Remembering

Ten years ago this morning the phone rang. My then-fiancé knew the news would not be good, as phone calls at 6am never are. It was my best friend urging me to turn on my TV. Her words didn’t really register, but the images on the television told the story.

On that day, this day was unimaginable. On that day, I witnessed my now-husband’s fury unleashed as his sense of having been personally attacked came to full force. I retreated from image after image of the towers falling – the carnage was too much to bear. I prayed as I crossed the Bay Bridge to see my mother, hoping that the violence of the day was over and that I would not be harmed as I drove an endless seven mile span.

My mom and I purchased my veil that day – a surreal act, but my wedding was only 11 days away. We went to sit with friends. The evening newscast had moved on to showing people jumping off the top of the tower hand in hand. For some reason, this was harder to hear in Spanish. There is something in the reflexive verb tirarse that was more painful and intentional and violent than the English – as if to jump off could simply be done on a sunny day, tirarse feels like the way one handles garbage, not the stunning act of those who chose flight over the flames.

…

On this day, I awoke to my five year old climbing in bed for a snuggly hour of peaceful sleep. She is too young to understand these events and we have had enough family tragedies in the intervening years for me to want to try. On this day, I leave it to those more eloquent than I to craft the words that children can understand, and to offer the blessings and unity of divine purpose that only people of faith can help us all to remember.

This past decade has transformed us all in every possible way. My husband and I will be celebrating our ten year wedding anniversary in 11 days, and the growth of our family and our life together continues to deepen and evolve. On that day, this quiet day of children laughing and playing was unimaginable, but here they are, dancing at our feet, and I am grateful.

Bellatrix is Back

My 12 year old god-daughter, Ariel, was diagnosed with cancer over 3 years ago. No run of the mill cancer for her, she got a very rare, very deadly form called rhabdo-myosarcoma. After an 11 month course of treatment, she was given the pronouncement “no evidence of disease”. Cancer families know that to say “cure” or “remission” is to tempt fate. NED is the moniker that is most meaningful in the initial post-treatment years.

Ari is precocious and smart, and a huge Harry Potter fan. She dubbed her cancer Bellatrix and fought with her family by her side and beat the crap out of cancer…until today. It appears Bellatrix wants a rematch. I am stunned. We are all stunned. Her mother and I have been causing trouble together for almost 20 years. We are family and my aching heart does not know what to do.

I find myself thinking about God and faith today. I suppose there is nowhere else to turn when the unthinkable becomes manifest. I am vacillating between two wildly different notions of the divine. The first defies anyone who believes in a personal, interested God – a God who gets involved in the mundane of our lives. How could such a God do this terrible thing to my Ariel…AGAIN! The other is a benevolent and merciful force of the universe – a God who is manifest in life itself. A God that I thank for my daughters as I kiss them and snuggle them as I put them to bed. But even this God makes me want to shake my fist at the sky and rage.

The thing about cancer, at least the thing that is so present for me right now, is how helpless we are against it. How little we can DO to make it better, to help those we love with this horrible disease, and how little we can do for their families and loved ones. Our mutual friends are asking me what they can do…and the only think I can say in this moment is: pray.

Gabrielle Giffords: It's Personal To Me

Gabrielle Giffords is still in critical condition, although there are some reports that she has regained consciousness.. A crazy young man shot her and 17 other people, killing at least 5 of them last time I checked. One of the dead is a 9 year old girl. I have been listening to this story unfold. I can’t look away from it. I am horrified that this congresswoman was shot at close range, in her home state in front of a grocery store while she was doing her job.

At one point today, I sat in my car listening to the radio outside of Safeway. My four year old was sitting in the back seat, playing her Leapster and I just started to cry. For me, this act was personal. It hit home. Gabrielle Giffords was one of twenty congresspeople targeted, literally, by Sarah Palin’s PAC. She, along with other Democrats who voted for healthcare reform, was placed in the crosshairs on takebackthe20.com. Giffords was even on record expressing concern about the safety of herself and her colleagues after this page launched.

In July a crazy man was headed to my office to lie in wait and exact revenge for the workers who died in the BP oil spill by shooting 14 people who work with me. He too, was a lone gunman. He had heard about my organization through Glenn Beck. He was driving erratically on the highway and was intercepted by the California Highway Patrol in a 12 minute gun battle on highway 580. I thanked God again today for those officers. But the fear and the frustration and the panic of what could have been resurfaced for me today.

Gabrielle Giffords was doing her job. She was at a Safeway taking advantage of an opportunity to meet with her constituents and learn about their concerns. Had things turned out differently, I would have been walking into my office on a Monday morning when Byron Williams opened fire – today, my girls could be motherless. That is my enduring nightmare. One moment you are doing your job, simply trying to do the best you can by your family. The next moment is your last. This is not the promise of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. This is not a healthy democracy where ideas can be debated.

When I step back from my incredibly emotional ledge, I can recognize that we do not yet have all the facts. I am aware that Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck did not plot directly with these men to do harm. But don’t they, as public figures, have some responsibility for the words and images they promote? Do they take a moment’s pause when something like this happens to reflect on whether or not they had a role in causing harm?

I am a project manager. When I screw up a project I manage, I am accountable to my boss and my organization. Who are Palin and Beck accountable to? Do they bear any responsibility for the words and images they promote? What happens to our discourse when we choose the language of violence to make a point or tackle a complex social issue? How are we all harmed by reductive language and emotional, tribal politics more interested in power and the next election than in finding solutions that can help to lift us all?

There is a lot of conversation about the quality of our political discourse right now. It can be tempting to imagine that this means we all have to agree. But the real challenge is to learn to disagree; to make sure that we debate ideas and do not attack people; to start our conversations with the notion that the “other side” has the same goals in mind, the betterment of our country and our lives, and that we often see different paths to achieving this goal. Don’t we know that we are all in this together?

Hello 2010

Welcome 2010. You with your fresh promise, your mid-term elections, continued economic recovery and hope for full equality. Welcome to new challenges, old friends and new beginnings.

This year, I will be trying to find a voice and rhythm for this blog. Expect postings that are personal, political and just plain random. Up to now I've managed only a handful of posts in just over two years. I've tried to keep my thoughts at a pretty high level and have waited until moved to write. Well 2010, you may be subject to my mental diarrhea. So, apologies in advance for my flights of fancy, stories of baby poop and half baked political analysis.

Thanks for playing. Let the random thoughts begin!

Election Day

Today is a day of emotion. You can feel the buzz of it all around as people engage in our democracy deeply and personally.

I spent my BART ride into work reading about all the propositions that haven't been widely in the news. It is fascinating what these pieces of legislation say about us as a society - particularly the three California initiatives that revolve around the criminal justice system. I am heartened that we are looking for ways to begin to move our criminal justice system from one of incarceration to one of rehabilitation; disgusted that our prisons and police want to have a percentage of the budget allocated in the same way that we allocate money to education; and deeply saddened at our willingness to increase the prison population, make sentencing more prescriptive and find new terms like "gang-related" which are only code for young men of color.

These potential amendments in particular give me great pause today. Are we really prepared to throw away a whole segment of the population? Are we so short-sighted that we believe incarceration is a better option than health care and education? Did you know that prison planners look at 2nd and 3rd grade test scores as a reliable method of creating and constructing prisons? Why are we so eager to fund incarceration for segregation rather than rehabilitating young men so they can become responsible and productive members of their communities?

I have no answers just now, only questions. And I'm sure more will crop up throughout the day - more news as it develops...

Tribal Politics

With election season coming to a rapid and dramatic close, it seems like a good opportunity to let everyone know that they suck. Have you noticed that this election has become tribal in its vindictiveness? People are just making things up because they can't stand the other team. I am as horrified by the people who say "I've never voted Republican in my life" as if to say that they never stopped to consider the possibility that there was a person not on their team who might take better care of them than a fellow Democrat; as I am of the people who are running around calling Barak Obama an Arab or a Muslim as if that necessarily means that the man is evil and untrustworthy.

Let's face it, each team is trying to grab and maintain power. I think the best thing we could do is begin to form coalitions that defy right and left to make change happen in the world. More on that later.

you get what you pay for

I've been thinking a lot lately about how it is we spend billions of dollars on war and continue to cut spending on education and social programs. The rhetoric of "tax increases" to reinstate spending on these programs is mind blowing. That congress is actually arguing about whether or not to find a way to offset Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) relief is astonishing. Do we really think that our country can function without those billions of dollars provided by the AMT? That it is ok to go right on cashing more checks we can't cover?

So, back to spending - if we're not willing to spend money on government and infrastructure, we get crappy roads, our children fall behind from an inadequate education, if they even manage to inherit a planet they can live on...we get what we pay for.

Likewise, if we spend billions and trillions of dollars on war, we are viewed as global bullies, we get violence and terrorism, we travel less out of fear and our children become even more isolationist deepening the cycle of mistrust...we get what we pay for.

There's a great op-ed in the New York Times a friend sent me from Tom Friedman. He asks the question why we - our government, our country, our citizens - can't seem to understand that the next big global marked is for green, clean energy. Can you imagine? An America committed to cleaning up our messes, cleaning up the world and in the process creating a new green economy to propel us forward into an age we could be proud of? I, for one, would love to start paying for that.