To Touch a Diseased Body

To touch a diseased body is powerful.
To watch a pillowy torso turn to a rocky terrain.
They mark her body with sharpies, map where her tumors are and point radiation into her abdomen. Her waist is bruised around her sides from injections, as if she’d been beaten and kicked.
She lies in a hot bath before me, naked, her body exposed and falling, wrinkles appearing at the corner of her mouth overnight. Her forehead wrinkles with concern, she can’t tell the difference between dreams and visions.
What is reality to any of us, anymore?
Time is lost in hospitals. A week is gone in a flash of a camera which strives to only capture what unity we have, bouquets in a corner, Mylar balloons with superficial prayers, a Chia pet farm in the window.
I rub her feet, I want to push the tumors from her body, I work her feet like dough, I watch her eyes tighten and her words stop when I find a spot behind her ankle bone, the pressure point for the ovaries, the place she feels so much relief when I coax the soft and pliable skin through my fingers.
I clean their house which has been left for days, maybe weeks, without being swept.
There are bags of movies that people have brought to occupy their minds.
The port for the chemo dangles from her arm, a purple and blue rubber cord bobs each time she reaches her arms to hug me. She can’t hug me long. Her body quivers, her hands shake. She has not yet cried on me, not until I kneel in front of her and hold her face in my hands and look her in the eyes. We stare at each other without saying anything, for so many minutes, blinking, and yet we hold our stares. She suddenly looks confused and smirks, she asks me what I am doing and I laugh as I cry.
I feel as if I am saying goodbye, as if we have words for one another even though we don’t have words. I get one chance to tell her before I leave, so I take the chance to tell her and this is what I say “I will support you not matter what direction of treatment you take. If you want to fight I will fight with you, and if you don’t then I support you". I think she hears me this time. We hold each other and she clutches and shakes out a few tears.
I am afraid I will never see her again that my last memory will be of me leaving her on her couch, when I feel like I should be with her for the journey. The entire journey. I just want to be there.

Nugget & Buddy: two-syllable, easy-to-say names for my two animals.

Nugget & Buddy: two-syllable, easy-to-say names for my two animals. One cat, one dog. Both ripe with character, both I love so much, both a big-ole pain in my ass, and pocket book.

First, Nugget, also known as 'beef stick' or 'Noooget' or 'Nugsie', bless her soul, is a 12 pound, 1/2 blind, diabetic, Chi-weinee (chihuahua/dachshund mix) who likes to chase anything that runs and throw herself off of high places even though she doesn't have the spine to support that impact. She was only two of these things, 12 pounds and a Chiweinee, when I got her off Craigslist with my former partner (ex is such a dirty word) from a clean-and-sober woman who was in the middle of divorce and selling everything (including her two dogs) so that she could live and drive her RV where ever the hell she wanted to go. We, knowingly, were getting Nugget to save our relationship in the same way that straight people have a baby to save a marriage.

A year after we got Nugget, after me and my "let's-get-a-dog-to-save-our-relationship" partner broke up and got together for the umpteenth time, on a weekend at the beach to revisit our relationship under more romantic conditions, Nugget came in after an afternoon pee only to turn around and pee again, and again. And then head for her water bowl with a voracious and unquenchable thirst and pee again, inside. Perplexed, we thought she'd got into a tide pool and ate some bad shellfish. But the peeing didn't stop, so we took her into the boutique-priced-vet that all vets are in Portland, when we got back into town and after several hundred dollars of testing found that, at the age of 3, she was diabetic, an illness that is expensive and hard to regulate. Even more expensive and hard to regulate for a 29-year-old, single woman, who likes to drink and go dancing, and is surviving on student loans and a server's income. Diabetes means a special diet and keeping a regular schedule and shooting your dog up with insulin every 12 hours (9 and 9).

Just so we're clear: Nugget isn't diabetic because I fed her twinkees and the fat off my steak every night, the diabetes came down through her genetic line.

At first I considered a rescue, or putting her back up on Craigslist because I didn't think I'd have the money to give her a good life, but after careful consideration and because I knew Nugget had been in three homes in her first year of life, I decided to give it a go and do my best to give her a stable home and a good life.

Needless to say, our first year was rough. Finding the right diet, not skipping shots, getting me trained to meet her needs was difficult. In May of 2008 she weighed 8 pounds and was practically a walking skeleton. Family and friends were split, as was I, on whether to put her down or try to help her recover. I decided to take the summer to try and get her regulated and make the decision after a more consistent regimen. Thankfully, we found something that worked: never missing shots, prescriptive food, lots of water, lots of money. Nugget is back at her normal weight and is doing fairly well, until lately when she's started having seizures.

This is the second episode this summer and it's gone the same way both times. In the middle of the night she pushes herself out from under the covers and falls on the floor without attempting to catch herself. Then she wakes up early and starts licking and pushing herself into my face, looking all around the room, her round body pulsing with muscle spasms. Then, for a few days afterward her muscles are weak and her balance unsteady. After this mornings episode I took her to the reasonably-priced-not-in-the-big-city vet for an exam and lab work. Our total expenditures for today: $201 and 3 lost hours of sleep. They gave me diazepam for her seizures (now you can be on the same medication as mommy!) and an anti-inflammatory (Metacam) and told me lab answers are to come by the end of the day...

Answers? Maybe...

Now, Buddy, the other break up based pet. Buddy, a short-haired, black and white who has also been known as 'Snake' and 'Budinski' and 'Fat bastard', came to me from the Oregon City projects shortly after my first major break up in 1998 with my first major boyfriend. I got him as a kitten and often slept with him in the nook of my collar bone, and since then he's thought it okay to still sleep there whether of not he weighed 9 or 15 pounds.

Today, Buddy is eleven years old (in his sixties in human years) and has lived with me in seventeen different home in three different states. He's been rather durable and accommodating, living with a variety of animals, in a variety of conditions and regions, with a variety of lovers and roommates. He's been the most reliable long-term relationship (which sounds like I've turned into that creepy cat person) up until recently.

About three years ago I took Buddy into the boutique-priced-Portland-vet for an exam for wheezing episodes. The vet blamed it on anxiety and I took his diagnosis as golden. But this year, when the wheezing episodes got more intense and were accompanied by a dilated pupil and raised third-eyelid, I took him into the reasonably-priced-small-town vet who found a lump in his throat and diagnosed him with Horner's Syndrome.

Since then, Buddy's appetite has decreased, his purrs and breathing have become more labored, he's lost weight, about three pounds, and sleeps all the time. I've tried changing his diet, giving him a variety of food, consulting the vet for treatments and what I've gotten is a shrug, following the offer to do an MRI to find answers, and another prescription for Metacam (at least both my animals are on the same drug).

Maybe I've always had a thing for differently-abled animals, after all, my first pet was a gray, one-eyed, long-haired, bladder-problem-ridden feline named Toke. But I've come to realize that at this point in my life of pet ownership, I am essentially running a convalescence/geriatric/hospice home for my pets. And that's okay. I love them both, and I am committed to them both, pain in the ass or not.

Not only is pet ownership expensive, it's fun, joyful, time-consuming, sleep-losing, awesome, heart-breaking, terrifying, and quite a commitment; a life-long commitment. I don't remember it being this way as a child. Was it that it wasn't as expensive, or that it wasn't my money being spent?

Regardless, I've come to understand that one should not take on the responsibility of pet ownership unless they are ready to spend the money, whether boutique-fees or reasonable-vet-fees, to maintain the health of their animal(s). And when my current pets pass I will likely take a break from ownership so that I can leave for the weekend without paying someone to come feed them, or without consideration of how to travel with them. But because I've been raised in a home that has always had pets as part of the family, I have a feeling it wont be long before I invite another animal into my home.

Then too, I'll be there to hold their paw through whatever health issues come their way, and hopefully my income can support providing them with the best treatment I can afford, and that is possible.

Interfacing With A Murderer

Minam is a place of solace for me; a locale where my distant relatives once tended to timber and made moonshine up the mountain during prohibition times. I go there to listen to the Wallowa River rush by, to watch the cedar waxwings flip and fly over the river catching small flying things, I watch the rafters put in across the river at the boat launch, listen to the Osprey's clip cry, and joyfully tend to customers in the market and people lodging at the motel.

Although I go to Minam to get away I often find myself working on small projects or motel upkeep; mostly laundry, which is a never ending chore. I always try to get a ride on the lawnmower if only for the excuse to sip a cold one while doing circles in the front lawn. I spent seven weeks working at the motel last summer and enjoyed most of my time there, with the exception of a few nights where I found myself alone in the canyon with no one in the motel.

I am afraid of the dark - particularly dark wilderness areas with little light pollution. I like to see what is coming at me and this is problematic even when I have the porch lights on all night. One night in Minam during my stay last year, some raccoons were fighting in the middle of the night, or god knows what, which nearly made me pee my pants. During a spring time visit, a mob of dear were eating grass around the back side of the manager's unit, snorting and brushing up against the walls of the motel which also scared the bejesus out of me, even though I knew damn well it wasn't a crazed serial killer. The issue is that the motel is the only lodging place between Elgin and Wallowa - a 30 mile stretch of a scenic by-way - which is remote but beneficial for us because the weary traveler can find a place to stay when they come through the winding canyon in the dark. But every time someone comes in a little past 10pm, it rattles me just a bit.

I've been to Minam three times this year; I just arrived home from a week in the canyon yesterday. I arrived last Thursday, a little after 5pm, to an empty motel - which I expected - and a damn hot summer day. My first customer rolled in around 6-6:30pm. Being that we are along a thirty mile stretch of well, nothing, people from the country or adjoining towns often drop in to chat, or use the telephone if there is an emergency in the canyon somewhere, or to grab a cold beverage or ice cream. So nothing to be concerned with when my first customer rolled down the driveway in a dirty and dusty Jeep Wagoneer - complete with fake wood paneling and came to ask me if I had a paper. In the car was a woman smoking a cigarette, a couple of dogs bouncing about her lap.

I grabbed the paper and handed it over to the man. He was about my height, tan from days in the sunshine, had on a pair of white paint splattered pants and a myriad of tattoos about his torso. He had big brown eyes and his hair was done. He got down on one knee in the gravel drive-way and turned the page to a article about the recent find of a murdered woman and her dismembered hand that was found in a local pond; a news report that I had been following since before I headed down to the canyon. For a moment I thought it peculiar that he would come in, ask for a paper, and go for that column, but the county was alight with rumors and everyone was interested in the news - no one had heard of such an occurrence in years...

"Isn't that awful?" I offered.
"Yeah" he moved his finger quickly down the sentences, "she was a distant relative of mine."
I thought about the care I should take with my words. Nothing to strident, nothing to disregarding.
"Oh, I'm sorry to hear that."
He got up and handed the paper back to me, I forgot if he said 'thank you' or another 'yeah', he just turned around and headed back to the car and left.

I went back into the manager's unit and thought about my safety - I got a buck knife out of the kitchen drawer and set it next to the front door. I slept with it by my side that night, the front doors locked, the bedroom locked, the windows closed and locked on a 98-degree day.

The rest of the weekend was delightful: family came in to do some remodeling, some friends in for a little R&R on Friday. The great thing about Minam is that we really know how to have a good time: country drives, a little sauce and some music, some time by a fire telling fish-stories, good food, and good conversation. There is a welcoming aura there at the confluence of the two rivers, a feeling that you are free to enjoy time as you please, and we encourage those who visit Minam to do just that. After a fun weekend, everyone skirted out on Sunday and once again, I was alone in the canyon.

I went to bed on Sunday at 2:30am, anxious at being alone, and woke up to my mother calling on Monday around 8am. "They released a picture of the killer, Chels. I want you to get a good look at him."
By this time the news broke that there were three victims total, people in the county were so certain there was a serial killer on the loose that the police had to release a statement dispelling the rumors. There was also rumors of a head found in a backpack. Also not true. I wasn't reading the paper that was being delivered daily to the motel, I was only quickly glancing to see whether or not that murderer had been captured. In Saturday's paper there were three pictures - two of people in plain clothes and one of a young man in a mug shot. I figured that was their prime suspect and moved on with my day.
"Yeah mom," I said yawning, "I already saw the guy. I haven't seen him."
"Okay, well, I just want you to be careful."
She headed off the work and since I was awakened by the phone call, I was up. I turned on the news anyway to get a good look at the guy and to make sure I knew his face. And this is probably no surprise to any reader of true-crime, but when his face came up on the news I nearly fell off the bed: my first visitor on Thursday was the guy.

I called my mom - or at least tried to - to ask her what to do. Should I call the police since the guy is still on the loose? She wasn't there to ask.
I decided to call the Union County Police.
A 1/2 hour later the news broke that Gregory A. Cook was captured in Rainier, Washington.In a news report he confessed and apologized.

Although I am scared of the dark and the dark is where most of the "bad" things that have happened to me have occurred, it's no stretch to say that frightening things happen in broad daylight - and often within a mile of home.

Minam is not where I reside, but it is one of my homes.
Even though we fondly call it The Minam Asylum.

Is Feminism Obsolete?

In this video forwarded to me by my friend Rebecca Rod, republican strategist, Mary Matalin can't even say "feminism," she stalls every time before she utters the words, which doesn't surprise me, even though she says the feminism she once fought for in the 60s has been perverted over the years. Perverted? By whom? By what?

While I stand behind Palin defending her daughters (what mother wouldn't defend their daughters from nationally broadcast comment like that), I also balked at her for saying that it's a matter women's rights. Pft. Whatever Palin... Like women's rights are on the forefront of your mind. Whatever bus you want to ride...

But I eat my words...Like Jessica Valenti at feministing.com, a philosophy of feminism professor once told me that a feminist is someone who designates themselves as one, or someone else who designates another as one. So is it any surprise that the word "feminism" is convoluted, and doesn't have the same meaning as it did in the 60s or 70s? Because, as feminists, we have so many issues that matter to us, we have so many agendas, that it only seems the word is "obsolete."

But it's not. It wasn't lost in 2004 when The March for Women's Lives drew over a million people. I believe that today feminists are more widely spread. From the people who are returning to more domesticated ways of living and staying home with their families, to the people on campuses programming and bringing awareness to student communities, to separatists who are still working the land and maintaining women's communes, to queers working on trans issues, to people of all genders continuing to work on abortion rights, to women seeking equality in the military, to the men and gender benders who stand behind our cause and walk with us at marches...

Feminism isn't "obsolete," unless you are only paying attention to national media..

But if Tina Brown thinks Hillary Clinton is real female power and Naomi Wolf thinks Angelina Jolie is the "embodiment of female power and liberation," I wonder what other public figures we can point to that demonstrate the diversity of feminist activist who continue to demonstrate "real" female power. Why not bell hooks? Isn't she still writing, still speaking out, still working for the cause? What about Gloria Steinem? Is she not longer relevant because she of her age, or her married status? What about the men who work for the feminist agenda, wouldn't Cornell West consider himself a feminist? And one of my favorite people to reflect on, Phillis Schlafly, I might even point to and call a feminist even though she would never call herself one, and was nearly the antithesis of feminism in the 60s and 70s. But wouldn't she fall in line with some of our feminists today?

I care about being a feminist, but I wonder if we should consider the questions posed by CNN reporter, Carol Costello. Why care about being a feminist anymore? If everyone has their own definition of feminism, why even use the word?

And finally, has feminism really become an exclusive club?

A Controlled Burn

The hardest part of negotiating a relationship with my other mother is determining whether or not she is of sound enough mind to maintain contact.

We haven't spoken to one another since before Christmas when I decided that her schizophrenia combined with drug and alcohol usage was effecting her ability to have coherent conversations with me. Also, after several phone calls that pursued the same line of questioning about my mother I felt as if her intentions for remaining in touch with me were not so much about our relationship, but with the desire maintain a thin line of contact with my mother. Just in case. And maybe that is her reason for remaining in touch with me - I am the last thread that connects her to a life she cannot recover, the one life in which she felt she really lived.

And maybe I keep in touch with her for my own reasons. She is a part of my connection to an identity: daughter of lesbians. And I keep in touch with her because I worry that she has no one, or few people, in her life that support her and love her unconditionally. Though, I am not even sure I love her unconditionally anymore. My psychological and emotional state is valuable to me and cannot afford to teeter any closer to the line where I could potentially break down and give into confusion. I've already been there and know what it takes to get out. I don't have time.

I also keep in touch with her out of guilt. I am her daughter. Her only daughter, as her biological daughter with whom she adopted out at birth, fled the relationship after meeting her in person for the first time, and has not kept in touch with her after seeing her physical and mental state several Christmases ago. Maybe she too closely saw what she could turn into and ran for her life. Sometimes I wonder if I should also run.

She called me few days ago after receiving the news that my grandfather passed through her brother whom my mother emailed to relay the message, and her voice mail plead for a phone call if it was in fact true. I considered it for days and finally called today to confirm her suspicion. Our conversation was short, she told me to give her condolences to my grandmother and my mother, and she told me that demons chased her from her apartment and I understood how that could happen, and she told me that she should write down her history so that I could write about - that there was so much to talk about, and she said that she had taken up painting again and this was a surprise to me because the only art I'd seen her do was during her times of institutionalization. But she laughed, she didn't mean she was using paint - she meant she had been smearing her own feces on the walls.

"Ew" I said instinctively and without thinking. And I had already said it when I realized there was a more appropriate response that should've come from my mouth. I could only ask about her meds, if she had been to the doctor lately, if she was ok.

She rarely tells me that she's anything but ok.
She's not ok.
She hasn't been for a long time.

Sometimes the mind snaps and the mind deteriorates before your eyes, as out of control as a brush fire in August. And sometimes the deterioration of the mind is slow and steady as a controlled burn, ever square inch of the minds land charred. Both fires have the capacity to spread flames onto the lands around them, and I often find myself fighting a fire which I allowed to ignite.

I rarely tell anyone I am anything but ok.
I'm also not ok.
I haven't been for a long time.

But I still have my mind.

The Rising Tide of White

Every morning I look in the mirror and find a razor-gray stripes highlighting my round face. They are prolific little buggers and I've given up trying to control them. It wasn't that I was trying to control them really, what I was trying to control was the red-ended grow out that is the last twenties years of my hair dying experimentation. My reasons for attempting to modify my dye-crazy behavior and let the gray grow out is due, in part, to watching my mother's hair grow, dye, and be cut. The two of us have been dying our hair a nice rusty auburn color for so long that people assume we are natural reddish-heads. Because of this, we've been unable to see the slow transition of our dark-ash-brown crowns turning to sterling. Catch my mother in a lull between dye-jobs and you'll find she has a white halo around her face and down her skull that spreads a few inches, as if Moses himself was parting the supermarket Red-Sea. By gauging the clone-like similarities between my mother and I, the decision was made to grow out the dye now and face aging head on (or at least on my head).

At 51, if you eek a peek under the red cloak, at the base of my mother's roots, you will see that her hair is a shiny white with a few stray brown survivors holding on for their lives. My hair, now down to my waist, is a result of nearly eight years of growing my hair out. From the skull, the first 5-6 inches is my natural color, the rest is curly, over-processed, reddish-brownish, what stylists without the right descriptive words call "ethnic-like" hair. Since we all have an ethnic heritage, I guess it's safe to assume that I got this hair from the smattering of god-knows-what European heritages with which I am composed. People more familiar with Irish folk will tell me that is where my curly coarse hair comes from. And the like for the Italian side of me. But there is that long lost branch of my heritage which remains a mystery. All I have is picture of the man who would've been my biological grandfather had he not passed in a plane crash when my mother was four, and a hazy memory of my great grandparents Zefa and Jesse Jones, both of who were blazing white-haired folk who passed long before I could ask them questions about that side of the family. All I knew is that Zefa made her way to Oregon on a wagon-train. The memory of sitting at her feet while she rocked in a chair telling me the story, is something I believe I made up. Maybe after my mom relayed the story to me herself.

Without knowing the heritage of that branch of my family, I am also not privy a great deal of additional knowledge. I know there are some Jones family in the SF are, but my curiosity hasn't compelled me to go dig through public records to find out more about this, as of now, fictitious family. Particularly since I've heard that a certain woman was brazen enough to say "Oh, bullshit" at a funeral my mother attended for her late uncle when the read the list of survivors and included her a a niece. Maybe I don't need to get to know the Jones family after all...

And I look at my grandmother, a Sparks, and see that it took here a long time to grow in the gray. And I look at my Dad who's 52 and see that he's just starting to brighten up a bit above the brow. His parents went gray - but not until much later - so I am sure that I am more Jones than I can ever imagine, though I can only look into the eyes of my mother and see her father's and see his mother's eyes and realize that not only do my eyes droop in the corners as they do, but that my hair might be one of the only living Jones histories with which I am able to have tactile contact.

In the mornings is when I touch it, feel it, get close to the mirror and examine the prism of light that passes through the hair and wonder how long it will take me to rid myself of the awful red-dyed ends hanging from my head, or how quickly I will turn platinum like my mother, my great-grand-mother, and if I will coil my hair in a bun as she did, or if I will find my way back to the dye and try to reclaim my youth for 11.59 in the beauty products aisle. Or maybe I will just love the hell out of this hair, all these stray grays that my ex individually points out while saying her name. And though they say that we don't go gray because of stress, even though we now know it's a chemical reaction that comes from the inside and works it's way out, these gray hairs are all bricks through the pathway that is my life.

So I'm gonna let them grow. Because although it's been a crazy ride, and a helluva journey, I'm ready (for now) to recognize that it's all been worth the slow rising tide of white upon my head.

Many Means of Expression

On a day like this, how can one not have something to say?

There are many political goings-on that have moved me to tears over the past eight years:

• My family called from Canada the night before I voted. They left messages on my voice mail saying, "We are just calling to remind you to vote for Gore." But, President George W. Bush's election in 2000 was not one of the events that caused me tears; quite the contrary, I was infuriated. But at that point, I was still too young and far too self consumed too think much of his election other than a halfhearted, "Well, it's the end of the world" or "it's certain we'll go to war with him in the White House."

• There were tears of unhinged fear upon seeing the World Trade Center's twin towers fall along with so many people. There was a voice mail from a friend in Brooklyn with whom I had spent a long evening under the towers, just three days earlier. He said, "Chelsia. Oh mah gawd. I'm fine, but I am standing on Carol Street and there are pencils falling from the sky." And the line went dead.
  

• March 20th, 2003. 12 a.m. PST. In bed, beside my girlfriend. We held each other, crying, talking, fearful that our president was keeping his promise and dropping bombs on villages in Afghanistan. We asked each other, "Do you really think he'll do it?" We looked at the walls of her basement and imagined Children asleep in houses made of clay, thousands of miles away. We fell asleep with our eyes wet and when we woke the next morning we protested with 30-thousand others in the streets of Portland.

• Then, the "mis-election" of President George W. Bush defeated me in 2004 and put me to bed early. My tears, that day, were for my the failure of my state (Oregon) to support equal rights for GLBT families when they decidedly passed of a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. I had worked so hard that year for equal rights for my family of origin and for my relationship and those of my chosen family and community. And o top it all of, my country reelected a man I was sure would bring down not only our country, but many others.

• April 24th, 2004. Tears again. When I walked onto the National Mall and saw 1.5 million other people present in defense of women's rights to privacy and choice. I cried at the magnitude of people who showed up in D.C. at what was called the largest march on Washington for women's rights, ever. And that I was so privileged to attend with the gracious support from the students and faculty from my community college to get me there. It was there that I heard Senator Hillary Clinton speak. It was that march that, I believe, caused Dick Cheney to withdraw his request for the medical records of women in the US who had had abortions. It was a small victory, but an important one.
  

Today and last night, off and on, I've released a few tears, mostly of joy, for the achievements of the incoming administration and the men and women of our country who fought for so long prior to this moment; for those who died, who wrote and sang and marched in the streets so that our country could elect a President of color. And on this day, (I hate to use such a cliche' campaign slogan but...) I am filled with such hope that gains will be made for equality in all of the spectrum of community in this country; be it that of race, nationality, religion, socio-economic status, political affiliation, sexual orientation, gender, ability, age, and any other identity included. I feel as if opportunity has broadened for many and that a new spirit may prevail, if we allow it so. I believe that spirit is that of Love.

I can't help but think of my sisters on a day like this. One 13 and the other 11. Although this may be somewhat only interesting to them, I hope they someday understand the importance of this day in the history of this nation. I hope that our world and that the people of this nation demonstrate the recognition, accountability, and responsibility President Barack Obama asked us to dutifully undertake for the sake of future generations.

When I was in Jr. High School, there was a blip in time where I became aware of international politics. My mothers recorded the news that broadcast the firing of artillery through night vision. Little green dots flew through the air in all directions and explosions erupted on the horizon as the newscasters detailed what was happening to a entranced audience. Although we didn't know the ins and outs of Desert Storm, we knew war was wrong and therefore, protested by walking out of school and having a sit-in on the grassy field at Rowe Jr. High School. We sat for a while and then the administrators pulled us back in. Unfortunately, I didn't become aware of politics again, or the impact of national politics, until long after I left high school.

I was awakened by the Seattle WTO protests and Y2K. It was then that I realized how much each of us is woven into the power of the larger systems this country and this world. It was then that I realized I couldn't afford to not pay attention.

But I haven't been paying much attention and I haven't been working for the last three years. I've been disheartened, angry, self-involved, unable to look, and I simply turned the channel. I can afford to do work and maybe I should have been doing work all along. But I believe that change occurs no matter how small of a change you make or no matter how few hear your voice.

Today President Obama said, "...your people will judge you on what you can build, and not what you destroy." And although he directed this remark to the leaders of countries in conflict, I believe it is a message we should all hear. No matter how small you think your impact is, lets build instead of destroy, love instead of hate, have hope instead of fear, and go forward in the spirit of building a better world and community that will sustain for many generations to come.