Aloha Nick

Aloha! Bub’s 20 year old son Nick has announced that he is going off to find himself in Hawaii and is leaving tomorrow.  He will come here tonight for dinner and goodbye.   And good for him.  His plan is a bit vague, he has some friends there already and so has a couple of couches to crash on until he figures things out.  He has also discover that he likes making music, so he is bringing his backpack and his guitar.

When I was in that transition stage, our cultural norm was to head off to Europe for a while with a Eu-rail pass.  College does it for some,  serving in the military does if for others. Other cultures do it differently, but going on a vision quest to find out who you are and what you want to do is a good thing and I think this is an incredibly great step for him.  His dad is having a bit of a time with it though.  Nick chose not to go to college.  He graduated high school early at 17 and spent the first year of freedom living in an unheated camper and blowing snow at the midnight shift up at Stowe.  ( could not be in a colder place in Vermont!) Then he worked on a Christmas tree farm until he lost half his thumb in an accident with a hydraulic wood splitter.  Then he worked up at he local hospital in the kitchen.  After three years of trying to find himself, I think is a very good idea to have a change in scenery.

Life lessons

The irony lately is that I am gearing up for  more graduate classes in Public Administration.  I just got my  syllabus for Administrative Ethics, starting in 2 weeks and then at the latter part of June, Women, Power & Leadership in Organizations.  Bill Doyle’s final in American Politics was last Monday.

As I navigate my way thought trash-gate, I had an epiphany.   I have been reaching out to individuals for support and guidance though this process.  My select-board, one or two allies on the board, the town administrator, a lawyer; which all turn out to be male.   I did not reach out to a women for guidance .  I thought a bully is a bully.  No gender specificity here.  However I  think need to change that thinking.  I wonder if male advice for how a female should respond is the best point of view? Perhaps if I was trying to be male, it would make sense.  But not if I want to maintain my own character.

It has been stated by some, that I was put on the board by Morristown because I was a women and that I am there for some great feminist cause.  I see it much differently.  I am there to do the business of the district and to be there representing my town.  The fact is that my gender should have nothing to do with it.  I guess I am in shock that it obviously does.

I am up to my eyeballs in reading, getting ready for the first class. Class is a rocket ride of 5 full days, covering 3 books and about 100 pages of handouts.  The handouts came a couple of days ago with stirring titles like: Moral Courage, Ethics and Environmental Policy in Democratic Governance, The Making of a Whistleblower and the Importance of Ethical Autonomy, Ethical managers making their own rules. How timely.

Here is the other epiphany.  For each step in my journey, I have always been given, though providence, the correct tools to deal with the life lesson.   I might not always recognize the tools, nor choose to take them up, but everything I need is there for me.  I am finding some comfort in that today.

Hyena in a petticoat…

Local politics can be sticky.  Everyone knows everyone and has for a long time.  Behaviors that are socially unacceptable can be dismissed as quirks of a person’s personality, and then the offensive behaviors continue, and in this case they have.    I will let the article speak for itself.  The title is: Porn Problems for the Lamoille Trash District.

So what does it mean to stand tall when a bully is after you, it means that you are standing tall for your daughters.  It means that when offensive comments are made in public meetings, you address it. It means that when boob jokes are told at a board meeting and you are the only women in the room, you stay that the joke offends you.  When smack is told about you to other members of the board and to employees in a manner to discredit you, you call it out.  You do this because standing silently by is an front to your children and others who can’t stand up.

You address the issue formally and send a letter asking the behaviors to stop.  Then you hold on for the shit to fly because when you tell a bully NO, the behavior gets worse.  Bullies know that you know it will only get worse and they count on that, they count on the fact that they believe that they can outlast you.  They try to wear you down, publicly embarrass you, demean you.  They hope you will quit.

But I hope I am a hyena in petticoats.  I am reading Madeleine Kunin’s book Pearls, Politics and Power. I hope I have the guts to stick it out and her book is inspiring.   If I don’t stand tall, if not now, then when?

So the media has continued to follow this story and they showed with cameras at the last board meeting.  Today the newspaper will most likely have another story.   I will read it and then I will wait.

No kids on Mother’s Day

New milestone…. no kids home for mother’s day. (This was taken at Thanksgiving.)

No breakfast out, no cards…

So what’s up with that?  Lulu gets a pass because she was gonna come home for the weekend, but I had Lupus crap to deal with and a final exam to prep for.   She wasn’t too bummed cuz she wanted to hang with the BF (boy friend, not best friend) also commonly called “the boy”.  She was given an out.

Emilie had been up earlier in the week, and she had finals coming at college, and well, she is in college and frat parties are more fun then mum.

Both girls called.

Bub, on the other hand…. well lets just say that he does not like any holiday.

I didn’t go home to see my mother either.  She lives in Dedham Mass. in the same house I grew up in.  I found a record (on Ebay)  of my grandfather reading Winnie the Pooh stories  to the Milton Academy Lower School in the Mid 70’s, and I had a CD made so we could hear it. I sent her a copy of it and a card.  My grandfather died in 1978, so it has been 31 years since she has heard his voice.  The recording is really wonderful.  She enjoyed it.

So who made up this day anyhow?  Here it is!

Anna Jarvis was born in the tiny town of Webster in Taylor County, West Virginia.   She was the daughter of Ann Maria Reeves Jarvis. The family moved to nearby Grafton, West Virginia in her childhood.

On May 12, 1907, two years after her mother’s death, she held a memorial to her mother and thereafter embarked upon a campaign to make “Mother’s Day” a recognized holiday. She succeeded in making this nationally recognized in 1914. The International Mother’s Day Shrine was established in Grafton to commemorate her accomplishment.

By the 1920s, Anna Jarvis had become soured by the commercialization of the holiday. She incorporated herself as the Mother’s Day International Association, trademarked the phrases “second Sunday in May” and “Mother’s Day”, and was once arrested for disturbing the peace. She and her sister Ellsinore spent their family inheritance campaigning against the holiday. Both died in poverty. Jarvis, says her New York Times obituary, became embittered because too many people sent their mothers a printed greeting card. As she said,

A printed card means nothing except that you are too lazy to write to the woman who has done more for you than anyone in the world. And candy! You take a box to Mother—and then eat most of it yourself. A petty sentiment!

Anna Marie Jarvis never married and had no children. She died in West Chester, Pennsylvania, and is buried in West Laurel Hill Cemetery, Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania.

So there is the story and I am sticking to it.

Odd Day and more about Washington

Today is May 7, 2009 or 5-7-9.  Odd Day .  Ron Gordon a Redwood City California teacher has come up with the idea and has a website and seems to have gotten his daughter to post Odd day on face-plant as an event.  I joined.    And good for him. I will meet him someday, randomly.

I like odd things.  According to Websters on Line,  odd is being without a corresponding mate, the odd shoe.  Also, not even. Not divisible by two. Most importantly to me, odd means not regular, expected or planned. How odd?

Einstein would have liked today I think.  My friend Lili is a number person too and she will like odd day, this I am sure. She and Einstein are much different then me, they are number people.  I like random events.  I like meeting random people too.

Traveling gives me great excuse for being randomly friendly and meeting all sorts of interesting people.  When you meet someone traveling, they are so wonderfully open and disclosing because there are no expectations of social engagement later.  No expectations of continued contact. 

This is Casey who drives a peddle cab in Washington.   We were looking for one to have fun, and he was the perfect pick.  Turns out Casey is the producer of a documentary called Ballou.  Here is the U-tube blip.

We also made friends with the DC Art police and got Sargent Murphy to let us play with his Segway. We asked Srg. Murphey and his crew if they had seen a peddle cab, cuz we wanted a ride.  We went up street and waved Casey over.  The two officers in the mini car played along and yelled warnings to Casey to not take us for a ride because we were trouble.  (how true!)  We got in and got Casey to race the Art police down the lane, us in the road and the two officers on the side walk in front of the museums.  Ringing bike bells and tooting mini cop car horns.  Tourists must have wondered what we were doing.

Wonderfully random and odd.  This is the way I like to live life, so I will celebrate odd day and maybe I will win the $579 bucks!