Drill, Drill, Drill

I write to my sisters. I write because I believe we hold this election in our hands. This vote is a vote that will determine the future not just of the U.S., but of the planet. It will determine whether we create policies to save the earth or make it forever uninhabitable for humans. It will determine whether we move towards dialogue and diplomacy in the world or whether we escalate violence through invasion, undermining and attack.. It will determine whether we go for oil, strip mining, coal burning or invest our money in alternatives that will free us from dependency and destruction. It will determine if money gets spent on education and healthcare or whether we build more and more methods of killing. It will determine whether America is a free open tolerant society or a closed place of fear, fundamentalism and aggression. - Eve Ensler

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Eve Ensler

Sept 12, 2008

I am having Sarah Palin nightmares. I dreamt last night that she was a member of a club where they rode snowmobiles and wore the claws of drowned and starved polar bears around their necks. I have a particular thing for Polar Bears. Maybe it's their snowy whiteness or their bigness or the fact that they live in the arctic or that I have never seen one in person or touched one. Maybe it is the fact that they live so comfortably on ice.

Whatever it is, I need the polar bears. I don't like raging at women. I am a Feminist and have spent my life trying to build community, help empower women and stop violence against them.. It is hard to write about Sarah Palin. This is why the Sarah Palin choice was all the more insidious and cynical. The people who made this choice count on the goodness and solidarity of Feminists.

But everything Sarah Palin believes in and practices is antithetical to Feminism which for me is part of one story -- connected to saving the earth, ending racism, empowering women, giving young girls options, opening our minds, deepening tolerance, and ending violence and war.

I believe that the McCain/Palin ticket is one of the most dangerous choices of my lifetime, and should this country chose those candidates the fall-out may be so great, the destruction so vast in so many areas that America may never recover. But what is equally disturbing is the impact that duo would have on the rest of the world. Unfortunately, this is not a joke.

In my lifetime I have seen the clownish, the inept, the bizarre be elected to the presidency with regularity. Sarah Palin does not believe in evolution. I take this as a metaphor. In her world and the world of Fundamentalists nothing changes or gets better or evolves. She does not believe in global warming. The melting of the arctic, the storms that are destroying our cities, the pollution and rise of cancers, are all part of God's plan. She is fighting to take the polar bears off the endangered species list. The earth, in Palin's view, is here to be taken and plundered. The wolves and the bears are here to be shot and plundered. The oil is here to be taken and plundered. Iraq is here to be taken and plundered. As she said herself of the Iraqi war, "It was a task from God."


Sarah Palin does not believe in abortion. She does not believe women who are raped and incested and ripped open against their will should have a right to determine whether they have their rapist's baby or not.

She obviously does not believe in sex education or birth control. I imagine her daughter was practicing abstinence and we know how many babies that makes.

Sarah Palin does not much believe in thinking. From what I gather she has tried to ban books from the library, has a tendency to dispense with people who think independently.

She cannot tolerate an environment of ambiguity and difference. This is a woman who could and might very well be the next president of the United States. She would govern one of the most diverse populations on the earth.

Sarah believes in guns. She has her own custom Austrian hunting rifle. She has been known to kill 40 caribou at a clip. She has shot hundreds of wolves from the air.

Sarah believes in God. That is of course her right, her private right. But when God and Guns come together in the public sector, when war is declared in God's name, when the rights of women are denied in his name, that is the end of separation of church and state and the undoing of everything America has ever tried to be.

I write to my sisters. I write because I believe we hold this election in our hands. This vote is a vote that will determine the future not just of the U.S., but of the planet. It will determine whether we create policies to save the earth or make it forever uninhabitable for humans. It will determine whether we move towards dialogue and diplomacy in the world or whether we escalate violence through invasion, undermining and attack.. It will determine whether we go for oil, strip mining, coal burning or invest our money in alternatives that will free us from dependency and destruction. It will determine if money gets spent on education and healthcare or whether we build more and more methods of killing. It will determine whether America is a free open tolerant society or a closed place of fear, fundamentalism and aggression.

If the Polar Bears don't move you to go and do everything in your power to get Obama elected then consider the chant that filled the hall after Palin spoke at the RNC, "Drill Drill Drill." I think of teeth when I think of drills. I think of rape. I think of destruction. I think of domination. I think of military exercises that force mindless repetition, emptying the brain of analysis, doubt, ambiguity or dissent. I think of pain.

Do we want a future of drilling? More holes in the ozone, in the floor of the sea, more holes in our thinking, in the trust between nations and peoples, more holes in the fabric of this precious thing we call life?

___________________

Eve Ensler, the American playwright, performer, feminist and activist

Fiona and I just finished our second reading of great book. She loves it.

Henry is at that age where he will try and repeat just about anything you ask him too.

Some of his favorite words are Dadda/Mamma/Outside/Cat/Cow/Drink/Helmet/HennrE (I really don't know how to type how he pronounces his own name but it is very cute.

He has many and is just starting to string things together i.e. " drink-all-gonnnnne", "Dadda's Helmet"

She needs a little prompting here and there and we have to point to one letter at a time but she can usually get the sounds right and make out your normal "starter" reading words. She also announced that she is excited for school to start but nervous about the Fall flue shot. Why she lumps them both together we don't know but that is Fiona.

Took Friday off - Fiona had her dance performace ( videos) & dance pics

Saturday we went wild blueberry picking and swimming in the secret pond. Why secret? It is less than 2 miles from our house, in the middle of the woods and we aren't telling any more than that!

Sunday we went on a hike at Ft Dummer S.P. Lots of mushrooms and humidity but still fun.

24.6 Pounds 32 and 3/4 inches tall. . or short depending on how you look at it :)

at 18-19 months Henry has the following words

Moma, dada, nona (for Fiona), cat, car, cow, wawa (water), down, dog, hot, Gorilla (pronounced "galla"), cracker,

He communicates "yes" by laughing and will shake his head for "no."

There are a few more that I am missing at the moment and will add when I can get Steph to take a look.

So the other night Fiona and I were looking at her Brain Quest questions. The question was

"The earth is mostly covered in water. True or False"

I could see her little wheels turning, I asked her if she remembered looking at the globe (Google Earth) with me. She replied that she had quickly asked

"was all the blue water?"

I answered "Yes"

She said "hmmm there was a lot of blue. . . True"

Good thinking Nona!

Fiona has been on a serious quantifying kick lately. She loves to talk about how much she loves steph (currently infinity plus something) and me (currently 100, up greatly from 4 last week when I didn't get her enough yogurt milk). Yesterday afternoon we were on the deck and I was teasing her a little with mushy kisses. I got a good one right on her forehead causing her to exclaim "You don't even know how many points of love you just lost!!!"

Recent Fiona Quote-

"Whenever we say the English language, our language, it makes me think of an English muffin and I want one."


She has been watching

Peep and the Big Wide World: Peep Floats

in Spanish - and sometimes she asks us to rewind and then switch to English

How easy it is to post. Seriously, little tidbits like this take a minute, maybe less.

So Fiona is already thinking about halloween, says she might want to be a skeleton. I think it might have something to do with the lego skeletons that she has been super into. Did you all see our lego time-lapse movie?



Enjoy!

So as you can see I rarely (what is less than rarely?) post here. Apologies for that but busy work/life and only dial-up at home are barriers to frequent updates. I do however take lots of photos and you can find all of those here

All my Photos - 49GBs at this time

My best shots, considerably less than 49GBs worth

Just a quick update (very quick)

Henry says "Momma" "Dadda" and "cracker". He also lets us know he wants to see the neighbor cows by mooing and pointing at the door!

Each spring, starting the spring when Fiona was born, we have taken a photo in front of our azalea bush - here they are - the first time in one place! WOwzers!

Spring 07

Spring 06

Spring 05

Spring 04

Spring 03

So, Fiona has her first Barbie. She made some money from our yard sale (she selected quite a few toys that she was ready to find a new home for, especially *gasp* stuffed animals, which incidentally, no one wanted, but we donated so we are rid of them anyhow), and we took her to ToysRUs to pick out a new toy with her money. Fiona chose a baby doll, who within literally moments of arriving home was decried as unacceptable because she did not like her eyes (they were a bit creepy, but Toby and I noticed that in the store!!!). Anyway, dolly went back to the store, and Fiona chose a Barbie with pet dog (more on that in a minute). A little later in the day, Fiona said to me, "If Barbie was chocolate, she would probably be very yummy, wouldn't she?" Umm, yep. I guess?

OK--so back to the Barbie toy set. Comes with Tanner, a lab-looking pooch, and mostly the expected dog accessories: food bowl, mat for said bowl, ball, chew toy, rawhide-looking bone. Tanner's mouth opens when you push his tail up (his ears perk up a bit, too), and he/she can hold the toy or bone in his/her mouth. Also, comes with a box of food, a trash can, and a magnetic pooper scooper! And magnetic turds to be picked up with scooper. Tanner poops when you push his/her tail down. Got it? True to life enough, if not a bit unexpected in a Barbie toy, but here's where it gets REALLY good. The food box attaches to the back of the trash can--there is a hole in the trash can and in the box. So, when you dump the turds into the trash can, they automatically go right into the food box, so lucky Tanner gets to eat his own poop!!!!

So I was a little iffy about buying Fiona her first Barbie. OK, truth be told, I would bet money that at some point I swore I would never buy her one, the words "over my dead body" might even have been uttered, but you know...things change. Anyway, I wasn't TOTALLY PSYCHED about it, BUT if I had known the twisted oogy nature of it, I would have signed on a whole lot quicker!!! So gross!! I love thinking about the Mattel board meeting, or whatever it is where these ideas get hatched or vetted or whatever, and someone describing this toy. It reminds me of a skit on SNL.

Fiona's song, to be sung slowly and somberly:

When the leaves blow of the trees
It's not very pretty
And it's sad
But they grow back
In the springtime
They grow back

Fiona had her first happy meal a few days ago. . well technically it was a kids meal from Taco Bell. Steph and I joked that when we did our giant cross country trip years and years ago [ http://gelstoncafe.com/content/webdesign/flash/xtrip.html ] that you could track our journey through Taco Bell receipts, we ate there at least once a week. Fiona has a fondness for bean burritos too and we recently found ourselves hungry and near a Taco Bell - the kids meal had a bean burrito and the toy was actually a book, surprisingly the book was a decent little story and the whole experience just helped to increase that little warm spot in my heart for Taco Bell. So for all the Taco Bell executives reading this, Thank you for being vegetarian friendly, for being cheap, and providing a wholesome "toy" in your kids meal.

Henry has a tooth!

In other news he had a little pool-time on Saturday - we set up Fiona's old baby pool while we did some yard work. Henry alternated between eating fistfuls of sand/leaves/sticks and watching us work. What a goon! Looking at Henry sitting in that little pool made us realize just how much larger he is. I will check with Steph and see if we can get some hard numbers up here about those differences in height and weight.

He is close. . . but not quite there. . .



Soon. . . so soon. I guess this means we better dust of the baby gate

What is the difference between an Ant and an Anteater?

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Ants are easier to pick up. And then she laughs her little silly laugh.

They will eat it. Pretty Cool study out of Missouri. "Children who ate the most fruits and vegetables were those in families that always or almost always ate homegrown produce. Those children averaged 5.2 daily servings of fruits and vegetables." Veggie Study Bring back those victory gardens. Maybe we can call them health gardens or something else that is a little more catchy. And since I added the ability to include pics, I thought I might as well include this one of a nine month old Fiona going for the veggies. She is still pretty good about eating her veggies. Some days better than others.

Henry can. . well. . just watch the



video

Did you know that energy efficiency-wise a bicycle gets 650 mpg.

Fiona says that bees take care of the earth because they take care of the flowers. I asked if she wanted to say anything about Earth day and that was her response.

Fiona and I were playing a little Eye Spy while waiting for Steph to pick up a few extra bits for our picnic dinner.

Fiona: I spy with my eye something cute.

Me: hmmmmmmm

Fiona: It's not me because I can't see myself in the mirror.

Me: Henry?

Fiona: Yupppppp!

We had a nice little picnic dinner at Black Hills SP. Photos Here and Here