fahrrad!

[along the rhine with junior, circa february '09]

today i get to say goodbye to 'junior'...
and let's be honest, jr. really wasn't all that good to me.
jr. was two sizes too small.
jr. left me stranded on the side of the road while
amy and i had to yank his chain back into place.
we had to use rocks and sticks and our she-power to do it.
it was no easy task; jr. could be pretty unaccommodating.
jr. wasn't open to change; when i tried to up the gears
upon approaching an incline, he threw a fit.
click-click-click, click-click-click. no luck.
oh pah-leaze jr., grow up! but he just wouldn't budge.
in the end, all the greased-up promises and perpetual coaxing
got us nowhere. -- nowhere, i tell you.
needless to say, i was left feeling pretty glum,
ride-less and depressed.

• ~ • ~ • ~ • ~ • ~ • ~ • ~ • ~ • ~ • ~ • ~ • ~ • ~ • ~ • ~ • ~ • ~ • ~ • ~ •
but then someone new came along.
daaaaaaaang. oh, no he di'nt.
could this be what i've waited for?
everything i've dreamed and hoped for?

saddlin' up... giving him a go.

oh, boooyyy. -- mmmmm-hmm.
you betta' believe it.
pure and total joy.
i didn't know it could be this good.
built-in headlight, complete with a generator.
a jolly lil' bell to greet friends or passers-by.
an added shelf for groceries, picnics, books or treasures.
and just my size. just.my.size.
'yazoo'. he's foreign.
ya-zoooo, hunny.
we're gonna' live it up here. here, in the büs.
what grand adventures lie in store.
this one's made of love.

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

why go veggie?

Taken from Eating for Peace by Thich Nhat Hanh
"Mindful eating can help maintain compassion within our heart..."

"...UNESCO tells us that every day, forty thousand children in the world die because of a lack of nutrition, of food. Every day, forty thousand children. And the amount of grain that we grow in the West is mostly used to feed our cattle. Eighty percent of the corn grown in this country is to feed the cattle to make meat. Ninety-five percent of the oats produced in this country is not for us to eat, but for the animals raised for food. According to this recent report that we received of all the agricultural land in the US, eighty-seven percent is used to raise animals for food. That is forty-five percent of the total land mass in the US.

More than half of all the water consumed in the US whole purpose is to raise animals for food. It takes 2500 gallons of water to produce a pound of meat, but only 25 gallons to produce a pound of wheat. A totally vegetarian diet requires 300 gallons of water per day, while a meat-eating diet requires more than 4000 gallons of water per day.

Raising animals for food causes more water pollution than any other industry in the US because animals raised for food produce one hundred thirty times the excrement of the entire human population. It means 87,000 pounds per second. Much of the waste from factory farms and slaughter houses flows into streams and rivers, contaminating water sources.

Each vegetarian can save one acre of trees per year. More than 260 million acres of US forests have been cleared to grow crops to feed animals raised for meat. And another acre of trees disappears every eight seconds. The tropical rain forests are also being destroyed to create grazing land for cattle.

In the US, animals raised for food are fed more than eighty percent of the corn we grow and more than ninety-five percent of the oats. We are eating our country, we are eating our earth..."

...while many go hungry.

mutter-vater, vater-mutter

i know, they're the cutest ever.
and lookin' so good after half a century! work.it.'rents.
[downtown l.a. -- november '08]

Sunday Magazine

Motherlode: Changing the Language of Fatherhood

By By Lisa Belkin

Published: June 13, 2009

In a guest blog, Paul Hankes Drielsma writes about words -- the ones we need to stop using, and the ones we need to use more.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
i just read a good, thought-provoking blog (found on the nytimes home page, linked in the title above) about fatherhood and motherhood. and the language we use when referring to each role. it's written by a dad who really is embodying an equal share in parenting but also admitting the obstacles he's up against when it comes to the way our culture views dads. this is actually feminism here. it absolutely is. because to seek equality between the sexes, marriage and parenting must be examined; they're both essential to the human condition. for true partnership to exist, there must be a sharing of responsibility and care. this dad gets it. he says he's not trying to play the 'woe is me' card, and i'll admit some of his concerns do borderline 'woe is me', but he's got a point. a good point. language absolutely shapes us. in every way.

my dad stayed home (while my mom worked full-time) with me during some of my most formative years. the same with my sister. it was kinda' just normal to us. and believe me, as i've gotten older, i've realized what a gift that was/is. my parents made a partnership in marriage just seem like the way marriage worked. there were times where they even shared a job; one taught classes in the morning while the other taught classes in the afternoon, and then they stayed home with their daughters during their off hours each day. they shared. truly shared responsibility and care.

but, one thing our family still had to learn was the way in which we referred to my dad's years of being the full-time, at-home parent. we called him 'mr. mom.' (he called himself this too) when telling a story from those years. and there 's the best of intentions in that terminology, but i think i see now (thanks to a conversation last year with melissa burt-gracik) that such a title belittles my dad's service to his family. such a title makes being a 'mother' the normative experience as a parent. that's exactly what this blog is talking about. why is mothering viewed as parenting while fathering is, at best, viewed as babysitting? such good questions to examine.

my dad is mr. dad. and as a stay-at-home dad, he did everything a stay-at-home mom typically does, but he did it as him. as a father. so as my parents celebrate 29 years of marraige today (congrats mutti und vati!), i must thank them both for the true mutuality, shared responsibility, and real partnership they've shown to me and my sister through the years.

one week from today, much of the western world will celebrate 'father's day', and that's great, but let's be mindful about how we speak about fathers and their roles in families (of course, same goes for mothers). may we not trap our sons and our daughters into set ideas of what a dad does as being so different from what a mom does. let's exemplify in our relationships and in our language that moms and dads are both parents... with both playing an equal and active role in their child's life.

thanks 'rents; you're the best. i'm celebrating with you both today even though there's an ocean and some land between us. i sure do appreciate you. the you that is you both: together. for life. all my love.

deine,
tochter nummer eins

spring's wonder.

Before summer begins officially (that is, the northern hemisphere summer solstice), I must give thanks for the gift that spring was this year.

Thank You,
Giver of All Life
who alone
brings new
seasons
to pass.

I remember when I returned to the Büs in mid-April, after having spent the end of Holy Week and beginning of Easter in Spain, Portugal, and France, it was like I was returning to another world. Spring had exploded. There was no other word to describe the color and blooms and blossoms that greeted me from every corner of the earth. Lent had ended. Spring had come. Easter was here. Glory be.

It felt like this:

Everything is blooming most recklessly; if it were voices instead of colors, there would be an unbelievable shrieking into the heart of the night.
-- Rainer Maria Rilke

mmmm. hmmmmmm.
most recklessly.

Who better to quote from than Rilke? I have fallen more deeply in love with him the past few months.; Living in Europa makes his words come to life all the more. Standing in places that inspired him are sacred. I get to journey with him here. I keep hearing about more and more people who studied Deutsch just so that they could read/translate Rilke. That's what he does to people.

I like this too.
a lot.

Spring has returned. The Earth is like a child that knows poems.
-- Rainer Maria Rilke

thanks be.

india elects first woman speaker

The elections recently wrapped up in India, and the new Speaker is a woman. Meira Kumar is not only the first woman to occupy the Speaker of the House seat, but she is from a lower-caste, Dalit background.

The BBC article (linked below) says this, "Observers say her election improves the Congress party's image as pro-women and a supporter of the lower castes."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8080474.stm

Read it all for more info. This sounds like a pretty significant step for India -- for women, for Dalits, for all. I can't wait to see what comes of her new position...