I'm in the midst of a weekend-eating project of both extreme attention detail and extreme boredom. In order to get myself through this, I have mounted a personal Lord of the Rings/Harry Potter marathon on a DVD player with a nine inch screen.

Having started yesterday with Fellowship of the Ring extended version, I decided to then listen to all the DVD extras, and then to listen to all four full-length commentaries, just because I was amused to find out how many hours of entertainment I could get out of this one movie.

I'm impressed. I still have 1.25 commentaries to listen to, and haven't even broken out the other version with the Making Of... DVD extra.

But as I get more tired and punchy, my plan may have some flaws. Just now I found myself standing in the bathroom, hoping Ferrett would come in so I could yell at him:

YOU...SHALL...NOT...PEE!

Yeah, possibly too much Tolkien...

I am nothing of interest to say. Not because there aren't interesting things going on, but because I'm vaguely braindead. So pretend I've said something important and controversial, and respond to me with the proper level of enthusiasm and outrage, and we can all pretend to be witty and insightful.

The spaghetti feed was a success. Whenever a group undertakes a fundraiser that requires an initial outlay of about a tenth of its entire nest egg, it's a bit nervewracking. What if no one shows up? What if we lose money? Is this really a good idea???

As it turns out, yes. Made back our outlay and cleared at least half again that outlay. And we increased our community presence by having a public event. So yay us.

When we last did this two years ago, it was in the middle of a blizzard. When we got to the Masonic Temple with all our stuff we were stunned by the weather. This year it was sunny and crisp, hardly a cloud in the sky.

The biggest change, though, was our work patterns. Two years ago no one was really sure how to go about things, and though we had two hours to prep before customers arrived, we barely made it in time to put food out. This year we only had an hour of prep time and I was really concerned about that. But we quickly fell into effective work patterns, Steve, Linda and me managing the cooking, a whole crew setting up tables, another getting the serving station ready. And even though it felt less than half as hectic and difficult, we were ready to serve food within 45 minutes of our arrival. It's astounding what a little bit of experience will do for you.

This is to all my fellow Clevelanders, since no one else is gonna make the trip at this point:

The Goddess Temple of Lakewood, Ohio, is holding a spaghetti feed today from 4-7 p.m. in the basement of the Masonic Temple in Lakewood, Ohio. Tickets are $10 each, and there will be raffles for crafts and services donated by temple members. The proceeds benefit the Goddess Temple of Lakewood, Ohio, a 501(c)(3) recognized church and one of only 3 or 4 such temples in the U.S. The Temple is raising money in the hopes of being able to rent "brick and mortar" space for their services.

I will be among the kitchen slaves, cooking spaghetti and garlic bread in the kitchen. We did this a year ago and it was a lot of fun. Especially fun when friends of mine show up and laugh at me!

You can buy tickets at the door. I'd love to see all of you there, if you feel like coming. Thanks!

Here's the address:

Lakewood Masonic Temple
15300 Detroit Avenue
Lakewood, OH 44107-3888

A Sacramento Connecticut manager for Bath & Bodyworks fired an employee for being Wiccan. The manager called in the employee to question her scheduled vacation time, and the employee stated that she had taken Samhein off every year for six years, and that the vacation had been approved almost a year earlier. When asked why this particular week, she disclosed that she was Wiccan. According to the article:

Her manager replied, “that is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard, let me ask you where your priorities should have been?” Uberti asked what was so ridiculous and was told, “Well, you will need a new career in your new year” and “I will be damned if I have a devil-worshipper on my team.” Uberti was fired shortly after the phone call.

This kind of discrimination is unacceptable. Don't buy from B&BW and let them know why.

As I mentioned before, yuki_onna and justbeast flew back in from Russia Sunday night with the intention of driving straight back to Maine. When they landed Cat texted me that they were coming straight to my house from the airport to avoid backtracking, since D's family home is 30 miles further east. In order to expedite their quick departure, I dragged all their stuff out onto the front porch. Just as I finished, Cat texted me again with the news that the car situation required them to go to the parental home first.

Fortunately, it was a warm evening, and dry. Rather than drag everything back in, I just sat down on the porch and read a book on my iPhone. It was midnight and I was surrounded by 2 big suitcases, 2 duffles, 4 large boxes and half a dozen or so paper and plastic bags filled with stuff. I kept the porch light on and the front door open, so I was pretty visible. The sight of me garnered more than a few flashed brakelights as drivers slowed to see what was up.

At about 12:30 a police car cruised by. I know the officer(s) saw me, because I saw the flash of their brakelights just as they passed me. The patrol car continued to the end of the block and turned right.

I wondered if they were circling the block to come by for another look. I wondered if they would stop and ask what was going on. I thought about that Yale professor and wondered how I would feel if they asked to see my identification. I decided that it wouldn't bother me.

They didn't come back.

That fact is at the heart of privilege issues. If I had been a black man sitting on the front porch in this predominantly white neighborhood, I am certain that they would have stopped to question me. And I don't think it's just a matter of being out of place. If I had been sitting on a porch in a predominantly black neighborhood, surrounded as I was with stuff, I suspect that the officers there would probably pass me by as well. Or if they stopped, it would be to discover if I was in any distress myself.

I get to feel like the police are watching out for me, on my side. I get the luxury of it being a novelty if I am ever asked for identification or to explain my actions.

Privilege isn't always receiving a quantifiable benefit. A lot of it is invisible to people who have that privilege. But just because I can't see it doesn't mean it's not there.

The Bride and her Beast returned from Russia yesterday. Cat and Dmitri flew back in last night and, anxious to get home and wishing to take advantage of their jet lag, packed up and hit the road at about 1am.

Mindful of their time crunch and their compact car (and, to be honest, desirous of making sure that they managed to get out of here with ALL their stuff), I spent some time yesterday evening packing up their things, removing unneeded packing material and boxes and compacting everything down to the essentials as effectively as possible. I figured that would help them get all their stuff into their car.

What I hadn't figured on was them arriving with their car quite full already.

Foolishly, I hadn't thought about the wedding gifts and other things that had gone home with D's parents. So when we looked at their car and then looked at the large pile of stuff on my front porch, it was with some dismay.

D suggested leaving behind some of the wedding things, like the bouquet. Cat protested because she wanted them at home. I protested because - AUGH!! No more boxes in my house!!! I suggested that they leave behind the suitcase with the wedding togs - after all, it's just one suitcase, and they are going to be back at Christmas. That was a reasonable compromise, and we got to work.

I really wish we'd taken pictures, because mere words cannot convey the special Tetris/Tardis combination required to get everything into a vehicle that clearly must be bigger on the inside. It's kind of amazing how many extra things can fit into the interstitial spaces between and around the large and bulky items. Misha and Babymonkey, if you can, take the time to appreciate their unpacking. It's going to look like a clown car. Just make sure they get all the wine out from behind the passenger's seat before they open the back door or there will be sad.

And if they have to stop suddenly on the freeway, the shifting load will likely kill them. Other than that, no problems!

So now they are gone, which means The Wedding of Bard and Beast is truly at an end. I walked back into the cleaned out guest room to savor its return to our possession.

And by the gods if I wasn't just a little bit sad and lonely. Of course, Ferrett being gone for this week doesn't help that, but the wedding was such fun and so wonderful that having it all gone leaves me a bit nostalgic.

Oh, well, I can always go down to my sewing room and revel in the mess left by the seamstress. That's still there for me.

USA Today picked up Cat and Dmitri's tale of woe and triumph.

Good job, all you fellow outraged people who called and wrote and retweeted!

We went out and walked in that wind last night. It is in nights like that, and in gazing up at the moon, and in the surge of storms, that I feel that sense of magic. Holding out my arms, eyes closed, that rush of wind feels like it runs through me and I am part of it.

And that, to me, is the wellspring of much of my belief. I believe that magic is our attuning with the world. My beliefs are as much related to quantum mechanics as they are to faith, because we keep learning, through science, things like observation changing the result of experimentation.

I believe that the forces of the universe that are beyond both macrocosmic and microcosmic can be accessed, and the way the human mind does so is by a sense of deity. Essentially, I think humans create godhood and, like the changes through observation, belief becomes a focus for the universal forces. I think of the forces in general as goddess/creator because it's an effective way for me to relate to them. I think the sheer power of belief can swirl some of that force into something more manifest, but it's like standing in Lake Erie and swirling your arm around to create a tiny whirlpool: you've affected the water right in front of you and made it do what you want, but the rest of the lake is too large for that effect to impact. And as soon as you stop concentrating that energy on the water before you it slips quickly back into common form of lake.

Some people go through life completely ignoring the force of the universe. Some people think of it as Capital G God and react to it passively in the form of praying to that force. It can impact the energy just like observation can impact an experiment, but the attitude is generally that the force is external.

Witches reach into the water and swirl those whirlpools up. Shaping deity from the force of the universe is creating a vortex in that water. Doing magic is reaching into that power.

Sometimes I can't focus the energy to manipulate it. But when I do, there is a moment when I can hear the pulse of the universe.

Sometimes, like last night, I don't have to manipulate it. I can just let it wash over me. That is blessing.

I finally finished R's baby quilt, in time for her second winter at least! Here's a photo:




It's called Rebecca's Road. The path travels crazily all through the quilt, just like our paths in life. And in one place the path gets reversed, signifying that sometimes we make mistakes, but if we keep moving forward they will straighten themselves out. Her mother told me that I will have to tell her the story of the quilt when she is older. For now, it's lots of bright colors and fun things to find: mermaids and soccerballs and kittens and cowboys.

And the reason that got finished was because I had taken up making the altar cloth for yuki_onna and justbeast's wedding, and I felt too guilty to finish it without finishing the baby quilt first. Spurred on by deadlines, I also finished the altar cloth:



The fabrics were ones that Cat and I purchased before she went to Maine. She said she wanted me to teach her to quilt. Since she doesn't sew at all, I wanted to start with basic piecing; she wanted to start with abstract Russian iconography. We were making some progress, but then the move happened and the fabrics stayed here and since she already loved them were perfect to make into the altar cloth (with design help from bec76; thanks, love).

Now I am into contract crunch season, so no quilting for a while. Le sigh.

Sunday morning: I can't even begin to describe the post-bachelor/ette party condition of my house. After 50 guests in the house, it looked like there'd been a frat party. We made some headway in picking up the recyclables and trash (thank you so much, tithenai, for all your help!) before we had to get ready and head out for the wedding site.

Monday morning: Ooooh, no, please don't ask me to clean!! Fortunately, we still had guests so we couldn't *possibly* clean when we still had to entertain.

Tuesday and Wednesday: Stabs at cleaning.

So here we are now:

Dining room: Baba Yaga and her house of chicken legs are snuggled up by a stuffed pony, all leaning crazily against a pile of 300 paper plates. The canvas bag of emergency supplies - sewing kit, band-aids, safety pins, etc. - is still waiting to be unpacked. Oh, and a gray bag with a camera lens. Anyone want to claim it?

Master Bedroom: Improbably, a fake mustache rests on the dresser. I can't quite explain that....

Guest Bedroom: We will daintily close the door upon the detritus of the Bride and her Beast.

Office: My dress and stuff, still in a trash bag on the floor. Oh, and a stray black shoe. Anyone want to claim it?

Family room: Other than the shifting of furniture, remarkably clean. s00j and company are very good at being vagabonds and respecting their space.

Sewing Room: Piles of taffeta are scattered everywhere. Scraps and threads all over the floor. A complete mess. But, Janice the seamstress did make up for her mess by leaving behind scissors, thread, needles, pins, and other stray bits.

Bathroom: Rumors that we now own a large black dog are completely untrue. Instead, it was a black Cat, who sheds. The number of hair products, face products, razors? Rather overwhelming. I assume they all belong to Cat and D, but if you left them behind? Not worth claiming.

The wedding I will write about soon. But I had to take a moment to memorialize the backstage parts of the experience. It will soon be cleaned up and forgotten if I don't, and it's dear to me.

I should be writing about the wedding. I really intend to write about the wedding. But then Maine happened, and I feel that I have to write about the reactions I'm seeing.

Let me state straight off that I am heartbroken about the vote in Maine. I am a staunch supporter of gay marriage. Even though anyone who has read me for any length of time knows that, I have to state it up front, and even having done so some people are not going to be able to hear what I am saying. I expect to be thoroughly flamed for telling the truth. it won't be the first time.

The most common response I am seeing to the Maine referendum is, "How dare they think they can vote on my civil right to marry whom I please?!"

Here's the thing: you don't have a civil right to gay marriage.

We want to think of civil rights as forces of nature, but they are compacts within society. And gay marriage has not been defined as a civil right by the U.S. government, or for that matter very many other governments in the world. Many people can't even wrap their head around the notion that gay marriage is a civil right because they are so caught up in the traditional intent of marriage, which was a way to survive in the world, raise children, and pass on property. They don't understand why they think of marriage in that way because there hasn't been anything to make them think of it in any other way.

We haven't brought them into the social compact of a new view of marriage.

This is not unprecedented. At one time in this country, Negroes were not considered people. Dred Scott, the terrible case that decided that persons of color did not have civil rights, meant that the social compact treated millions of former slaves as less than human. People recognized that it had to be undone, and laws were passed in states. But for a period of time until it was overturned, persons of color only received permissions to do things, not rights.

Gay marriage should be recognized as a civil right. But getting to the point where that compact within society exists is still a battle that has to be fought. We can't skip that step. We tried, and the citizens of most states where gay marriage has been judicially or legislatively passed have voted to repeal those rights.

Until that social compact is made, this is going to keep happening. It's sad and terrible, but it's the reality that we have to work with. Just railing that it isn't right or fair is not getting the job done. We need new strategies.


The other argument I keep running into is that the U.S. is a representational democracy, not a direct democracy, and that all we are getting is "mob rule." But what people are forgetting is that this is not a federal issue. And states often have something closer to direct democracy in the form of the referendum.

Marriage has long been a states rights issue, notwithstanding Loving v. Virginia (interracial marriage). Marriage laws are made by the states, and the whole thing will not become a federal issue until enough states recognize gay marriage that it is an issue. Loving v. Virginia was decided by a highly activist court, which the current court certainly is not and is unlikely to become so. We can't count on them.

The majority should not deprive the minority of civil rights, but we have to get to an agreement as to what those civil rights are. We have more work to do on the ground, convincing people that gay marriage is not ridiculous. For all of civilization marriage has involved a pair of people genetically capable of reproducing. To a lot of people, that's still what marriage is. There's a whole center that still doesn't "get" why gay marriage is even an issue, and most of the voices they hear on the topic are spewing on Fox. We need "boots on the ground" talking about rights in a way that those people can hear. I don't know what that way is, but we have to find it.

Cat and Dmitri's wedding is this weekend, and the out-of-town guests are arriving. Cat has been here since early October, D arrived Friday, and Amal got here last night. Cat's mom is here, and Lee, their officiant, spent the night last night.

When I came out of the bedroom this morning, there were pieces of wedding dress all over the living room, the bouquet and corsages on the table along with a sewing machine. Jewelry and crafty bits everywhere.

Basically, it's like living in a tent city. And it's completely AWESOME.

This is very much a group effort - the seamstress is in my sewing room working on the dress, the harpist is in my living room tuning up her harp, the officiant is working on the ceremony at the dining table, the bride is setting up the play list with much input from the rest of us, the groom is cooking blinis. I am just about to finish the altar cloth. This feels so amazingly communal and cozy.

Family is what you make it.

In a shocking turn of events, someone has clearly thrown a stick of dynamite into my office.

There simply cannot be any other explanation for why it is this much of a disaster area.

Ferrett is also sick. Night before last he barely slept due to congestion and coughing. Last night he took Nyquil, which makes him pass out. When I climbed into bed with him he was already deeply asleep, breathing a deep and raspy breath that wasn't really snoring. It was, in fact, rather soothing to me because I knew that he was sleeping at last. It was very rhythmic and put me to sleep.

Rather a different story when I woke up because I thought we were having an earthquake. He was so congested that his breathing was shaking the bed. Poor love.

As for me? I had to get up early to go have an ultrasound of my gall bladder (see, I do take you people seriously), and even though the tech was jamming the ultrasound wand into my ribs and side, I was falling asleep on the table.

I am so ready to be done with this.

Go check out the best Halloween pumpkin ever.

I have now been sick with the Angry Cold of Misery and Death for two and a half weeks.

Two and a half weeks.

This is entirely too long for a cold (or cold-like viral nastiness) to hang around. I would be more alarmed except for the fact that Ferrett has had it for two weeks, and the gang at Villa Villekula have mostly been sick with it for as long as well.

This is a nasty one, though. Besides making my allergies all much worse, it's left me hypersensitized to scents, coughing and stuffed up, and generally feeling about as low-energy as one can feel without actually ceasing to function. I went to the doctor last week and he confirmed that it's just a nasty bug that's going around, though, so there's nothing to do but live through it.

Speaking of the doctor, it turns out that I have high cholesterol. I wasn't worried about the test at all because my cholesterol has been excellent year in and year out, but not this time. I have to go pick up a prescription for a cholesterol-lowering drug, and they want to see me again in three months to check it. Bye bye steaks, hello fish. Fortunately I do like things that are good for me, so I hope it won't be too hard to get it back under control. Still, scary and irritating, all at the same time.

Have I mentioned that I hate being sick?

Once again, I am inspired by my sweet baboo, who wrote today about when sharing is appropriate. In his case, it was about poly. But when I read it, my empathy came from my experience as a pagan.

I deal with a lot of people who are Christians. And these people often mention god casually in conversation. I have no problem with that, since I, too, believe in god. I know, though, that when they are saying such things their concept of deity is very different from mine. And that, while I'm aware of the difference, they are quite sanguine in their assumption that I share their beliefs. They are, in effect, assuming that I am part of their tribe.

This is a survival mechanism that is deeply ingrained in our monkey brains. A baby's stranger fear is based on seeking the protection of the people most invested in her survival. An important cognitive skill is learning how to group things in sets and how to find where those sets overlap in shared characteristics. It may seem obvious, that of course we choose as friends people with whom we share common interests and/or world views, but that's not the only - or even the most efficient - way of making a tribe. Why not the people who live in your neighborhood? It's the way things used to happen, and you probably have at least an economic commonality with them. But thanks to easy transportation and communication, your best friends can be miles away and you can still visit them regularly. Heck, with the internet we maintain friendships halfway around the world.

One of the results of this is that strangers do not trigger suspicion in us in the way that they used to. They just arrived, and they may not be here for long, so we don't have to find a place for them in the Venn diagrams in our minds. Instead of needing to study them and determine their place in the tribe, we take a shortcut approach: unless there is something that marks them as different, we assume they are One of Us. Generally, we take into consideration our own foibles and eccentricities and assume that the stranger is a blander, more middle-of-the-road version of One of Us. And unless they stay in our lives long enough for us to get to know them, or unless they do something abrupt and dramatic to move themselves out of it, they will remain in that amorphous and bland grouping.

While we are doing this? The stranger is doing the same thing, projecting their own beliefs and characteristics on us just as we are projecting ours onto them.

This generally works well if both parties are close to the median of socio-theo-economics for their community. The Lutheran and the Baptist may not be comfortable at each other's church services, but they have a commonality of beliefs that are not an affront if assumed of the other.

But when one is several Venn hoops away from that median? Then the system starts to break down. It takes remarkably little to feel excluded by the assumptions of commonality: state that you are a vegetarian and some people already can't find a place to put you.

If you don't fit into the median circle, it seems that every day there is at least one instance of feeling excluded by the assumption of inclusion, and that every such instance requires a decision: do I speak up, or do I just go with the flow? How much does this assumption matter? Is this a person with whom I will continue interacting enough that integrity requires me to identify myself as different before the relationship goes any further? Or am I just creating discomfort for no reason?

For me, "passing" is easy. I'm white, married, and grew up lower middleclass Catholic. I know the lingua franca of most people. I'm pretty thick-skinned and prosaic. And yet there are times when even I feel alienated.

But I try to remember that people are doing what is natural. That I do it, too. That most people don't have the awareness that I do. And that most people are genuinely trying.

From his Facebook (and probably his Twitter, but I still don't Twitter):

Yo Barack, I'm really happy for you and Ima let you finish but Dalai Lama is the best peacemaker of all time! OF ALL TIME!

Eric, you are a god.

I have a theory about street planning in New England: someone spilled a plate of angelhair pasta over a long sheet of paper, and then traced around the noodles. And that became the map of Massachusetts. This fact of driving should elicit enough confusion and frustration to please whatever evil traffic gods cackle while looking down upon the situation. But no.

Near my daughter's home, there is an intersection shaped like a T. If you are coming up the leg of the T to the two arms, you have the right-of-way.

So does the traffic coming from the right arm of the T.

From the leg of the T, you can turn right or left. From the right arm, you can turn left and go straight. All of these roads are single-lane roads. And the only Stop sign is for the left arm of the T. So, you can be turning left at the T, with the right-of-way, and the guy coming from the right can be turning left onto the leg of the T, also with the right away.

You will note that the trajectories of both these vehicles intersect.

There is literally nothing to provide guidance as to how to negotiate this intersection, save an ongoing casual game of chicken: That guy looks wary, go for it!!!

Oh, and it's right downhill from the high school. I'm sure that it's all fine....

Last night we went out to dinner at an Italian place. I ordered the sautéd scallops, with a side of angel hair pasta. When the pasta came, it had a red sauce. I apologized to the waitress, but asked if they had a choice besides tomato because I get severe heartburn from it. "I don't know," she said. "Something, like, tossed with olive oil and garlic?"

I said that would be lovely. She took away my pasta and returned about 10 minutes later with a bowl she slipped onto the table with a murmured hope that I'd like it, then scurried away. We all gazed at the dish, a little perplexed.

I had clearly pissed off the chef.

Before me sat a bowl of angel hair, unadourned save for the half cup of prechopped garlic that had been scooped out of a jar and plopped, unheated, on top of the mass of pasta.

I could pratically hear his voice in my head: "She wants garlic? I'll give her garlic!"

I briefly considered turning into a serious pissing match, but it seemed ridiculous. Instead I scraped away most of the garlic, then used the drawn butter from my scallops, the Parmesan on the table, and salt to create a pasta dish that was edible. Because living well is the best revenge.

Still, when we snuggled up in bed last night, Ferrett snickered. He said it wasn't bad, but it was like cuddling with a shrimp scampi.

Yeah, that's gonna be with me for a while....

Just got off the phone with my mom.

You know how sometimes you can be sick or injured, but not realize how sick or injured you really are? Until medical personnel say something meant to reassure you? And how that something assumes a possible outcome so far beyond consideration that it fills you with absolute horror?

Just before they put Mom under to perform emergency surgery on her eye, the doctor patted her on the shoulder and said, "Don't worry. We're going to save your face."

Save your face???

They put her out in ER (didn't want to wait to get her admitted and up to surgery) and inserted a drain behind her eye. Apparently, they drained almost a cup of noxious gunk out of there, and the drain is still in place. They are very impressed that she still has sight in that eye and it appears that the ocular nerve was not compromised by the infection. She will be there at the very least through the weekend. They are still concerned about the infection to the bone, but have hope that they got to it soon enough that they won't have to go in there again.

Mom told me all this and then we discussed the fact that seeing double out of one eye is *not* normal and that maybe she should have gone to the doctor sooner.

Oi.

It may be that Roman Polanski should not be sent to jail.

Now, hear me out.

It may be that he has indeed suffered enough. It may be that his mental state at the time of the crime was still deeply affected by the brutal murder of his wife and unborn child. It may be that the reparations paid to the victim are adequate to ameliorate his jail sentence.

But the authority deciding this? Should be the judge and jury of the Los Angeles County Court.

Not Roman Polanski. Not Roman Polanski's friends. Not the kangaroo court that is the internet. Polanski's return to the U.S. to finally face sentencing does not immediately translate to "Polanski will be in jail for the rest of his life and does/doesn't deserve that!!" as the hysteria claims.

I don't know what Polanski deserves. Neither does anyone else out there. No one will know until the evidence is laid out in court.

That, more than any other reason, is why he should be brought back to the U.S.

When I was eight years old, I read The Sinking of the Bismark. This book was in our house not as literature but as part of a centerpiece atop a TV console - three small glass fishing floats, a piece of driftwood, a hurricane lamp, and four or five books with an oceanic theme. My mother had picked them up at a garage sale and never opened them. I don't remember my mother reading at that point, but when she took up books a few years later, her idea of literature was Valley of the Dolls and Love Story.

At eight, I was engaged in a battle of wills with my school and my parents. The school librarian relegated first through third graders to the picture book section. I would sneak over to the novels section only to be shooed back to picture books. Protests that I had read The Wizard of Oz and the Laura Ingalls Wilder books fell on deaf ears: third graders could only take out from the picture book section. About the longest book I could borrow was Frog and Toad are Friends.

My mother, on the other hand, could never get around to taking me to the public library, and complained about having to pay fines when the books were late getting back. I had read the few books I owned over and over, and was bored sick of them. So I plucked Bismark from the centerpiece, causing consternation over my damage to the aesthetics and considerable scorn for my ability to finish reading, let alone understand, it.

But I did. It was dry and filled with words I didn't know, and I struggled hard with the concepts, but I got through the whole thing. And made my mother write a note for me to deliver to the school librarian attesting to this and demanding that I be allowed to take out real books.

The librarian acquiesced, but said I could only check out one book. I remember that first book: Ginnie and her Juniors. It was a book about a girl starting a babysitting service, but it caught my eye because the lead character had my name, with my (then) spelling! I'd never seen that before!

I took it out on a Friday and brought it back on Monday. "Humph!" said the librarian. "Too hard after all?"

"No," said I, confused and a little offended. "I finished it. I want to check out the next one."

Weirdly enough, the librarian's resentment never ceased, and she crowed with delight when I handed her Little Women.

"You shouldn't even try this one."

She was right that time. It was culturally too confusing for a hick-town seven year old, and I had to return it without finishing it. (It took all the way until 5th grade before I was ready for Alcott again, and I started with Eight Cousins, which avoids the Pilgrim's Progress and Transcendentalism of Little Women, things I better understood when I finally read it the next year.)

Looking back, I resent that librarian more than just about anyone else in my childhood. My reading over the rest of my childhood was a haphazard affair: lots of seriously mediocre books purchased from Scholastic's quarterly fliers, much Nancy Drew and Bobbsie Twins, and the occasional stumble over something really wonderful. I was given a copy of Jane Eyre when I was 12 and must have read it 10 times, but no one thought, "oh, steer her toward more Bronte" or "with her book tastes, she should be introduced to Austin!"

How much better read might I be if the librarian had taken an interest in this child who clearly loved books, rather than resenting me for upsetting her ridiculous and arbitrary rules? Certainly no one at home was going to do it. My dad never read, and when I was in fifth grade I was sent to my room on Christmas morning for giving my brother a book about sports heroes - it was selfish for me to give him something that only I would like. (I sobbed into my pillow for an hour because I'd been very excited to give it to him, since he was so into sports. This is one of those hard little resentments in life I will never overcome.)

Despite a TV-glutted environment where there was no encouragement toward reading, I was a passionate reader by nature. Learning to love classical music was another matter. That one came when I began, as a teen, to babysit for people with a large classical collection. Once the kids were in bed, I would put on an LP and force myself to listen.

I was bored senseless. I had no ear for the music. All I had was determination.

Now, this was the accessible stuff: Beethoven, Bach, Mozart. If I'd started with Bartok, I'm certain I would have abandoned the project immediately. It took a while, but familiarity and then enjoyment blossomed.

Living in a household where American Top 40 and Tom Jones were pretty much the extent of the musical choices, other than my collection of John Denver and Neil Diamond, I kept this project to myself. Because I'd suffered enough accusations of being hoity toity for my refusal to spend all evenings watching TV with the family and then - horrors - wanting to watch Masterpiece Theater. To watch that, I was banished to my room, where PBS reception generally wavered and everyone, Upstairs or Downstairs, apparently - and obliviously - endured a perpetual snowstorm.

So, in light of Ferrett's journal entry today, I find myself asking what of my current tastes developed as a reaction against family and institutions, and what is my own nature? I think the love of reading (which is shared passionately by one sister and somewhat by the other) came naturally and my battle for it was not rebellion but defense. Classical music was a reaction to my perception (probably thanks to reading) of what appalling rednecks surrounded my and was a generalized rebellion against that.

Masterpiece Theater was open rebellion against my mother. I didn't even like Upstairs, Downstairs - again, lacking a taste for that kind of thing at the time. But I watched it, by gods, because it was superior to Dallas.

Unlike Ferrett and The Beatles, though, hearing Vivaldi or watching the BBC Pride and Prejudice does not trigger a, "take that, my protoplasmic ancestors!" reaction in me. I know that I love them, plain and simple. I know that it makes me different from my family (when people ask me how I can be related to them, I explain that I am a faerie child, switched at birth), but I don't generally think about it much.

But I bet if I ever tried Upstairs, Downstairs again, though, I bet that I would.

I had a series of extremely vivid dreams last night, but the last one was one of the most vivid and awful I have ever experienced.

I dreamed Ferrett was dead.

It wasn't a dramatic dream of death scenes; it was instead a dream in which I was calling friends and making funeral arrangements and shopping at the grocery store and picking my daughters up at the airport and cooking them dinner and getting phone calls back from people and hearing and repeating the same phrases over and over: words of shock and condolence and sadness. And running, time and again, into the wall of never seeing my sweet weasel again: the tight pain of it in my chest squeezing out all the air, feeling simultaneously claustrophobic and completely exposed. It was the mundanity and the pain, combined, that made it so completely real that I'm still a little shaken. The phone calls to family and friends were so realistic, filled with shock and pain and the awkwardness of no one knowing what to say.

Of course, it didn't help the awkwardness of all those conversations that his death had involved a climbing wall and a ball gag....

(Edit: Yes, it's okay if you laugh at this!)

Ferrett just started a Goodreads account. After a whole day of working, no food, and eleventy-twelve phone calls, I just wanted to quickly add him before we walk out the door.

I did not notice, shadowed to gray-on-white as it was, the mischief on the other side of the page. Until I pushed "send" for the email to Ferrett.

You've sent invitations to 50 friends! it cheerfully informed me.

Wow. Shouldn't you have been a little more clear about asking me if I wanted to spam my address book???

Apologies, and GRRRRRR!!!!!

EDIT: Better still, it sent the message I meant for Ferrett to EVERYONE. The message?

I'm your wife, you have to like me.

Now furious AND embarrssed.

For no particular reason, I am terribly blue and sad today. It's like I'm moving through jello.

Sad jello.

I need to get something done so I can at least feel good about the day. I also need cheering up. Tell me something good?

Just talked to Brother. He's up and around, taking a walk, and appears to be going home today. Gall bladder removal only; appendix was fine. They did it by laparoscope. It's kind of amazing what they can do.

The internet encourages the kind of instincts that once meant "entertainment" consisted of feeding Christians to lions. But occasionally antidotes to this feasting upon misfortune come along.

My Life is Average is an antidote to FML. Instead of horrible misadventures, it celebrates the amusing bits of life. This may be my favorite of all time:

At my new school I sat with a group of kids during lunch that asked me "twilight or Harry Potter?" I answered Harry Potter and they scoweled at me and made rude remarks. The next table over put a bag over my head and screamed "GRYFFINDOR" then pulled me to their table. I just found my new best friends.

The interesting thing is, if you go back to the earliest entries on the site, they really were aiming for a tongue-in-cheek "today nothing really remarkable happened" style to mock FML. But it quickly evolved into its current incarnation of little moments worth treasuring and humorous bits. Sure, there are still entries of complete mundanity, but most are cute.

Life needs more cute.

My mother called an hour or so ago to tell me that my brother is in the hospital to have his gall bladder and appendix out. I spoke to him for a couple minutes, but he was already loopy on "the good drugs" but not worried.

Amazing how much trouble that little bugger is.

Ferrett wrote today about perceived IQ and the use of derogatory terms. And of course, the comments are filled with loads and loads of other examples of terms that shouldn't be used because they are derogatory.

Including jerry-rigged.

I've let this go before, people, but this time I just have to speak up.

Jerry-rigging is allegedly derogatory toward Germans (sometimes called "Gerries" by British soldiers during the world war), and allegedly implies that Germans are stupid and incapable of building stuff.

This is just plain dumb.

The word has its origins in the 1700s, as a temporary mast set up to help a ship stay asail. It's from the French jurie, meaning help or relief. Rigging is the ropes and such of masts. Its meaning has expanded to generally signify things thrown together quickly, but it is not derogatory in any way.

And here endeth today's lesson in not being so fucking ready to take offense at any word that possibly sounds like it might be related to some special interest group. When you jump down people's throats for slights that don't exist, it's hard to take you seriously when you actually have a point.

The chip on your shoulder is not a fashion statement.

For our second anniversary in Ohio, Ferrett and I went to a little inn in Amish country. He'd read about it in the Free Press and thought it sounded nice. Neither of us had visited Amish country at the time, and we naively wondered if we would see any buggies.

Gods, we were such tourists.

But we fell in love. We fell in love with Amish country, and we fell in love with The Inn at Honey Run, and particularly with The Honey Combs, 12 intimate, earth-sheltered rooms that are like Hobbit holes, cozy and romantic.

We were a marriage in trouble back then, both of us struggling through the growth and change that would bring us to where we are today. But for that weekend, we were able to put all that aside. We drove around holding hands, squealing in delight when we saw buggies, poking around in shops filled with both awesome and completely tacky stuff, and discovering Lehman's, possibly the most awesome shop in the entire world. I want to take it all home every time we go there.

And go there, we have. We have returned to Amish country many times since then, mostly with family or friends, one other time to the Inn by ourselves. In fact, we were there just a couple weeks ago with Ferrett's dad.

It's not something that we haven't done. Yet, when Ferrett asked that I wanted to do for our 10th anniversary, I didn't hesitate for a moment: I wanted to go to the Inn at Honey Run. To me, it's the place where we can retreat from real life and just be the two of us. And so we did.

For the first time in several years, we were not escorting friends or family to the area. Instead of going to all the usual haunts, our plan was to go to those little places that we noticed off the sides of the roads, places that were run by families.

Gods, we are such tourists.

We sort of succeeded, but not so much with the shopping. Instead, we ended up being semi-lost on lots of back roads. When we came to an intersection, our choice was the road less traveled, again and again. Until we were in places where folks working nodded to us, a certain respect for the fact that we'd managed to get that far back into the middle of nowhere.

Alas, we were too shy to pull up into places where there was a sign but no other cars - we didn't want to interrupt people's day and then not buy something, and we didn't want to be guilted into buying stuff that we didn't want. So in the end, we did most of our shopping at Heini's Cheese Chalet.

Dude, don't judge us. It's awesome cheese.

Okay, wait. I think I spent an equal amount of money at the quilt shop in Charm. And I found the house of my dreams for sale on a country road outside of Charm. I'm buying lottery tickets, and as soon as I win, you're all invited to enjoy my lovely new house.

Assuming I can ever actually find that house again. We were in the weeds.

Anyway, we ended the day with a wonderful dinner at the Inn. I started with an open-faced ravioli with duck, while Ferrett began with a puff pastry with wild mushrooms and goat cheese.

I won. OMG, the duck. The duck was brilliant. So brilliant it almost overshadowed the scallops with basil pasta and lemon sauce. Almost. I adore scallops, but when I tasted these? Ferrett was saying something to me, and whatever it was faded to silence as a foodgasm exploded in my mouth.

...

Sorry, was lost in memory there.

Alas, while dinner was amazing, something that I ate prior to that was taking a weed whacker to my lower GI tract. When we got back to the room I was completely disabled by digestional distress.

My lovely hubby just cuddled me and took care of me. And that is the wonder of my weasel. We were at the most romantic place in the world, and instead of pouting because I was incapable of being romantic, all he cared about was me and my being okay.

He really is the best hubby ever.

This morning started with massages, which were several kinds of amazing. We didn't think there would be time or energy for romance, and then there suddenly was.

It was, in all, a perfect weekend, despite the imperfect moments. I love you, babe, and all this bragging is just my way to always remember what an amazing weekend it was.

My former mother-in-law was (and remains) a lovely woman, but she was incapable of making a meal without destroying the kitchen. Even heating up leftovers meant that pretty much every pot and pan in the cupboards ended up on the counters, soiled. Gripped by a false sense of economy, she would continually start with too small a pot and have to size up, sometimes twice. She had no skill for cleaning up as she went, and no patience for anyone else trying to do so around her. When we were visiting there, meals were always for a minimum of 6 and frequently for 12 or more, so if you were assigned chopping or stirring or some other chore, you were expected to stay with it until assigned something else. The way she cooked left no room for being at the sink washing up. And then it was time to sit down and eat. At the end of the meal, there were not only a dishwasher-full of plates, glasses, and flatware, there were piles of mixing bowls, cooking utensils, and cookware with dried-on (and sometimes burned-on) food. It was reminiscent of comic depictions of soldiers on KP duty. Quite disheartening and far more time-consuming than was necessary.

When I cook, I am a firm believer in cleaning up after myself. At the end of the meal, there should only be the dishes, serving dishes and the last cooking vessels (preferably already soaking in the sink, but hot fresh food is a higher priority).

Last night I think I rather outdid myself.

I'd picked up a lovely Alaskan salmon fillet (coho) for myself and my dinner guest, transfiguration. It was a thin fillet, so I knew its cooking time would be minimal. I laid it skin-side down on the broiling pan and brushed it lightly with olive oil and soy sauce, then let it rest. In the meantime, I peeled and sliced an onion into thin slices, and placed them, with a little butter, into my one cast iron pan and let them slowly saute until nicely soft and carmelized. I arranged these down each side of the fillet, deglazed the pan with some port wine, and tossed in about 2 cups of mushrooms, halved. After then had absorbed the port, they got another half tablespoon of butter and were cooked until just soft. These I also arranged down either side of the fillet. Then into the pan went some butter and garlic, which I brushed onto several pieces of bread. I placed them on the outer edge of the tray and everything went under the preheated broiler for 7 minutes. The bread came out a little too dark, but still very tasty, and everything else was perfect.

I served it all with a salad made from mixed baby greens, blueberries, sliced fresh peaches, and candied ginger, all with a mild vinaigrette. Which was also a delicious mixture of flavors. M brought a perfect bottle of white wine, and dinner was complete.

In the end, I had the broiling pan, the salad bowl, and the dishes to clean up. The cutting board and knives had of course already been washed and put away, the cast iron pan only required wiping out with a paper towel,and the counters were wiped down. Doing the dishes after dinner was a job of five minutes, since even the broiler could go in the dishwasher.

No, it wasn't dinner for 12, but the principle is the same. I've done dinner for 12, and the biggest trick is running a load of pots and pans in the dishwasher while eating, so that unloading it then loading the dinner dishes is all that's really required.

It would be easier with house elves, but only a little.

Ferrett: So, the kid in Farmer Boy. Does he ever, like, make a reappearance in the Little House books?

Me: Almanzo?

Ferrett: Yeah, him.

Me: Well, yeah. He's marries Laura.

Ferrett [recoiling]: I just wanted to know if there was a reason for his story! You didn't have to spoil it for me.

Me: Sorry, I thought you knew!

[moment of silence]

Me: Didn't his last name being Wilder give you a hint?

[another moment of silence]

Ferrett: Um...no. Not really.

I've written, and Ferrett has written, about the abstracts of parenting.

But this moment may be the most succinct comment on parenting ever.

(Go look, it's only a minute. I'll wait before spoiling.)

...

This dad is a life-long Phillies fan, a guy who buys season tickets not only for himself but for his wife and two daughters, a regular Joe whose life-long dream is to catch a foul ball. His moment finally comes. In glee, he hands the ball to his three-year-old.

She does what three-year-olds do with balls. And Dad's reaction is written all over his face: WTFF!!!!????

But only for a heartbeat. When she turns to him, he embraces her, preventing her from registering his gobsmacked gawp. As his wife and other fans look on in horror, he works through horror and comes out the other end to, "my own fault, of course she threw the ball" resignation. AND humor - a sort of gallows humor, yes, but he is laughing at himself and the situation.

None of his frustration is aimed at his daughter.

Bravo, sir. At the moment, you did not know that the scene was caught on film, that you would be richly rewarded. At the moment you were just a dad loving his daughter. She took away your most prized toy, and you thought of her instead of yourself.

I wish all children dads like you.

Here's a first: Ferrett out of town and me going to bed before midnight. Getting no sleep to speak of last night is a motivator. Sleep well, intarwebs.

I did it. I got on the bike and rode 10 miles. Nothing legendary, but I actually managed to enjoy it.

And it was the right time of day for it - mid-day, where there was little traffic and I could take a chunk of lane instead of squeezing over to the side and trembling in fear of hitting my pedal on the curb or getting sideswiped by a mirror. I am self-conscious about making people wait 3 seconds instead of trying to squeeze around me, but it's not a big deal if there are only a few cars driving. And no one even honked at me. I did chicken out and ride on the sidewalk from Kamm's Corner across the bridge, but the road is in crap shape and the lanes are narrow.

The rest, though, I did properly: on the street, humming along at 15-16 miles an hour on the way out, about 12 on the way back - I kind of overdid it at the beginning. Now I just have to keep reminding myself that this is fun. Maybe I will get in a few miles this fall after all.

I am getting ready to go for a bike ride.

I hate that I am still so skittish about it since I got hit. Getting myself to bike is an act of will and determination now, instead of pleasure. I have put in a whole 15 miles this year, 10 of that at a place where I was completely off-road. I used to bike for errands, now I'm scared. It's frustrating the hell out of me. I wonder if I will ever regain my confidence.

Goodbye, Patrick. Thank you for giving me great memories. Rest well.

A total of 13 friends showed up to rock the house to the Beatles last night (though two left before four others showed up), meaning that including ourselves there were as many as 13 people, along with three microphones, two guitars, and a drum kit the size of a Smart Car (thank you, Todd, for being crazy enough to haul that beast over here) crammed into my house. My house is not very big. It was a bit of a tight fit, that. Which, of course, is part of the fun.

As shiny as Todd's drum kit may be, we will not have a version of it in our house. It pretty much occupied half the floor space in the living room, so getting one would require moving Rock Band and the big screen TV into the basement family room. And while the neat freak in me finds this idea appealing, half the reason that these parties work so well is that the dining area and kitchen is just around the corner from where we are playing, so people who are sitting out a song or two can visit and spectate without the evening turning into two separate parties. So I will live with the continual clutter of instruments and mic stands in my living room, and we will make do with the regular drum kit.

Some impressions from the evening:

- Everyone sang. Raucously. So much glee for the music.

- Spontaneously, we all joined in with the screaming girls. The neighbors must think we're insane.

- Screaming along meant that after 4 hours of nonstop singing my throat wanted to know just what the hell I was up to. No singing today. Croak croak.

- Dig a Pony? Dig a Pony??? This song was so bad, I finally gave up on the words and the harmonies and just howled into the microphone and sang insults at it. At the end, I got the best score on vocals. WTF?

- Todd also brought the official Rock Band George Harrison Paul McCartney bass (what? I didn't know, and everyone kept referring to the bassist as George, so I just assumed they were smarter than I - apparently not). It was still a plastic guitar with buttons, but playing it actually felt like I was really making music. Proving that I am easily deluded.

- No one stepped on my bruised and swollen foot, but I myself managed to trip several times and stood way too long. It's amusing to lie in bed and count your pulse by the throbbing in your heel.

- bec76 was my hero for the evening. She spent her afternoon working as sous chef while I tried to stay off my foot, then she took over cooking duty for the burgers when Ferrett had to help get the equipment set up. Love you, sweetie! You were awesome!!!

- I suspect that we will be playing around with the vocals and harmonies more than anything else on this game. They are quite challenging.

Even with a good night's sleep I am feeling terribly scattered and useless today. Must pull out of that; stuff to do.

I'm seeing a number of people proposing that if we took insurance companies out of the equation, eased the medical school bottleneck that is artificially limiting the number of doctors in this country, and passed tort reform to cap medical malpractice will somehow make health care affordable.

And, in fact, these things will decrease the cost of routine care and minor illness. But routine care and minor illness are not the things that drive families to bankruptcy or cause people to simply not seek medical care because they can't afford it. It's major accidents, cancer, heart failure, chronic medical conditions treatable only with expensive medications. It's diagnostics and surgery that break people, and no amount of opening up the medical system will lower the price of MRIs, CT scans, and all the other alphabet soup of diagnostic tools to a price for which your plumber can write a personal check.

Now, people point to these tests and say that doctors do far too many of them as a defense against law suits, and tort reform would lower the number of tests ordered and thereby reduce the overall cost of treatment. And they are right, up to a point. But I'm going to let you in on a little secret: malpractice protection is a bit of a straw man. Because your doctor, and the hospital to which s/he is attached, needs to get bodies into their fancy and very expensive machines. They need to pay the bills.

Diagnostic equipment is phenomenally expensive, and yet the physician's office building where my doctor has his practice not only has its own lab, it has its own CT scan machine. A CT scan machine costs about half a million dollars - that's for a relatively simple model. That's just getting it out of the showroom and into your building. Then there is maintenance and the cost of running the thing. You have to put quite a few bodies a year through that machine to make it pay out. And that's what a lot of diagnostic tests are about: making the rent on your fancy piece of equipment.

Here's the really insane part. My doctor's office is within 15 minutes of three large hospitals, each of which has its own compliment of hungry diagnostic equipment waiting to be fed patients so it can turn them into cash. Before my doctor moved offices, getting a CT scan would have required his scheduler to call one of the hospitals and set up an outpatient appointment. Generally, it could be done same day or next day.

This was not a huge inconvenience. Really. If a person was sick enough to need immediate hospitalization, then they were hospitalized. Or, hey, the doctor used his highly trained skill to actually diagnose and treat instead of throwing in an extra test because he wants to protect himself pay for his machinery. And insurance companies encourage this kind of machine emplacement by paying more for tests done in-house than they do for referrals. It's bad economics over the long term, but it still encourages the purchase of more medical equipment, turning a profit for big companies while gang-pressing patients into tests that are of minimal benefit.

There are communities out there that are lacking medical facilities, it's true, but there are also towns where far too much medical equipment has been installed and diagnostics are ordered to pay the bills. When Fairbanks, Alaska, got an MRI machine, an economist looked at statistics and ran the numbers and figured that the hospital could fly every patient needing an MRI to Seattle first class, put them up in the Hilton, and have their MRIs done at University of Washington cheaper than maintaining the machine.

Strangely enough, the number of patients in need of MRIs skyrocketed once it was installed.

I'm not arguing that diagnostics should be reduced to a stethoscope and x-ray machine, far from it. I am merely pointing out that the waste in the system can't be reconciled by health care savings plans. When the doctor ordered a CT scan for Ferrett's appendix, I didn't argue. I'm not trained to know what is needed and what is overuse of diagnostics. And I appreciate that our doctor gave Ferrett a copy of the CT scan and strict instructions on how to make sure it ended up in the right hands so that the hospital had no excuse for running him through another.

Thinking back, though, it seems his symptoms were clear enough that the right decision - surgery - would have been made without needing the scan - after all, doctors did so for decades before they came along. The scan was of no additional benefit, really. Except to get a few thousand dollars into the hands of the clinic and help pay this month's bill on the machine.

But if insurance disappeared and this $7,000 test was ordered by my physician, how would I really know whether I was shortchanging my health care in refusing it? And suppose the surgeon refused to operate without it? Where is choice, really, when my loved one is flat on his back in a hospital gown, tethered to an IV pole?

No matter what happens with health care reform, all that equipment still has to be paid for. An entire industry relies on placing complex diagnostic equipment in freestanding clinics and doctor's offices.

You're not going to pay for your medical care on butter-and-egg money.

The yay: Aunt Flo came to visit a couple days early. This wouldn't usually be a yay, but it's logistically advantageous to have it out of the way.

The boo: Scurrying across the marble floor toward the courtroom, my rain-dampened shoe slipped and I turned my ankle and sort of half-fell. The ankle itself isn't bad, but the outside of my left foot has a large and extremely painful bruise down its length. Yes, I have it elevated and iced right now. But the combination of that owie plus cramps is making the Z one unhappy camper for today.

Fortunately, I was able to reschedule today's afternoon appointment until tomorrow, because I'm pretty sure I couldn't wear shoes with any kind of comfort for the moment.

This is terrifying, disgusting, and should be the cause for criminal trespass charges:

Noose Left in Fairview Park Family's Yard.

These people are less than a mile away from me. It just fills me with shock and revulsion that these poor little girls had to find such a horrid, hateful thing, and this family is now living under the shadow of knowing that someone around them is actively thinking this way.

Let me quote from myself last week:

my nephew, a Navy sailor stationed in Guam, got involved in a bar fight and was stabbed seven times. He, and his buddies, will also be in trouble for being in that particular part of town, since the deployed sailors have been instructed not to venture there. I think stupid runs on the Y chromosome in my family....

And not one person accused me of blaming the victim. Why? Simple. Because he is a young, white male and in the military. He took a risk he shouldn't have taken, and he paid the price.

But if I had written that my niece was mugged walking through a dangerous part of town and how foolish it had been for her to be there, people would have assaulted me with accusations of victim-blaming. Any thought that she had taken the responsibility for putting herself into a risky situation would have been vilified - how dare I assign her responsibility for her own actions?

That's asking for the world to protect her when you wouldn't expect it to protect him. That's a double standard.

And it's a double standard aimed at infantilizing women. What you are asking for is old fashioned chivalry, and asking it not of some noble class (that of course wasn't always noble) but from every junkie, hoodlum, frat boy, asshole on the street.

Now, don't get me wrong. No one ever deserves to be mugged, stabbed, beaten, raped, murdered, no matter what situation they put themselves in. The perpetrators always deserve to be punished. But if we can't analyze a situation and say, it is not particularly wise for a person to wander through the worst part of town late at night all alone, then it's difficult to educate anyone how not to get themselves into situations where some vicious bastard could harm them.

When you accept that the victim has some culpability when it's a white guy but refuse to do so when it's anyone else, you are creating a double standard that condones - and refuses to warn against - foolishness.

It's wrong that anyone is ever a victim of anything. It's foolhardy to pretend that this means no one ever will be.

EDIT: Since all the comments seem to be based on a defense of agency (a bar fight), let me add this to the actual entry so I don't have to keep saying it:

After finally getting to talk to my sister, it appears that he was trying to stop the beating of a guy who was jumped, and had nothing to do with starting the altercation.

Nevertheless, if a girl went to a frat party and got roaring drunk, no one would dare suggest there was any agency on her part in getting herself into a situation where she might be endangered. Double standard.

A research group is collection a survey of pagan opinion, to follow up on research done 20 years ago. If you are interested in more details and in participating, you will find them at The Wild Hunt. An interesting survey, and good to lend our voices.

The breakup about which I was most worried appears to have been patched up. Fingers crossed....

I just found out last night that my nephew, a Navy sailor stationed in Guam, got involved in a bar fight and was stabbed seven times. He's not in any danger of dying, but will need reconstructive surgery on his ear, one side of his face, and his arm. He, and his buddies, will also be in trouble for being in that particular part of town, since the deployed sailors have been instructed not to venture there. I think stupid runs on the Y chromosome in my family (this is a different nephew from the one who lived with us and has managed to get himself into all kinds of trouble).

Also this week? Two more marriage breakups of people whose lives deeply impact either us or our kids.

Just make it all stop, please?