Keeping up my courage

That little ‘lift’ when something good happens.

I woke up to a rather full mail box this morning. People saying “I notified” this group or that, but haven’t heard back yet, but I’ll be there. And my blank mind says “Who is that?” I call one of my co-hippies. “Oh, that’s……” And I still don’t know, because that’s the way my mind still is.

There’s a message board. No idea how I set that up. Here’s the first message:

Thank you for organizing this local event. We need a comprehensive, common sense strategy to combat gun violence once and for all. Enough is enough. And I firmly believe it will take effort from local communities, states and the nation as a whole to better protect our children. I am so very proud that an event such as this is taking place in our community and I am looking forward to standing with you all.

This is just to blow off a little steam. I need to go prepare in my head my remarks for the trustees tonight. But, I know the names of a lot of people who will stand on the curb with me, and I even know some of their faces.

How I love those faces.

Keppra, please

My head is spinning, literally, and almost actually.

Cast your mind back fifty or more years. How did demonstrations happen? I remember a constant sense of awareness. Walking to class, seeing an “activist” acquaintance. “Hey, man, the word is out…”, and so forth. We weren’t radical, we just were students who could walk into a group of acquaintances and find ourselves walking down the middle of a street, arms locked, chanting.

After my disappointing conversation with Laura last night, and another restless night, I went out to breakfast. Before I left, a flurry of texts with Deb, who was “in on it,” and Pam, who I hoped to recruit. I told them Hudson would be tough; we’d have to be out on the sidewalk, and where to park? I said I’d call the Peninsula police chief and ask his advice.

On the way to breakfast, I called one of the two trustees remaining from my tenure.  It came to me, what is more Mom and Apple Pie than a protest in the middle of Peninsula. He had no problem with 303 and Riverview, outside the town hall, except for visibility, and suggested a couple more conspicuous spots. But, at ten in the morning it’s not visibility. Traffic is gone. It’s media coverage.

I pitched protest to Lynn, over pancakes and bacon. She loves me dearly and turned me down flat. She could not bear the idea of her picture in the paper.

I called the other trustee. She was all for it, and will be there. We can park in the town hall, because it’s “the normal course of business.” 

I called the last trustee, who did not run for re-election, and is not for having his guns confiscated. He did agree magazines could be smaller, background checks better, assault rifles banned, and, yes, he would come after all. 

I called the police chief. He put it on their calendar, not a problem.

I began emailing the press. We have three newspapers of note. By the time I hit the last send, I heard from the first paper, in Hudson. “Didn’t you used to be in Boston? What’s this protest all about?” Like he hadn’t heard of the National School Walkout. It was an adversarial interview, to say the least. I said we were protesting nothing, we were standing for something. He said to take a picture and send it. I said send a reporter or miss it.

The Akron paper hopes to feature it in a local story of all the protests. I told her I was available to answer questions.

I was invited to attend tomorrow’s trustee meeting and pitch the Walk Out to the third paper, that covers our meetings, as well as our new Fiscal Officer, who takes the minutes and updates the web pages.

I posted on Facebook and Twitter.

I still have two weeks and a lot of local citizens to get involved.

And signs to have printed.

Attempting to fit in somewhere

This morning I drank over a quart (960 ml) of barium sulfate, tainted to resemble citrus, iodinated during the procedure, to facilitate a CT scan. I am so tired of all this fooling around; to quote Scarlett, “as God is my Witness, this is their last chance to figure out why my right side has become so weak. Frankly, I no longer give a damn.

In another event of interest today, it was cards with the Methodists. Nancy and I took every hand but the last and beat the Dickens out of the guys. Tomorrow, breakfast with Lynn. I hope to see if she and her husband will join the rag tag remnants of the National Walkout.

For this to be a student walk out, the students who want to be involved must present a respectful plan of safety to the Principal. I’ve checked with Laura almost daily for the last two weeks, and each report has been more disappointing than the previous. The two teachers who suggested they would sponsor the seventeen minutes seem to have faded from view.

Far more disappointing to me, Laura’s interest has waned, too. Disappeared is the better descriptor. I won’t do much beyond telling her I’m disappointed, in the event there is not last minute scrabbling on her part to put together the event.

I do have a band of old hippie adults who will stand on the public sidewalk, off school grounds, holding #ENOUGH signs at 10 am. Well, at the present it’s Deb and me. I figured I could put my group together in a minute, so it’s time to put my money where my mouth is and see who will be in on March 14^th at 10 a.m.

Laura and I went to Deb and Steve’s, over the weekend. They’re the porcelain potters who closed their gallery in town and now work from their new studio in the back yard. Laura had not been there yet, and she was pleased as punch. And, she scored another half dozen eggs. Aren’t they pretty.

Well, this old hippie will keep you posted on how many protesters can be rounded up, and how much media will want to come. I wonder how much old hippie clothing will be involved.

One more in the books

Another good workout with Greg today. It's coming along. Even Greg had something to say. I walked while looking down, then up, then down. Down was OK, but up was iffy. Greg remarked when I was good at it, a bus probably wouldn’t catch me off guard. I responded I probably would not be on a bus again, but then had to stop and think, it has not been a year since the accident, and possibly eight months since I began rehab.

I began this essay intending to remark I’m making little of retirement. I just can’t settle on some alternative to employment. I went to lunch with Beth. I went to the quilt show with Ruth. I’ve read more than a few books, now that reading them seems the way to retrieve them. I should be angry about losing the books, and my education and my ability to retain information and form it into coherent thoughts, but I’m not.

I did cry over it a couple of nights last summer, but now it’s just resignation and trying to walk a straight line while looking up and looking down. I hold the rail, too.  The only constant left is 3:45 pm, when the high school bus drops the children.

Laura came in tonight with a prize; an EEG. The Hudson EMS sent a team to their health class today, and she was the only volunteer. It looks a decent EEG to me, speaking from looking at a lot of mine. Her oxygen was 100%. I never read more than 98%, and would have bet no one scores a hundred. And, unless a whole lot more changes, she and I appear to be the only two who will be outside her school on National School Walkout next month.

The books I’ve read have been fairly light weight. I’m almost through the last of three by hometown hero Dave Giffels. Then I have the Autobiography of Malcolm X to tackle. I know I read this book. Even more than Wuthering Heights or Middlemarch, I cannot put together one line of it. Somewhere in my Master’s Degree in American Literature lies the Autobiography. I’ll start it next week, I hope.

I had a haircut today, overdue, and picked up a new ring I’ve waited for. I think it looks like a tree of life. The other ring I had made this summer, when Keppra ganged up so badly on my dreams. I’d wake up and twist it. Nice, solid, twistable. I’m nearly done with the Keppra, two more weeks.

And I had my ears re-pierced today. It’s been eighteen years since my daughter’s wedding. I took out the earrings my other daughter admired and gave them to her. I wonder if she still has them. One was left, one was right. Very unusual. I haven’t worn earrings since. I felt nothing; the technician’s needle went right through the old piercing.

Now when I go to lunch with arty friends, I won’t be the only one without earrings.

A happy day

I spent the afternoon at a quilt show, with Ruth.
For the last ten days we've had rain.
For at least the next five, it will rain.
I may go out soon to photograph our state of floating away.
But, I went with Ruth to Lake FarmPark Quilt Show.

I turned in my ballot unmarked, at the end.
Here are all my favorites.

This quilt is called A Happy Day.
That's all. No further explanation.
I thought of Elephant Child's balloon fests.

This quilt is as good as it looks. For a minute it was Tolkien, to me.
Then I said "Oh, Joanne. Harry Potter."

Poppies, well done, are fine, any day.

I would call this one "View from a kitchen window."
Spring is coming.

Had I voted, this would have my Best of Everything vote.

And this one I picked for my mother.
She would have selected all these fabrics, especially the green.
She would have laid it out exactly as this quilter did.
She also would have hand pieced and quilted this quilt.