The Wild Winds of Fortune

I know this is tacky, but I am going to do it anyway.  I hope you are not offended.

I  have been told that one of downsides of helping non-profits is that at some point you have to hit up your friends.*  That time has come…

Kara Grief and Bereavement Services, the non-profit I volunteer at, is holding its Spring Gala, themed “April In Paris,” On April 14.  (You have heard me complain before of the work involved in hunting down movie rights. I learned how to do that!  I don’t know when that information will next come in handy, but it has got to at some point.)

Kara is a wonderful group of people who do very important work. People come to us at times when their lives have been pulled out from under them; I’ve talked to parents who have lost children, adult children who have lost parents, people who have lost multiple loved ones within a short period of time. We help families and children.  As someone whose family lost a child years ago, I know firsthand the devastating effect such a loss has, and how, absent help, families can self-destruct under the burden of their grief.

We offer peer counseling and support group for adults, teens, children over the age of 6, and families. We have counselors who go out to organizations, schools, and companies to help them cope with the grief of the death of a student, teacher, or employee. We educate teachers and caregivers how to help those who are grieving. We hold a three-day camp every summer for children and teens who have suffered a loss: it allows children to connect with other kids their age who understand what they are going through.

People don’t “get over” their grief, or “move on,”  but they move through their grief to find peace and healing. We help them in that process.

We do not charge for our services. We subsist on individual and foundation support.

I have been volunteering with Kara since fall 2009.  This is the second year I have been involved with the Gala.  It is our major fundraiser for the year (after the support of various foundations).  Part of the fundraiser is a silent auction.

If you are located in the San Francisco Bay Area, please consider donating goods or services to us for our silent auction.  We can use gift certificates to restaurants, stores, and assorted services (spas, for example).** Tickets to sporting events are popular, as well. (Every year, we have people who have season tickets to baseball games donate tickets to games they know they will be unable to attend.) If you have a business, please consider donating goods or services from your business.

For more information, contact Susan Christensen, Kara’s Events and Development Coordinator, at (650)321-5272.  Or send an email to gala@kara-grief.org. Donations can be sent directly to Kara, 457 Kinglsey Avenue, Palo Alto, CA 94301.

Please help us.  Kara will be grateful, and I personally will be quite appreciative of your donation.

Thank you.***

*One of the few advantages of not having girls is that you never have to get your friends to buy cookies.
**In addition to jewelry, which I gave last year, I gave a $50 gift certificate to The Loft (one of my trivia prizes) and am going to be donating movie passes at a local theatre to go with that, as sort of a “dinner and a movie” package.
***If you would rather, you could also donate money directly, or buy an ad in the program. Or buy a ticket to the event itself.

Offered without commentary from Criterion Collections’ blurb about And God Created Woman, by Roger Vadim:

Bardot stars as Juliette, an 18-year-old orphan whose unbridled appetite for pleasure shakes up all of St. Tropez; her sweet but naïve husband Michel (Jean-Louis Trintignant) endures beatings, insults, and mambo in his attempts to tame her wild ways.

So, there’s the gala I am working on.  I am looking for possible movies about or set in Paris, to be shown in the background during the cocktail hour/silent auction preceding the dinner. And I am really resisting my urge to suggest to the committee that we show some of the films I have found.  Films like…

Last Tango in Paris.  Or Lovers on the Bridge. Or  Henry and June...

The Motion Picture Licensing Corporation has the worst hold music I have ever heard.  It is a throwback to early seventies Muzak-dime store music (I used to work in a Kresge’s as a teenager, and had to listen to this all the time), and it’s scratchy.

I am writing a post – which may ormay not see the light of day – about all the people I am thankfulfor in my life.* Out of 18 people, five have names which begin withthe letter “C.” I don’t think any other letter has more than one, orpossibly two.

Clearly, the letter “C” has had a great influence on my life.

For some reason, I am very fond of the competition show Top Shot on the History Channel. Shooting stuff up in interesting ways just looks so fun.  Not quite as much as blowing things up a la Mythbusters, but serious fun nonetheless.

As a result of my viewing habits, last night during my weekly trivia game I was able to accurately  identify a M-16 rifle. Although it was only one point (and I won by more than that) it helped keep my (and my occasional teammates’) four-game win streak going.

Hey, fifty dollars of food for knowing what given make of rifle looks like isn’t shabby.  And I think I can identify a BAR….

Now if I can only get to shoot one.*

*BARs are cool, but I want to learn to shoot a twelve-gauge shotgun.  Either a Benelli Vinci or a Winchester 101.  I’m not sure why. 

Personhood from conception has been shelved in Virginia.  Just as well.

It is still alive and kicking in Oklahoma, though.  And this morning, completely unbidden (much like an earworm), the following scenario presented itself:

A man has two daughters, A & B.  He dies.  A and her husband have in vitro fertilization, with several embryos left over, which they store.  After A has her child, B and her husband have a child.  A’s child dies, and she and her husband decide to have a child from the frozen embryos.

The man died before either the IVF or the natural birth of a grandchild.  The man’s will declares that his two daughters have a life-estate in his not inconsequential property, with the vast majority of the residual going to his eldest grandchild. So…

If personhood begins at conception, not birth, who is the elder child? The child conceived in vitro, or the child born first?  The Oklahoma bill grants the unborn all the “rights, privileges, and immunities available to other  persons, citizens, and residents of this state.”

So, absent other provisions of Oklahoma law, the elder child is the child conceived first.  If this law were to stand, you just know that  question  is going to be litigated.

This has been bugging me all day.  It is going to keep bothering me until I research it, which I have not done yet.  I don’t even remember the little of trusts and estates I learned a long time ago: it may be this is an already settled issue.  The question then becomes, does it bug me enough to spend time learning the law of a state I don’t live in and have only driven through a couple of times?

Sometimes, I rather wish my mind didn’t work this way.

Wired, alert, anxious.  Rereading every word I have written over the past three weeks, worried about being misunderstood — what have I not said that I should have said, or said that I should not have?  Do I represent myself fairly?

Am I good person? Can people tell I try to be a good person?

Idly wondering could I — should I — run away to Los Angeles? How about Portland? I have friends in both places. And Disneyland would be fun… or better yet, Disney World.  I could get Mom to go with me.

And how can I be so alert and so completely unable to get things done?  Maybe that’s because — squirrel!

That second Venti Skinny Carmel Macchiato may have been a mistake.  I thought I told the barista to make it decaf, but I don’t think she did.

A man in Alaska has filed suit alleging that the Fourteenth Amendment does not carry with it the right to hold public office. This particular frivolous lawsuit not only infuriates me, but concerns me.  Not that there is a bigot out there willing to allege that Barack Obama cannot be president because of his race, but that said crazy felt comfortable enough in the current sociopolitical environment to file suit challenging his candidacy. Not only that, but if you read through the complaint, there have been attempts in states other than Alaska to keep Obama off the ballot.

I am not going to say that this man is representative of conservatives, or even the Republican Party.  But if you read the document, he is also a birther, and those crazies are more thick on the ground than one would think in a rational society.

These people drive me nuts.  Racists in general do, because of my background.

I am a child of privilege in many ways.  Not only in the way that white people in general are privileged, but in a more particular way that those of us who are white Southerners and who have roots reaching back to the antebellum period have.  A lot of my ancestors owned slaves, including one who was a plantation owner in Greene County, Georgia*, and who owned more than one hundred and thirty slaves.  (A horrifying number of those were children and teens. )

I have no guilt about the actions of my forebears.  I have not been a slave owner.  I have not supported slavery.  I have not longed for the return of the antebellum South and the plantation.

I am not guilty. But I am responsible. Although often used interchangeably, the two are not the same.

As a descendant of slaveholders, and one whose family has been shaped by the institution of slavery, I have a responsibility to support in whatever way I can efforts to overcome the lasting effects of that evil system. I say “support,” because it is unfortunately not my fight per se; I can only give whatever aid I can and speak the truth as I see it. And in that truth I have to defer to others who, sadly, have more direct experience with the lingering shadows of slavery and Jim Crow.**

The Bible says that the sins of the fathers shall be visited upon the children to the third generation.  I think that is right, although I think that that obligation extends even further.  The wealth of my great-great-great-grandfather allowed my family to continue in the form it took, and I am a product of that wealth, even if only distantly.

Don’t misread me: I am no hero here.  I would not for one minute have you think that I would represent myself as such.  I am just fulfilling a duty that has been left for me.  If I am guilty of anything, it is that I have not done enough.

My forebears did evil.  To the extent can, I feel morally compelled to support the correction of that evil.

*Oddly enough, this was not from the Greene side, but from my mom’s side.  My dad’s side is no cleaner, however.
**This also broadens into a moral requirement to support those of other ethnicities who were not subject to slavery but who have experience of bigotry in America.  Quite frankly, I fail to see how anyone with a knowledge of U.S. History can feel otherwise.

I am a large woman.  I am a very large woman. I have been so for a much of my life.*

One of my experiences has been a feeling that I am somehow nonexistent.  It is a hard thing to explain, unless you have been part of a group that people look past or through or would rather not see at all.** I have been told I am beautiful, but that is hard to accept when you have trouble looking at yourself in a full-length mirror.

Part of this is an artifact of growing up where and when I did. I had a friend in eighth grade (eighth grade!) offer to get me diet pills from her father, who was a pharmaceutical rep.

So tonight, when Gabourey Sidibe in one of the Oscar interview montages said that she watched herself on film to remind herself that she still existed, I understood completely. *** This is part of why I write, because in these pages I do exist.  All of me.

I wonder how many people were confused by her statement.

*Although not as much as I would have thought.  I see pictures of myself as a teenager  now, and I am astonished that I am not the hideous person some of my classmates told me I was.  I was not slender, but I was strong and well-built.
**My experiences as a large pregnant woman were particularly horrible.  The treatment I received from clerks in maternity stores was humiliating.
***And let me say right now: Gabourey, you and Melissa McCarthy are heroes.

After watching the Oscars, I need to see…

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (both versions)
Pina
Undefeated
Purgatory
Rango
Beginners
War Horse
The Iron Lady
The Descendants
Plus the live-action and documentary shorts (I saw the animated shorts last week)

I have seen two of the performances that won acting awards (Best Actor, Best Supporting Actress), as well as Best Picture/Director/Original Screenplay.

I actually saw over half the Best Picture nominees this year — the first time that has happened since 2007. I adored Midnight in Paris.  I loved Hugo, The Artist (even if I did fall asleep for part of it) and Moneyball.  I liked The Help.  In spite of the nominations it received, I have absolutely no interest in seeing Tree of Life.

Also, Penelope Cruz is too beautiful for words.

Having seen his Grammy 2011 performance (with its Elton John homage), and his work on The Voice [Edited to add; especially his asides with his fluffy white cat], I have come to the conclusion that…

Cee Lo Green is a Muppet. No other explanation makes sense.

[Edited to add: I think this is a great thing. I think Elton John is a Muppet in disguise, too, for that matter. And John Denver was totally a Muppet.]

I would like to make a post about each of them, but lately I have a) been sort of pre-occupied with other things and so not posting a lot of substance, and b) working on three long and substantive posts that just keep growing more and more intricate and because in one case I  worry about how they will be received (not personal info, just opinions that make me uncomfortable) I keep postponing publishing.

So some links:

I have long been a vocal opponent of “anti-vaxers.”  This story of a little girl who nearly died from pertussis is a great example of why.

For those who are concerned about Google’s new privacy policy,* the good folks at EFF have tips on how to reduce its impact.  This link also includes links on how to cut down on your accessibility online.

Speaking of privacy, the way in which marketers gather and use the information about what you buy is really scary, when Target can find out you are pregnant before your family does. [Very long, but very worthwhile reading.  Also includes information on how the neurology of habits which I found fascinating.  The pregnant teen story is on page seven, if you are only interested in that.]

A couple of links about Christianity:

From Abilene Christian University’s Professor of Psychology Richard Beck, “Bait and Switch Afflicts Contemporary Christian Society”. **

From jimrigby.org, “Ten Thing I Wish the Church Knew About Homosexuality.”  I actually think the church** knows these things — they’ve been told often enough — they simply ignore them.

And, on a lighter note: “The REAL Personality Types.” They have me pegged.  Exactly.  And, for the record, I just want to say that Friends IS a really, really stupid television show.  Not too familiar with Anais Nin, though.

*A good friend at lunch yesterday mentioned that people were aghast that she was not more concerned about privacy issues, given that she was a sysadmin and general computer geek. “That’s because I simply assume I have no privacy anymore,” she said frankly. I was horrified, but upon reflection decided that she was probably right, which horrified me even more. I have always assumed I was too small a minnow to attract anyone’s attention, but the News International scandal in Britain made it plain how easy it is for unscrupulous individuals and organizations to get access to your private information.  People become objects of interest through no action of their own, such as having a child murdered or having a spectacular incident involving a celebrity.


**It is a mistake to talk about Christianity and “the church” as though it were a monolithic whole.  While it certainly has its very conservative faction, mainstream Episcopalianism holds far different views than Southern Baptists and Roman Catholics on a whole host of Scriptural and social issues.  (This would be different than the Anglican Communion outside the US, which, other than a few outliers (New Zealand, South Africa) is very conservative, especially on the issue of sexual orientation.)