(Okay, Babelfish translates tant pis as “such an amount of worse” rather than “too bad for you.” Gotta love those transliterations.)

I hadn’t seen my hawks in days and wondered if they didn’t like that I’d changed the looks of a few things out there, like that slip’n’slide for the squirrels with the shiny reflections from the greased foil by the birdfeeder.

Today they made up for it: I saw the female twice, the male once. He flew to a few feet from the window and while gazing in steadily, leaned towards me as if to say hello. I loved it.

But his mate! She came in first, landing on the barbecue grill, and that same squirrel with the severe testosterone poisoning–‘terone ranger!–not a female squirrel defending her young but a male his territory, and I will mention that it was the same one that deliberately motioned threateningly at a hawk last week–at first as she flew in he started to run away, but then when she settled down on the arm of the grill he turned around midrun and audaciously came back to repeat that deliberate menacing act. Going so far as to put a paw on the bottom of the grill poised as if to leap up at her immediately above him.

Get lost, loser. She lifted off.

A little while later, her mate was doing his closeup for me on the wooden box. What a gorgeous bird. Ix-nay on the beef suet with peanuts here, Ma’am, but thanks for trying.

And not a squirrel to be seen. Even though he was the smaller of the two.

Then another hour or so later, the female flew in front of the patio again, abruptly blending into leaves and disappearing into the tree behind the grill. Wow, she’s good at this.

Guess who took offense at her invading his favorite tree?

I watched in disbelief as that little bushytail (he has distinctive markings) deliberately strode down the fenceline toward her like a cat about to pounce. And then he jumped at her! Not quite to her, but with the intent of scaring her off again like a sparrow. She again took off slowly and deliberately–I’ve seen her in a hurry and that wasn’t it–and whether she was responding to an innate instinct on the part of a bird, even a predator, to get away from something coming at her or what, I don’t know.

But wow, that squirrel’s got a Darwin wish. Coopers, looking at Sibley’s western birds guide, do indeed eat small mammals, not just birds.  He’s so got it coming.

On a side note.  The Washington Post reports on a professor who ran the recent press releases of the members of Congress through a computer to determine patterns, and what surprised him was this: 27% of everything they say is taunting. Not just chest-thumping aren’t I wonderful self-congratulations to their constituents, but actually taunting their opponents and not even pretending to try to work together to get things done in a way that acknowledges that other people have valid points of view too.

This is not the way to govern a diverse people well.

We voters should be watching them like a hawk.

I am proud to say that my Representative, Anna Eshoo, who thanked me warmly for her hat from the Warm Hats Not Hot Heads project for Congress, handled the latest quite respectfully, I feel, while explaining her point of view.  It can be done.

Justice is blind? The Washington Post reports: Antonin Scalia caused a four-car pile-up this morning on the George Washington Parkway, with a former NBC reporter witnessing from the car behind him.  She says he didn’t brake and that that’s an originalist interpretation.

Karma kaze driver.

Ahem.

I had a really good day today, so I threw out the cabin fever and ran a few errands that had needed doing while I was down. On my way home, I noticed at a light that the person behind me was my next door neighbor. I waved hi. She didn’t notice. Approaching our neighborhood, she turned left.

Well, I thought, for once I’ll get a chance to time the difference between that left and turning here at the light. She gets the stopsigns and the twists in the road; I get the wait and then the straight shot forward.

And then we were facing each other head-on, turning in tandem onto our street. Totally a tie.

I pulled in my driveway and got out laughing, calling over to her as she got out. She’d had no idea she’d been behind me; we chatted a moment, glad for some neighbor time.

“How’s the new grandson?” She has triplet grandchildren, she knew how happy a question that was.

But at one point she had to stop me to just exclaim, “You look FABULOUS!”

I was very surprised and blushed and thanked her and admitted I’d had the flu and had lost some weight the last few weeks. (The bod, it’s a flu-zy around germs, picking up on them constantly, don’t listen to it.)

“You don’t need to lose any weight,” she affirmed–“But you look so young.” She said it again:  “You look FABULOUS!”

I tell you. I can never move away. Not with good neighbors like mine.

There was a mini-conference today set up by the Lupus Research Institute, so I set my alarm for early this morning and went.

Until Wednesday, no new treatment for lupus had been approved, not for lack of trying on the part of those in the lab, in over 50 years.  Daniel Wallace, the rock star of lupus researchers, told with frustration of how one company had recently carefully followed all the FDA’s guidelines and had spent many many millions of dollars, only to be told that the third FDA president since they’d started had now decided to shelve it for reasons that many felt were very wrong. (And I personally know a patient who went from the normal person I knew to severe brain damage symptoms akin to late-stage Alzheimer’s, to being blessedly, miraculously normal again during the trials of that drug that is now denied to her and her good, supportive husband. I have not seen her since.)

There was an outcry. And the FDA finally paid attention to the disease.

So now there is Benlysta, and great hope–and more new drugs in the pipeline, at long long last.

One of the people who testified before the FDA for Benlysta’s approval was on a panel that spoke today. Another was a patient who’d been in its trials.

What I didn’t expect, though, was to get to have several minutes of private conversation, after most the others had left, with a gentleman (and I use that word to convey my very great respect and admiration for him) whose name I missed, the head of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine.

He in his own remarks to the group made clear that stem cells can now be made from adult cells. No embryos need be involved.  This goes far beyond lupus; this is everybody. Californians voted for this, the State of California will get 50% royalties on all patents from this, and it is already returning $4.50 for every $1 spent on it.

The state isn’t exactly swimming in cash and the funding was to be re-voted on after ten years. That will be 2014. He wants the word out: there is great hope that we could cure many diseases and that treatment will bring down medical costs, as well as vastly improving the lives of those treated–and their families by extension.

First they had to build the buildings; they did. Then they had to hire the researchers. They have been. Talent has come in from all over the world to pursue their dream jobs of doing real and lasting good for one’s fellow man.

Sixteen million people in California with chronic diseases, he said. And all those others who will get a disease that could become treatable. We can do this.

Merino wool takes up dye more quickly than silk does, making it easy, in the case of my Filatura di Crosa “Wave” yarn, to have a heathered effect come out of the dyebath: two fibers that have been through the mill and share differences and similarities from the experience.

Soft but closely knit and strong and warm. It seemed perfect for her. A braid of a cable around the brim, the stitches picked up and then more braids working their way up: Fisherman’s Wharf and sailors’ ropes, even the yarn itself named to match the power of the ocean reaching halfway around her district. I liked it.

It was Jackie Speier’s hat, and I didn’t get it finished in time to mail with the Senators’ yesterday but I did do those last few rows today. I emailed her office a heads-up as to who I was and what I was up to, said I was going to put it in the mail, and then looked around her site for where to send it.

Hey. I thought it surely would have been San Francisco. It was closer in–a trek, and getting towards 3:00 rush hour soon, but certainly doable.

I called.

I got this male voice stopping me as I tried to introduce myself, going, Wait. Run that by me again? What?

Gradually, I got to hear his voice sounding happier and happier as he heard me explain the Warm Hats Not Hot Heads concept and why it was important to me that Jackie Speier get one of those hats.

He seemed a little more hesitant though when I chirped brightly, Great! Then if you don’t mind I’ll hop in my car in a few minutes and bring it over.

Thick clouds at home became a cloudburst the further north I drove. A slightly soggy-looking (red-tailed?) hawk perched on a signpole over the freeway made me laugh in surprise: always a touch of raptor, isn’t there, waiting to be seen for the noticing. Speaking of which, Clara‘s third new peregrine egg made its appearance on camera today.

Traffic was not too bad yet. The rain caught its breath a moment as I parked the car; a friendly touch, that.

I was screened downstairs and signed in.  I went up. I explained to the buzzer at the door, as before, who/what/why. A woman’s voice seemed to hesitate at first; I imagined her asking and the guy there going, oh yes, her, okay, so she did come, it’s okay.

But that’s just my guess. It’s kind of hard to lipread a doorbell for missing details.

I entered and immediately knew who it was that had been on the phone: the man on his feet now whose smile was all one could ever hope for. The glass between the staff and the waiting room was surely protective, but the woman near him quickly opened the door to the waiting area and came to me, smiling as well.

I’m not quite in Ms. Speier’s district, I quickly acknowledged to her, pulling the hat out, but I feel she represents me. She’s not one who needs the message of one of these hats like some of her colleagues do; rather, it’s that I personally needed to knit her one to thank her so much for what she does and who she is.

She asked if I were following the pipeline hearings. Ohmygoodness yes. Thank you Jackie Speier! Our very lives in this neighborhood may well depend on her firmness in holding PG&E’s feet to the fire they created.

I got to see, in my few minutes there, how much those two staff members clearly love their boss.

Which says to me all over again what a fine leader she is.

The hats. We’re at 245. Not a big jump from yesterday, but still, steady upwards progress.  Thank you, hat knitters! May every one of you come away feeling as blessed by your recipients’ responses as I did with mine today.

Does anyone else find themselves wishing they could knit hats for everybody in Egypt? I wish and hope the best for them and thank them for their peaceful efforts; they are representing themselves well to the world. I’m holding my breath and fervently hoping they’ll get to do so in their government too.

We are so blessed.

Here at home, there is now a Ravelry group at http://www.ravelry.com/groups/warm-hats-not-hot-heads for the campaign to knit hats for our Congresspeople and there will be a Facebook group soon.  If anyone feels so inclined, please, feel free, spread the word on your blog or your knitting group or wherever. If you knit a hat for your congressperson, please shoot an email to Ellen, here if you would; we’re hoping for Feb. 28th as a deadline to get them all shipped by, en masse would be great but if you want to sooner, more power to you. Sending it to your representative’s local office works well, in person even better; the whole idea is to make it feel as personal as possible to them.

Those who tell Ellen so she can put it on her spreadsheet, by whatever moniker you want for yourself there, will be the ones I’ll be able to know about for sure: because when this is all done, I told her that as my thank you I’d like to draw a name and send out an autographed copy of “Wrapped in Comfort: Knitted Lace Shawls” to that knitter, wishing I could do it for everybody. I know, I don’t need to bribe anybody, so many people are already simply diving in and doing this without feeling the need to tell about it, but I’d like to be able to do something by way of thanks to those who do.

Ellen and I talked on the phone tonight, and someone she knew had gone from, I could never knit for…!, to, I need to knit for them. Don’t I. Yes.

And so I told her the story of a nursing assistant in the hospital during my first severe Crohn’s flare in ’03 who was just an angry person, consistently and bewilderingly mean to her patients–just angry. I wondered why on earth, at that time of all times, I had to be stuck dealing with her. Her accent was thick, my brain equally so in my illness on top of my hearing loss; we were not a good match.

And then a few days into this I found myself wondering what it must be like to be her. Or what got her that way.  What is it like at home for her? Where is her family, what are they like?

That stopped me, and I said a prayer for her: not completely willingly, and apologizing to God for that, but this much at least I could try to do. Please bless her? (So I don’t have to?)

The next time she walked in my hospital room, though, what happened was definitely not sweetness and light: I beat her to it and immediately snapped at her. The one time she had done nothing to deserve it, I just didn’t want her in my room just then, I’d had enough.

And she, instead of yelling back or defending herself, suddenly looked deeply sad. She spun on her heel and was gone.

I felt TERRIBLE. That was so not what I had prayed for, my stars!

The next time she walked in the room it was by coincidence a step behind when her boss did, a nurse who was one of my favorites, and I grabbed my chance: I said to the woman, in front of her boss, “Thank you.”

(Say what?! on her face.)

“You came in here and I snapped your head off and you were kind to me. I did not deserve that. Thank you.” Because I knew that for her, that was the best she could have done and she did it.

After she left I said to her boss, “I’m so glad I got to say that to her in front of you.”

And the boss, a dear woman, answered with a glance to the door to make sure we were alone, “Me too!”

That nursing assistant completely changed. The next time she came in I honestly didn’t recognize her, her face was so different. She looked radiant! She had finally seen herself through someone else’s eyes in a better light.

I later knitted a lace stole in the boss’s favorite color and several more things for quite a few more people there; and I knitted a hat in case I might see that nursing assistant, whose name I never did know–she’d tended to keep her badge turned over, I always guessed so that people wouldn’t be able to complain about her by name.

I didn’t see her but she saw me down the hall when I came back for that visit. She ran down the hall and she *threw* her arms around me with great emotion. She had no idea yet about the hat. No language barriers. Friends, in the deepest sense of the word; she wept, and I knew then that what I had done had meant everything to her.

I said to Ellen, Now, can you imagine if I had NOT made her anything while I was handing out my handknits? Thank heavens I did. Thank heavens I knit that hat.

Ellen said, “It made all the difference to you, too, then, didn’t it?”

Oh you bet. Oh, honey. It was one of the most important things I ever made.

Sample letter, feel free to use or not when you send yours in:

Dear (Congressperson),

This hat was hand knit for you by me, ____; I live in ___. I wanted to show you that I appreciate the work you do for those of us whom you serve in the House/Senate.

I knitted it as part of a campaign among knitters for Warm Hats, Not Hot Heads. We are from many political backgrounds. We want those who engage in angry and even vicious public rhetoric to stop speaking for us in those ways. We want civility in Congress.  We are choosing to give hours of our time silently to be able to give you a visible, tangible, heartfelt symbol of our desire for respecting and honoring one another within our government–and to thank you for doing your best.

Each stitch is individual. Each stitch depends on every other stitch within that hat being present for it to be able to do its job where it is of creating comfort and warmth.

I wish you the best in your work and thank you for your service to us all.

———–

(And then the imp in me is tempted to add, It’s not all about running…)

Ed. to add: Ellen at twinset.us is keeping tally on who’s getting one/who needs one.

I am nearly done with hat #2 for my representatives in Congress. And my order for a few more hats’ worth of the DBNY King George came today.

But oh, the other thing that came.  We’ve been waiting for Customs to let it through, and finally–I called “Thank you!” after the mailwoman this afternoon, took it inside and opened carefully.

Qiviut. A long wide lace 90/10 qiviut/merino scarf knitted by Lorraine at Cottage Craft Angora and a large skein of the Taiga for me to go knit with, too, her thanks for my naming her colorways.

I put that scarf on and instantly never ever wanted to take it off. I–

–Okay, here’s what it reminds me of: we were remodeling our house years ago, had been for months, and there were a couple of guys working away who had seen me day in day out in my jeans being a mom to my kids. Ordinary life.

Then came the day I had to go out in a black dress with a white Battenberg lace collar, very stylish then, very formal–and as I walked past them they dropped their tools to their sides, speechless. They had no idea I could look like that. I had no idea I looked that different like that.

That scarf completely one-ups that dress.  It is soft, it is warm, it is gorgeous, it matches what I happen to have on today, and I feel incredible with it on.  I was just gobsmacked all over again. Lorraine knitted this for me!, even if she didn’t know it was going to be for me at the time she knitted it. Still–she milled the fibers, she dyed the yarn, she knitted it on fine needles, all with the intent of making someone out there happy in the world.

And how. Wow.

I hope… May our congresspeople appreciate the thought and work going into the hats being knitted for them and may they, too, totally love what they get.

Here you go, and I’ll try to get a better photo of it in the sunlight. This is what I finished for my local House representative, a woman, in our knitters’ campaign to ask Congress to speak to and of each other with civility and a sense of decorum: for we knit softly and carry a big bag of sticks.

At the brim: a line of cables leaning to the right, a line of cables leaning to the left, a purl stitch dividing them, but when they’re relaxed, the purl disappears into the fabric and they come together in an interlacing effect as one.

I figure that’s pretty representative of what I’m trying to convey to them.

Congressperson hat pattern, version 1.

(Note: version two would be to use a heavier yarn in, say, a dark color for a male recipient and only pick up 2/3 of the stitches as noted below for a beanie effect above the brim. It would be fewer rows upwards, too, thus faster to make; I wanted this one to have extra height and width above the brim to go with that knit/purl pattern for a slouch effect, and to protect my congresswoman’s hair from being matted down by allover tightness.)

Yarn: worsted weight. I used Misti Baby Alpaca Royal (apparently now discontinued), 86 g out of two 50g skeins, a very soft, very drapey yarn, but very fine and thin to my hands for worsted weight.

No gauge swatch necessary, although a measuring tape pretty much is.

Needles: I used US size 6, 4mm.

Cast on 17 stitches. You can use a temporary cast-on, or later just pick up the stitches of the side of the strip; I found it easier to do the temporary cast on.

Row 1 and all wrong side rows: Purl 2, k2, p4, k1, p4, k2, p2.

Row 2: K2, p2, k4, p1, k4, p2, k2.

Row 4: k2, p2, slip two stitches onto a dpn and hold in back of work, k2, knit the two stitches on the dpn, p1, slip two stitches onto a dpn and hold in front of work, k2, k2 from dpn, p2, k2.

Repeat these four rows till the strip is the length you want to go around the head. Hat size chart, again, is here.  Remember to take into account that the strip will have a bit of give to it; on the other hand, it will, if you make the hat long enough, be folded up over another layer, taking up just a little of the give. On this particular hat, the cable part can be folded up as high as a person wants to go as there is no right or wrong side above the cabled strip.

I did 25 repeats of my cable pattern to get what looked like 18.5″ sitting there but easily stretched to 21″. If it’s a little loose on the person, they can always just fold the cabled part up higher.  End with a cabling row.

From here, I undid the temporary cast-on, putting those stitches on one needle and the live stitches at the other end of the strip on the other needle and did a three-needle bindoff to work the short edges of the strip together; then, I picked up the stitches around the top of the now-circle.

For a standard hat, you pick up 2/3 of the stitches. For this one, wanting a slouchy hat that wouldn’t compress a coiffe, and given that I had a good drapey yarn that matched that concept, I picked up all of the stitches: 100 stitches. (Remember, 25 repeats times four rows.)

I knit five rows.

Then I purled five rows.

I repeated those ten rows till I had, facing me, four sets of purl rows alternating with five sets of knit rows.

Ending:

Row 1: P2, p2tog, p1, repeat across row.

Row 2: Purl.

Row 3: P1, p2tog, p1, repeat across row.

Row 4: Purl.

Row 5: P2tog, p1, repeat across row.

Row 6: Knit.

Rows 7 and 9: K2tog across row.

Rows 8 and 10: Knit.

Row 11: P2tog.

Row 12: Purl.

Row 13: P2tog.

And then I think I did one more p2tog row–I ended up with five stitches and cast those off. I wove the end in a little and added a “Created with Pride by” and then my name on the tag on the inside of the hat and wove the strand in just a little more.

Note: When I knitted the light pink hat with the braided cable out of the King George yarn from DBNY, I picked up all the stitches as well: cables tend to shrink the size of the fabric by a third, roughly, so picking up all rather than 2/3 of the stitches worked–but the cables are slightly stretched  when the hat is worn, at least in that pattern on my needles.

And when I knitted this bright pink one, the hat that started this whole thing, I picked up 2/3 of the stitches and made it shorter than the red one is because it had no extra width for a slouch effect; on the head, it simply comes out as knit/purl stripes.

Here’s another shot.

The yarn was a gift from Sandi at Purlescence: awhile ago, to my great surprise, she handed me a bag of this cashmere-with-sparkles in a heavy worsted and told me that I would know the right thing to do with it.

I don’t know if any of my three Congresswomen want bright pink sparklies. What I do know, is, playing with that yarn got me familiar enough with this pattern that I could go play with it comfortably and offer up my own version in the pattern above in hopes that others run with it, or with whatever pattern they like, and help to create a little peaceableness in the halls of our Congress.

And one other thought: I want our representatives to know that people care about them personally as they go about their work serving us all.

No, I couldn’t wait, I went stash-diving and came up with some Misti Baby Alpaca Royal from a Webs sale and my first hat is into the second skein now.

I’ve been reminded that Talking Heads as the name of a group has been claimed already.

How about… Per caps we could say…

Making Headlines. (Except I really don’t want to.  So not my style. Not to typecaps myself as a new grandmother, but I just want to quietly knit away over here.)

Creating a vast left- and right-win caps-here-I-see.

A mesh lace and twists pattern could become The New Cables Net-work.

Hat-y days are hair again!

Cap, Hat-R-Us for the Outer Banks knitters. Over here, if Dianne Feinstein, my senator who lives in San Francisco, has a spinnable dog (or wouldn’t mind my using a skein already at hand from my wheel), one could theoretically make her a cabled Fisherman’s Woof.

I know, there are grad(u)ations of cap and groan in that list, but what else can we come up with for the newscapsters.

By the way, for those who don’t yet do dpns or two-circ knitting, you can still make a hat. The easiest way would be to knit a strip about as wide as you’d want the brim to be; remember that it will stretch a little lengthwise once on. It can be plain stockinette, ribbed, cabled, mosaic, anything you want to try out.  Again, head sizes are listed here.

Then you’ve got your measurement as to how wide to make it and that’s all the swatching you have to do. Cast off the strip, don’t break the yarn, and pick up 2/3 of the stitches down the long side. Knit it back and forth to the length desired (checking Bev’s chart again) including decreasing stitches spaced out across the top, maybe alternating plain rows with decreasing rows. Or not. You can pick up the stitches along both sides and do a three-needle bindoff if you don’t like sewing.

Let’s get these delivered by the end of February, sooner being better; warm up their heads inside and out while it’s cold!

Tomorrow I’ll post the pattern I’m knitting.

This started with a stray comment between us but the idea has only grown more insistent.

In response to the shootings in Tucson, Arizona,  Ellen and I have been talking about what we could do to make manifest the idea that we want our Congresspeople to deal civilly with one another. To hear one another. To talk things out. To not do what will play on the news the loudest but to do what’s best for all of the American people the best they know how.

How could we personally help make that actually happen?

My uncle Bob Bennett of Utah, in his remarks to his colleagues on leaving the Senate last month, discussed the general philosophy of the Republican party vs the Democratic party re the role of government,  and then pronounced, “Both sides are right.”

This is a man who had been rated one of the most conservative members of the Senate (and with whom I often disagreed politically).  But he’d also had real-life experience: as a homeowner trying not to lose his house at one point. As a former business owner who knew that for businesses to succeed, their workers had to have the peace of mind of knowing that they could have adequate medical care should something happen to them or their families.

He said, and I’m paraphrasing to the best of my memory, It’s the meeting in the middle to negotiate our differences that is where we do our best work. None of us is supposed to get everything all our way in any other part of life, and certainly not in politics where we are working with people with completely different life experiences.

So here’s what Ellen and I are hoping for.

Never mind, I’ll let her tell it, she says it better than I do.

From Ellen:

——————————-

“Here is what I think I’d like to do.

Invite any and all knitters who would like to join in to knit a hat (sizing information here) for their own congressional representative, whether Senate or House.  Ask them to email me, perhaps send a photo or link to a Ravelry project, and let me know to whom a hat has been sent.  I can track who is being covered (literally!) and if anyone wants to knit more than one hat, they can send them to me and I’ll handle mailing them to a rep who hasn’t received one yet.

I’d like to write a standard note to go with it, to which any knitter could add her own personal message.  I’m also thinking how cool it would be to design a hat for it, but I am also telling myself to keep it manageable.  (Her husband) suggested that the hats be purple, a blending of red and blue, but I told him I want them to be worn!

This doesn’t rule out hats for the victims, which is also a good idea and could be a use for some of the extra hats, though I still don’t know how to go about getting the names or how to deliver them.  After thinking on it all week, though, what is really compelling me is to highlight the need for civil discourse even over things we disagree on.”

———————————-

From me: I would plead that the hats be of a material you’d want to wear yourself. I want each recipient to feel they are being treated with the great respect we all mutually deserve.  For whatever it’s worth, I can vouch for the fact that the Plymouth King George (how’s that for an ironic name!) baby alpaca/merino/cashmere blend on sale for four bucks a ball (for the moment, at least) will make an absolutely soft, warm cabled hat using two balls; I just knitted one. Three balls should I think get you two plain beanies.  All in a day’s work.

I’m not trying to shill for DBNY, I’m just trying to convey the idea that it doesn’t have to be a lot of money for it to be something nice if you don’t have something ready in your stash. Support your local yarn store, too. However it works for you.

We want each individual to be glad they got one–and wouldn’t it be cool to have Congresspeople swapping around with each other to get just what they want? Let the cheerful negotiating begin!

I just ordered two more balls in, yes, Ellen’s husband, purple.

Can you just picture the photo-op we could all make happen? Knitters can change the world. We can set the tone. In wild color combinations or subdued: as the song says, We’ll give them something to talk about.

You in too?

(ed. to add: What should we call this campaign? So far I’ve come up with Talking Heads.)

My heart goes out to the wounded, the families, the bystanders, the doctors and nurses and ambulance crews and all those who have had to see firsthand what was deliberately done by a human being to other human beings.

My hometown paper had this to say.

It doesn’t matter what party the shooter belonged to. It is the simple truth that the unbalanced among us had been told what to do to get the most attention and to believe they would be praised for it.

The words we choose to represent ourselves by have consequences beyond what we can know or control, and that is especially true in the political sphere. Choosing to have basic common courtesy: is it so hard? It is so essential.

And yet.  However one feels about how this all came to be, there is another truth: that we are all in pain, all grieving over the senselessness and the pain and the injury done to individuals and, really, to all of us.

And that speaks to the empathy and the great good in the very great majority of us. We may not personally know any of the people at that scene, but they matter to us as if they were us.

We are all in this life thing together.

And now I’m glued (again) to watching the results come in.

We went over to Johnna and Glenn’s for an election party, Jon Stewart style: everyone kind and courteous and just plain enjoying hanging out with friends, regardless of any party affiliation. Pass the snacks.  Glenn supplied fine chocolate, I brought almond raspberry sponge cake.  (Mom: that would be your hot milk sponge cake recipe from Betty Crocker circa 1952, made with almond extract, 4 tbl butter instead of 2, and with two boxes of raspberries rinsed, very carefully patted dry, and arranged across to sink down to the bottom evenly.  Crunchy organic/Demerara type sugar sprinkled on top of the cake.)

And a good time was had by all.

(Ed. to add, and one political party=one baby hat, knittingwise.)

My hometown paper posted pictures of signs at the Stewart/Colbert rally. My favorite so far, having grown up in DC during the Vietnam War, was number 42, with the picture of a pepperoni pie: Give pizza chants.

Amen, brother.

And pizzan quiet at last when the phone stops ringing every five minutes come Wednesday.

Meg. We’ve heard all about your maid, endlessly; it’s not so much the is she legal/is she not, it’s, once you knew, how did you respond? Were you kind to the person who loved your children and you, too, enough to stay there for half of their growing-up years by then?

Or did you respond with vindictiveness?

Then how will you treat the rest of us whom you don’t personally know when you are in power over us?

It was not the taxpayers’ pockets that settled the suit when you lost your temper at Ebay and threw a dissenting underling towards the wall; I don’t want to be on the hook for your behavior when you find yourself thwarted in politics over and over and endlessly over again.  But see, there’s something you would already have learned a little of had you ever voted before deciding to run:

You don’t always get your way in politics. It’s worth trying, and then you just have to go and be gracious with the results.

And Carly? I remember friends who worked for HP singing in great glee, Ding dong the witch is dead! It was the unofficial company theme song across the headlines and in person–I bear personal witness–when you got fired by the board. You had no use for the egalitarian culture of a good company, one where by common consent when there was a downturn, everybody across the board from the top on down would take temporary salary cuts in order that there be no layoffs until the next business upswing. The focus was on taking care of each other for the good of the company that was creating new ideas and new products for the good of society.  It was a very idealistic place to work.

You killed all that. You bought yourself the corporate jet that Hewlett and Packard would totally never have done. (Bill Hewlett swam at my therapy pool. He was a sweet old guy.) You bought into the whole overprivileged CEO thing, spending millions and millions on yourself while firing competent workers and shipping their jobs away–HP nearly died of you. The HP Way, you thought, was archaic and quaint.

John McCain fired you too.

And tomorrow is my chance.

Don loaned me his copy of Stones Into Schools, by Greg Mortenson, one of the most important books I’ve read in my life. Mortenson writes well and lives well: the man loves deeply.  And by that love’s work he is changing the world.

I’ve been savoring it slowly, a chapter or two a night–and then today couldn’t stand the wait and simply read through it all. I didn’t want to put any of those living characters down.  I wanted to support their cause of hiring the local population to build and staff good schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan and requiring that girls make up half the student population, both by my attention and financially.

I immediately ordered a copy of Three Cups of Tea.

I cannot begin to say how important it is that this man, and those who work with him, are alive in this world and that they are doing what they are doing (and how glad I am that our soldiers are being told to read Three Cups).  We are the ones being educated, too, by Mortenson’s showing who these people are and what their lives are like.  They respond to being cared about, just like we all do.

I did not know that the custom was, before one goes to war, the elders properly sit down with the opposing elders to discuss whether they can afford the costs: the winning side is to take on the solemn obligation to support the widows and children left behind.

My thanks to all who supported Mortenson’s cause by their donations long before I opened the book and let myself see beyond just the titles of two bestsellers.  There are students at 145 new built-t0-code schools and counting who will always know who, along with the dedicated labor of their families and neighbors, made it so they could learn to read and see the world through what others too may write.

An exit interview I found interesting, even if I often don’t agree with my uncle’s politics. Gotta love that secret CIA/Senate committee briefing in the secret room because Patrick Moynihan wanted it scooped on the front page the next day.

Note that my uncle’s son is helping the Democrat candidate’s campaign now that his dad is out. It’s the candidate that matters far more than the party.  Go Jim!

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Update: PG&E was awarded nearly $5 million by the state three years ago specifically to replace that high-risk pipe that later blew up. PG&E did not replace it. They did, however, give that much in bonuses to their executives. And now they’re asking for money to… Yeah…

Go lawmakers go! This is the kind of thing we vote you into office FOR!