Friends We Hold Dear

I’m unabashedly amazed at the comings and goings of some people in our lives. People that we met and never thought to see again can sometimes be the most important catalysts in our lives and someone that we think will be there forever just seem to vanish in the wink of an eye.

Two people that have played major parts in my life fit that description. One I met at a social gathering; she was kind of cool, had a new baby and I liked her a lot. But our lives seemed totally different; the paths we each were on seemed miles apart and I thought it was a shame that I wouldn’t get to know her better.

But 15 years later she is still one of the best friends I’ll ever have. You know the saying; friends help you move, but real friends help you move bodies. And she would, as I would for her. We’ve disagreed on lots of things during those years, but I’ve never doubted that we will always be sisters of the soul. I’m an ‘auntie’ to her daughter, a part of the village that has helped to give her guidance over the years. Not the my friend isn’t perfectly able to figure it out herself, but every now and again a helping hand and some thoughtful advice can do wonders for a single moms soul.

Now that my ‘niece’ is in high school, I look back at the years and feel awe at being able to be a part of her life. She is beautiful and talented and if I’ve contributed even the tiniest bit to that then I must have done something right.

And then there is the other situation; the one friend that you can never imagine leaving your orbit, your world. This is the person that has moved bodies for you, so to speak. They have lent their shoulder and soaked up more tears than anyone should have to; they support you emotionally, roll up their sleeves and get dirty when the situation requires. They are your hero.

And yet, somehow they are gone. There were no angry words, only an expression of pain. Words that evidently struck a guilty cord and now because of that keep them from saying those words that move mountains – change everything.

“I’m sorry”

Those are magic words – big ju ju in them. They can heal a wound deeper than any ocean and make the pain go away. But there is a secret to them; you have to actually utter them out loud. To the person who aches to hear them. To the person who doesn’t really understand what has happened.

Do you know someone who needs to hear those words? Don’t wait, don’t think you’ll get around to it tomorrow or next week; that precious person might not be there when you think you are ready. We have so few people in our lives that really mean that much to us. Don’t lose another one, another day with that person.

What Do You Mean Caucus?

For the first time in many years Kansas has held a caucus. The democratic caucus was February 5, Super Tuesday in fact and the republican will follow on Saturday. Not quite sure why they weren’t the same day, but then I didn’t understand a lot about the whole caucus format truthfully.

But I have learned.

As a dedicated voter I wouldn’t have missed this for the world. Co-workers and friends were split on whether or not they would participate. Many of them felt that it wouldn’t be worth the time and effort to participate.

Myself, I have always thought that my vote is worth it all.

When I decided to participate in the Kansas Caucus, I realized that I knew very little about the whole process. What was the difference between a caucus and a primary? Are there differences even? So, to find answers I turned to my good friend, Wikipedia.

I like how Wikipedia is laid out; for me it is easy to read and understand and always provides me with valuable info and it was pretty helpful in this instance.

Caucus: A meeting of members of a political party or subgroup to nominate candidates for various offices.

Primary: Primary elections are one means by which a political party nominates candidates for the following general election.

Well, that cleared everything up! The only difference I could see was that a caucus was specifically done by political party and a primary isn’t. General election, primary election? This all sounded like some kind of political double-talk to me.

Both are designed to determine where our delegate votes will go at the conventions next summer. Okay, I understood that. So what else was different?

A primary is basically an election – you go in and cast your vote in a normal election process. The caucus it turns out functions a bit differently. Here’s how it worked here.

There were places set up for each of the candidates and you went to the place of the candidate of your choice. Your time to get in there and register was limited so when 7:00 came, the doors were closed and no one else could enter. When the doors closed the votes at each table were counted and then everything was tallied up and combined with all the other votes from your state.

Or that was how it was supposed to work, in theory. And of course we all know how that line of thinking works!

So, it was a bit different…

There was a place for each candidate, an over-flowing place; they had woefully underestimated how many folks would turn out for this democratic process. Each candidate had a room then, and it still wasn’t enough. But there was only so much space so they did the best they could.
So, there was a room for Clinton and a room for Obama, and then there was never-never land or in other words, the land of the undecided. It was up to the Clinton and Obama camps to educate the undecided on their candidate’s issues and views thereby coaxing the undecided to their side.
Again, in theory it sounds good and in reality it fell flat. Too many of the undecided’s knew perfectly well whom they were going to vote for. Halfway through the caucus I decided to call the undecided’s the argumentative instigators. The moniker fit perfectly. Most seemed to thrive on the arguments. I don’t know, maybe they were just lonely, or bored, or even inspired, who knows. But two hours into a process that was estimated at an hour I had pretty much had enough. And the two hours didn’t take into account the half an hour spent looking for a parking place before finally parking 2 blocks away in icy sleet that I would later have to scrape off of my car, nor did it count the half an hour waiting to get in or the time spent trying to find a place to hang out during the process.

Sounds like I’m one of those ‘whiner’ types doesn’t it? I’m not really. But I had built up expectations about the glorious process of caucus; how I would be thrilled and inspired by it and become even more motivated. Instead it became tedious and irritating – all I wanted was to get the hell out of Dodge!

Oh well, right?

I don’t know if caucus works that way in every state, but it’s how it worked here. It was an interesting process. Not particularly high-tech, nor even private as an election vote is. But it’s part of our processes of choosing our next leader and therefore to me, an important process to take part in. The main thing is that I did it. I went and became a part of the political machine we call democracy, a right guaranteed by our constitution.

My mom always told me when I was growing up to never complain about our political leaders if I didn’t participate in who got elected. I believe that is true and heaven’s knows I want my say!

Just try and shut me up!

Gimme Shelter

Oh, a storm is threat'ning My very life today
If I don't get some shelter Oh yeah, I'm gonna fade away
War, children, it's just a shot away It's just a shot away
War, children, it's just a shot away It's just a shot away

Ooh, see the fire is sweepin' Our very street today
Burns like a red coal carpet Mad bull lost its way
War, children, it's just a shot away It's just a shot away
War, children, it's just a shot away It's just a shot away

Rape, murder! It's just a shot away It's just a shot away
Rape, murder! It's just a shot away It's just a shot away
Rape, murder! It's just a shot away It's just a shot away

The floods is threat'ning My very life today
Gimme, gimme shelter Or I'm gonna fade away
War, children, it's just a shot away
It's just a shot away
It's just a shot away
It's just a shot away
It's just a shot away

I tell you love, sister, it's just a kiss away
It's just a kiss away
It's just a kiss away
It's just a kiss away
It's just a kiss away Kiss away, kiss away
--Words and Music by M. Jagger and K. Richards

A few months ago for about 2 weeks I had the Rolling Stones song Gimme Shelter roaring through my head. I say roaring because it practically never ceased its assault on my attention. It was with me during the day and even if I happened to wake up in the night. When I opened my eyes in the morning the serenade began anew each day.

Don’t get me wrong – I like the song. It’s my favorite Stone’s tune. I vaguely remember it as a child around 1970 or so. It was a song that sort of characterized the Vietnam War. The song seemed to be about war in fact, about that age, that time. So why was it on cruise control in my head?

War, children, it’s just a shot away!

It was about war, wasn’t it? Isn’t that what Mick meant when he sang, Oh a storm is threatening my very life today. If I don’t get some shelter I’m gonna fade away?

It certainly epitomized the thoughts and emotions of a generation of people who saw the fruitlessness of that war. Oh wait, police action. At 12, I watched the news in the evening, saw the destruction of villages and people, of jungle and life. Sure seemed like war to me. People died in war and that was what was happening every day in Viet Nam. Did ‘police action’ make it less violent, less deadly? It didn’t seem that way to me.

And yet not seeming to learn from our mistakes we as a nation are embroiled in yet another war, and the same sad consequences are spread across the news every day. So maybe that was why the song was running rampantly through my head. Again, loyal American’s are going off to war, to fight in a country that isn’t even sure it wants us there. There are points for and against that war and it’s not for me to say what’s right or wrong. I don’t support the war – but I whole-heartedly support our troops. I can’t even imagine the courage it takes to go to a place to fight for the rights of people who want to kill you for your protection and yet troops do it every single day.

So was the song repeating through my mind as a reminder that we are at war again? That precious life on all sides of this combat are being recklessly lost? I had to print out the words to look at them, to see what they said to me before some possibilities started to occur to me.

The words seemed so hopeless – almost as if the darkness and despair were coming regardless of what we do. Rape and murder? Certainly common enough in war, but not exclusive attributes of warring activities. So was it a societal epidemic it was referring to? Man, where was Mick when I really need some answers!

So I started taking a broader look at the world around me. Not hard to do since every news broadcast, newspaper and internet blog is full of the miseries of this world; of everything that is wrong with people, the world. Yes, all of it is true – our children are dying in the streets in Iraq and America. Children are starving as well and we’re tolerating it as a society because we simply don’t know what to do to reclaim our streets and towns, our world. Our hearts weep with the wasted potential of our youth, our future. Famililes shed tears over flags that cover the coffins of our dead and wash the blood off the sidewalks and streets and pray that the violence doesn’t claim anymore lives. How do we keep hoping; hoping that it will change?

And then one line in the song suddenly jumped out at me.

I tell you love, sister, it's just a kiss away

Isn’t our love our strongest shield? No, it cannot stop the bullets as they blast through bodies, tearing asunder not only the body but the lives of so many. But can love help us to find a way to shield the kids who carry the guns because they see them as the only protection from a hostile world? If we love enough, not only our family, but our communities, our cities and towns and neighbors, if we love enough can we do it? Will love make us strong enough to stand up and say ‘No MORE!’? No more fruitless death, that your gangs are not family, they are not love. They are only a temporal path to destruction derived from people who don’t have a clue as to what real love is? Who don’t know the shield of protection the loving arms of mothers and fathers and grandparents and family and friends of all types provide.

No, love cannot stop a bullet but it can stop the tide of violence by building children and society strong enough to take a stand against it; one person at a time.

This sister will choose love, with all my heart.

Signs, Signs, Everywhere Signs...

As I was driving to work this morning I saw a bus that was turning left in front of me. A large sign on it said “Madeyoulook.com”. At first I was shamed that I had indeed taken my attention off of driving and read it and then I started to feel a sense of outrage over it.

Much like the old ‘70’s song by the Five Man Electrical Band says,:

Signs Signs everywhere a sign
Blocking out the scenery breaking my mind
Do this, don't do that, can't you read the sign

Most of the signs seem to be aimed at selling us something. They come in small portable signs setting out in front of businesses to billboards to huge flashing electronic LCD signs advertising everything from which hospital is best to radio stations.

I feel as if I’m bombarded with messages, 24/7. At night those electronic monstrosities flash and swirl, keeping beat to some unknown rhythm all of their own. They draw our attention when we are at stop lights, saying read me, over and over. They are almost hypnotic sometimes and as I watch I find even my heart often beats with their flashes as I am drawn in to them.

Then the light changes and we’re all off, racing on to the next light, the next sign. Do we shake off the old sign before we are in front of the next? Do we even shake them off period? Those flashing images have a way of imprinting on our brains; sort of like watching TV and then closing your eyes. You can still see the image of the TV screen when you do that. So what does the flashing of the sign do? Does it imprint itself into your brain, your memory? That’s what they are designed to do folks, to make you remember them and the messages they try to sell us.

Is it safe? Do you feel competent to drive around with all of these signs flashing at you? Do you have the ability to shake them off? I’ve heard arguments from the sign companies saying that the signs are meant for the passengers to read. But as I said above, I caught the sign on the side of the bus so can we successfully block out the messages?

How many things do you try to focus on when you are driving? We have enough on our minds already; families, work, what we need to grab at the store. Messaging systems follow us everywhere we go now. The age of electronics ensures that our phone calls, e-mails and text messages are never out of our reach. Now we add signs that are doing their best to imprint into our already over-taxed brains, almost impossible to over look.

But I do try…

I like the last verse from the song:

And the sign said everybody welcome, come in, kneel down and pray
But when they passed around the plate at the end of it all,
I didn't have a penny to pay,
So I got me a pen and a paper and I made up my own little sign.
I said thank you Lord for thinking about me, I'm alive and doing fine

New Attitudes - Part Two

I think sometimes that we women are our own worst enemies. Again, it goes back to the internalization thing. It’s hard, if not all but impossible for us to just ‘Let It Be’, as a good friend of mine often tells me I need to do.

No, I lie in bed at night endlessly thinking of my day and trying to figure out how I could have done it better or different. I think about the phone calls I need to return or the e-mails; I think of the bills I need to pay. You know what I’m talking about because you probably do it too. Not to say that men don’t as well, but I’ve yet to meet a man who obsesses nocturnally as much as we women do. Most of them seem to have some internal switch they can flip which enables them to just move on.

I try, I really do and sometimes I almost, just barely succeed. I’m so close to the secret of letting it all go that I can feel it and then poof!, its gone. Back to lying there in bed, tossing and turning and trying to shut my furiously clicking brain off. Ticking items off that I didn’t do, items that I have the best intentions of doing the next day, all the time beating myself up for what I perceive as my serious shortcomings.

Why does everything seem so much more ‘vivid’ at night? You can sort of push it all aside during the day and yet at night, there it is, dancing emphatically before your tired and weary brain, demanding attention.

Another attention getter for me at night is my work. I love my job and the people I work with for the most part. No one could be more fortunate than I am in that I don’t think. I work with mostly women, a situation that can sometimes be problematic in many situations but which goes pretty smoothly at my job.

Our Associate Director is an amazing woman, especially in a business world that often does not often appreciate women. No, she isn’t paid near her worth or recognized either, but she still gives her best and makes this an amazing place for other women to work. She is a mentor of the highest caliber and shares her knowledge freely and enthusiastically. I have learned the most important of things from her – how to help others succeed.

As I watch and read about the business world around me I am constantly amazed to find women who submarine other women. They’ve managed to climb the ladder in the business world and many of them are kicking at the people below them, afraid to share any of the ways that got them there. Truly, they may not be methods we would want to embody anyway, but still, the women have made it and are there and undoubtedly they could help others.

Why are we so territorial in the business world? Where is our sense of solidarity? How many women climb the ladder, traipsing through murky and treacherous waters only to bang their heads against a glass ceiling? We see the other side and it is so close we can practically taste it and yet there we are, unable to touch it for real. There is not only safety in numbers, but strength as well ladies. What may be an impossible task for only a few will surely easily fall for many.

Take a stand. Reach out and help another woman, whether it’s at work or home or school or anywhere else in the world. Let her know she isn’t alone, that there is someone else there who knows her struggles and appreciates them and the road that has been followed to get there.

I promise you it won’t hurt a bit. Success isn’t better when experienced alone; it is much sweeter when shared.

New Attitudes

**NOTE: I have a strong Sociology background and what makes us tick as human beings endlessly fascinates me. There is a certain person in my life who often tells me I have a bleeding heart, but I hope he will forgive me for this one…


I often found during my sociological studies that I felt a great deal of anger towards men. Not any men in particular, but at the social and emotional aspect of men roles in society as opposed to women’s roles in society. Granted, as women we have come a long way, but sometimes we still sabotage ourselves.

For instance, I watch Survivor and have since the first season. Okay, its reality TV at its worst sometimes, I’ll admit, but I still like it. Let’s face it though, it’s a Sociologist’s nightmare.

Whether the tribes are set up in the beginning as men vs. women, it always seems to come down to that. Several times I’ve seen strong female teams and alliances go to pot just because a few men join the group. It’s like, suddenly the men infiltrate the women’s minds and all that testosterone over-rides common sense. The women have to know that the men use their superior physical strength to their advantage, so the women must use their wits. And a few do manage, but then they are looked at as bitches by the men because they are strong, or as threats by the other women. Time after time strong female alliances crumple as men get in the way of them.

It makes me want to scream. Do there have to be female only alliances? No, but if that’s where your original loyalty lies, why let some guy come sliding in and get between you and your alliance?

Why? Because we are taught from our youngest ages as women that we submit to the superiority of males. My mother taught me to be strong and stand on my own two feet, that I was as good as any male out there. And my dad reinforced that through my ball playing years when he fought tirelessly for new equipment for us instead of the cast-offs of the boys.

But often times those messages of subjugation come from within us. I think it has something to do with sex. We are the female – the part of the sexual equation that is ‘entered’ during the process. We are taught that there can be pain, but we must endure because that’s just how it is. We do it because we love the man, we want the babies, and we take joy and pleasure in the act. None of those are bad reasons at all and it isn’t a bad thing, that’s not what I’m saying. But who told us those aspects of sex?

We internalize everything. All the major things happen to us internally, sex, babies, and menstruation. It’s how we were designed, how our bodies function, but growing up with our bodies how can we not internalize everything emotionally as well?

Most men tell us we think too much. Is it any wonder?

The Music in Me

One of the many sociological things I ponder is music and society. I grew up in a house that always had music going in it. Yes, we had a TV but mom did her housework with the radio going and listened at night.

When I was a child my mom often listened to Wolfman Jack at night and it was so much fun to sing and dance with the music. But mom’s music tastes were very eclectic and I learned from her to enjoy music – all types of music.

Many people boast smell as being their strongest sense to ‘put them back into a place’ but to me, music does it. I can hear a song and usually tell you how old I was when it was out, or when I first remember hearing it. It brings recall of events and people, places and emotions. It touches my heart because of these recalls and I cherish them.

I can remember that my first slow dance was in 7th grade, at TARP with Mark R. and we danced to ‘Something’ by the Beatles. Not so much dancing actually, sort of holding onto one another and swaying a bit. I felt perfect, so happy. I think he was just happy feeling my breasts pressed up against him, but that is a different story!

But hearing that song puts me right back there, to a darkened gymnasium, arms around his neck, feeling both of our heartbeats skip along. Of the first stirrings of something I didn’t yet understand.

And music made it all acceptable. If I were to get that close to a boy in other situations, someone (an adult) would have pulled us apart, told us that wasn’t ‘acceptable behavior’. But because we were dancing, it was all cool – go ahead, get as close as possible, rub adolescent body parts up against each other. It’s dancing, socially acceptable; in fact it was and still is a socially favored behavior.

We teach our babies to listen to lullabies in attempts to quiet them at night, we teach our children the joys of playing an instrument or singing as an outlet for certain desires, needs or behaviors. Music fills our hearts, our heads and our souls; tames the savage and not so savage beasts.

The alphabet song teaches us our ABC’s, other songs teach us about our history as human beings, such as ‘The Erie Canal’. They give us a brief peek at what a society was, how the people thought, how they interacted with one another. Yet we often fail to acknowledge their significance.

And songs themselves change and evolve through the years as well, new versions, new singers. Take one of my favorite songs: ‘Since I Fell For You’. It was done in 1962 by Lenny Welsh (if it was done earlier I am not aware of that version). That song speaks of love in a relatively innocent way. Not the words so much – it was after all a song about a relationship breaking up, but the tone, the way it is sang. When I listen to it I see a couple perhaps necking in the backseat of a car, stolen kisses and a few illicit caresses. A song for the times, because that was a lot of what 1962 was about.

Another version came out in the ‘80’s by jazz artist David Sanborn with lyrics by Al Jareau. Same song, same tune, but a little edgier, hipper. It’s no longer quite so innocent; its melody sort of invades your body, urging you to move with it.

And finally, Michael Bolton’s version in the early ‘90’s. Again, same song and melody but this one takes on a whole new feeling. Its way past edgy, it doesn’t just invade your body it permeates it, and you know exactly what it is urging you to do – run out and find that certain someone and have your way with them - NOW!

So here is the question I put to you all: Has music changed because of society, or has society changed because of music?