Incognito Breeder

White Trash Martha

As previously mentioned, I'm hosting Thanksgiving this year. This is not necessarily a bad thing. I like to cook, I'm good at it. But I have a secret, hidden part of my personality that goes anal-apeshit over event planning. Normally laid-back, go with the flow, it's all good-me gets incredibly Type-A with invitations and menu planning and scheduling and putting together an interesting and diverse guest list. People who think they know me are completely baffled when this trait rears its ugly head, I'm Sybil in an apron.

I'm only expecting ten people at dinner, but I've already cooked two pies, and ordered two more. I have a twenty pound bird, two kinds of cranberry sauce, and vegetables galore. While I'm mindful that four of my guests will be under the age of ten and unlikely to eat any vegetables and there will be two adults currently on restricted diets who should not even look at pie, I have an emotional and irrational concept of what should be available at any Thanksgiving. And that means that I must have both squash and sweet potatoes, no matter how similar they are and how unlikely it is that anyone will eat the sweet potatoes.

The other issue is my need to try new things. I've never baked a pecan pie--we should definitely have pecan pie for Thanksgiving this year. Nevermind that we must have apple and pumpkin or else I will go into an combo sugar-addicts DT/event-planner OCD downward spiral, ignore that. We shall have pumpkin, apple AND pecan. Oh, and then there's the chestnuts. You often hear, this time of year, about chestnuts roasting and chestnuts by the fire and as I browsed Epicurious.com the other day, trolling for new ways to serve broccolli, it occured to me that I've never roasted a chestnut. I don't know how. Declaration: "We should have chestnuts for Thanksgiving!" I found a recipe for wild rice with roasted chestnuts. No one will eat it. I don't know why I'm doing this. And at some point during dinner my Dad will point out that I have enough food for twice as many people, and did I "really think anyone wanted to try lemon crumb broccolli with dried tomatoes, I mean, what's traditional about that?"

Traditional doesn't really fit our family, though, and I find it sad when we try to slip on that tiny, tight shoe. For instance, my apartment consists of a living room/kitchen area that's basically one big room divided by a half-wall, plus the two bedrooms and the bath. It's kind of like a loft and there's no dining room. There's no dining room table. I have one bistro table covered with antique postcards, surrounded by red vinyl diner chairs from the 1940s. Even though half my guests will be kids, I can't seat us all around a two-foot square table, right? But on the porch I have two more cafe tables. Wrought iron, round, black tables that I got from a friend of mine who works for one of those national chains of restaurants that sell bread and coffee and stuff. With each table I grabbed three black, bistro chairs.

After I finished bleaching the kitchen the other night, I brought the cafe sets into my kitchen and set them up with the postcard table. It's Cafe Breeder, seating for 10! The G-Man looked over the scene and observed, "We need centerpieces."

(yes, I still think he's straight)

But having bought two pies and food for thirty, I don't have the resources to buy flowers or paper mache turkeys. Besides, the tables are so small, there's no room for anything elaborate. I looked on my bookshelf at vases and photos, trying to find inspiration. "What would Martha do?" Martha always uses something she has on hand, a jade green tea cup filled with mums from the garden; a tall, straight, modern, glass vase filled with pine cones; soap carved with a shiv into the shape of a cornocopia. I looked at my bookshelf filled with toys and I got an idea, an awful idea. The Breeder got a wonderful, awful idea.

With some construction paper and tape I went to work. Now, on table one is Velma from Scooby Doo and Sigmund the Sea Monster. Velma has an Indian headress and Sigmund is sporting a pilgrim hat. Table two features Bart Simpson and Patrick from SpongeBob in Thanksgiving garb. And table three sports a four inch wooden tiki with turkey feathers (turkey-tiki, say it, it's fun!) and Pee Wee Herman in a Pilgrim girl bonnet. I may be ghetto, but I'm ghetto-fabulous!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Nine

"I can always tell when the holidays are coming by the way that the house smells," observed G.

"How's that? The turkey? The Christmas tree smell? Pumpkin pie and gingerbread?" I asked, such a good mom I am, giving my child wonderful memories of the holidays to look back on.

"No, it just smells clean," he said.

"Oh, like that's a new thing?"

He looked at me sideways and disappeared into his room, leaving me on my knees on the kitchen floor. I had a spray bottle of Clorox kitchen cleaner in one hand, steel wool in the other. In a desperate attempt to clean our dingy, linoleum floor before Thanksgiving I was bleaching and scouring, Cinderella-style. The house smelled less lemony fresh, more like the indoor pool at the Y, and the chlorine was burning my throat and lungs. Worse than that, it didn't seem to make much of a dent in the gray film on the tiles.

I'm not sure why I was going to such lengths, our guest list was limited to my Dad and brother, Tim, who live together in such bachelor filth that the Queer Eye Guys and Fear Factor could combine their efforts and do a two-hour crossover special live from their condo; and my brother TJ, his new girlfriend, their newborn son and his twin daughters. It's not a crowd that's expecting a Martha Stewart Thanksgiving, a Swanson's Turkey (mostly white meat) Dinner would suffice.

Taking a break from the kitchen, I stood next to an open window, gulping the cold, fresh air and looking over our stock of videos and DVDs. "How old are the twins?" I asked G-Man.

"Well, Uncle TJ has a new girlfriend and a new baby, right?" yelled G from his room, "the girls must be five."

It was an educated guess, every five years or so my brother's latest victim gets tired of his bullshit and throws him out. He immediately finds himself a young woman with self-esteem issues severe enough for her to overlook his bright, red, plummage of warning flags. They date, once, twice, he takes her to the Olive Garden, nine months later I'm an Auntie again and TJ has a place to live for the next five years. Don't knock it. Twelve years and five kids later it's a proven successful strategy.

"We should rent a video to keep them entertained, or I'm afraid they'll just torture the kittens," I suggested.

"Not Ella Enchanted," insisted G.

"Oh, come on, they're five year old girls, they'll love it."

"Mom, you watched it three times last weekend."

"I need to start dating again, huh?"

Again with the sideways glance and he ducked into his room.

I resumed my position on the kitchen floor. Wax on, wax off, Daniel-san. It's good for the gramma-triceps,  good for the shoulders, weightwatchers would have to give me at least 2 points for the whole floor. 3, if I did the bathroom, too.

"Mom?" G-Man slipped back into the kitchen,  "I want to know the truth, I can handle the truth."

"No, we're not renting A Few Good Men for your cousins."

"Huh?" he's sarcastic, like his mom, but without all the pop culture references, "I want you to tell me if there is really a Santa Claus."

I'm on my hands and knees, my green sweatpants bleached to a pale yellow, his big feet are under my nose, his shins are newly furry with dark brown hair. I look up at him, I mean I look up at him, damn, he's getting tall. His face is longer, he's developing a unibrow. It is furrowed with concern, "Tell me, truly, I'll be ok."

I sit back on the floor, take a moment, exhale the chlorine, a scent now forever associated with the end of innocence and wonder, "No. Not the way you think of Santa, no."

His head dipped slightly and he nodded, "I'm ok with that," he said, "so you buy all the presents?"

I nod.

"But we're broke," he correctly observed.

I pulled him down to the floor with me, sat him in my Indian-style lap, and wrapped my arms around him, I thought of winters when we ran out of heating oil. I thought of the succession of shit-box cars with the rust and bald tires. I thought of our first apartment, the one where I  told the landlords that G-Man was my brother's child who I babysat while he worked because they wouldn't rent to a single mom, which worked pretty good until he learned to talk and started calling me 'mama,' but I digress. I thought of all of these things, and how my big, sweet, sarcastic, furry boy has survived them all, "We'll that's the spirit of Christmas, I guess," I said, "and that's what Santa really is, you know, the spirit of giving."

He tucked himself into my hug and nodded, "It's good to know." He didn't sound very convincing.

"And there was a Saint Nicholas, of course," I added, because he seemed to need to hear it. "He was a real saint, very generous to the poor and good to children."

"That's true," he agreed, "and there was that time that we left out the reindeer feed on Christmas Eve and it was all over the driveway in the morning."

Innocence is not lost in an afternoon, growing up doesn't happen overnight, for any of us. I held him in my lap as he held on to the grains of his childhood for a little bit longer.

Something Positive

I've been a big ol' cranky pants lately, huh?  Sorry for that. It's not that I'm suddenly a nasty, icky person. I've always been a nasty, icky person. I just have more need to vent it lately. First, because I'm horrified by the state of my beloved country. Second, because I have very limited minutes and can't call friends to vent verbally. Hope you understand.

So, today, I'll put something positive into the world. My good buddy Brian  occasionally publishes a Short List of  Reasons to Live. Today, I offer mine.

1. G's school pictures came out blemish free and goofy lookless
2. I've got a really great job for sane and talented people who only sometimes ask me to work in PowerPoint or Word and always balance it with opportunities to shake my booty in something sexy).
3. The recent addition of another beautiful, healthy baby to our family.
4. He ain't mine.
5. I was born in Canada, if things get ugly they'll just have to take me back.
6. Veritek, Damon, Schilling, Ortiz et.al.
7. Little clementine oranges, damn I love those bitches.

Awright, have a good weekend, no road rage in the grocery store parking lot, ok guys? Remember, take the good karma in, breathe, let the bad dogma out, repeat.

The Walmart

Massachusetts, the last bastion of securlar humanism in our country, has successfully held the Walmart at bay in our state. I believe we only have a handful of the stores in the Commonwealth, and most of them are located in towns we've long given up all hope of redeeming, like Lynn. I don't often see the Walmart, nevermind shop in one.

Recently, I was in Maine and I needed to pick  up school supplies for the G-Man. There were no Targets in the area, so I went slumming in the local Walmart.  It wasn't a wholly unpleasant experience, much like the pretty girl who enjoys hanging out with her funny, albeit obese, girl friend, the encounter left me feeling comparitively superior to my countrymen.  And after a quick shower, to remove the light film of pork rinds that had settled behind my ears, I could be described as almost perky.

I did notice something, and in light of recent corporate decisions by the Walmart, I'd like to discuss that thing now. I noticed, in the electronics section, that Walmart only carries "Clean" versions of many of our popular music titles. "Clean" versions of 50 Cent, Nelly, Eminem, etc. What exactly denotes "Clean?" Is it the content? The context? Or is it the presence of "dirty words?" I believe it is the dirty words that defines a CD as clean or explicit. Am I wrong? I'm asking, here, if you know, please, leave comment.

The reason I ask is because the Walmart has opted not to carry George Carlin's  When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops?  or Jon Stewart's America, The Book  because they were deemed offensive. I'm not privy to the thought process behind the Walmart's decision, but I believe the press release stated that Stewart's book was not carried because it contained photoshopped images of the Supreme Court in the buff. Carlin stated on the Tonight Show that he chose his book's title specifically because it offends all the major religions, but I'm under the impression that the book is not in the Walmart because the cover shows George photoshopped into the Last Supper in place of Jesus. As Leno pointed out, this makes it a picture of thirteen guys having dinner and what's wrong with that? But I digress.

What I want to understand is why the "clean" version of D12's song, My Band, is safe for American consumpton with lyrics like;

So I get offstage right, drop the mic
Walk up to these hot chicks and I'm all like
"Sup ladies, my names Slim Shady, I'm the lead singer of D-12 baby"
They're all like "Oh my God it's him!, Becky oh my f**king God it's Eminem!, I swear to f**king God that you f**king rock, please Marshall please let me suck your c**k"

(Please note, that's the CLEAN version. All askterisked words are BLEEPED. So it's ok for you to buy it for your kid. They won't know what Em's talking about. It's like those Warner Brothers' cartoons with the jokes that go over your head when you're a kid, but you get it later... junior won't have a CLUE what the bleeps refer to.)

OK, and we're all going to hell if we see Ruth Bader Ginsburg's photoshopped titties? 

The Horror

I had a dream last night, a nightmare, really. I dreamt that it was the end of the world and in a flash of light, everyone wearing a LIVESTRONG yellow bracelet was struck down dead. The survivors were then gatherered together, school assembly-style, in what looked like a rather large Starbucks.  The coffee shop was decorated for the holidays and the staff served us pumpkin spice lattes and gingerbread cake. The last thing I remember, before I woke, was the Archangel Gabriel perusing the Norah Jones Artist's Choice complilation, looking up and casually inquiring, "Does anyone here know Flash?"

Roger

It snowed this weekend. It was our first snow of the year and it was quite respectable at 4-6 inches, more impressive than some of my ex-boyfriends. The G-Man, being nine years old, was deemed old enough to share in the shoveling responsibilities. I sent him out at 9 a.m. with a shovel and a broom and instructions to clear the stairs. I hoped he would manage to shovel all the stairs, the two sets that led up to the porch and the 40 stone steps that ascended from the parking lot to the house. But I knew, if he managed to clear the porch stairs it would be a major accomplishment.

Ten minutes into the first set of steps, he showed up at the front door and asked for hot chocolate. "Not until the stairs are clean," I said, evil slave driver. He hung his head and dragged his shovel behind him, back to the mines.

Twenty minutes into the first set of stairs, (there are six steps in this set,) he showed up at the front door complaining that neither his shovel nor his broom were effective against the white, fluffy stuff. "I don't care what you use, use your hands if you must. I want the stairs clean." Such a bitch am I, an overseer.

It was now obvious that the 40 stone stairs would crumble to dust before my son set his eyes on them. I pulled on my jacket and gloves and grabbed a shovel and headed out to tackle this part of the job. It had been 30 minutes since G started on the six stairs outside my front door. He was on the second stair. He was clearing them with a little garden spade that I use for repotting my plants. I opted not to comment, as he was following my explicit directions to use any tool he deemed useful.

One hour after I sent my big, strong, youthful son out the door, I have cleared the front path, the 40 stone stairs, my car, part of my neighbors' truck, (yes the Vegas light neighbors, I have to realign my karma, somehow.) Our neighbor's son, the one with the banjo and the Deliverance cameo, came out with a shovel. He cleared the second set of stairs from the porch and started to help the G-Man with his lot. G was on his fourth stair. I hollered at Banjo to cease and desist. G-Man hung his head dejectedly and continued to spoon snow with my garden tool, one---spade---at---a---time.

Banjo reemerged from his door with a sled.  My son, kneeling on the sixth step and only starting to clear the fifth one, looked up at Banjo longingly. G was the starving man in the Warner Brothers cartoon, hallucinating that Banjo carried not a sled, but a four foot tall rack of ribs. He was salivating. If my sneakers weren't full of snow and my gloves not soaked clear through, I would have found this entertaining.  But it was an hour and a half since I first asked him to shovel and he had only cleared four and a half steps.  I was not amused.

The promise of sledding seemed to provide the fuel that my impending displeasure did not. The G-Man completed the last two steps in record time and bounded down the hill with new found energy to request permission to go with Banjo across the street to the new park. Right in the middle of the new park is a big hill. G looked at it and thought, snowboards, toboggans, somersaults. I looked at it, remembering the landfill that was there only a year ago and thought, broken monitors, used cars, toxic waste, hypodermic needles.  Still, what good is youth spent sheltered from biohazards? "You may go, but only if you bring the radio."

With thoughts of the new park across the street,  I had recently purchased a set of two-way radios with a 3-mile radius, "Get the 8-Mile ones, Mom!" pleaded my Eminem-obsessed son. But the 8-mile radius radios were $20 dollars more and where did he think he was going? Boston? The 3-mile ones were fine. I figured I could take walks in the park while G played Game Cube. Should he burn down the house, he could buzz me, "Mom, not to interrupt your workout, but the house is in ashes. Don't worry, I got the kittens out. Can I have a snack?" And G could play with Banjo, a boy I'm convinced will get my son arrested before his thirteenth birthday, and I could buzz him from the house, "G-Man, I don't want to cramp your style but I'm watching from the porch and I was wondering if you have permission to hang that small dog from the slide by his tongue?" It was a wonder of modern technology. This would be the first time we'd put it to use.

The G-Man, Banjo and Banjo's friend, let's call him Rusty, all headed over to the park, sleds and snow skates in tow. I could see them from the porch for a while and then I couldn't. I buzzed my son on the radio. No response. I buzzed him again. Nothing. I thought of the brook on the other side of the big hill. I thought of that scene in the beginning of It's a Wonderful Life when George's little brother, Harry, falls through the ice.  I buzzed him once more. Silence.

I was ready to run across the street to pull my cold, dead son from the depths of the icy retaining pond, when I saw the boys climb over the crest of the hill. G saw me. He waved. I buzzed him again and got nothing and I realized he had turned off his radio. "Well," I thought, "we'll have a little talk about the purpose of the radio when he gets home."

Bzzz. My radio buzzed.

"Yes, G?"

"Mom?"

"What's up, hon?"

"We're coming home," he said.

"Do you want me to help you cross the street?" It's a busy street.

"Nope. We're good," he replied.

"Mom?"

"Yes, G?"

"Can you have three cups of hot cocoa ready when we get home?"

"Sure, G."

"And heat up some of that turkey chili, too, with the cheese and the crackers."

"Would you like fries with that?" I asked coldly.

My son, never one for sarcasm, cheerfully buzzed back, "nope, crackers will be fine." And then he turned his radio right off. Slave driver, he is. Overseer.  I stepped out onto the porch and found  my garden spade, a useful tool for serving chili.

 

Night Out

I had a night out.

Those with children know how loaded those words are. A night out. Granted, it was a Wednesday night, and I was obliged to attend an interactive award ceremony for work, (cash bar, check out the fajita station.) But it was a night out and the G-Man was--get this--sleeping over  his friend's house! That's like the night out that never ends!

Perhaps, I had set my expectations too high.

At 4:30 p.m. the afterschool program called. G was sick, sore throat, getting a little warm, very whiny, he probably should go home. "But I have a night out!" I cried. The afterschool teacher was well aware of my itinerary. She had his travel bag with sleeping bag and stuffed animal and PJs appropriate for sleepovers (less of the Superman Underoos or pervy longjohns, more on the sweatpants and t-shirt tip.) She had his permission slip to leave with his friend's mom. She knew. She suggested I talk to him.

"Hi, Mom," he croaked into the phone. Oh, if I lived in L.A., the money I could make on my little thespian.

"Hey, G. How are you feeling?" asked my external voice as my inner monologue cried, "don't say it, don't say it..."

"I'm ok," he responded, and I heard his voice crack. Not a sore throat crack, but a --"I'm trying really hard to be brave, but I want to cry"--crack. Damn it, he wasn't faking it.

He insisted that he wanted to sleep over his friend's, but I decided that he shouldn't. I was torn. Not only did I want my night out, but I'm new at this job and I felt like it was important to put in some face time at this event. We were nominated for two awards, we bought a table. There was supposed to be an amazing dessert bar.

I called G's friend's mom. She's a single mom, too, she knew I was torn. She knew it wasn't just because of the promise of cannollis and cheap wine. She had been in those "must make face time" situations before. She offered a compromise, "I'll pick him up, give him dinner, put him to bed. You pick him up tonight and stay home with him tomorrow. There's nothing you'll do for him in the next three hours that I can't do. And I have cable." The cable sold me. I called the afterschool program and explained the arrangements and went to the awards.

From the hotel I called her house. "He's fine," she said, "he perked up as soon as we left school. I think he has a cold, but that's all. He's been talking my ear off about manga and South Park (which he's not allowed to watch-ed.) and he wants to sleep over. Do you want to talk to him?"

I did, and he was fine. He must have been exhausted with school. He did have a cold, but that was all. He wanted to stay. My night out was back on.

The ceremony was goofy. Lots of jokes about the election, lots of marketing chicks in Sex in the City ensembles, lots of geeky guys who looked like they wandered over from a Weezer concert. A word of caution, dear readers,  if you're asked to speak at a convention or an event with big huge screens on either side of the stage that will broadcast your face at billboard magnification, spend the cash, get the facial. Nobody knows the blackheads I've seen... yuck.

When all was said and done and the band had played both Mustang Sally and Smoke on the Water, we had lost in both our categories and it was time to go home. It was 9:30 p.m.

But I've got a night out! I've got an overnight, the night out that never ends! Nobody cared. It was Wednesday. I could go home, to my empty apartment, to G's two cats, to laundry waiting to be folded, a dishwasher needing to be emptied, to Christmas lights hung before Thanksgiving giving my house the glow of a whorehouse in the middle of the Nevada desert. I didn't want to go home.

Other people were out. I saw them as I drove through the city. They waited outside bars, having a smoke, meeting their friends. They were college kids and twenty-somethings. They wore jeans and t-shirts. In my skirt and heels, I looked like a suburban mom on my way home from a PTA meeting. I was alone. I wouldn't blend in. It would be pathetic to try. But I didn't want to go home.

I could catch a movie...  too lonely.
I could hang out in a bookstore... too late.
I could drive around aimlessly and listen to talk radio... too psycho.

I could go home and open a bottle of Knob Creek, pour myself a glass, squeeze a lime and think of how my life would be without the little G-Man. Think of how things will be in a few years when he's a teenager and every night is a night out, me home alone, with the cats.

Or  I could go home and make a cup of tea, write a little, sketch some snowflakes for work, read a magazine, and plan trips to Ireland, where I will wear jeans and a T-shirt, and wander around bookstores, and sit alone in a pub with no worry about my age writing postcards to the G-Man on his own back in the States.

Take a Left at Nasty, Straight Past Bitch and On Till Morning

Does anyone remember where I left my happy place? I think it's back at Fenway, maybe it's on Tybee Island, I don't know. I haven't been able to get back there for a week or so and it's eating me up. And not in a way that's resulted in any weight loss, which would have made my anxiety somehow worthwhile. 

I live in a two family house. My neighbors upstairs are nice folks, married couple, one kid. The husband has another son from a previous relationship who visits every-other-weekend. He's four years older than the G-Man, but slow enough for the age gap to matter little. They play video games and raid my fridge. They go for bike rides, and G reminds him to wear a helmet to protect against head injury. His Dad doesn't see this as a problem. I tend to agree.

Don't get me wrong, he's a nice boy, but he's the kind of kid that gives a parent that gut feeling. An intuition that says, "If the police show up at my doorstep in the middle of the night and ask me if my son has access to plastic explosives, this kid will be involved in some fashion."

The couple upstairs, they're good enough people. We don't socialize. Not that I haven't tried. I've invited them to soirees at Chez Breeder. I've sent up treats. I always say hi. But somewhere along the way I alienated my neighbors. The wife has sent her husband out to tell me that my Weber Smokey Joe Grill is, well, smokey. He insisted that I pick it up and move it...

...while it was full of hot coals.

We don't have much in common. I confess I have looked askance at her acid-wash, Winnie the Pooh embroidered jacket. I know. I'm a snob. I have a $40,000 art degree which grants me license to cast aspersions on that which I deem esthetically offensive. Which brings me to my issue...

Last night my neighbors decided to decorate for Christmas. I will refrain from going on what would be a seven page rant about decorating the house for Christmas before Thanksgiving. There's not enough alcohol in my desk here at work to bring me down should I go ballistic on that one. They decided to decorate the front porch for Christmas. The first floor porch, the wrap-around porch that stretches from their door in the front of the house, to mine on the left side. Surely, they could keep their jolly light hanging on their own turf? This summer, when I hung my simple, elegant, white-trash-with-aspirations single strand of white lights on this porch, I kept it to my side of the house. This is my dance-space, this is your dance-space, no spaghetti arms, dig? But no.

I walked out my front door to see my lovely, garden party,  light string yanked down from all its hooks but one. Hanging, half-assed, from one bare nail, right down the middle of my doorway, like a suicide corpse. In its place, strands of "icicle lights". Ok, I've bought them, too. They looked much better from a distance, in the dark. During the day, up close, they are knobby strands of seaweed, dangling, dripping. I don't love them, but I don't hate them with the heat of a thousand suns. That passion I save for people who mix colored Christmas lights with white Christmas lights.

I know there are people who are strongly pro-colored lights, and others who are vehemently white lights only. I would go so far as to say that this is not a blue state/red state issue. I believe the party lines are split evenly across these United States. I know of marriages that have been saved by the exterior/interior compromise of 1978, by which the party of the first part agrees that the tree shall only be decorated in white lights if the party of the second part confirms that the house shall only be decorated in colored lights. Or the reverse can be true. But for all that is Holy in this great land of ours, you just DON'T decorate the outside of the house in BOTH white and colored icicle-friggin-Christmas lights!

----breathe----

So, last night, I walked out onto the porch to see this monstrosity, to see my violated strand of bulbs hanging useless and limp. It was everything I could do to go inside and shut the door and scream into a pillow. I wanted to take a craft knife to the extension cord. I wanted to yell at my neighbors for not asking me if I had a preference. I wanted to hang a lawn ornament from the porch overhang by a strand of lights in a mock execution. All of my anger and frustration from the last week and a half was focused, laser-like, on my neighbor's holiday decor. I was redder than Utah, I was feeling really good about my Second Amendment Rights.

So, I called a friend. She suggested I swap out good bulbs for broken methodically over the next two months until the neighbors decide that the colored lights are defective and should be thrown away. Much more subtle than the Joan Crawford impression I was contemplating..."No more colored wires! EVER!"

Imaging the gaslight effect my sabotage would have on my dimwitted neighbors provided  a strangely soothing sense of satisfaction. I hung up the phone and went to my room with some tracing paper and a pencil. Layer after layer I animated a leaf. An autumn leaf falling from a tree, surfing on the wind, flipping and swirling and floating higher and higher, over the trees, over the house, past the moon and on 'till morning.

Rolfe

This is what we've come to.

A good friend of mine from high school moved out to California in the 1990s, and found Jesus there. I always thought He was hiding out in Costa Rica, drinking the cheap beers and giving tours to the college girls, who knew? She got a good job, made a life for herself, and developed a deep faith. A few years back, she found me--via the internet I think, as I was not in Costa Rica--and we've maintained a casual correspondance ever since.

I know of her faith. I know it is a different stripe than mine. I respect that. I have never mocked it. We've argued about gay marriage, the 10 Commandments in the courthouse, the separation of church and state. We disagree. These disagreements have always been civil. I felt that I learned from them. I hoped she did, too.

I've been particularly harsh on fundamentalism in my last two posts. I am deeply concerned for the erosion of our Constitutional separation of church and state. I know that many people disagree on the issue of gay marriage. I say, don't have one. I have yet to hear a non-Biblical reason for outlawing the civil rights of homosexuals. I say, if you cannot make your arguement without the Bible, then you cannot legislate your position. Argue on economic terms, argue on points of law, explain to me the effect this will have on our federal and state infrastructure, who this will hurt and why, and I will listen and weigh your points. God's Will is not a legal arguement. This is the wisdom of our Constitution. It is why Catholics don't try to outlaw birth control. It's why Hindus can't outlaw the consumption of beef. It's why kosher food has guidelines and labels, but Jews can't force a homeowner or a business to operate kosher kitchens unless they want to. This is a basic tenant of our country.

Pam and I disagree on all these points. Until today, I felt we did this respectfully.

Today, I checked my referral logs, as I usually do, and found a striking number of hits from Republican Headquarters group discussion. My friend, my confidant, asked hostile strangers to post comments on my site. She did so with a request of anonymity. I can only guess that is because she knew how hurt and betrayed I would feel if I knew that she did this. I don't know the Bible as well as she, but I believe one definition of sin is the intentional infliction of hurt or harm to another. Disavowing her responsiblility tells me that she knew she was causing hurt. I am hurt. I am saddened.

We are turning against our friends and our brothers. We are reporting our sisters and our neighbors. It is a dangerous time we live in and the enemy is us.

editor's note, since posting this, the thread on the RNC site has been deleted

Getting to Know You

Fundamentalism is fueled by a poverty of education and economics. Look to the Middle East where there is really no middle class, only wealth and poverty. The wealthy send their children to Boston and New York for good educations. The poor send their children to the mullahs who teach them to think in extremes and hate those whose lives and beliefs are different or unknown.

Under a right-wing Republican administration, the divide between rich and poor has widened, the middle class treads water to keep their finances afloat. The intelligent and ambitious child from Kansas graduates high school and off he goes to Boston or New York or California for his good education. He rarely returns. This leaves the poor, the under-educated, the easily-led, back in Kansas, or Alabama, or Mississippi to home-school their children and instill them with hate and fear of those whose lives and beliefs are different or unknown. The Utah-Mullahs, so to speak.

There has been a movement over the last 20 years to get ivy league university grads to take a few years after college to teach in our inner cities. Perhaps, it is time to encourage our best and brightest to relocate to our rural areas and bring their world experience to kids whose universe is limited to the county line. Granted, this would cut into a volunteer's prime fornication and buggering years, but that's a sacrifice we may have to make. The time has come for us to infiltrate the enemy, purple up those red states. It's so much harder to hate what you know.