I went to the post office for some back up postcard and international stamps. Gave away my first button in my personal project of giving out buttons to people I meet. Had some breakfast. Went grocery shopping (oooh pot roast soup? I’ll try that!) Saw this
Visited with Mom and had some lunch. She had a new snow pusher-thing for me which is great because the one I’ve had for years has decided at last to fall apart. And it’s snowing.
Came home, watched the birds for awhile and painted this.
Then what is good? The obsessive interest in human affairs, plus a certain amount of compassion and moral conviction, that first made the experience of living something that must be translated into pigment or music or bodily movement or poetry or prose or anything that’s dynamic and expressive – that’s what’s good for you if you’re at all serious in your aims. — Tennessee Williams
Tonight as I was leaving work, I was chatting with another co-worker (also in the “older” bracket of my worksite) about stuff. I was telling him what my next month’s goals were – world peace poetry postcards, sent also to legislative/congressional sorts etc. We both expressed amazement that all this stuff had been going on – for one week. Felt like months. He felt the same way.
As I drove home I was thinking about the chat and it now occurs to me that what I’d been describing – passing along articles and tweets and screenshots of tweets to my facebook pals, explaining how to vet things, where to find primary sources, keeping the story in the news – was much like what I’d just seen on a live feed of Elizabeth Warren talking to a protest crowd at an airport. She was holding a megaphone (apparently non-working) but she and the crowd had fallen back to the Occupy human megaphone technique. She’d say a sentence or part of one and the crowd around her would repeat it verbatim so the people in the back could hear it.
So be it. I can be like that. I can be the pebble tosser that maybe finally pushes someone to make a call or a donation or to talk to others about what’s going on.
Also today, I made a bigger than normal donation to WAMC our local public radio station. I rely on them for news and commentary and they’re rightfully concerned that the federal funding for public radio will be pulled. It’s not a big percentage of their budget but it’s a meaningful one. They added 1/3 of the amount they’d lose onto the fund drive that’s about to start and will keep that money squirreled away just in case.
I want to make a donation to ACLU but I need to button down the info for my company match first. Not gonna throw away the match!
Came home and this was in my mailbox. Between these and my big safety pin I think I’m in good shape.
This morning there was some yelling in the car when the news reported some high-up-somebody trying to fly the Sept. 11 flag to convince me why we had to shut out foreign visitors and refugees. Yeah there was yelling. STFU. You don’t get to fly that flag. Not that flag.
On the way home tonight this popped up in my playlist (see below) and I thought about what’s going on. Yes I was very sad in 2001 and I’m still sad – at all the innocent lives lost and the state of the terrorists’ world that would allow them to bring such violence.
But I’m not shutting down my hope and belief in freedom and peace because of an idiot’s yelling about fear and terrorism. That’s not what our country and people is all about. My facebook feed is pretty much all news reporting, suggestions on actions to take, who to write, where to go, opinion pieces, with some breaks for funny (or biting) cartoons and some art and kittens.
So yelling big-wig (ha! ha!), not on my watch. No more doing things in my name without my approval. I don’t approve.
I signed up for “World Peace Poetry Postcards” for February and hope to send postcards not only to the other writers on my list but to people who are supposed to be watching over the country, doing what’s right for the citizens, protecting the core values of the Constitution. I’m sure there all so overwhelmed that none of them will read my postcards. My hope is that maybe a postal worker will. Maybe a congressional staff person.Maybe the person who takes out the trash. Maybe that card will bring them a moment of peace, a little bubble to surround them even briefly. To give them strength.
In the political arena, kindness is the giving up of domination and vendetta, and the recognition of others’ points of view, their needs, and their history. Violence and war, on the other hand, appear more and more as remarkably gross and inefficient ways for resolving the world’s problems — a method that generates rage and thus new violence, chaos, waste of resources, suffering and poverty. — Piero Ferrucci, The Power of Kindness, The Unexpected Benefits of Leading a Compassionate Life
What happens when you get out of your own thoughts and pay attention, via The Writer’s Almanac, commemorating the birthday of W. Somerset Maugham. He’d become a doctor and practiced in the slums of London.
I saw how men died. I saw how they bore pain. I saw what hope looked like, fear and relief; I saw the dark lines that despair drew on a face; I saw courage and steadfastness. I saw faith shine in the eyes of those who trusted in what I could only think was an illusion and I saw the gallantry that made a man greet the prognosis of death with an ironic joke because he was too proud to let those about him see the terror of his soul. — W. Somerset Maugham
They also quoted him as saying this, which is a strong argument for a solid education system that fosters a love of reading:
To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life. — W. Somerset Maugham
Winter’s here. Yes there was some sleety, snowy, mixed-precip sorta stuff but tonight friends, there was roof avalanching.
After a day of reading news stuff and trying to wrap my head around what a person might do, I watched a movie (tiny dose of Cumberbatch – August Osage County) and then I headed off to make paint hit paper. Has luck would have it, a piece of Arches came to hand so I felt it just had to start off well. Now it really needs to dry before finishing and that’s ok because I’m sort of finished myself.
I was looking at the 10 Actions in 100 Days website and thinking about sending postcards (seem to do that pretty regularly although not on political topics) and then remembered that February is National Haiku Month. In the past I haven’t done a theme throughout the month although some days generated multiple haiku around a subject.
So folks, I’m going to try writing haiku on National Topics of Interest (to me, anyway) and I’m going to send them out into the world on little pieces of paper and see if a ripple happens somewhere.
If you want to generate a back and print it, here is a link to the 10/100’s printable postcard site. You could come up with your own or use commercially available postcards to send your own messages, haiku or not.
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