial at best, but what’s really needed are institutionalized programs designed to provide everyone with affordable health care.

Free Write - Reality TV

Reality TV, for most Americans, satisfies a need for interpersonal relations that can be accomplished while vegging out in front of the TV.  We laugh, cry, and get mad at the “characters” that are just like us while they dance, lose weight, hook up, paint their bodies with mud, eat gross things, and sing.  We can relate, because the contestants on the shows are just like us.  It is very entertaining.

Conversely, since the characters are just like us, the quality of the program is extremely compromised, and for two reasons: one, the people aren’t trained actors, and selected for their dramatic and/or scandalous personalities and potential to fail (which the audience loves), and two, the producers interject, selectively edit, and prod the contestant to spark drama in the program. They market it as “reality,” when in reality, it is just the directed throwing of fits.  Sure, we like getting to know the contestants on Survivor and rooting for our favorites, but what do we learn from it?  That the only way to win a contest is to lie, cheat, and double-cross your teammates?

Journal - PressThink

PressThink is a blog very relevant to the discussion of media convergence - the "Information Era" brings both benefits and problems to journalism.  Jay Rosen, the head blogger (and founder?) discusses the advantages of "citizen critics", who have gained the tools to become journalists, and and the impending danger of "Absolute Commercialization."  The tagline, Ghost of Democracy in the Media Machine, points to a time when the media and press were interchangable words.  Now The Media has enveloped little ol' The Press, and is becoming a multimedia commerical giant.  Rosen is trying to save what little of The Press is left, or so he claims in his blog.

The PressThink Intro Page champions the cause of journalism that's worth fighting for and "worth dying for". Not sure about that one, but it did remind me of that movie Veronia Guerin where an Irish journalist writes about a drug ring, and is eventually asassinated because she won't be bullied into stopping her investigation.

Rosen's post are excruciatingly long, but contain valid content; though he knows that "meta posts",  as he calls them, are long and arduous, he unapologetically explains that it is his website, damnit.  If you like it, leave some comments.  If not, you can leave.

becoming a rambler

Today is St. Patrick's Day, 2009. My favorite holiday. Pond and Chris Holcomb stopped by the OP, and we discussed our "plans", which were the equivalent of 5-year plans for most college grads, but we call them our "6 month plans." Why would you live with more committments than you need? My definition of success is being happy and working little.



I want seasonal jobs in 6-month tracts of time for a very long time. I don't see any reason to get a mortgage, a steady job, a marriage, a kid. I don't see a problem in using my mom's house as my "permanent address", and getting my mail in big paper sacks when I stop by home. I want a Subaru I can sleep in, a good dog, and a tall, long-haired travel buddy. I want to learn Basque and Spanish, and get tan on a Costa Rican beach. Does everyone want to live like this when they're young, or is it just a particular breed of us afflicted with wanderlust?

the coldest, windiest, highest, driest place on earth

Above, in the photo from November titled "Antarctica Supporters for Obama", is my aunt Jules,holding the American flag amidst a group of red-parka-ed scientist and base workers at McMurdo Station. With any luck, I'll be working there too this winter. I just applied with Raytheon for positions as General Assistant in construction, Administrative Assistant, and Courier. Maybe by this time next year, I'll have finished a season of being an Antarctic mail lady.