My Version of "And Still I Rise" by Maya Angelou

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room?

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries?

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin' in my own backyard?

Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise

Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise

Dirty, impoverished, enslaved and poor
Not even allowed to walk through the front door.
Not good enough to sleep in your bed
Turned up your nose at this nappy head.

You can have nothing, was their solemn cry
I'll take even less, I dared to reply.
I want nothing that I do not earn,
I could not enjoy it, now watch me and learn.

Fast forward to now and look at me,
Didn't you know this is what you would see?
Had you no eyes, no brain or no heart?
Had you no imagination to predict this part?

I'm a dark ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.

Adapted from "And Still I Rise" by Maya Angelou. Copyright © 1978 by Maya Angelou.

Only Human

"Is that a tattoo I saw when your shirt raised up?" one of my new friends asked me during our softball game. When I answered no, she added, "Oh, I was thinking maybe you had a wild side we don't know about." I squinted briefly at her, shaking off the tiny questions that fluttered and glistened like soap bubbles all around my head..."What was she looking for?" I wondered. "Why would it matter if I have tattoos?" Only later did it occur to me that what she had probably been seeing were the scars from the fibroid myomectomy I had in 2005. I don't have a tattoo but there have been times I've considered getting one.

Her curiosity and search for my wild side is understandable. It's only human to look at someone we like and admire and to make comparisons. Recently I wrote a post called "Independence Day". I've said before that all of my posts write themselves and that one was no exception. It strained to get out of me like a child and I couldn't understand why it begged to be written so badly. After it was created I felt bad about what I had written about my friend so I took it down and buried it in my drafts folder. Then tonight it occurred to me why it needed to be written. For years somewhere deep down in the recesses of my mind I have been chiding myself for not being more competitive professionally like my friend. And then when I found out her life hadn't turned out so well after all and I wrote this post it came across like I was gloating, or worse yet, revelling in the failings of my friend. But I was doing neither. I was only being human.

Any success I have is God's,
my failures only, belong to me
There's no need to search for scars
I have plenty
though they may give you comfort to see
and I don't blame you if you do
after all you're human too

The Center of the Universe

Yesterday was my birthday and I awoke feeling like a princess. I felt like I should lie back on satin pillows all day while I did my laundry. My boss had accidentally sent out my birthday announcement a day early so the emails with birthday wishes had already started to come flooding in. You know that feeling of anticipation you get on the day before a holiday? That's how Wednesday felt, like Birthday-eve, so that by the time the actual day arrived it was built up to the point that it felt like a national holiday.

I have never had a birthday like this before. When I was a child no one ever made a big deal out of my birthday except to talk about it all day long. So although I knew the day itself was special it never occurred to me that I should feel special too. My ex-husband tried to make me understand. He was the youngest of three kids and an only son with two teenage sisters when he was born, so he'd always been treated like a prince. He'd had birthday parties his whole life and because his birthday was during the school year and his mother was a teacher the entire school was invited. He feels sorry for us poor kids with birthdays during the summer.

My first birthday after we started dating we went out to dinner with the married couple who had fixed us up and he gave me at least 6 or 7 presents. I remember a tennis racket, a gold necklace, and I'm ashamed to say I can no longer remember the rest of the presents. I was so touched. I didn't feel that my birthday was special but I did know that I was special to him. I don't think there was any doubt after that day that I was going to marry him.

After we were married he started having birthday parties for me to which he would invite all of his friends and make them all buy me presents. He would even tell them what presents to buy. It felt a little bit like when the teacher makes the other kids play with you at school. He would have invited my friends except I didn't really have any. It's not that I'm unfriendly. Quite the opposite. It's just that I was still pretty new in town and the one thing I've forgotten about having a boyfriend is that once you do you no longer hang out with anyone else. Come to think of it, not having a boyfriend in Omaha has been sort of a blessing because it's forced me to get to know lots of other people. (There I go looking at the bright side of things again).

Yesterday I celebrated my birthday at 7 Monkeys, a bar and grille on 156th and Maple in this room. I love this room because it feels like it was meant to be used in an episode of Sex and the City. I think people who know about this sort of stuff would call it art deco. It was my first attempt at getting my friends from different groups together. I have church friends, bar friends and work friends. I didn't invite everyone I know because of course some of my friends just aren't going to mix well with others. Honestly if some of my friends met some of my other friends they'd be so mad at me they'd never speak to me again. If you don't believe me click the link. So along with a tinge of guilt over all the people I didn't invite, there was a feeling of warmth and happiness that I could get everyone together under one roof without having to get married (or die) to do so. After we left 7 Monkeys we went to Mick's! where, I was surprised with a birthday cake lit up with candles. I don't do surprises well, especially when they make me feel like the center of attention and a room full of people are all looking at me. This is due to the childhood trauma of having been raised in a household of about ten aunts and uncles and getting whippings everytime someone called attention to me. There was no such thing as good attention. Attention equalled trouble as far as I was concerned from about age 3. That's why I was shocked to feel no strangeness, no trauma, no feeling of wanting to run and hide when said cake and candles were brought out. All I felt was love from everyone in the room.

In the months since I've written this, the sentiment "all I felt was love" has often been mistaken for "in Love" with Mick. I have to smile because that is soooo my sister. It means that my search for her through my blog-writing has worked and she's "here" in my heart, where I wanted her to be. I have added "from everyone in the room" because that's what I felt and those are my words, not hers. I apologize to anyone who misunderstood. No hard feelings. Even I didn't fully understand till now.

My sister left this world in 2003 and she and I never understood each other. We approached life from completely opposite directions. For me the bar experience was my way of stepping out of my perfectly engineered life and getting a little messy, walking in her shoes and better understanding her choices, of finding the part of myself that I rejected because I didn't like the reflection that I saw in her - my gift of understanding to her and her gift of creativity and of open-mindedness (and open-heartedness to me). I think if she could have given me a birthday present this is exactly what it would have been.

The Nanny Diaries...

Well the vacation is over and I'm back home. It was an interesting weekend. My friend brought her 8 year-old daughter along because the child's father, my friend's ex, lives in Florida. My friend spent half the day in my hotel room working on the book and the other half in the room she was sharing with daddy and daughter.

Don't get me wrong, I think it's great for a divorced couple to be friends. I am friends with my ex. It works for Demi Moore and Bruce Willis. But my ex didn't steal my credit card on my last visit to see him. I don't pay the mortgage on a house for my ex to live in, a house we nearly lost in foreclosure because he was gambling our income away. The problem with being friends with an ex like that is there is always an elephant in the room that everyone is trying to ignore. And no one sees elephants better than kids.

At one point the child threw a HUGE temper tantrum because she wanted to go shopping with mommy and me. Eventually this tantrum landed in my room..... with me....alone. This seemed an odd time to leave her with me, I thought. I wondered if mommy and daddy were spending quality time together.

I hugged her and comforted her and told her that mommy loved her and we wouldn't be gone long. I remembered my training from sales school....get them to say three yes's and you've got them sold. Maybe it would work on kids too.
"Who bought you a sewing machine today?" I asked.
"Mommy did" she said.
"And who got to pick Mongo's for us to go eat the best lunch ever?" I asked.
"I did" she said.
"And who played with you in the ocean today?" I asked.
She had caught on....."Not Mommy!!!!" she wailed.
"Yes, Mommy did" I said. And I could see her resolve to stay mad melting away.

Eventually she calmed down and I went to take a shower and change. She sat in the room watching tv and when I came out she was entertaining herself by pouring the $4 bottles of hotel room water out the balcony window. Probably on somebody's head.

Moments later mommy showed up at my door, furious! What was taking me so long?? I was scathingly criticized for comforting her daughter during her tantrum. I was accused of letting an 8-year-old take advantage of me. Didn't I know when I was being played by a child?

Um....she's a child. She's 8. She has by default permission to "play me". It's my responsibility to figure out what it is she really needs and then meet that need so that she will no longer find it necessary to "play me" and she can learn to ask for what she needs in an honest, respectful and healthy way instead of manipulating. Call me old-fashioned.

"What did you say to her?" my friend asked.
How was I supposed to answer that? I tried to make you look good you b-word?
"I appealed to her sense of logic" I answered.
Impossible for my friend to understand because her sense of logic only appears for short bursts of time, 2 to 3 minutes max.

"Do you ever doubt yourself?" my friend had asked earlier in a totally unrelated conversation.
At this point I am seriously doubting my taste in friends.

Independence Day

This is the 4th of July weekend and I'm spending it at the beach with my friend. We are writing a book about her life and her career. She's an engineer and also has a business as a professional coach and she wants to use the book as part life lessons, part professional coaching instruction manual.

I love my friend. She and I have known each other since around 1992 when we worked as interns for the same company. I was the quiet, studious little engineer, the one who put her head down, obeyed orders, did what I was told and worked hard. She was the political juggernaut who behaved as if every assignment she was given was a fight for civil rights. I imagined it was exhausting to be her, but she had some good points. She was always questioning the establishment and policing our management to make sure she was getting the same treatment as the male engineer in our department who, let's be honest, was given more perks and seemed to do much less work.

She was the first person who pushed me to compete at work. Up until that point I had never seen work as a "competition". For the most part I still don't, but I know that just because I don't naturally function that way doesn't mean I can ignore the fact that most of the professional world does. She was right, if a little over zealous about her message. You have to stick up for yourself, look around, and make sure you compete and fight for what you deserve or no one will give it to you.

After I graduated and finished the internship we lost touch. When last we saw each other she, ever the ambitious one, was getting ready to take her GMAT exam and enter MBA school. I on the other hand was just interested in getting my feet wet, using my degree, and finding out just what an engineer was and how I would do it. I took a small, unglamorous job in a remote area of Alabama where there were no professionals and no one to date. I didn't hear from her for years and assumed she'd gotten her MBA and was continuing her fast track career to the top. A few years later I saw her picture in Ebony magazine and she was being featured as one of the most eligible single African American women in the country. "Good for her!" I thought, and I was proud of her because it seemed that she was well on her way to getting what she had always wanted and what seemed to me her birthright. She was beautiful and outgoing, popular with men, and hungry for career success. Meanwhile I was dating my college sweetheart long distance and content, though lonely, in my tiny little garage apartment in Alabama.

Cut to today. Her career has been derailed several times. She's been making bad decisions about men, especially men with whom she works. She's started her own business as a professional coach but is finding it hard to find clients. She's been married and divorced with a man who steals from her, has a gambling problem, and forfeited on their home mortgage. She is a single parent, struggling to maintain a lifestyle just beyond her reach and spoiling a daughter who doesn't know how fragile it all is. I am also divorced but with no children, no foreclosure, no gambling, no debt. My career has also been derailed a couple of times but the position I have now is a perfect fit.

So now here we are, on the beach, writing a book. I'm trying to listen without judging and without advising her or playing armchair therapist. It's always easier to see where other people have gotten stuck, much easier than it is to coach and unstick ourselves. What's shocking is the number of things our lives have had in common. It's as if God gave us the same material to work with and then sat back to watch what we'd do with it.

I wonder if she is getting the same value out of this experience. I doubt it, but I can always hope....

Prelude to Apocalypse

The power was out last night for a big chunk of Omaha. I drove around town looking for hot fast food and every McDonalds was closed. That's how I knew it was bad.

I had spent the early part of the evening stuck at work. I had headed home twice but had been stopped by the high winds and common sense which told me I was safer where I was for the moment. Some people left anyway and I have no doubt many of them ended up with hail-damaged cars and stalled on flooded roads. When the winds finally died down and it felt safe enough to leave I passed along highway 75 North headed home and the southbound lanes, only a few feet away but separated by construction barriers, were flooded.

When I got to my neighborhood the traffic lights weren't working but the people had the intelligence to automatically turn it into a 4-way stop, driving politely and in an orderly fashion. My kind of people. Intuitively smart and organized. No traffic cops in sight and none needed.

By 9:00pm I was starving. I wanted a hot meal, not the cold food that was spoiling in my refrigerator, so I was finally forced by hunger to leave home in search of food. I instinctively started towards West Omaha but it was instantly clear that things only got worse in that directon. All of the lights were out and all of the businesses closed. At 132nd and Maple, the home of my Baker's, several power line utility poles had been blown down by the strong winds and crews were out working on them. Traffic was routed south.

Most of the traffic lights weren't working. I drove through the busier parts of my neighborhood surveying the damage. The Omaha police force was out directing traffic at the major intersections. Giving up hope of finding food, I decided to head towards the bar where at least I would find the comfort of good company, good music, and good drink. But the bar was closed. Apparently the damage was widespread.

On the way there I had to enter the other, neglected part of Omaha, the part that the city government seems to ignore or at least considers less important. Things were worse than I thought. 90th and Maple, usually an ok area, was like the land that time forgot. It was a drive deeper and deeper into chaos. No policemen in sight. Trees and debris still littered the streets. Some folks were smart enough to treat the major intersections as if they were 4-way stops, but others had no clue and either sat there in their cars holding up traffic or driving randomly into the intersection with no sense of order. Bless their hearts, these were definitely not my people.

When I got closer to the bar in Benson the IQ seemed to go back up again. There is for some reason a series of traffic lights, one after the other, in the middle of streets instead of at intersections. I imagine these were placed there in the old days to allow the people to cross the streets safely to go into the businesses, but now it just seems odd and antiquated, but also quaint and sweet. In fact that's how the people were driving...cautiously, carefully, not systematically and clean like in my neighborhood but with a different kind of system that indicated an awareness and politeness for all the foot traffic in the area.

By now I was really hungry and getting cranky. I drove back towards West O a different way, along Military which had to be better than driving down Maple where at one intersection the people seemed to be trying to drive in order but there were too many who wouldn't follow the system. At that intersection I did something that is uncharacteristic for me: I lost my temper. I honked at a car that drove out into the middle of the street. "Relax!" yelled a man as I drove past him sitting at the bus stop on the same corner. He was right. I needed to relax. These are the types of conditions that either bring out the compassionate side or the worst in people. In my defense, I was also hormonal.

Finally I found a Burger King that was open. It was located, of all places, at 72nd and Sorensen, considered a "bad part" of Omaha but in a newer and relatively nice area. I smiled at the fact that, in the midst of all that had happened, it was this section of town that was up and running.

The entire drive had looked like something out of the beginning of a disaster movie. Traffic everywhere as if people were looking for something...food....answers...lights...other people.

I got my food and headed home. I promised myself that I would make use of this experience by making a list of all the things I'd realized I needed. I mentally added cans of tuna and baked beans to the list. Should I get a generator? A grill? If this ever happens again I want to be prepared so that I can be hospitable and helpful to people, not cranky at them.

And a child shall lead them: 4 Boy Scouts

When I wrote "Tornado" a few days ago it was because it seemed like a good story. I almost left the word "surviving" out of the title because to use that word implied that there was a possibility of not surviving and honestly that thought never entered my head. I believed when I went to sleep that night that I would wake up the next day, though to what I didn't know. There were no fatalities that night and no reason to expect that there would ever be any this season. "Surviving" was just a word.....just a title....just for sensationalist purposes. I have since taken it out.

Who am I that I should even know one, much less two, of the young boy scouts who were killed in the tornado last week? I have been in Omaha for not quite two years. I have no kids the way most people my age have. I don't have teenagers to get me involved in the community. I feel like I know almost no one, although of course that is not true. But how on earth could I possibly know two.....????

In my usual fashion I considered skipping the memorial services. I sat at my desk. I prayed. What else could I do? I checked the news, I cried for these young children who would never get to live as grown-ups, I emailed my friends to pray. Then one of my co-workers asked me if I was going to one of the memorial services. "Are you going?" I asked her. "yes" she said. "Then I'll go too." I was going for her. I never know what I can do in those situations when I am not close to the families. I don't see what good my presence would do or how they would even know I was there. But I would go with my friend.

After making the decision to go to one, I decided that I should also go to the other one. I left work and went alone. The place was packed. I was the only black woman in the audience. Well, if you count the bi-racial teen then there was two of us. She looked at me accusingly (as teenagers will do), as if to say "you didn't know him, why are you here?" I just looked at her and smiled slightly, letting her know that she was right, I didn't "know" him the way she did, but sometimes adults just do things because they're the right things to do. I wasn't going to get caught up in race that day.

I wasn't going to think about myself at all. I could have easily sat there, a tall black woman with locked hair dressed professionally in a bright yellow bolero jacket and black slacks, amongst these plain Nebraskan folk, many of them farmers in their ordinary clothes, and I could have felt very much out of place. In fact for a few minutes I did. The people who normally hug me barely gave me a look. Some of them seemed to want to avoid me. "Why?" I wondered. "Is it because they don't want to show how familiar they are with me in front of all of these strangers?" No matter, I could forgive them and show them grace and mercy. Things will be back to normal later. I was not going to get caught up in my own thoughts and feelings of being an outsider, not now. This was not the time. The young man we were memorializing wouldn't have cared. That was his lesson, his example to me: to put my social anxiety aside and not let it get in the way of life.

He was the least self-concious kid I've ever seen. His total lack of self-conciousness reminded me of my brother when we were kids. This young boy scout was a constant reminder to me that life wasn't about appearances. He didn't seem to care that he wasn't "cool" or to even realize it. He was just a good, sweet, little kid going through that awkward teenage phase who loved God and who lived life with more enthusiasm than anyone I've ever seen. I have been self-conscious all of my life. But for Sam I would do this, sit here and forget about myself and just be a human being sharing in the feelings of other human-beings. And an interesting thing happened: My clothes and my race melted away and all that was left was me.

You can say as one of my Catholic friends did that God had no message in what happened, that sometimes bad things just happen. "Some people say 'everything happens for a reason" she said, "but that's not true. God does not treat us like pawns in a chess game. He loves us more than that." These were her words, and I mostly agreed with them.

OK, not pawns. Not chess. Not a game. But God doesn't interfere? Are you kidding me?? Has she READ the Bible??? God does nothing BUT interfere. It's good because it's the only way we know he exists. I didn't say anything. Riding home from the memorial service wasn't the best time.

What I don't believe is that 96 people can be hit by a tornado in the middle of a wooded campground surrounded by trees and ONLY 4 of them be killed. Have you seen the pictures? That place was destroyed. THAT is the miracle. But then why those 4? I don't know. But read 13 year-old Sam Thomsen's sermon that he read at church just a few months ago. If it doesn't move you or touch your heart, you don't have one. Then let me know what you think.

Barrack Obama's VP: General Wesley Clark

Ok, Mr. Obama, I know you didn't ask me but just in case you're paying attention I'm going to offer my opinion on who you should choose as a running mate...

General Wesley Clark.

The only way he could be any more perfect as a running mate is if he were a woman.

Ok, I know this is where I'm supposed to provide the compelling arguments in his favor, showing that I made this judgement based on information rather than some emotional or traditional reasons. I started not to do this. I started to leave this article just as it was, ending with the "woman" comment above. But I can do better than that.

I've decided to leave the emotional/traditional/"I think he'll be a good president because his Daddy was a good president and that's good enough for me" type decision-making to the people who follow that pattern of behavior. (I swear to God an otherwise intelligent female chemical engineer once said that to me about Bush). Plus I shouldn't just assume you know the reasons. I am an intuitive and intuitives tend to expect people to fill in the blanks. It's a compliment to you really. But the world is ruled by S's - sensing people who need information and detail, and as much as I give out information as an intuitive, I receive it as a sensor, meaning I like detail. So here are the reasons, but before we go into detail about "why Wesley" I think it's best to start with a discussion of "why not Hillary?" Here's why not:

Reason number one: For Mr. Obama, winning over Hillary's supporters may mean losing his own. There are a lot, and I mean a LOT, of people who hate Hillary. If Mr. Obama were to add her to his ticket, he would undoubtedly lose some of the swing votes he had; those nice, intelligent, thinking Republicans and independents who want to vote for change. Sure, he would gain her 18 million supporters, but there's no telling how many of his own suppporters he would lose in the process. That's just not good math. You NEVER alienate your own base just to get more votes. That type of action would make him look weak and, well, too political.

Reason number two: She still wants to be President. She didn't stretch out her own campaign that long just to be VICE president and I don't think she would be happy to accept the traditional role, that is, being there just in case something happens to the President and in the meantime providing the occasional swing vote in the Senate. John Adams called it the most useless job ever invented by man and Hillary is anything but useless.

Which leads us to...
Reason number three: We would have two Presidents. I don't think she could stop herself from pushing her own agendas even when they contrast starkly with his. That would be a serious distraction from taking care of the business of getting the country back on course.

And here are the reasons for choosing Wesley Clark as his running mate:

1. Obviously his military background
2. He didn't just serve in the Army, he achieved the rank of General. They don't just hand those out for good attendance.
3. He served in Kosovo so he has experience dealing with a war in the Middle East. Hmmm, wonder why we'd need THAT qualification in a leader?
4. He was valedictorian of his class at West Point. I have nothing against C-students. I was one myself in college. Yes it's great that we live in a country where a C-student can be elected president, but hasn't that theory failed?
5. He's a relatively young 61 years old.
6. It's hard to overlook how handsome he is. That's gotta bring Hollywood running.
7. He is both multi-ethnic and multi-religious. He's White, Jewish, Methodist, Baptist and Catholic. Plus he's a southerner who was raised in Arkansas. You can read about how this is possible in his bio, but to my mind that's got to draw in a lot of different votes that Barrack Obama may not have gotten otherwise. Hey, if you look far back enough, he's probably even black.
8. He was aligned with Hillary in the primary. And since he's run for President before it's probably safe to say that she was considering him as her running mate. That means representing her agendas without having to actually represent HER, thus perhaps skimming a few of her 18 million votes and leaving the die-hards still voting for John McCain out of spite, which honestly makes them the same as people who voted for Bush because of his father and isn't that where the irrational people belong?
9. Clark is going to continue to hold his own ideas while remaining loyal to the President.
10....I don't have a reason number 10 yet. I've decided to reserve that spot for if and when Clark is chosen and the media starts pouring out all the laundry, clean and dirty.

P.S. Has anyone noticed that no one is asking who McCain's running mate is going to be? It's almost as if no one cares.

Tornado

As I lay in my bed asleep Saturday night, my dreams were injected with a faint high pitched whining sound. The sound kept getting louder. "I think that means you need to wake up" a voice in my head said, as in my sleep I tried to figure out where the sound was coming from.

I awoke to realize it was the weather alert sirens going off. "Oh great" I thought. "I wonder how long that's going to go on?" I was not yet awake enough to realize that the sirens were not a test, but were alerting us to a real weather threat which meant I needed to take action. Groggily my body started to move. For some reason I had slept in my yoga pants and a t-shirt, not my usual sleepwear, so I was basically "dressed". Throwing back the covers I could hear the wind and trees blowing outside, the rain hiting the roof and sides of my condo with more force than normal. I think it was those sounds that finally jolted me into reality.

I remembered my friend A's words from the other day, "You're in the interior of the building surrounded by other homes, AND you have a basement. You're SAFE." His words played like a recording in my head and reassured me. As I headed for the basement stairs I spotted a pair of sketchers at the back door, the ones I normally wear to play golf. I grabbed them to put on and ran down into the basement. For some reason I went straight to the window and looked out, trying to see the exact moment the tornado would touch down. I could see my neighbor's basement lights were also on, letting me know that they were taking this as seriously as I was.

I turned away from the window and looked around the room, my mind finally grasping the entire situation and starting to think about what I needed to do. I had no chairs down there, and no folding chairs to bring down. A treadmill and an eliptical machine were placed in front of the window. I could actually lie on the treadmill, but I would have to move it away from the window. Other than that, the basement only held boxes of christmas decorations, a lamp with a fisherman's basket for the base and fish shadows on the shade, and a single bottle of red wine on a little wine rack, the beginning of my wine collection. "No, look at EVERYTHING" my mind said. My goodness my mind is so much smarter than "I" am. So I re-surveyed the room again and this time I acknowledged the roll of remnant carpet against one wall. Hmmm...

I grabbed the carpet roll and dragged it into the small closet-like space between the stairs and the innermost wall. I unrolled it and the space was instantly more inviting and comfortable: a shelter. I moved the little box containing a camp stove out of the way, hoping. My hopes were rewarded, there was an outlet back there. I brought over the plastic tub of Christmas ornaments and the fisherman's lamp, making a nightstand of them and plugged the lamp in, then ran back upstairs and grabbed my pillow and the duvet off the bed. I had my paperback copy of Jane Austen's Pride & Prejdice and a bottle of water. It was a cozy little shelter and I was ready to settle in.

Hmmm, not quite.

I needed my cell phone. Another trip upstairs. This time I also grabbed my purse and the six-pack of water I'd bought at the store that day. Back downstairs. I lay there and read a while, but the floor was too hard. I'd never get any sleep. I remembered a foam mattress I had in one of the extra bedrooms on the 2nd floor. But I didn't want to go back up there and get it. I thought of my male friends and how, if one of them were here, they would do whatever it took to make me comfortable and would go get it for me. "But I have no man" I thought. "Then you must do for yourself whatever you would want a man to do for you" said the survival instinct that had been guiding me all night. Up I went.

As I was getting the foam mattress, dumping the clothes that were stacked on it to the floor, I spotted my sleeping bag sticking out of a box. I thought it was long lost back in Chattanooga, Tennessee, but there it was right when I needed it. I grabbed it too. On the way back I grabbed a bag of Cheetos and a bag of Pepperidge Farm oatmeal raisin cookies. Back down stairs and spread out first the foam mattress then the sleeping bag. I lay down on it and it was more comfortable than my bed upstairs. "Now you have everything you need", I thought. I looked at the clock on my blackberry. I knew I'd been pressing my luck. "There are to be no more trips upstairs" said my survival instinct, quite firmly. The clock read 2:29 am.

I lay there and read for a while. I have to admit I liked the adventurous feeling of it. I was safe and comfortable and having Jane Austen to read made me feel even more secure. Just before I drifted off to sleep, I reached up and turned off the fish lamp and turned on the little flashlight I'd had in my purse, using it as a nightlight and hoping it would keep the spiders away. I slept well under the circumstances. I dreamed that the exterior wall of my basement was blown away to ground level and my neighbor's entire building was gone. When I awoke everything was in tact. I went about my normal routine and later in the morning I checked the news online to see if any of Omaha had been hit. The first tornado had touched down at exactly 2:30am.

The Hillary Experience

Sooner or later, we as women all have to go through this. No matter how beautiful we are, or how smart, or funny or athletic or 'pert near perfect we are...sooner or later we're going to have to let go of something that we knew for sure was ours.

It's official, Barrack Obama is the Democratic nominee for president, but Hillary Clinton still won't end her campaign. The papers today are full of details and analysis about how Clinton, a virtual shoe-in, lost the nomination anyway. And everyone has accepted it except Hillary.

I have to tell you that I can relate to this. I know what it is to be the perfect candidate, to have everyone supporting me, and to be the assumed heir only to lose anyway. Not in an election, but in love and romance. In fact, I am learning at almost the exact same rate she is. But unlike her I have a great example to watch. I have a bird's eye view of the fact that despite her perfection, Barrack Obama is in fact the perfect candidate right now. There's no disputing it. I like to think that the Universe always works this way. Yes, I may have been right, but I'm not right now. So my job changes from proving how perfect I am, to exiting the stage with grace and dignity and supporting the true winner.

Hillary, my dear, I am sorry you are having to learn this lesson so late in life. The fact that you can live to be 50-some-odd years old and not have the sense to know how and when to bow out gracefully makes me feel blessed that I am learning it right now. The universe is a wonderful instructor. In what I have come to call "the Hillary experience" it is showing me just how carried away one can get with the concept that determination, hard work, and desire will get you there.

The reason Hillary lost the nomination can be debated by the experts, but I can tell you exactly why, in my humble opinion, she is not the right candidate right now. It's because she's myopic. The fact that she's so doggedly determined to stay on a course when it has so obviously failed is evidence that she is disturbingly similar to her predecessor, president Bush. I'm afraid that under her we would have had 4 more years of going full speed ahead in the wrong direction, even if it is in the opposite direction.

What has touched me most about all of this? How gently and patiently and respectfully the rest of the Democratic party has handled her, refusing to push her out or to criticize her. Even if she hasn't behaved with dignity, they have certainly treated her with some. It encourages me that there is still decency and a sense of respect for her intelligence and her abilities, for her position as a former first lady, and for the historical significance of what she was trying to accomplish and it reminds me of a time when honor and respect still existed in government.

Flying Trolley

I had a choir performance last week. True to form, I had no idea where it was.

Ok, I had SOME idea. It was taking place in Florence, Nebraska as part of Historic Florence Days. I drive through Florence every day on my way to work. The place is all on one street, maybe 4 or 5 blocks long, with a big park right off the way. We'd probably be performing in that park, I thought, but just in case we weren't I had my blackberry with me so I could pull up the directions in the email our choir director had sent. I always have a contingency plan.

I arrived at the park with plenty of time left. There was already someone in the park playing instruments and they didn't look like they were leaving any time soon.

"Maybe if I park here and watch, I'll see some of the other members pull up". I parked and waited. No one came. I started to worry. Time to pull out the directions. (Like a guy I always ask for directions only as a last resort, but unlike a guy I don't wait until the situation is hopeless.)

I found the email in my blackberry but when I scrolled down for the directions they were in an attachment instead of in the body of the email where I could have easily read them. "No problem" I thought, "I'll just open the attachments". But the attachments wouldn't open. I looked at the clock and my extra time was starting to melt away. What to do? I called the director but he didn't answer. I considered driving in to the office, logging in, and checking the email and I even started driving in that direction but quickly realized I'd never make it in time.

I parked my car and walked to a sidewalk book vendor who was part of the festivities. Before I could even ask I heard her say to one of her customers, "I'm getting ready to go hear the singers." Great!

"Where are the singers going to be?" I asked.
"Over at the old depot" she said.
"Where's that?" I asked. (You mean there's more to this place than only one street?!!)
Another lady, a customer, started explaining the directions to me, but my mind was racing too much to absorb what she was saying.
"Look" I said, "I'm one of the singers and I need to get there quickly."
"Oh, you're in luck" said the owner. "Here comes the trolley. He'll take you."
Great!

I stood at the curb and waited for the trolley. I hadn't paid a lot of attention to the directions but I had listened enough to vaguely realize he was pointed in the opposite direction of the depot.
"No problem" I thought "I've got plenty of time for him to circle the block and take me back. How big could Florence be?"

I got on to the trolley and explained my situation to the driver. He wasn't real clear but he did say he could take me and I made it very clear that I only had like 20 minutes. You can drive clear across the entire city of Omaha in 20 minutes.

I took a seat, smiling and saying hello to the other passengers, happy people with children and ice cream cones. The driver continued on his tour and it didn't take me long to realize that, despite my obviously desparate plea to go straight back to the depot, he was going to do his ENTIRE tour.

We went to a church, past a school where we stopped for someone to get off and buy fresh baked goods, and then turned down a dirt road. Oh dear.

I cautiously made my way up to the front of the trolley, not easy to do when it was wobbling around on the dirt road and I was still wearing the skirt and high heeled sandals I had worn for church that morning. "Sir", I said, "I really do need to get to the depot immediately." He said nothing." On my way forward I noticed he had a tip basket. I fished throuh my wallet. I had about 4 singles, a ten and some twenties. I only had a few minutes left. "Please, sir, if you could get me to the depot, I'm in a huge hurry and I'd really appreciate it." I dropped the ten in his basket to show him just how much.

The trolley lurched forward as he floored it. As we flew through the streets of Historic Florence I was pretty sure we were making history right then because it's safe to say that trolley has never gone that fast before or since. Oh, and he got me there on time. I even had time to warm up.

Spring Fever

I watched two robins playing in my backyard today. They were flitting about and I don't know how I knew, but I could tell something romantic was going on. "Oh how cute" I thought, thinking it looked like they were trying to mate.

Wait **nose wrinkling** how Do birds mate?

Anyway, one of them started making a lot of noise that vaguely resembled "get off of me"! The other one persisted and kept chasing about until they finally ended up in a patch where a lot of other robins seemed to be hanging out playing and relaxing. The fighting couple annoyed the happy robins and they all started to take off. "Hmm....Just like humans", I thought.

One robin continued to chase the other around the yard, not bothered by the fact that they'd annoyed all of their friends. "Hmm....must be the boy trying to pounce on the girl" I thought. Then I took a closer look. The smaller female was actually the one doing the chasing. It was the big boy who was running away.

"Awwwww....REALLY just like humans", I thought, smiling.

Blessings & Success

When you move to a new city there's no one, even after two years, who really knows who you are. Our lives are a crazy quilt of experiences that have shaped us and if we're lucky there are a few people who've been around long enough, and understand us well enough, that they know the story for every patch. My best friend is one of those persons. Without these people to vouch for our stories and explain our quilts, the rest of the world will just come to its own conclusions and will quite often get it wrong. That is frustrating. That is what I'm feeling right now.

My move to Omaha was the final step in reaching my life's goals. Not because I wanted to live in Omaha, but because moving here allowed me to take the last step in my career; the final step I had dreamt would define my career success. I know that sounds odd, but my dreams never included a specific place, just a description of my job and my lifestyle. And now I'm living it.

You would think that people would be happy for me, especially other Christians. You would think that when I say "look, look what the Lord has done" they would see me and say "Amen. Praise God". But they do not. They say "what makes you think you're so special that God would answer your prayers when he doesn't answer anyone elses?"

It's true, ladies and gentlemen. I don't know if the majority of Christians are this way, but the ones I keep encountering do not believe that God actually answers prayers. And so when I tried to have this conversaton at lunch last Sunday, I think I offended someone at the table. Yesterday the sermon was about, you guessed it, success, and how we don't know how to measure it, and the ways in which we measure it are not God's ways. And the minister, as he spoke, looked pointedly at me, or so it seemed.

I was shocked...disappointed...disillusioned believing (incorrectly) that that he was preaching a sermon about something I had said without ever hearing my side of the story first. A sermon based on heresay. This happened to my best friend years ago when we were in college. I no longer remember what the sermon was about, I only know that my friend was mentioned in a sermon or speech of some kind and she was highly offended, so much so that she stopped going to church there and eventually changed schools. She was only 18 or 19 years old and she handled it remarkably well for a young girl her age.

If this man knew me or anything about me he would be circulating petitions to make me the poster child for success. I was so shocked that I could imagine having a crisis of faith if I had been younger. I could imagine doubting the existence of God. But thankfully I am 38, not 18, and I felt, not a crisis of faith, but shaken in my belief in worship assemblies and ministers who think they know it all; men who forget to follow the caution they preach cause a world of trouble. Just look at Jeremiah Wright.

I prayed about this as I drove to work today, my best time for prayer. If I had been saying what he thought I was saying, then yes, that would be cause for alarm. People should not think they are better than other people, or that they are blessed because of their actions or because "God loves them more".

"We don't know", said the minister, "if something is a blessing or if we are a success until we look back."

I agree, and I do look back. I keep journals and I can go back almost 15 years and read my own words of prayer. I can (literally) look at my life and all around me and I can see the answers. I am sorry if everyone hasn't done this. But my telling of it and my rejoicing in it does not make me prideful. Has every prayer been answered? Of course not. But every answer is a blessing.

New note: Added June 4, 2008:
Of course I couldn't let things hang like that and let this fester, so I called my minister and told him how disturbed I was about his sermon, and asked him if there had been any discussion about the lunch conversation. I was relieved when he said no. I told him about my 15 years of journalling and he was really affirming. He said "Good for You" and told me that is exactly what he was trying to get people to do with his sermon. (He really IS a good minister & I felt guilty, but relieved and forgiven...whew)

Told ya the universe does that. Of course it could have been just that once the topic came up, people continued to talk about it all week until it finally worked it's way to the minister and he thought "ah hah, that would be a good topic for a sermon!" But I think if that had happened he would have told me.

Nahh....

New note added:
Looking back I think the reason I experienced this is so I could understand and relate to the traumatic experience of my friend. Thanks Universe.

The Problem with Blogging

The thing about blogging is that someone almost always inevitably reads more into a post than I intended. I once had to delete my entire blog because one of my reader’s thoughts got carried away. That’s why my blog profile says I’ve been a member since 2004, but my posts only date back to 2006. I deleted the two years that I wrote prior to moving to Omaha.

So now I can see it happening again. No sooner did I write about my “psychic connection” to an ex-boyfriend then I can almost see the weeds starting to grow and choke other relationships. Not to worry. Honestly, I have this sort of “psychic connection” with almost everyone I know and care about. I just wrote about him as an example because it’s particularly strong with him, not because we’re closer than most, but because we both have a quality I haven’t been able to articulate yet. I’m not a Star Wars geek, but the best way I can put it is “the force is very strong with both of us”.

Sometimes I meet people who have no “force” at all. He is the first person I’ve ever met whose signal is strong. I have nothing to do with him having it. It was there when I met him. Our meeting was a coincidence of someone who is really “loud” (him) meeting someone who has a really sensitive “ear” (me).

One of my qualities as a "receiver" is that I hear and reflect back, the result of which is that people who are around me begin to develop their own abilities. So if you and I, dear reader, have never shared a thought or called each other when one of us was thinking about the other then we probably haven’t known each other long enough or well enough. But if you hang in there and relax, I’m sure we will.

Grown-up Easter Barbie

Sunday morning. Here’s how it went:

8:00am. Alarm goes off: beep-beep-beep. Slap! Snooze.
Alarm goes off again. Slap! Snooze again.

Repeat above about 10 times. Why that many? Because I actually got up around 9:20 and the snooze goes off every 8 minutes.

Great. Now I have 10 minutes to get ready for church and 30 minutes to drive. Stumble to the shower.

Out of the shower. Glance at clock. That's ok, I can drive to the church in 20 minutes. 10 minutes to get ready and 20 minutes to drive.

Now what to wear? Hey, it’s Easter! That means I should wear something pretty. Pull out floral skirt. It’s probably too big. I haven’t worn it since I lost weight. Try on skirt. It’s not too big. Curse skirt and hang it back up. It’s too floral and Hawaiian-looking anyway. This is church not a luau.

Hmmm…what else? It’s cold today. Not Easter-like at all. Not like the South. Better wear something pretty AND warm.

Oh, there’s my long white linen skirt. Admire it. It IS pretty. Check the size. Definitely too big. Try it on. Yayyy!!!! It’s too big!! Definitely going to wear this skirt. And it’s ankle-length so I can wear boots! (I love boots.)

Now what top? Black linen with the white embroidery? Try it on. Hmm..verrry slimming. Looks good with skirt. Am I really that slim on top? I look almost delicate. Nevermind, black and white are definitely not Easter-y. Back into closet. Will keep in mind for funerals. But it's too pretty for funerals. Maybe for a festive spring funeral.

Hey there’s my yellow linen jacket with the ruffles all around the edges and sleeves. Never worn it. Verrrry feminine. Too feminine? It’s from J-Jill! It’s allowed to be too feminine. Anyway is there any such thing? Probably not. It’s Probably too big. Try it on. Hmm, lovely. Too big in a way that fits, not too loose.

Now, I have an outfit. Glance at clock. Ok, well I can get ready in 5 minutes and get there in 15.

Walk into bathroom. Pull my hair back. Why doesn’t it look right? And why does it look different depending on the angle I pull it back? Because they’re different angles, duh…now get a move on. Pull hair back and take it down. Repeat at least 10 times.

Well that took long enough. Don’t even THINK about makeup. Exit bathroom. Glance at clock. Ok if I leave now I have 10 minutes to get there.

But I need a coat. Which coat? And perfume.

Glance at clock. Drat!! 5 minutes!!!!!!!!! I’ll never make it!!!!!!!!!!!

Walk towards garage. Pass powder room mirror and get a glimpse of almost full length of outfit, including lime green coat which looked very Easter-y in the closet but on me just hangs.

Great. Everything’s too big. I look like a pastel-colored bag lady. Maybe I should…..

“Oh no you don’t” I think…….and mentally push myself out the door.

Made it. Only 5 minutes late. Service ok. Go to Easter brunch with girlfriend. Two little girls who are mixed half-black/half-white walk past our table holding the hand of their mother who is white. The older one looks at my girlfriend and makes a shocked face.

“Don't be shocked” I think, “You’re going to be one of us some day”. (Unless of course Barack Obama wins president in which case you'll get to be whoever you want to be and your skin color won't matter, I continue my mental conversation with her. )

They walk by again later. This time I catch her eye and flash her my best “grown-up Barbie” smile. She smiles back and gives me an “Oh my, you look like a princess” look. “Yes, and you’re going to be one of us someday” I give her a knowing look and a nod back. This time she looked like that would be just fine with her.

There, that's better.

Let There Be Light

The ultimate destination of faith is to come to that point where you realize that (1) eternity is a very, very, very long time and (2) no situation is permanent and (3) suffering may seem like a bad thing (OK it actually IS a bad thing) but imagine the monotony of a life with no struggles or growth...it would be like a world without seasons. Saying suffering isn't bad would be like saying winter isn't cold. It is, but you can avoid freezing and sometimes even manage to enjoy yourself.

I would love to live in a "spiritual Hawaii"......a world of no problems; a paradise. But to live in a physical world with changing seasons, well......... that is like living in Omaha, Nebraska. The winters are long and hard here to be sure, but not impossible and not nearly as bad or as long as they seem. Just like all suffering, it looks far worse to the people who aren't going through it. The dread of it is worse than the actual experience.

A friend of mine at work emailed me the story below. I've heard it before and probably you have too. But it is exactly what I think of Christianity. The people, believers and atheists alike, who believe themselves to be good people because of their own abilities are like candles that think they lit themselves.


Does Evil Exist?

The University professor challenged his students with this question.

"Did God create everything that exists?"

A student bravely replied, "Yes he did!"

"God created everything?" The professor asked.

"Yes sir", the student replied.

The professor answered, "If God created everything, then God created evil, since evil exists, and according to the principal that our works define who we are, then God is evil."

The student became quiet before such an answer. The professor, quite pleased with himself, boasted to the students that he had proven once more that the Christian faith was a myth.

Another student raised his hand and said, "Can I ask you a question professor?"

"Of course", replied the professor.

The student stood up and asked, "Professor does cold exist?"

"What kind of question is this? Of course it exists. Have you never been cold?" The students nickered at the young man's question.

The young man replied, "In fact sir, cold does not exist. According to the laws of physics, what we consider cold is in reality the absence of heat. Every body or object is susceptible to study when it has or transmits energy, and heat is what makes a body or matter have or transmit energy. Absolute zero (-460? F) is the total absence of heat; all matter becomes inert and incapable of reaction at that temperature. Cold does not exist. We have created this word to describe how we feel if we have no heat."

The student continued, "Professor, does darkness exist?"

The professor responded, "Of course it does."

The student replied, "Once again you are wrong sir, darkness does not exist either. Darkness is in reality the absence of light. Light we can study, but not darkness. In fact we can use Newton's prism to break white light into many colors and study the various wavelengths of each color. You cannot measure darkness. A simple ray of light can break into a world of darkness and illuminate it. How can you know how dark a certain space is? You measure the amount of light present. Isn't this correct? Darkness is a term used by man to describe what happens when there is no light present."

Finally the young man asked the professor, "Sir, does evil exist?"

Now uncertain, the professor responded, "Of course as I have already said. We see it everyday. It is in the daily example of man's inhumanity to man. It is in the multitude of crime and violence everywhere in the world. These manifestations are nothing else but evil.

To this the student replied, "Evil does not exist sir, or at least it does not exist unto itself. Evil is simply the absence of God. It is just like darkness and cold, a word that man has created to describe the absence of God. God did not create evil. Evil is the result of what happens when man does not have God's love present in his heart. It's like the cold that comes when there is no heat or the darkness that comes when there is no light."

The professor sat down.

The young man's name -- Albert Einstein

Match Dot gosh-darned Com

So I just changed my profile on Match dot com. First of all, may I tell you how much I hate actually being on that site? But I have found that starting out by telling guys how much you don't want to be online dating......is not a good way to start off.



I've been out with two guys, one of whom is quite possibly gay and who obviously (since I am calling him gay) has not been invited to read my blog. Ironically the gay guy (ok, ok "Metrosexual guy") is turning out to become a pretty good girlfriend. So here's a sampling of a possible profile...... :




When I was very young my aunts used to tell me I should become a model. (I know that sounds conceited, but stay with me here, I have a point). I didn't, because I didn't want to get paid to have strange men look at me. Now I'm a member of match dot com and I am actually paying money to have strange men look at me. How ironic is that?



So, what would you like to know about me? I'm smart, fun-loving and easy-going. I have a great sense of humor and can be very funny. I love to laugh. I like to play tennis, belong to the Jane Austen Book Club, and travel a lot, especially for work but also for personal recreation. I like to try to stay in shape so I just got some new excercise equipment delivered to my home because I find that with travelling I excercise a lot in hotels but when I'm home my workout routine gets interrupted. I hope you like to stay in shape as well. (Not that I expect you to be a model. Most male models are gay...not that there's anything wrong with that. A woman can never have too many gay male friends. Anyway...).



I like to think of myself as a citizen of the entire country rather than only one city. I am relatively successful. I'm very outgoing and everywhere I go I am constantly meeting smart and interesting people. I look for, and usually find, the good in everyone.



If you're still reading this then hopefully we have some things in common and if that's true then you are a rare and special person. If we actually do get a chance to meet I hope you will realize what a privilege it is just to call each other friends.



P.S. If you've changed your profile lately you'll notice that match dot com now gives us about a quarter of an inch of space in which to type a profile of 4,000 words, so you can never actually see what it is you just typed. What is up with that?

Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit

Went to New Orleans this weekend. Had a bachelorette party for "the bride". Well, not so much a bachelorette party as just a girls weekend. My brother asked me if he'd be seeing me on the next "Girls Gone Wild" video. That prompted many thoughts & questions in my mind...

First......What's he doing watching a Girl's Gone Wild" video? Yuck!
Second...I think at the age of 38 I no longer qualify to be called a "girl". At least I don't think the sleazeballs who create those videos would consider me one...
Third... If I did "go wild", I'd have enough sense not to do it on a video.
And fourth.... If he knew anything about my friends at all he'd realize I am the wildest one of the bunch, even if you consider them all collectively, which means there is absolutely zero chance of a video ever happening.

We must be the only women on the planet who've gone to New Orleans to celebrate a pending nuptial and went there to enjoy the food, art, culture, and weather. As boring as it sounds, we toured art galleries (my favorite was Galleria Bella on Royal street - check out Randy Cooper's wire mesh shadow art. It's the coolest thing I've ever seen. The shadows cast by the wire mesh actually show more detail than the mesh sculpture itself.) My favorite artists there are Antonio Gravina, David Chandler, and Marso Savaro. I also think I like Ann Copelan, but I'm not sure.

At a place called "the Brass Monkey" (yes, I know that sounds like a dive bar but it's actually a cool antique artifacts shop) I discovered Sabino glass, a type of glass made with milk. It has a blue-ish milky hue and it feels soft, like soap. I've been wanting to become a collector of something. You know how people collect teapots or mugs or thimbals or (if they're like my ex-husband) comic books. Well I've decided I'm going to collect Sabino glass! I decided to start my collection with the Rabbit. He's the little fellow you see up top of the post.

For years now rabbits have been becoming a sort of good luck charm for me. Whenever I see a rabbit something good is happening in my life. I first noticed it happening back around 2002. I would see a rabbit.....and then something good would happen. Or vice versa...something good would happen and then I'd see a rabbit. There's an old wive's tale in North Carolina that on the first day of the month you wake up and say "Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit" (with the proper accent of course) and it will bring you good luck. It doesn't matter what form the rabbit comes in. Sometimes they're stuffed. Sometimes they're real. last week in Wyoming I was working with one of the switchmen, sitting outside in the truck waiting for trains to go by, when I saw three white rabbits in the snow. First one appeared, hopping back and forth over the tracks, and then another, and then another. They were barely visible against the snow. As if to make sure I didn't miss my rabbits, the Universe sent me another one. We left our spot and drove over to where my car was parked. There in the grass in front of the building, near my car, so close I could have walked up and petted him, was a brown rabbit. He was just sitting there, not even afraid when we walked near him. I think I'm going to collect both bunnies AND Sabino glass.

The highlight of the weekend was having custom perfumes created for each of us at Borboun French Parfums. We got to name them. I named mine "Lyrical". I also have another scent but I don't want to reveal its name here. Anyway, they both smell heavenly, and the cool thing is that each of our perfumes smells exactly like us. That is, each scent matches the wearers personality. And amazingly, considering we made them all together, in one sitting, at the same time, none of the scents fit any of the rest of us nor do they smell similar to each other. I also had two amazing discoveries:

1. Almost anything smells good on me. Ok not almost. Everything smelled good on me. (I like to think it's because I am a happy person so my body chemistry created happy smells) And..
2. No matter what scent she put on me, after leaving them on a while they always combined with my body chemistry to end up smelling the same.

Another cool thing about this is that once they have your scents on file, they keep the formula. So friends and family can call or go online and actually order perfume, lotions, shower gels and whatever else they carry, either for me or for themselves, all in either of MY two signature scents. It's like the ultimate gift registry.

Not to worry, we did get our groove on at Bourbon Cowboy. There's nothing like walking past a wide open club full of people doing their version of dancing to some great R&B/Hip Hop sound to pull us in so we could "show 'em how it's done". Yes, the bride wore an "I'm the Bride" sash. And yes, we got up on one of the platforms and "performed". At one point we were joined up there by three other girls, so there were six girls dancing in all, three white and three black, all in sync, in a very small space. But the interesting part about this was there was not a drop of alcohol among us. None of us had even had so much as a glass of wine. We're just cool like that.

But what would a weekend in New Orleans be without jazz? We started the weekend on Friday night with dinner at Snug Harbor Jazz Bistro, followed by a live performance in the back room of the bistro by Ellis Marsalis, the grandaddy of the great Wynton Marsalis and the first family of jazz. We finished our weekend with brunch on Sunday morning at the Ritz Carlton hotel (we didn't stay there, we stayed at the adjoining Iberville suites which were much cheaper). The garden was beautiful. in all my trips to New Orleans I've never noticed how many beautiful courtyards there are. We had some time before our flight left Sunday afternoon so we decided to get in some shopping. Real shopping this time, not the art-browsing, "we're not actually here to buy anything" type we'd done the day before.

My friend, "the bride" got into a huge bruhaha at one of the stores where we were buying our designer knock-off purses. She had, against my advice, bought a Juicy Couture knock-off the night before, and then had carried it around to the various places we went, including dancing at the Bourbon Cowboy. I'd advised her against it, not because I was worried about the purse, but because one of the earliest rules you learn when you go out with a group of girls is "every girl watches her own purse", which as you grow older translates to "never carry a purse out dancing" to which was later added the corollary: "especially to a bachelorette party".

As she was buying the purse I had flashbacks to my early college years when I was still young and naive and I'd gotten stuck sitting at the table because I was watching the purses. It didn't take me long to figure out that the sooner I got up and got out on the dance floor, the less likely I was to be the one benched for the night. Hence the rule. The one thing all good bridesmaids know is that the rules don't apply to the bride, so I knew if she wanted me to watch that purse, I'd watch it. I was going for prevention. But here's the thing: Her maid of honor is her twenty-six year old sister. I'm not sure at what age you write the rules in stone, but I know it's not that young. The sister/maid-of-honor who outranked me insisted that she buy the purse RIGHT NOW. I don't know what the hurry was, but the bride bought it (both the advice and the purse).

The next morning when we went back to buy the fake Coach I'd wanted she noticed a rhinestone was missing from her purse and she demanded her money back. The store clerk pretended he couldn't find her original receipt (it mysteriously turned up later). There were all kinds of things wrong with this picture. The important thing to know is that while all of this was going on I noticed that we had thirty minutes left to get our luggage out of the hotel before my credit card was going to be charged for an additional half-day. While she was still arguing with the store clerk and waiting for the owner to arrive, I raced back to the hotel (20 mintes), up to our room, finished packing everyone's stuff, and had it packed and was loading it on a cart (10 minutes) when the bride and her sister returned. All my travelling experience came in handy. They had packed a lot of their stuff already but there was still a lot left lying around. I have packing down to an art science. I even knew who's stuff was who's and which pocket in which bag to put it so it's owner would find it. The girls walked in and checked. I hadn't missed a thing.

As we were leaving on Sunday, we were sitting in the New Orleans airport after our flight was delayed. The inbound flight at our gate de-boarded, and there strolling off as cool as you please as if he weren't the least bit famous, we spotted the great Mr. Ellis Marsalis.
Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit....

Insert Ego Here

I once had someone tell me that I am different in my emails and on the phone than I am in person. In other words I am, in his opinion, different in print than I am in person. No offense to my friend but this is utter and complete hogwash. I am exactly the same no matter what context you find me and anyone who knows me for any length of time knows this. Nevertheless, I respected his opinion. That was a year and a half ago and I've been pondering it ever since.


So if I'm not different then what is it that made him think so? What was different about me in person that wasn't coming through in print? The answer finally came to me today. The one factor that changed from one medium (print) to the next medium (face-to-face) was........him.


I remember once writing to him after he criticized me about something that it seemed to me that all of the things he was complaining about were my reactions to him or qualities that he brought out in me. It wasn't me he didn't like, it was the effect he was having on me. When I write, it is pure, but when we interacted his presence was affecting the message.


The odd thing is that this was not the first time this had happened. I had an ex-boyfriend who did the same thing, complimenting my character but criticizing me constantly whenever I was with him. He told me that if he ever had a daughter he wanted her to be just like me. "If you did" I asked, "would you want her to date a guy just like you?" You should have seen the look on his face.

Karmic Lesson about Karmic Lessons

In my post "Karmic Lessons" I pondered how every time I have a critical thought about someone I have a life experience to teach me what it feels like to live with their condition, and though I have been receiving those lessons for a long time, they now seem to be occurring with increasing rapidity. I didn't exactly phrase this as a question, but I did wonder why things seem to have speeded up....what used to take weeks or months to understand now happening in days. This, by the way, doesn't just happen with criticism. It happens with all my questions.
Case in point:

Today's sermon at church was called "The Dimmer Switch" and the point was (and I am typing this straight from my notes so I can get it right) from Larry Osborne:
"the longer we walk in obedience, the more subtle distinctions that were once indescernable become obvious....things that we would have never noticed at first suddenly can't be missed."

In other words, the lessons have always been occurring. Walking in obedience all of these years has enabled me to discern them better and apparently with increasing rapidity. I asked a question and I got an answer.

There's got to be some sort of term for this; that I could write a post about a situation - the gift of discernment in "Karmic Lessons" - and the post itself received an answer today, making it the perfect example of the condition it was meant to describe.

(If you're getting a headache reading this, just imagine the one I got trying to write it.)

Problems Men Never Have

Well, not most men anyway.....

Yesterday I attended a shower for my friend, "the bride". Afterwards one of my other friends left her purse behind and I was chasing her around trying to give it to her. I decided to try her cell phone but she didn't answer. I was annoyed. "Why doesn't she answer her cell?" I thought. Only after I located her and handed over the purse did it finally occur to me why: because it was probably in her purse and I had been carrying it around the whole time. In my defense, the ringer wasn't on. "This is the kind of problem a man would never have" I thought.

The theme for the shower was "Breakfast at Tiffany's" and we were instructed to wear our little black dresses and pearls. Earlier in the day just after I had gotten dressed and was standing in front of the mirror it struck me that this is how I look all the time. I think "Breakfast at Tiffany's" has never gone out of style in the south. I decided I needed to be a little more over the top and add a longer strand of pearls. It's funny how the mind works. As I struggled to fasten them, straining and trying to avoid my curly locks in the back, I wondered how old this particular strand was. Was this the strand I'd bought at a good department store or one of the cheap stores? Just as I had that thought I heard a pop followed by the "tap-tap-tap-tap-tapping" sound of pearls raining down all over my tiled bathroom floor as I pulled too hard and broke my necklace. I was heartbroken. Guess that answers my question.

You think that's all don't 'cha? Oh there was more.

Earlier that day I'd been putting on panty hose when I heard a menacing "zip"as my thumbnail ripped through and the run zipped up my leg. "Oh yeah, I forgot to file that nail". Good time to remember. But not to worry, I had a backup plan: spray-on panty hose. Yes, you read right. I got it at Walgreens to wear for New Year's Eve but it had been so cold I'd worn real panty hose instead. The weather this weekend was gorgeous and a shower with just a few of the bride's friends, most of whom I barely know, made this the perfect setting for my experiment. No crowded party, no public display to worry about, nothing could have been safer.

The way you put these "panty hose" on is you spray them (or "it") on your legs and then you rub it on like makeup. In fact that's exactly what it is. It's makeup for your legs. "Brilliant!" Later on at the shower I showed off my new legs. They looked airbrushed....just like a photograph. All the other girls were very impressed and asked where they could get some. Everything was great and I left the shower. After going to all that trouble to get dressed I wasn't ready to go home and undo it all, so I decided to stop by and visit a friend on the way home instead. The sun went down and it got cold...really cold....should have worn real panty hose cold.

Taking the Bit Too Far

My family does this thing I like to call "taking the bit too far". It's what happens when we are starting to become very comfortable with someone but we haven't completely established trust yet. We lose all sense of boundaries and we say whatever comes to mind, some of which might be better left unsaid. I don't know where this habit comes from, but we all do it, not just my immediate family, but every aunt, uncle and cousin. We all start at different ages but it's almost inescapable. For years I thought I'd escaped it but it turns out that I'm just a late-bloomer.

Meandering

Yesterday at church the sermon was called "Meandering". Without getting into the religious-sounding aspects of it, what I took away from it was that I might enjoy life more if I just relax and let things happen rather than trying to control every aspect. Sometimes it's better and healthier if things don't go according to plans. (Ok, he didn't say "relax". He said spiritual growth occurs when life isn't going according to plan and quite often this is actually a very painful time in your life but it's when the most growth occurs. (But you know I'm an optimist, so....))

I guess the lesson must have really sunk in because I had an 11:50 flight out this morning and I knew the moment I woke up that there was no way I was going to make it. Don't ask me why. There are various reasons, but sometimes I am just so overwhelmed with the amount of "stuff" I have to get done that I don't do any of it, and I knew this was going to be one of those days.

So around 9:00am I called our travel company and asked to reschedule my flight. The woman I got refused to even check on it. Apparently customer service on short notice wasn't her thing. You know those people who are great crisis managers who could get you out of a third world country just after a terrorist attack? She's not one of those people.

I got off the phone and pushed through trying to do my errands, hoping that maybe somehow I would make it in spite of myself. Around 10:30 I called the travel company again. This time I got a guy named Dustin who has helped me out in the past and who, I remember, is AWAYS helpful and positive. But even he couldn't get me out of this one. "If you miss your flight to Denver" he said, "you won't get a flight to Rock Springs (Wyoming) until 2:45 pm tomorrow". Well, that's no good because I have a a meeting tomorrow at 9:30 am. I told Dustin not to do anything yet.

I called the customer I have a meeting with and tried to reschedule. I couldn't get him. I left three voice mail messages. Finally out of desparation I got a receptionist to interrupt him in a meeting. He sounded annoyed but he said he would check his schedule. It started to sink in that if I reschedule and piss this customer off there may be repercussions in sales & marketing that will reverberate back to me. Could I lose my job over this? Over one lousy, "my sense of time is malfunctioning" day? I don't know but I think I'd better give Dustin another try and see if we can't make a miracle happen. I called the travel company back and this time I specifically asked for Dan.

"What if I fly to Salt Lake City?" I asked. "Could I get there tonight?" Dustin checked. After about 30 minutes of calculations and negotiations he got me a one-way ticket to Salt Lake City, a one-way car rental to drive to Rock Springs where I would drop that car off, exchange it for an SUV, and keep the same flight back on Thursday. Holy.....

I breathe a sigh of relief and disbelief. I can't believe it, but somehow I can believe it. I'm going to make my meeting. I'm not going to reschedule it. I'm not going to piss anyone off or be fired.

Now THAT is what I call SERVICE. "Thank you" I said, "you have been an ANGEL today". If I had a job to offer Dustin I would have hired him in a heartbeat. I should at least send him a fruit basket, but I don't know his last name. I vow to myself that when I get a chance I'm going to find out.

When I started meandering, I thought I'd lose my motivation to be a top performer. But Dustin's performance and dedication to his job somehow lit a fire under me. I decided right then and there that I would be more motivated on this project. If he was willing to do all of that just to get me there, then I owed it to him to do my best too.

My Lifelong Friendship with Books

"So, do you like Barnes and Noble?"

I can't tell you how many times I've been asked that question. I don't know why but the answer is always "No". I think I might be some sort of a book snob.

Growing up I read a lot. My best friends were characters in books. In fact I tried listing them here and am ashamed to admit that I have forgotten some of their names. Here are a few: Anne Shirley (Anne of Green Gables), Laura Ingalls Wilder, Pippi Longstocking (although I wouldn't have actually been friends with her because she got into too much trouble), Beezus & Ramona, Scout (To Kill a Mockingbird), The Little Princess, the March sisters from Little Women.....see...I've forgotten so many. I'll have to look them up and do a complete list here later so that I can keep them forever. In fact, this is going to be one of my evolving posts so watch for it to expand and change as I ponder this subject and my thoughts evlove.

I think of characters in books as real people and bookshelves as the places where their homes reside. Something about large book stores feels like my books have gone "Wal Mart". They're cheap and available to the masses and while I can appreciate that, it's just not a dignified place for them to be. They shouldn't be dwelling amongst "Car & Driver " magazine or "PowerPoint for Dummies" or all the other books that are for "non-readers". They should be in houses, libraries or in the best treasure chest of all, old book stores. I just love old book stores. When I walk through the doors I can smell the dusty pages and decaying covers and my mind instantly feels "mmmm.......I'm home."

I don't read as much as I used to. That's on purpose, by the way. I decided some time during college that I should spend less time reading books and more time getting to know real people. So if books are my lifelong friends, then like most of those, I haven't visited them lately. I don't stay in touch. I think about them every now and then and we pick things up as if we've never been apart, only for me to lay them back down again promising I'll visit more often and meaning it, but more often just hasn't seemed to come around yet.

Ya'll....I'm so drunk

(Don't be alarmed, I'm not really, that's just the title.)

I've been in Omaha for almost exactly a year and a half. I grew up in Carbon Hill, Alabama, a town of about 1900 people with an excellent school system. Most people say I don't have a Southern accent, but people with a good ear for accents can hear it loud and clear. In other words, it's there it's just very...hmm.....educated and correct. I can't help it, I've always talked this way. I can remember when I was growing up adults would ask me "how'd you get to talking so proper?" And I would think, "duh, because I can read and I don't want to slaughter the English language." Flippant thoughts for an 8 or 9 year-old so of course I never said it out loud or I would have gotten smacked across the mouth for it. When I drink at the bar or I'm around other southerners my accent becomes more pronounced.

My favorite bar in Omaha is Mick's. I especially like when there is anyone remotely classical playing. Last Tuesday they had my favorite type of music, rock/pop/folk with classical mixed in. There was a couple called Montana Skies with an electric cello. It was awesome. I was talking to the duo after their set. "What part of the south are you from?" they asked me. "Alabama" I said. "We grew up near Atlanta" they said. I could not hear their accent either so maybe they were avid readers as children, like me.

This week at another restaurant I was asked this question again. I gave my usual answer "Alabama, but people tell me all the time I don't have an accent". One girl said "oh I can hear it" and then she proceeded to ask me to repeat certain words over and over. "Aww, that's so cuuute" the crowd coooed. I have no idea what they were talking about, I didn't hear a thing, but we'd been sitting there since 7:00-ish and by then it was 11:00-ish. I'd had several drinks.

Today on the tiny little plane taking us into Rock Springs, Wyoming the subject came up again. "Oh I love southern accents" the lady in front of me said, "My father was from West Virginia so hearing that accent always makes me feel like home."
"I hear your accent" The guy sitting behind me chimed in. His accent was far more pronounced than mine and I told him so. He was a gentleman too. I haven't gotten motion sickness in years but the plane was moving a lot and I was sitting in the back. I almost passed out once and thought I was going to, well, hurl at least 3 different times. I turned to ask for his help. I didn't want to get sick on the nice lady in front of me. He hastily passed me the white bag from his seat pocket. "Here use this" he said. It turns out he'd spent 3 years in the military in Charleston, South Carolina but now lived back home in Ohio. "3 years?" I asked, "I spent 26 years in Alabama and you sound way more southern than I do." His accent was definitely more pronounced than mine. Or so it seemed to me.

I rarely drink during the day but on this particular occasion I'd had a long layover and had eaten lunch while sitting at a bar. (It's the only place you don't have to sit alone.) I'd gotten into an interesting discussion with an older woman who was a mechanical engineer in the aerospace industry and a young girl who'd recently graduated from nursing school and was going to New Orleans to help with Katrina relief. On the plane, the guy from Alaska sitting two rows ahead and to the right turned and said "Living in Alaska, I LOVE hearing a girl with a southern accent." I think he said something about melting but I'm sure I blushed and turned my head. The blood rushing to my ears made me tune him out.

In Dale Carnegie class we were told that our stories should always have a point, but sometimes mine just don't, or maybe I prefer to leave them open-ended and let people find their own points. So I'll end with a joke:
What is the mating call of the southern belle?
"Ya'll......... I'm so dru-unk".

Neverland

Up until I was about 4 or 5 years old, my sister and brother and I all slept in the same bedroom. That bedroom has always reminded me of the nursery in the Peter Pan stories. I don't remember how many beds there were in it at the time, but there was an old-fashioned dresser in between the beds. It was composed of a long narrow mirror in the center that reached almost to the floor, flanked by two shorter mirrors, and two sets of drawers that looked like built-in nightstands attached to either side, and a little bench (or maybe it was a dressing table) in the middle. It set in front of a large window that took up most of one wall. After hearing the story at school, I was convinced that one night that window was going to fly open and Peter Pan would fly in and all three of us would fly out with him.

My older sister, of course, was Wendy. My brother was John. I considered where I fit into this story. Since the only girls were Tinkerbell and Wendy, that left me to be Tinkerbell, and that made sense because I did have the most faith of us all and I was feisty like Tinkerbell. If anyone could believe we could fly, it was me.

I don't remember the color of our walls, but I do remember my uncles using an overhead projector to project bedtime stories onto them. It was like having a movie theater right in our bedroom. Like sleeping in a fairy land.

Just before he started school, my brother was moved out of the nursery and it became "the girl's room". I was upset. Where were they taking him? I know I must have made a fuss. My brother, although a year older, doesn't remember any of this, but I do. I remember one of my aunts (I don't know which one) was unusually patient with me and explained that he was a big boy now and he wasn't going far, just on the other side of the wall to sleep in the big boy's room. Whoever it was made me understand that it wasn't proper for him to continue sleeping with us. I looked around. None of the other big boys slept in this room so it all made sense to me.

Win / Win

Normally I would not care who's going to get the Republican nomination, but for some reason I found myself hoping for Huckabee. "Hey, what are you thinking?" my common sense interjected, "You should root for the WORST Republican candidate, that way Obama or Clinton will win". McCain should be way easier to beat. If Huckabee gets the nomination he'll get the votes of the nice Republicans who want to vote Democrat on the sly. McCain can't do that. More votes for Obama/Clinton! (I registered as an independent but I don't think I'm fooling anyone.)

For some reason my heart wouldn't give up. "But I LIKE Huckabee" I whined internally. "Hmmmm......well, one good thing about Huckabee is that if the Republicans do cheat and win like they have in the past, the American people will still have a good president." (pause while that sinks in.........) Huckabee it is!

Karmic Lessons

Ok, so I realize in my post "Clear the Transaction" the second story about the debit card contained absolutely no Karmic lesson at all. I know people read that with a puzzled look on their face thinking "did I miss something?" No you didn't miss anything. I edited out the real story because it made me look like a snob and because it made the post too long. But here's what actually happened.. .....

Before the manager came over, the clerk who had been ringing up my groceries noticed that one of my lasagnas was defrosted. "This is defrosted ma'am" he said, holding it up, "want me to get you a new one?" I wanted to say no. I should have said no because when I picked that lasagna out of the freezer I distinctly noticed that they all had wrinkly boxes and they all looked exactly like the one I had. But I shrugged and said "sure" thinking he was the expert. Then he called a kid over who looked pretty clueless but eager to help. He sent the kid to get my lasagna. "Great" I thought, "he'll never find it".

Why did I think that? Because this was no ordinary lasagna. This was Amy's Organic Lasagna and it isn't kept with the rest of the frozen food, it's on the opposite side of the store, so obscure that only I, the handful of people who buy that brand in a Baker's, and the person who stocks that freezer know where it is. Most people who buy stuff like that go to the tree-hugger stores like Wild Oats.

So while the manager was screaming out to the entire store that I could not afford to get a hundred dollars out of my account, and I was trying to keep my composure, the kid had darted eagerly off before I could think of a way to tell him that it wasn't where he probably thought it was.

I stood beside another young man who was going to push my cart out. I tried not to tap my foot or huff impatiently but I'm sure my demeanor gave me away. "What's wrong?" the young man asked generously. "Well, I know that kid didn't know where that lasagna was but I didn't tell him because if I'd told him it would be like insulting him before he's even made a mistake." The young man ,who was a little older than the kid, said something helpful and soothing. "How sweet" I thought. He is well on his way to understanding women. We stood there for about 15 minutes which feels like an eternity when you are blocking that narrow aisle of space on the way to the door. The kid finally showed up, panting.

"I can't find it" he said.
I didn't say anything but gave the other young man a look that said "what did I tell you?"
"It's not with the regular frozen food" I said. "It's in the produce section over there", I pointed.
Off the kid went again and returned in about 2 minutes.

The following weekend on the way out of church the lady who organizes our singles lunches told me where we were meeting for lunch. "It's the Olive Garden at Lakeside" she said "do you know where that is?" "Oh sure" I said and darted eagerly off. I know exactly where Lakeside is and how hard could it be to find the restaurant once I got there.

As it turns out, it was very hard. There had been a fleeting moment just before I had answered her that I thought I should ask her for directions just in case. About 20 or 30 minutes later I was still driving around Lakeside trying to call them on my cell to ask where it was.

"I can't find it"I said.
She didn't say anything critical, just directed me to the right location.
I arrived there in about 2 minutes.

I had to laugh as I realized I was experiencing exactly what that kid had gone through hunting for my lasagna. Ok so the kid wasn't such an idiot after all. The church ladies were much more gracious than I had been. They didn't tell me "I told you so" or lecture me on why I shouldn't be so hesitant to ask for directions. They were just happy to see me. They hadn't even ordered, but instead had waited patiently for me to arrive.

"Patience" I thought, "but that's not enough. Be gracious about it." Got it.

Getting to know you...

So I recently am corresponding with a new friend online and was asked about myself, how I grew up, my culture, etc. It's interesting how I was able to express myself as I wrote. I thought it would be good to post it in here.....

I grew up in Alabama and lived there for about 6 years after college and then moved to Chattanooga, Tennessee where I lived for about 8.5 years before moving to Omaha. My family is mostly in Alabama. I was raised by my grandmother who has since passed away back in 1994. I am the youngest of three. My sister, the oldest, died in 2003 and my brother, a year older than me, is in the Army in Tacoma, Washington.

My mom lives in Birmingham and I help take care of her. We've grown closer since my grandma died but the reason my mom didn't raise us is because she was considered too irresponsible by my grandma. As an adult I have learned that my grandma was right so I've been essentially mothering my mother and giving her the nurturing my grandma didn't. This past Christmas when my brother and I (who never fight) got into an argument, my mom behaved like a mother towards me for the first time. It was the best Christmas present I've ever had.

I was raised Church of Christ and I attend regularly. I don't want to sound like I am apologizing for my spirituality nor do I want to seem like I am chest-beating and proud of it. It's just simply who I am. If it helps, I am not into "rules". I think Christ came to show us how to love so we would no longer need laws. But different people are on different levels of maturity and some still need the structure of rules to define their limits. Religion is a matter of laws but spirituality is a matter of love, and love always comes first.

The Illusion of Race

I have decided that for U.S. Americans, race is just an illusion. I came to this conclusion for many reasons. My great-great grandfather "looked just like a Chinaman", I was told long ago by my grandma (or maybe she said Indian). This explains the Asian (Native American?) slant to my eyes. My father spoke with a Carribean accent (Or maybe it was French?...Congo?...who knows?). My sister-in-law is Asian. My niece is half-white. I stopped calling myself an "African American" about 10 years ago and switched to calling myself just "black" when I realized the term was designating my skin color, not my racial background. My success in life is due in large part to the wonderful schoolmates, teachers and community in the small town in Alabama where I grew up, most of whom were white, but all of us had every opportunity to be and do almost anything.

At my church there is a grown white woman whose sister and brother are black because they have different fathers. She's nearly my age, not one of the new millenial bi-racial kids you see now all over the place. Her nieces and nephews are both white and black. Her brother married a white woman so his kids look white. Her sister married a black man so her kids look black. Never in my life have I seen more evidence that all of us are only one parent or grandparent away from being either white or black in skin color.

When I still lived in the south I was stuck between feeling the racism of the past and behaving with the bold confidence of knowing I was equal. Thanks to my year and a half in Omaha, Nebraska I no longer struggle with that. I feel liberated and free to walk into any room or business and look around and know that I have more in common than differences. My expectations, demeanor, and attitude are the biggest contributors to my experience, not my skin color.

In countries where the entire population is still one ethnic group, race may still be considered a real factor, but no longer in the US. I hope that all Americans who have longed for equality to become a reality can now see in the victory of Barrack Obama in Iowa that their battle has been won. The fact that he can win Iowa means that racism is almost extinct.

I admit that I had not decided to vote for him for president. My support was leaning towards Hilary Clinton years ago before she even announced her candidacy, while she was still first lady. But to see the change in attitude of the entire country with the victory of Barrack Obama in Iowa is amazing. It's like the entire country is breathing a sigh of relief..."ahhhh, we are not the racists we thought we were" and "see, we were just waiting for someone who was really qualified". Previously in this post I had written that this country was in fact once as racists as we seemed to be, but I am going to recant that. I am changing my opinion on the idea that America is fundamentally and historically racist. I think if that were true the civil rights movement wouldn't have been successful. None of the progress towards equality would have been possible without the cooperation of all races. I am going to cling to that thought.

Recently several states have been issuing apologies for slavery. All rational inteligent Americans want to repent of slavery and racism and finally put them behind us and actually practice the values the current administration likes to pretend to have. An Obama victory might do more to restore a return to family values than anything any Republican candidate could do. It would bring about a huge healing process for the entire country. We might finally be seen throughout the world as the example of Democracy that we proclaim ourselves to be and perhaps be redeemed not only from the hypocracy of slavery but also from the humiliation and ignorance of the Bush administration.