Silk Wrapped Dyed Easter Eggs

We wrapped the eggs in squares of silk; then white cotton, and twist-
tied them. Next we put them in an enameled pan, covered them with
water, and brought to a boil. As soon as it boiled, we lowered it to
simmer for 20 minutes. We took them out of the pot but left them in
the wrapping till they cooled. When we untied them this is what we got.

Quote of the Day

"I would rather do art than watch someone else do it." (my daughter in response to Frank saying, "I enjoy watching you do art.")

Holy Week Unholy Meltdown

We woke to a tantrum. Not mine. But I wonder how much my sleeplessness for the last couple of nights has affected my daughter, the one who threw the tantrum. She's not tantrum prone, and the chanting that went along with it was near primal.

The news Sunday of the Fed's bailing out Bear Stearns by loaning it money and taking mortgages (which is what got Bear Stearns into trouble to begin with) as collateral depressed the living daylights out of me.. well, after the giggling fit at the absurdity of the transaction passed, I got depressed. Bush's comments to the press that we're in handy-dandy shape bewildered and troubled. I live in a country run by cartoon ostriches. It's enough to keep people agitated, if not wide-awake. Maybe my wakefulness is a metaphor: STAY ALERT! Maybe it's due drinking Kefir and psyllium at bedtime. Come to think of it, drinking the Kefir may have been News motivated: get the c-r-a-p out wherever you can.

I had decided yesterday morning to avoid The News. Without my saying anything about this decision Frank said this morning -- after reciting more details of the Fed deal, "what are we supposed to do, turn off the News? We can't afford to. We have to stay alert." Sigh. If my leaders are ostriches, maybe I am, too? Maybe I need to look in a mirror and check for feathers and big lips. And maybe I need to hold my honey's hand while continuing to imbibe The News. How else am I to know when our house is worth less than it was when it was built in 1928?

At the end of last week, I went grocery shopping. The same elderly people were doing their careful checks of prices and coupons, but others were maneuvering a little more cautiously, too. Everyone I saw seemed to choose carefully between items, putting things back, choosing fewer items. Thanks to running out of several cleaning supplies at the same time, my cart was the most full at checkout, and I drew stares. I mean STARES. Avoiding eye contact, I paid, reminded myself that our school PTA gets eScrip credit for these purchases, and we'll get 10 cents off per gallon of gas, and left. Ostrich.

Frank reports that the bus seems more full these days. The email airfare super-saver deal to Paris this week topped $700. Not that we were planning to go, but it used to be three or four hundred and something to fly to Paris on a super-saver. This situation, however, is easily remedied: hit the delete key on the email. Ostrich.

So, how do we transfigure all these cartoon ostriches into vigilant Eagles?

I need a cup of coffee.

Glow - The scene through my window this morning

Lake Washington glows a soft warm yellow that radiates up and wraps the island hills.
The trees reflect as foggy spikes or poles for underwater piers.
A finger smudges the scene sketched in soft charcoal misty grays. If you listen, you can hear the finger stroke the paper.
Inner fire alight beneath milky Irish skin, expectant mother watching over, smiling upon, embracing in silent joy.

Constitutional Law - Free Speech / Church-State Issues

If you enjoy Constitutional issues, namely topics of free speech and the Establishment Clause, read this article in the New York Times.

Who knew painting a word on a church roof far from anywhere could cause such a stir? Fascinating.

CAGES

If you haven't seen the Pew Center research report detailing findings that America now incarcerates 1 in 100 of its citizens, then read it here.

My how we have fallen.

I look at our daughter's elementary school, Dearborn Park, here in the south end of Seattle and then at its polar-opposite, Lawton Elementary in the lovely, wealthy Queen Anne neighborhood of schools. Dearborn Park ranks on the emergency, needs help list of the school board. Lawton tops out on state testing and special programming beyond the basics. It also has the Spectrum program for gifted students. Dearborn Park is about 82% free lunch qualified and majority minority. Lawton is 0% free lunch qualified; 98+% white (its statistics shows an asterisk for all other racial categories and the asterisk means that the percentage doesn't make up enough of the student body to register as an entire percentage point).

I see the EPA sponsored Mercer Island study results, in which the University of Washington tested for of levels of pesticides in children eating organic v. regular grocery store fare. The study showed that when the children ate regular grocery store fare, pesticides showed up in their bodies, but when they ate organic, no pesticides showed up. Then, I hear a hard-working, middle-class, concerned mother say that with the rising cost of groceries, rent, and oil, she doesn't have a choice but to eat standard fare; she can't feed her family organic, though she'd like to.

I hear Republican candidates say "use less healthcare to make the costs go down" and Democrats say "make everyone buy health care and punish them if they don't, or make some people buy it and hope the others do".

I hear the family case worker at our school ask me on behalf of unnamed students' families if I can give something to help. This week's urgent need is not food, but clothing and basics.

I receive the prayer chain request to pray for a parishioner's child who witnessed a friend get shot.

I look at the payday loan companies in our neighborhood and at our end of town and the casinos and bars versus the coffee shops and quality clothing stores, salons, and emergency clinics in wealthier parts of town. One of the blighted areas of the south end is Skyway. Why doesn't Starbucks or Ladro open a coffee shop in Skyway? Why doesn't PCC open a grocery store there? Where are the useful shops with convenient walking between them? Where are the green spaces and planter boxes to make it pretty and proud?

Then I see the Pew report and I want to scream: "WE ARE ALL IN CAGES!"

My God, have we lost all sense of self and selflessness? Have we lost all sense of the bond of humanity? Have we become so inured to inhumanity, separatism, elitism, degradation of others, privilege, injustice, and selfishness that we can really and truly recreate England of 200 or so years ago with its workhouses, debtors prisons, indentured servitude, prison colonies, slave ships, and blood-class system? Our country was spawned as a reaction, even an antidote, to that hateful, vile system.

Why indeed should we educate our children well, if a decent, thorough education might tell them such history? They might actually wake up and realize that the same is happening and learn its eventual outcome: downfall of a potentially great society and one which many claim to be the great democratic experiment and success.

How successful a democracy are we if we are disenfranchising 1 in 100 people at an ever increasing rate?

Why should we educate our children equally, if we are planning to use 1/100th or more of them as veal? Our children are not oblivious. They are not incapable of learning. They learn very well from our actions. The reason the expectation of college attendance and a successful career is not pandemic in the poor schools is because we have educated these children well that they won't need college and financial success where they are going.

Ten years ago when I moved to Seattle, I watched two consecutive news stories: a report about destroying a homeless encampment in Seattle despite a dearth of shelter beds and food and a report about the Redmond Rabbit Coalition raising $60,000 to transport feral rabbits who were chewing through electrical wires in that city's downtown to a special rabbit sanctuary. I couldn't figure why they didn't cook the rabbits to feed those hungry people who were going without food and shelter and help the people to a sanctuary. This memory floods back whenever issues of inequity and injustice come up.

I fear I am becoming a socialist. I am not yet there, but the thoughts stir. I am not ready to let go the rope of democratic hope.

A few weeks ago, I read an article on the difference in fundraising between poor schools and wealthy schools. Its thoughtfulness lingers, returning on that lazy susan stream of mindfulness whenever I face the challenges at our own school. That article is here.

Mulling this article yet again after reading the Pew Report, it struck me that all the general funds granted to Principals and all the funds raised by all the PTAs in town should be combined distributed in such a way that every child in the district's basic needs are met, and when all the students in all the schools are receiving exactly the same daily experience in school, the next wave of funds could be used to give the specialty items and programs to each and every school equally. After all, Dearborn Park would like marimabas and orchestras and after-school activities (chess, opera, piano lessons, foreign language, knitting, sports, yoga...) with equal transportation and care opportunities as Lawton.

It's not enough this crazed equalization of education plan. I know that. It will not answer all the problems we have created and face now and in the future. But it is something, if only a lightening rod.

Clearly, if we are willing to plop 1/100th of our population in a cage, we have serious challenges that require an entire social overhaul. Now is the time for thinkers, brave prophets, researchers, and doers to find a way other than revolution out of the quagmire we have created and labeled "homeland".