Thursday, November 29, 2007

would this make a good muu-muu?


the eye of the beholder

Cathie saw the nearly-finished artwork for Desert Star on my new project desk today and said "Oh good, I like this much better in person." Cause when she saw the picture here a few days ago, it looked to her like a vagina.
Yes, all good organic imagery has to come from somewhere -- as someone who has shown and sold a lot of art in my time, I can tell you for fact that all young art students go through what I like to call their "dicks and tits" phase (sorry, those of you who are easily shocked.) They become fascinated with their physiological points of origin, and for about a year that's what they draw. They get over it.
My artwork has nothing intentional to do with female anatomy, but as I told Cathie, any "water gushing forth" imagery is bound to have something to do with birth and creation. I can't help it if archetype and Carl Jung and Freud are all in Wikipedia. God makes babies, and the apparatus that facilitates them.

Meanwhile, back in London...Al, what happened? You text-mailed pictures of your hotel room to my phone, for cryin out loud, and I haven't heard from you since. Are you lost in the Underground? Have you been swept away by some British bird? News at 11?
Write the intern grant for "Beauty That Speaks." Re-write the grant. Fax it in just under the wire. Stay up half the night worrying about completing the installation of "Desert Star," while trying to finish the piece you mean to hang in the show. Do the laundry at 1am -- after all, your husband needs undies. Worry about not seeing enough of your kid. Admire the artwork and the artists -- trust the Holy Spirit to do what needs to be done through you. Wonder if the Holy Spirit occasionally takes a lunch break and leaves you in charge. Wonder if you'll get the memo before that happens. Wonder if you can really offer any significant help on costumes for the church Christmas play, when you don't actually know how to sew clothing. Wonder when you'll get to setting meetings for "Spirit in the House" and the Daisy Day. Wonder if you're EVER going to mail out another issue of "Dynamic Spirit."

Wonder if you have too many irons in the fire right now.

Monday, November 26, 2007



At left, the "Desert Star," monoptilon bellioides - A tiny flower barely three-quarters inch wide that blooms in the western U.S. every once in a while, and the inspiration for the exhibit opening at Mercy Seat on Dec. 1. "Desert Star: Blessing, Loss, Exile & Return" is curated by yours truly and runs in Minneapolis through Dec. 31, 2007.
http://www.nemercy.org/






Sunday, November 25, 2007

foxes with anoxia

OK, got rid of the X's but she's still kicking my R-rated ass. Mainly because she's good at building into existing words to make two and three small words in a turn. Grr.

I'm so happy there are people up at this time of night to keep me company.

got them low-down XX blues

Becky has two Q's that she can't do anything with. And after what seems like hours holding all the ee's that could possibly be available in the Scrabble bag, I just drew two X's. We're playing Scrabble online, at some website called Bug Cafe -- a really loooonnnng game of Scrabble, since we manage about two turns per hour. That's because we're engaged in midnight multi-tasking: she's ostensibly writing a paper or handling some paid work for a colleague, while I'm sewing and reading my email (including an interesting piece from the New York Times about faith and the foundational laws of physics. More on that later.) But more important than the order of the universe is the simple question, WHAT am I going to do with two X's? Besides rate myself, ha ha.

Saturday, November 24, 2007

work in progress


Well, if it looks like water springing forth from the desert, then I'm doing my job. Actually, I'm still working on it, but need a break from tiny little hand stitches and tiny little beads. Need to not get too wrapped up in the teeny tiny stuff, since the border etc still needs to be finished.
This is all cotton, including a fair number of batik-like fabrics that Cathie bought me for my birthday. It measures about 12 by 9 inches currently.
Gotta get it done by the end of the week.

Friday, November 23, 2007

sucked into hulu with you

So here it is, 2am the morning after Turkey Day, and I've been sucked into Hulu watching reruns of "WKRP In Cincinnati" and recent episodes of "30 Rock." Following links on the MSN homepage always seems to be a mistake. And what a juxtaposition of shows. Though there are some weird similarities between Gary Sandy ("Andy Travis" on WKRP) and the aging Alec Baldwin...
I used to read the transcripts for "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" at Television Without Pity, and they always read funny; but I never got around to watching it, and my current fav is a British rip-off of "The West Wing" titled "The Amazing Mrs. Pritchard." I like Sorkin, just not enough to get excited about a TV show about a TV show. Obviously, "30 Rock" is a little too hip for me -- actually my tolerance for satire is just incredibly low. Though there are some great lines in there -- "Did he just talk to me like I'm ugly??" I'm not even hip enough for the title -- "30 Rock' makes me start looking around for John Lithgow. But hey, Jane Curtain was on that show too...
All of this is to say that I'm so out, I'm in. Why watch the popular new shows on the network's schedule when you can just dip into them any old time online? Heck, even my husband hangs out on YouTube. Hulu is the Cliff Notes of TV culture.

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

cranberry cheese bread

I've grated two clementines' worth of peel and juiced them both; I halved a cup of cranberries; I shredded a cup and a half of cheddar cheese. I have five more minutes, while the pumpkin pie finishes scenting the house with its comforting warmth, before I put in the cranberry cheddar cheese bread.
This cheese bread smells incredible as it bakes; it sounds strange, to anyone who hasn't baked with Betty Crocker or lived in the South, but it is delicious. I can personally eat a half loaf of this stuff. I'm serious.
My mother baked this bread every year at the holidays, and for a long time I thought this was a cherished family recipe. When I lived in GA, I called her for it, on the occasion of the first Thanksgiving after I married. I wanted to recreate something in my own life that I recalled from my childhood -- the scent of comfort, the sense that all was well in the world when Mom was busy in the kitchen.
She looked it up while on the phone and carefully described the measurements, the ingredients, the baking temperature. And then she said "But I just got this out of Betty Crocker, so it's probably in that cookbook I gave you."
And it was.

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

watching someone sleep

A man once asked me, on the bus, if I would awaken him before he missed his stop. It must have been a Monday, since my son was with me and we were on our way home. The young man said his medications made him very tired, and he just needed to sleep. He was riding from downtown to Broadway and Central.
I said I would let him know when it was time to get off. He settled down immediately, though sleeping on the bus is never comfortable, and had nodded off within moments.
I've known a number of people who took medications for depression that left them dopey much of the day. Other meds too have similar effects, and a person with multiple diagnoses can have a tough time balancing dosages.
Of course, he could also have been self-medicating, recovering from a party, whatever. He wasn't drunk, at any rate, though in addition to looking absolutely exhausted he also seemed in need of a shower.
I watched him a little, as he slept. I like watching people sleep. Also, riding the bus means looking at the backs of people's heads a great deal -- the human in repose at close quarters, known but unknown. I never feel so much aware of the grandeur of the mind as when someone sleeps -- their bodies still, their motivations temporarily suspended, what is left is the vast interior space. Dreaming or no, neurons fire off echoes of earlier experience, repeating and learning and storing up impressions for use in waking life. It's all in there, rattling around the endless architecture of memory, and in this young man's mind I now too had a place. Whether or not he remembered me a day later, I'm still in there somewhere -- mind at the center of all contains within it all that it is center of.
He responded groggily, reluctant but ready, when I tapped him on the knee. For a moment his eyes rested on me without registering my purpose, and I felt the distance between us -- felt the odd intimacy of being the first face he saw on waking.
We are always at close proximity to one another, and only our adherence to resistance and denial keeps this kind of intimacy at bay.

Saturday, November 17, 2007

a wasted opportunity



When I was a kid, the overnight casualty rate among jack-o-lanterns spiked sharply after Halloween: neighborhood kids grabbed the biggest and best and smashed them in the street, leaving the carnage for adults to sweep up in the morning. It was kind of a thrill, going to bed knowing this secret violence would take place while I slept; perpetrated no doubt by older boys, highschool boys, mysterious creatures with unknown motivations. Parents grumbled about the mess, but in retrospect I realize it was never a big deal -- Mom could easily have moved those pumpkins to the back yard out of harm's way. But everyone understood their role in the rituals of harmless mischief. I'm disappointed now, when our half-dozen home-grown pumpkins languish day after day on the front steps, molested now and again only by squirrels. Gone by now of course, with turkey day fast approaching. But just this week I snapped this photo evidence of deflated waste in a dumpster two blocks from work -- and I think how much more interesting and proper it would have been for these jack-o-lanterns to have met a sticky end on a sidewalk somewhere. Seems like mindless destruction has take a much more serious turn these days. What an odd thought.

Friday, November 16, 2007

A strange week for acquisition


New project desk with built-in shelving units;
new leather chair with stainless steel legs;
wool sweater with likeness of JFK;
two bottles of expensive Aveda hair spray.
QUESTION: Which of these items was actually given to me by a Northeast pastor who runs a clearinghouse/food shelf operation that benefits neighborhood folks in need?
QUESTION: Which of these items cost the most?
QUESTION: What might the first two answers imply about economic participation and the distribution of wealth in the USA?

Non-plussed at 8am


THE MORNING NEWS: Deadly cold virus from Japan (don't they just make everything better in Japan); deadly typhoon in Bangladesh; young mother in St. Paul loses her two little kids to police custody because she left them at 2am to "go pick up a friend" and cops found the naked four year old wandering the streets. And...Fox 9 News spotlight on fireplaces! New, energy efficient fireplaces and "designer woods." After 12 hours of meetings yesterday, it's Friday (my Thursday) and I've got those end-of-the-week, end-of-the-world blues. It's your moral duty to monitor the news, but some days I wish I worked in retail. Today is one of these.

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

in the wee small hours

...of the morning, when the whole wide world is fast asleep...
There are plenty of thoughts that keep me awake this late, and I long for the day when sewing geniuses finally invent a whisper-soft machine that allows me to sew until dawn without disturbing anyone. Unfortunately, my house is small, and my terrific new Baby Lock isn't 100% soundless.
So, after a fruitless hour in bed between 12:30 and quarter-to-two, I'm up. Ate a brownie, read the Strib online, noted without surprise that no one I know emails at this time of the night. I feel tired, but got caught up instead with thinking about the job -- if I devoted as much attention to the logistical details as I do to parsing the relationships among my co-workers, I'd really be on top of the place.
But it's the relationships that get my wheels spinning. Part of my thing is that I'm dogged by the usual frailties -- pride, insecurity, jealousy, ego -- and I know when I'm letting one of these failings determine my overall approach to a person or problem. Midnight is when the "practice dialogues" tend to start -- conversations with friends and coworkers, exchanges that would probably never take place in real time, imaginary give and take that allows me to put my feelings into words. It's a weird habit, one I also indulge when I'm out walking to and from bus stops and the like -- these dialogues help me imagine an issue from someone else's point of view, help me anticipate a reaction to a question or complaint, and allow me some time for mental detective work as well. I get to expose my personality flaws without actually embarrassing the hell out of myself by imagining confrontations over petty concerns and office rivalry. I need to process this stuff, to live it out in some sense, in order to get past it. Or to at least achieve sufficient perspective that a conversation about some problem won't devolve into lots of whining or groveling. Sometimes it sucks to be so self-sufficient -- it's more fun to spontaneously emote all over someone, isn't it? But the church is a lousy place to act self-centered.

Plus, as I mentioned, this time of night is great for knotting loose ends into skeins of activity and patterns of behavior -- it's fun to speculate about what people don't tell me. In my imagination, I'm the fly on the wall in every room; I'm reading other people's mail and prying into their motivations. Sound creepy? I mean no harm. I'm just keen to know what's really on everybody's mind, all the time. I'm interested in what they'll do next.

It's windy -- the bamboo chimes over the back steps swing and activate the motion-sensor light that floods the backyard. In the grass, our swivelers swivel and our spinners spin, catching the light and reflecting it back at the blind windows. Somewhere out there, rabbits and raccoons and varmints of all kinds are skulking and slinking or furtively nibbling. Bars are closed. Intersections are deserted. Criminals and taggers and homeless people share the night, feeling and smelling the winter coming on, considering their options if they have any. I used to go bike riding in the middle of the night, during the warm months, when I was in school. If I couldn't sleep. Dress up as a man and ride around town, avoiding groups on foot, staying out of the way of the guns. Just to be free and anonymous and invisible.

Monday, November 12, 2007

in my travels...

3 weeks ago, Como Lake in St. Paul - after heavy rains.

the Dishonest Manager

Reflection on Luke 16:1-13
The parable of the Dishonest Manager

Some of Jesus’ teachings are elegant and straightforward, expressed in just a few lines. My favorites are those that begin “The kingdom of God is like…” They encapsulate the endless power of God’s love and the interrelationship through God of all things living. They are easy to memorize and to relate. The parable of the Dishonest Manager is not one of these.

Fortunately, the parables in Luke 15 provide an overture to the Dishonest Manager, and Luke 16:14-16 serve to drive home the point: Faithfulness in God is demonstrated by hospitality to the poor, and it is impossible to both serve God and pursue personal wealth. Extracting this lesson from the parable required a tidy volume of footnotes however, at least in my Bible, and I was glad to have them. Without footnotes, my next step would have been to try holding a mirror up to the printed page, hoping the meaning would magically appear in the text’s reflection. “And his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly; for the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light.”

As I read that phrase I consider the generation of aspiring MBAs being taught by my husband at the community college. Then I ponder the fate of all those young people whose strengths won’t earn much financial security in this age of outsourced manufacturing jobs and the suppression of the minimum wage. Shrewd we are, with our health in the hands of for-profit drug makers and our pensions tied to the stock market. Shrewd our government has increasingly become, passing laws that line the pockets of the CEOs and the lobbyists while millions of children lack adequate health care and thousands of full-time workers cannot make ends meet. “I want to walk as a child of the light.”

We teach our children in Sunday School the things that were made by God: stones, trees, wheat, animals, people. We teach that other things have been made by humankind: bricks, electric lights, telephones, currency. We are empowered by God with the talent and free will to improve the lives of all – or just the lives of some. When we ask Why does God allow some of us to suffer while others profit, it’s worthwhile to ask ourselves whether we might alleviate the pain in others’ lives (as well as our own) if we all acted together the way Jesus instructs us. “The kingdom of God” is here on earth – “Whoever is faithful in very little is faithful also in much; whoever is dishonest in very little is dishonest also in much. And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own?” It’s Confucian and convoluted; but sometimes we want to struggle with these lessons, we want them to be difficult, almost obscure – perhaps our intellectual struggles seem to buy us time against the profound simplicity of acting “faithfully.”

“You cannot serve God and wealth.” In the end, it’s pretty straightforward.

Saturday, November 10, 2007

In my travels...

32 bus to Rosedale.

Mary Kay, Bob Newhart, Dr. Wilson

Not necessarily in that order.
Today started at Urgent Care, where it took nearly two hours to get a prescription for a condition that takes about ten minutes to diagnose. Dr. Wilson, a tall, heavy-set and somewhat sleepy guy, was the only physician on duty. I waited 45 minutes in an exam room for the pleasure of a five-minute consultation -- which is all it takes to prescribe antibiotics for a bladder infection. I've had enough of these over the years that by now there should be a standing order -- like a permanent hall pass, I should just be able to walk into any pharmacy in America and say hey -- gimme Cipro. No such luck though. So I got to work two hours later than I intended, and brought work home with me to avoid staying through dinner.

Couldn't get rid of a headache most of the day -- I've been congested for so long that I just assumed it was sinus -- and after drinking half a small pot of tea, the ache disappeared. Now I realize I hadn't had any coffee this morning. What's up with my body? I've been sick for two weeks, that's what's up; but so has the rest of the family.

Margarette stopped by to deliver some Mary Kay products this evening. I'm not particularly enamored of the Mary Kay racket, nor a convert to their products, but price-wise it compares with the better retail cosmetics. And Margarette is a friend. So every few months I write Margarette a fat check, thereby doing my part to send her twins through college. There was a public tv special on about Bob Newhart, when Marg and Ann (her mom) arrived, and for a minute we were all lost in the details of Bob's private life -- after all, when's the last time any of us thought about Bob Newhart? But I grew up on his particular brand of humor, along with the Smothers Brothers and Carol Burnett. Comedy was a big part of my tv childhood. Later, "Hi Bob" was a drinking game people played in college dorm rooms. Not every guy has a drinking game named for him. Immortalized by alcohol, a terribly American phenom.

Dr. Wilson reminded me of an actor I know, someone like Charles Grodin or some lesser-known character actor. Not quite good-looking, but certainly self-assured. What else can you be, when you make a living at feeling up total strangers? "Here are your kidneys. Does this hurt? How's the colon, here? Still have your appendix?" Poke, poke. "And when I push here it makes you have to go to the bathroom." Thanks Doc.

Friday, November 9, 2007

Darkness After the Grocery Store

Friday night is usually grocery night. That means I leave work promptly at pick-up time and we swing by the bank or the post office on our way to the megabox black hole shopping complex in our part of town. Target, Roundy's, Home Depot, Old Navy, Office Depot (or is it Office Max?) etc. PetSmart. A Payless Shoes. Caribou Coffee. LeeAnn Chin. AAAHHH! Places that look and smell exactly the same, everywhere you go, no matter how far you travel. Let me say that again -- these places all SMELL the same. That's just wrong.

I hate the grocery store. Not to be relentlessly negative this week, but here's the thing: It's full to the brim with single-minded, tired, irritated, oblivious shoppers. And their tired, overstimulated, hungry, crying children. Unless you shop at about 9am on a Sunday morning (because then it's mainly seniors.) But all that neural noise and ambient tension puts me right over the edge in about half an hour. My husband is somewhat less bothered by it (probably because he pushes the cart and makes most of the decisions, which means he's single-minded and slightly oblivious.) My son becomes desperate after about 45 minutes, so we usually go sit out on the bench in the entryway while the husband pays. We got in trouble for this a while back -- the husband gets lonely in line -- but really, it's best just to bale out of there as soon as it's feasible.

Another place that makes me tense is Menards. Not because of the shoppers (who tend to be men without their kids in tow, men shopping quietly and carefully for things like sander belts and fluorescent bulbs.) No, I don't like Menards because they have a big, automatic sliding exit door that sounds exactly like a distant scream each time it slides open or closed. If I had to work at the registers right in front of that door, I'm sure I'd go mad.

It's dark by 6pm now. Soon it will be dark shortly after 4pm. My husband hates this time of year, and remarked on it as we were pushing our grocery cart and our kid in his stroller out to the car. He's much more seasonal affective than I -- the darkness doesn't make much difference to me. Overcast weather (weeks and weeks of it) is what I dread -- grey days when the angle of the sun is almost impossible to discern, and time crawls. Darkness is actually a relief, compared to overcast. So we sailed off into the parking lot, with the city glowing in the distance. A chill November breeze tousled our hair, and for once we remembered where we'd left the car.

Thursday, November 8, 2007

Church secretaries have social diseases

I'm thinking about doing some "church-shopping." Not seriously, not to make a permanent change. Just to find out what it's like to worship among equals, and possibly to make friends among congregants. I've never just been a member of a church. I entered the church as staff two years ago, and that's really all I know.

As a staff person at a certain unique level in the organization, I feel increasingly lonely. My bosses will never see me as a colleague, because I'm not a professional equal in the church hierarchy. I don't have comparable co-workers, and I'm deferred to generally. When people stop me at church on Sunday it's very nearly always to ask me a staff-oriented question; I don't get invited to join people as a friend at their table very often. Even social functions among church team members can be a little awkward, since my husband doesn't come to church and I don't drive. I often find myself outside, in a privileged position to be sure, but somehow that's not quite what I want. Of course, I can't have it all -- at least not at the church (churches) where I work.

It's not my pastor's fault -- he is my boss, nominally also my pastor; sometimes he is a friend who speaks to me as an equal. That's a lot of hats for any person to wear in a single relationship, so it's unfair to ask him to wear all of them well.

Maybe I should stop in at Mt. Carmel -- I've met their pastor several times, a really nice guy -- or at one of the other churches near my neighborhood. Just to see what it's like. Just to have the experience of being a member. I always wanted a community -- to be part of a community -- and I am, where I work, but it's not I think quite the same. Maybe it won't amount to much, but I'd like to see how I do where people don't know me.

Rotten ice

Had an interesting morning listening to a lecture by Will Steger on global warming -- rotting ice shelves, thawing permafrost, methane and carbon dioxide emissions...It was a condensed version of what I'm sure he can discuss for hours, consequently a repeat of basic information I've gathered via PBS and my husband (A biogeographer.) Absorbing all this in a room full of Lutheran pastors was perhaps less than I expected, though the post-lecture panel discussion seemed to take them into account by focusing on speaking to congregations about the issue and understanding the ways in which buildings are more responsible than cars for energy waste. Someone said that if every household replaced five high-use lightbulbs with compact fluorescents, we in Minnesota could avoid building our next 21 coal-burning power plants. Someone else said that we waste enough electricity on power draw for idle appliances to electrify every home in St. Paul.

One point worth particular note came from a energy adviser from Hamline University, who said "science proves nothing." Science is a gathering of evidence that strongly suggests certain conclusions, but if you're waiting for scientists to incontrovertibly prove ANY theory you'll be waiting a while. We haven't proven the existence of electrons; but if you stick your finger in a light socket you'll see strong evidence that they exist. Steger confirmed that global warming has been accepted science for more than a decade, but the disinformationists protecting people with an interest in the status quo are paid well to confuse the public and obfuscate the facts.

What this means in terms of inspiring preachers and congregations is open to some discussion. One church out in Long Lake has already converted to geothermal heating and cooling -- they maintain power and environmental control for a 10,000 sq ft building for under $500 per month. At NECL, we pay more than that just in electricity. (We are quite a bit bigger, to be fair.)

Steger at 63 is a very vital-seeming man. I suppose you must be made of durable stuff if you can survive Antarctic temperatures at 80 below for days at a time, with storm winds of over 100 mph. "Technology is what always fails us on an expedition" he says. Meanwhile, the sled dogs bed down cozy beneath several inches of snow, and snooze the arctic nights away.

Wednesday, November 7, 2007

Tuesday, the day of rest

Back at work after a really satisfying day off. Did some sewing, blogged, bought some furniture at Pier One (and finally convinced someone to give me the shelving pegs they shorted me a year ago.) Cleaned my house, did laundry, sewed some more. Slight fracas with the husband later in the evening -- a snoring-related thing, he'd rather I didn't sleep on the couch and I'd rather he bought some Breathe-Right strips -- but otherwise a successful 24 hours.

My son is really, really into bugs lately. So much so that he sleeps with one of two large plastic insects every night -- that's right, not a teddy bear, but a big squishy rubber beetle of the type you don't want to see in your child's BED. Though sometimes he prefers the oversized housefly. I'm not the one buying these toys, ladies and gentlemen, but it makes the kid happy. He reads his bug books every day, and listens to the Musikgarten cd that just happens to feature instrumental interpretations of bug sounds and bird calls. Interestingly, he refused to go out in the backyard for the last three weeks of summer, because of gnats. And he still worries about the moth we saw in the back hallway at church several weeks ago. Face your fears, kiddo. If he can sleep with a disgusting rubber beetle, sooner or later he's bound to accept the gnat facts of life.

Tuesday, November 6, 2007

in my travels...

At the intersection of Lowry Ave NE and Central Ave; above a school of dubious repute. Prime real estate...

Picasso as God...or a god, anyway...

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/06/books/06kaku.html

Threats and Promises...

My alter ego has been given fair warning that if she don't ease up on the "public self-flogging" there's going to be some serious heck to pay. Hence, I've tweaked my blog description ever so slightly to include the Boston Red Sox; since association with the BoSox can only be seen as a plus (by anyone who matters.)

K'MAWN BAWSTON!

Peace, Red Sox Girl

Monday, November 5, 2007

A post a day keeps the shame at bay...

We'll bump the drama levels for this post just slightly, since it's the first in yet another Jenski blog. The page might seem to promise something lurid and vaguely Catholic, but if I actually start veering into that territory it will be some cause for concern. Mainly because I know better than to publish that stuff. Privacy y'all -- I'll tell almost anybody almost anything, given the opportunity, but my last personal blog got me into hot water quite unexpectedly with a couple people I'd have preferred not to alienate. (However temporary that turned out to be.) Of course, one can always shitcan one's blog at a moment's notice, taking all the brilliant poetry and drunken midnight musings along down the pipes with the stupid self-pity and the adolescent pop-cultural references. Thank God. I'm sure the NSA has copies of my anti-Bush rants, but that file's probably too big even for Google to parse.

Anyway, I decided quite on the spur of the moment (and I have the day off tomorrow, which helps) that in order to avoid vomiting all my embarrassing first-draft shit onto my hapless friends and co-workers, I really should get back in the game. The blog racket, that is, a fairly trivial pursuit but a good place to go when I feel the urge to write and require the illusion that someone will read -- hear -- understand! I have a few friends who actually DO read the stuff, who expressed regret that I folded good ol' kafepolitick after just a couple years -- but they just say that because I'm a lousy long-distance communicator, and they're both on the west coast. Thanking providence that they live near the beach these days, since they both live in San Diego. Though they've never met.
Which is funny, since one is a habitual ladies' man and the other a confirmed lesbian. I find that really amusing. I've known them both well over a decade now.
But I digress.

Welcome to Laptop Confessional, a blatant rip-off of a band name that I've always liked (though I've never bothered to seek out their music.) I intend to gripe about my job as Congregational Administrator of two -- count 'em, two -- growing urban churches; about my marriage and my other dicey relationships; and about politics. I also intend to wax rhapsodic about poetry, my kid, art, nature, worship, authors, friends and other fun stuff. I'll expose my anxiety (lots of that), my insecurity (lots of that also) and maybe my ego (unavoidable actually). And hopefully, have more than two readers. Three, counting Cathie.