Says It All

A Sick Country

Did you know that one fourth of the Iraq war budget alone could fund healthcare for every uninsured person in this country?

Check out: Campaign for Healthcare, Not Warfare

Notes from One Wedding Chickie

Not Annie and Me On Our Wedding Day

My piece about Annie and me getting married in San Francisco was just published here, on a website called weddingchickie.com. The focus of the site is "Advice and Commentary for the Savvy Bride." Very cool that it includes weddings with two brides.

And guess what? I actually got paid for the piece. $150, not shabby. Especially since it was previously published in a small literary journal.

This is all good news on a day when I can use good news. It's only been a little over a month since my father died, and I can feel my skin crawling from residues of stress and grief. I feel like I've been on a speeding train since his death: all the calls and vistors, planning the service, holding the service, mom falls and breaks her arm and moves in with me, seeing her daily reminds me of our big loss, helping her bathe and dress and all that reminds me of everything she's been through, I continue teaching, face a mountain of papers to grade, Virginia Tech happens so here come stressors of even BEING on a campus, we're studying the devastating sitatuion in Iraq in one of my classes, I didn't get a job I applied for, we almost went out on strike, now I'm involved with students in protesting fee hikes ... Seems appropriate that this is one big run-on, with unparallel structure. Grammar be damned when life is like this.

And thank goddess for humor. Laughing reminds me to breathe. (My dad used to say, "You can either laugh or cry. I 'd rather laugh.")

And biggest of all thank goddess for Annie. Marrying her was the best decision of my life.

Humanitarianism, Anyone?

Wounded Iraqi Boy (From here)

I've been moved reading about the lives all of all those killed at Virginia Tech. What devastation for their families and friends--and for us all, to be witnesses to such random, senseless cruetly.

Can you imagine if every day in a mainstream paper there were posted the photos and personal stories of every Iraqi (approximately 100 a day) and soldier killed in Iraq?

Why does our society refuse to see the devastating human catastrophe that is war?

I think part of the problem is patriotism. We need to celebrate humanitarianism, not random divisions that make one person an "American" and another an "Iraqi", that create an "us" and a "them."