Come together…right now

Last night Obama passed that magic delegate number to become the presumptive nominee. “Multiple sources” now are saying Clinton is about to end her campaign.

When the election coverage started well over a year ago, I paid little attention. I followed the headlines, but knew we weren’t going to really get into issues until the primary season started. And Hillary was a lock for the democratic nomination. I was wowed with Obama, thought him charming, but thought he was just not established enough to be a real contender.

Then I read his book. It was like someone had penned my thoughts about politics the ills of our society. I was enamored. I saw him speak and felt something welling within me, like I was seeing history in the making, that I would be boring my grandkids about shaking this person’s hand.

Around the same time Obama showed strongly and early primaries, and sort of just rode momentum to last night’s final victory. And what a victory was.

Meanwhile, Clinton’s been working tirelessly to claim the spot that once seemed inevitable. She’s been tough, resilient, and at times caustic and petty. I lost respect for her as a candidate, but it only helped to confirm my decision.

But now it’s over.

If you’re like me you’ve watched in horror as Bush took us to a unfathomable war, took overwhelming international goodwill and turn it - almost magically - into ridicule and contempt. Then you watched him somehow, inexplicably, get re-elected for four long years. If I was looking on the bright side I may say it was just long enough for him to permanently ruin his legacy. If I was looking on the dull side I’d say we’ve been sunk into an abyss that will takes years to crawl out from.

So now we must come together to ensure our ideals are brought to the foreground. We must forget race, sex, should have and could have. We must forget bitter battles and what we didn’t like about the other person. We must bury the vitriol and come together.

Hillary is a woman of tremendous resource and influence, and she is a fighter who will work hard for the very things we hold valuable. If we want our country, our world to change for the better, we need to put aside anger and bitterness and work together to move forward.

Last Child in the Woods

When writing my last post, I struggled to find why camping, such a flawed activity, is so wonderful and satisfying.

Strangely, just after posting I started to read Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv, a fascinating book about what we are doing to our children in the name of safety and time management — that we think of nature as a leisure activity, not a necessity, and therefore our crucial connection to nature is one of the first activities to get cut in our hectic lives. I’m previewing the book as a possible selection for my teaching colleagues to read this summer and discuss when we return. Ironically, I was reading it whilst supervising our silent reading activity, and when the students asked if they could read outside for the last ten minutes, I immediately started to say “no”. Even as a self-professed nature-lover: hiker, camper, recycler and wanna-be environmentalist, I was reluctant because it seemed too hard, too hard to get off my comfy chair, computer handily nearby, to sit in a sunny spot and read for ten minutes.

The book doesn’t tell us anything we don’t already intuitively feel about our lives; we know we’re over-plugged in, we know we should get outside more, and we know we all watch screens too much. But usually that mild guilt is as far as it goes. In his book Louv articulates this feeling so well, and in his opening passage I found him articulating what I struggled to say about the contentment I felt camping last week:

Unlike television, nature does not steal time; it amplifies it. Nature offers healing for a child living in a destructive family or neighborhood. It serves a blank state upon which a child draws and reinterprets the cultures’ fantasies…given the chance, a child will bring the confusion of the world to the woods, wash it in the creek, turn it over to see what lives on the unseen side of that confusion. Nature can frighten a child, too, and this fright serves a purpose. In nature, a child finds freedom, fantasy, and privacy: a place distant from the adult world, a separate peace.

Under the starry skies

This weekend Veri-husband and I went camping. The idea of camping always tickles me: VH and I have gone to great lengths and expense to live in a roomy place with a lot of land. We’ve invested in a posturepedic bed for restful nights, and we’ve bought fancy pans and appliances for our kitchen so our food can taste yummy..

But a few times a year we not only give all that up — we pay to give it up, pay to sleep on the ground under a flimsy piece of fabric, eat cooler food speckled with dirt and ash, in a patch of land as big as our bedroom and living room.

But as I ate mushy food scrunched into a folding chair, I found myself struggling to stay awake. Throughout the weekend I was in a hazy fog of reading by the fire, taking the dogs for a stroll, and just enjoying being unplugged, unstressed, and unbathed.

Then it makes sense. I’d pay a lot more for such gentle calm.

Never Say Goodbye

This weekend was a surprise-sunny weekend so I went out and messed around in my garden. For some reason I’ve developed a habit of putting my little radio in the window above the garden and tuning into to the local classic rock station whenever I’m putting around, pulling weeds and digging holes. I’m not much of a classic rock fan — well, I do like a lot of classic rock songs, but like most CR stations, my local one plays the same few dozen songs over and over and over. Like there isn’t thirty years of great music to choose from.

But last weekend was a rock block weekend, so the same, tired songs had lesser-heard classics mixed in. I couldn’t help but smile when I heard the familiar first few chords of “Never Say Goodbye” by Bon Jovi. Played nonstop when I was in middle school, I have heard it only a handful of times since.

It immediately brought me back to hanging out with my friend, Lara. We’d walk to her house every day after school, stopping to buy teeny bop and heavy metal magazines and squirrel up to her room to blast music and talk about the boys we loved and the girls we hated. When “Never Say Goodbye” came on the radio we’d mime out the lyrics and dream of “loosing more that that” in back seats, and having dramatic proms that ended like an 80s brat pack movie.

Since this weekend the song has floated around my head and, inevitably, thoughts of my friend Lara who moved away in high school. Occasionally when I hear a song or watch an old movie I’ll think about long-lost friends and memories we had. But something occurred to me: when Lara hears an old Bon Jovi song, or watches a movie from our days together, there’s a good chance she thinks of me. Somehow I found this strangely comforting. Not in a narcissistic, attention-seeking way, but in somehow having a connection to someone that was once so close and so important. My memories are her memories as well, so in a way we’ll never say goodbye. And yes, a cheesy-song blog post must end with a cheesy line. I’m a child of the 80s.

Good Things Happen to Bad People

As a teacher, I know how crucial the maintenance staff are. I know they work terrible hours, pick up after people a half, a third, a quarter their age, and are often ignored and invisible on campus. As a crunchy, lefty place, my school goes out of their way to honor our maintenance crew. I find the fanfare a little sycophantic, perhaps even condescending at times, but I do respect and value the work this staff does.

However, there is one maintenance person who starts work at the end of the school day who drives me batty. Forget that he doesn’t clean, forget that he locks the door while we’re still on campus because he wants to listen to his iPod without worrying, what really bothers me is that he is a chatterer. He likes to chat about…I dunno, anything. Politics, music, events in town. Sounds okay, right? But by 4pm I’ve been surrounded by children, in charge for most of the time — motivating, answering questions, guiding, caring, worrying. By 4pm I’m trying to scramble to finish loose ends, plot out what I need to bring home to work on, and enjoy a few minutes of post-kid quietness. The last…LAST thing I want to do is chitchat.

So what do I do? I avoid him, I greet him warmly and then look busy. I avoid eye contact. What I don’t do…I don’t become honest, I’m not upfront, I’m not kind but clear about my situation. I don’t like confrontation, so I get annoyed and try to get out by 4pm. It’s awful, but it’s true.

So..I found out that he’s leaving. Soon. I’m thrilled. Sometimes it’s nice when you don’t have to do the right thing and life just hands you an out — even when you don’t deserve one.

thumbs and glue

The thing about being in my thirties is that I’ve found that I finally know myself pretty well. I’m not clouded by identifying myself by what I wish I was, nor am I trying on different styles to see what fits. I know that I lack certain fine motor skills: I will never learn to play the guitar. I mean, I could learn, but it would take an enormous amount of dedication and practice and frustration…and here’s another thing I’ve learned about myself — I simply don’t care about most things to do that. I always wanted to learn to sew and knit, and I may some day learn in a rudimentary way, but my desire to ‘be’ a knitter/seamstress isn’t strong enough to overcome my lack of detail orientation and my aforementioned fine motor skill struggles. And what’s more..I’m okay with it. Finally.

Which is why I was surprised to hear about my reputation at my school. For most of the year I’ve been in an application process for a full-time position, largely hanging out under the radar as to not ruffle any job-determiner feathers. But now that it’s the end of the school year, duties and committees and specifics within my job are being determined, I’ve been given comments about what I am in the school, and it’s surprised and nearly floored me. I spent the year nodding in agreement to things..I never expected there to be any impression at all.

Apparently, I have a skill for collaboration. Namely, getting people to the table and getting people to get things done. I was shocked when I heard it said one way by my department chair, and a bit..awed…when I heard a similar sentiment repeated in another way by my school director. I’ve always known that I’m generally a people person. But what I didn’t realize that somehow I was going beyond…well, I dunno, beyond something to make a higher up in my school report to a colleague that I “shame” them with the way I get people together. Interesting. It’s a helpful when selling the guitar and knitting needles.

Go ahead, Tri me.

Today I ran a mile. At least, I think it was about a mile — I forgot to bring the sneaker insert to the world’s greatest invention. Seriously, this little, 2-ounce do-hicky has transformed my running. I can go anywhere, run any route, and I don’t have to worry how far I’ve gone, how far I have to go, and I’m updated on my progress and perfect intervals, along with a calorie count and average mph. But best of all, Lance Armstrong comes on my speakers as I finish and congratulates me on a great run.

The first run after a long break — eight months for me — is always great. My body’s well-rested, nothing is chronically bothering me, the only obstacle is my atrophied muscles keeping me from going very far.

But, a mile’s a mile. And in ten short weeks I’ll be running 6.2 more of them — after I’ve swum a mile and then hopped on a bike for 24 additional. At least I hope. Last year I ran in the Maine State Triathlon in Bethel and loved it. I loved training for it, I loved doing it, and I was surprised that I didn’t feel very tired afterwards. I had only trained for about five or six weeks, but I felt ready for a bigger race. I didn’t have the time to commit to continue training, but I promised myself I’d graduate from a sprint triathlon to an olympic triathlon next year.

My cut-off to start was February vacation. It came and went. So did March, and most of April. But who was I kidding. I’ve never been great at moderation. I seem to throw myself into a project at about 100 miles an hour. It consumes me for a short time and then, just as suddenly, I drop it. My mile today was the first since last year’s tri. So in the coming weeks I’ll run a bit more, bike a lot more, and swim when I can. Or maybe I won’t. Sometimes motivation takes over me and I become obsessed. My days filled with getting extra protein (as a vegetarian this takes work), planning routes, getting annoyed when I feel like I have to postpone a workout. I remember last summer going to court with my mom; she was tangled in a nasty legal battle with her neighbors that had gone to trial. After the stressful and exhausting trial I couldn’t help it, I jumped in her river and did laps by the very home she had just battled in court, flinching when they got on their jetski as I felt someone fearful they were out for an extra bit of revenge. But I had to get in there. I had to swim at least a short route or I felt like I’d lose precious ground skipping the day.

So, we’ll see. Sometimes my obsessions are one-timers. Swing dancing, marathon training, sometimes I just do something once and then somehow it’s checked off a list and I can’t be bothered to repeat. I hope not.

Summer lovin’

In sixth grade I had a pen pal from Australia, Natalie. In class we could pick from a number of countries, but at the time I was fascinated by the prospect of putting a letter in my mailbox and having it zoom completely around the world. We wrote throughout middle school and into high school, and I can still recite her address, another fascination for my 11-year-old mind: it adhered to none of our rigid number/street/city/state rules. It involved names and numbers and commas in all sorts of illogical places.

That spring we had an early heat wave over Memorial Day and I sprawled out under the sun for all three days. On Monday my peers marveled at my red skin (in ‘87 slathering baby oil was the norm, and sunburns were just a good tan in the making), asking if I’d traveled over the long break. Nope, summer had given us a sneak preview of the long, lazy days ahead.

A few days later I got a letter from Natalie who mentioned getting a late-summer sunburn the previous weekend. I was so amazed, so excited - here we were, opposite sides of the world, opposite seasons, and we had a sunburn at the same time. It impressed my 11-year-old self and, truth be told, it still kinda impresses me now.

Since then, as I anxiously await summer, I always marvel at that early sunburn. In New England, such warm weather is usually not seen until mid to late June, and usually the warmer days are not prolonged enough to break out anything that would reveal enough skin for a burn until well into summer.

But this week we’ve had glorious weather. It started late last week, and each day seems to have brought only sunnier, warmer days. But the miracle is that it is also my April vacation week — next week is cold and rain, but somehow, fate has determined that all of us stuck behind, not traveling, not doing anything, will enjoy our own sunny reprieve. Today it hit nearly 80 and I looked for every excuse to be outside. I gardened, I raked, I rode my bike, I graded papers outdoors. And now, April 23rd, just after Patriot’s Day, I have a slight sunburn. It never felt so good.

My crystal ball…

This past weekend I traveled an hour and a half to see my mom down in Mass. I love popping down there in the spring and summer as it’s like peering into the future.

No, Maine is not that backwards, but we are about 1-2 weeks behind spring and summer (and to make up for a it, a week or two ahead in fall in winter - though somehow that doesn’t seem like a fair trade-off). In fact, it was my mother’s mentioning of her crocuses being out that propelled me to peak outside and look for the tiny nubs of green at the end of the snowbanks, heralding a long, long awaited spring.

So as I drove south, the grass got greener, the buds on the trees got fuller, and I arrived to see a beautiful bouquet of daffodils dancing along the river’s edge, all scenes I have to look forward to in the upcoming weeks.

Yesterday, Veri-husband and I traveled a further hour-and-a-half to Rhode Island. Their spring was blooming, with cherry blossoms and magnolias, lush green lawns and sprouting trees. As beautiful as it was, I came away with one valuable reminder of early spring: dandelions. In my anxious anticipation of spring, and worshipping of everything green that peaks out from the deadened brown, I always forget dandelions before it’s too late, and my garden and lawn are covered in crabby green leaves with long, snarled roots impossible to dig up. Today, I launch a surprise attack.

Rock of Love

On my vacations from college I used to go home and flop on the couch and watch bad TV until it was time to leave for my flight back to school. I grew up — gasp — without cable, my mom curiously deciding to get hooked up after I left for higher learning. So to make up for years spent without HBO, MTV, and VH1 — or really because college lit a fire under me and I would let it fuel me until I collapsed with exhaustion at the end of the semester — I would return from school and dutifully watch endless reruns, cooking shows, and, of course, reality shows.

When I mindlessly watched cable in those early years, the only reality show was the aptly-named Real World, followed by its adventurous cousin, Road Rules. It seemed like every time I traveled home to visit my mom, much to her chagrin, MTV would air a marathon and I’d get to catch up on life with seven strangers picked to live in a house together and have their lives taped. The early Real Worlds were…at least on the surface … kinda real. The people looked fairly normal and they fought over the kind of things people fight over. They had dreams, they drank in kinda moderation and nudity was very, very rare.

Now, both shows are unwatchable. I’ve aged, MTV producers have polled audiences to find out that guess what - sex sells! and until recently I determined that cable just wasn’t worth the $50/month.

Last fall there was a mix-up and we (shhh..) ended up with cable and after two calls still haven’t come around to switch it off, even though they stopped charging us.

I have to admit with free cable I was afraid I’d lapse into my bad TV days, when I’d relieve life’s stresses by turning on E! and watch behind-the-true-hollywood-stories until my eyes or my brain exploded.

But, alas, I’ve kept it down to only one show. On Sundays I watch former presidents, presidential candidates, award-winning authors and top political strategists on This Week with George Stephenopoulos, and follow it by watching Rock of Love with Bret Michaels. Season 2.

As a former metalhead, I was intrigued to watch my favorite aging and bloated rocker pick which stripper he was going to fall for. Like a car accident, I couldn’t help but peak over to see how bad the damage was. But like all reality shows, before very long I was hooked. I had my favorite..um…contestants, my ones I loved to hate, and I often felt strangely embarrassed when I related to some of their woes.

Unlike last season, I felt just as torn as Bret Michaels when it came down to choosing which of the two remaining women would make his best rock-of-love. There was the big-boobed babe with the heartbreakingly sad history, and the older, smarter, but somewhat boring lass that I quickly started to identify with. I felt the twinge of hope that the enhanced sad girl nearly-from-the-streets would discover Bret as her knight in shining armor, but just as quickly would get mad when I looked at her 25-year-old perfect little body bounce up and down across the camera. I found myself starting to root for age, for wisdom, for self-confidence and drive. The second contestant, I found myself telling myself, stood for women who get ignored or put down because they don’t live up to a superlative sex appeal, who get the job but never also the man. As a pre-teen I adored Bret Michaels, and ached when I saw him attached to women made of plastic, with vacant eyes and tiny waists. I knew I would never be them. I had too much drive and too much education, and too little mammary. But part of me also wanted the hot rocker guy, too.

So this week, in the finale he picked —

*pause for spoiler alert*

– smarts. drive. confidence. age. Me. The (former) hot rocker guy looked past the boobs, past the swollen lips, past the extensions and weaves, and picked the person who could have the conversation. Somehow, I felt vindicated.