"should I stay or should I go"

"Good Morning Akka," my baby sis texted me around 2:30 am... and then my mom got on the chat too and the three of us we were just... yakking for a while... (This is one of the many reasons my sleep patterns are so fucked.) And then, things got urgent. My mom who watches a lot of Turkish TV shows and has wanted to go to Turkey for a while and knows that Istanbul is huge on my list of places to visit because I'm a history nerd suggested we all go to Turkey together. She'd pay for my air ticket, she said. The three of us could share a suite. How about next week? We should go!

I asked Big A if I should go. (That's right, he usually works nights, so he was up reading beside me too; yet another reason my sleep is messed up.) He said to go for it. I have midterm break coming up next week and so I thought I could actually do it. But this morning, I looked at my calendar and realized that next week I'm in charge of the WGS sessions of the Michigan Academy conference and have board meetings, and am not completely off. Also, I was kind of looking forward to unwinding for a bit, and I'm a bit freaked out about planes falling out the sky. I'll probably stay.

I'm glad to see my mom is willing to spend that much money though. This was probably going to come from her "kum-kum money." (Kum-kum is sindoor/vermillion/the red powder Hindu women use in their hair as a marker of their married status.) Back in the day before middle-class Indian women worked, this was the money families gave their daughters when they got married so they wouldn't have to ask their husbands when they wanted to treat themselves to something. In Victorian novels, "Pin Money" seems to work this way? The amount varied according to the family. My grandmother's kum-kum money at her wedding was several mango orchards and required a manager and became the inheritance handed down to her own four daughters (including my mother). Unofficially, kum-kum money also worked as an emergency fund that could help women leave, if they decided they should go. 

Although Big A and I have everything in both our names, I still (and always will) have my kum-kum money in a separate account (I promised my parents this). And it's going to come in useful because just this morning, someone dear said they'd need help making their mortgage this month, and I know without consulting anyone that I am going to be able to be able to help. They'll be able to stay. 

Pic: Jumble of things on a shelf at work. I love that picture in the center with At reading to Nu so much... This was also around the time At had just discovered The Clash and loved belting out "Should I Stay or Should I go" as a punchline to everything.

stay unruly

In a recent post StephLove mentioned how when she visited her kid at Oberlin, she was "charmed by paper snowflakes in the windows surrounding a “Free Palestine” sign" because it made her "think about what it’s like to be in college, close enough to your childhood to make paper snowflakes, but old enough to be politically engaged."

I've thought about that image often since reading it, and it always makes me smile. It is particularly endearing. And it describes young people and their hopefulness and creativity perfectly... 

And in some way it also describes everyone I know. 

All of us making time outside of mandated work to create something or reach out to someone or share thoughts or start a conversation or make a difference are pushing back against a system that's built to keep people in narrowly-defined and isolated channels. 

I love the unruly nature of this. The system cannot rule us.

Yesterday, I looked up from typing just in time to see Nu (probably taking a break from homework) pick up an old party-favor-bubble-bottle that has been sitting on the table forever and blow out a stream of bubbles. I'm glad I caught that. That bubbling moment of playfulness in my child and the unexpected bubbles in my day.

Pic: Outside the window, are the icicles I think of as "the fangs of winter." Inside, my jasmine is budding profusely. Last May, a single bloom was so fragrant I nearly went mad with happiness. Fingers crossed for these buds.

fallout shelter breakout

there must be someplace where life takes place

outside the snarl and rattle of tyranny 

and everything else just waits

life could just be... beautiful even if useless 

longing could maybe be merely distance 

growing wordless, not mindless 

but my teen just doesn't yet know what happens  

to the Emmett Till Monument... doesn't even

know what they've done to Stonewall 

it feels like we've hardly caught up with history 

while events range--like mountain peaks

just absurd in scale and spilling over

so here we go again searching for surest shelter 

after gasping out how we'll never return 

just... going back and forth like that  

_____________________________

Pic: Serendipitously, a shelter I spied at Sleepy Hollow Park yesterday. 

a stranger sonnet

I let the ecologue in my head be interrupted
for it is also right there and alright
ready to wait for these letters 

that make all these words

that then go on to make

so many meanings

and things

watch how

it is wayward

and a bit word weary 

and yet bright as a ribbon

tossed up, a road trip through 

options: what is / what we wanted /

how we find our way as we brake for beauty

_________________________________

Pic: A hike in Sleepy Hollow State Park with work friends (none of whom I'd ever hiked with before). Also four new-to-me doggos. Would repeat. In the proverbial heartbeat.

"avoiding time travel"

My people showed up! The potluck went great! 

Everyone picked five songs for the playlist so everyone had something they liked to groove to and it turned out to be a neat icebreaker with people bonding over artists as disparate as David Gray and Rupaul. And also, there is a song called “Cowboys are Frequently Secretly Fond of Each Other” (with Willie Nelson), and isn't that a great title?

Funniest thing: SD is no longer a work friend, but continues to crack me up. He submitted ten songs (instead of five)  on behalf of himself and AH and quipped, "Married filing separately, bitches!" This makes me giggle every time I remember it. 

Smartest thing: "Avoid time travel," DG told us--"don't dwell in the past, don't obsess about the future; just live in the present." Sounds like something well worth trying. 

Sweetest thing: DV's chocolate-raspberry torte was wildly popular and was polished off before too long. But after clean up, I kicked back with a bowlful of her whipped cream, dipping hothouse strawberries into it.

Pic: The zucchini and carrot rosette tart I made based on the picture I fell in love with on this recipe website. (At some point, I got tired of rolling carrot peels into rosettes and instead layered circles of mini peppers to look like the core calyx and sepals.)

the drumming in the wilderness

by the time this day ends 

I've  run  out  of  prayers

but  I've  made  an  altar

where  I grimly offer up 

my  pride,  my  surprise 

other  words  are  missing

(we'll  always  miss  them)

there is also indifference

its easy caress like a hook

escaping edicts, their edits

dim redactions--it's official

it's artificial--how we are all 

desperate as gossips--telling 

and listening at the same time

__________________

Pic: Store-bought chocolate cheesecake bites, store-bought valentine's day picks; assemblage 100% me. Max still doesn't know chocolate Valentine's Day treats are not for him--it's a good thing there are other treats he can have. Several long meetings today, but I somehow managed to power shop for our Post-Valentine's potluck tomorrow. We've already had some cancelations from long-distance friends due to the winter storm though... I think local friends will still be able to make it. Let's see. 

killing medicine

Big A posted this publicly, and I'm sharing a part of what he wrote here. The whole thing is basically a valediction for the medical progress he's seen over the course of his career and the reverses that are already beginning to happen. 

This is just one of the many, many, many stories from people like him who have devoted their lives to making a difference and are now seeing everything they've worked for being dismantled in a matter of days.

"As a premed at the NIH in the mid-90s, I volunteered at D.C.'s largest HIV clinic during the ongoing AIDS epidemic, and got a tour of Tony Fauci's lab from one of my co-volunteers who also worked in Bethesda. One of the most astonishing changes in the 30 years since is that we rarely see complications of advanced HIV infection in the ER.

As med students in Cleveland, we were regularly awestruck running into Fred Robbins, who received a Nobel prize for their contributions to the development of the polio vaccine, in the hallways,. I have never seen an acute case of poliomyelitis, but it's suddenly plausible I may. (Until 2024 I had never even diagnosed whooping cough; I've already been exposed twice in the past two months during a recent pertussis outbreak triggered in no small part by the number of unvaccinated children.)

I'm eternally grateful for having trained at Bellevue Hospital during the era of Lewis Goldfrank, who always put the needs of the marginalized and afflicted above those of corporate medicine and the capitalist healthcare system. And I'm lucky to have had support from the NIH as a postdoc, which has allowed me to devote some of my hours outside the ER to helping prevent fatal opioid overdose among my fellow Michiganders.

But the grants that pay for free naloxone come from the HHS, now led by an infamous anti-vaxxer and conspiracist (while, simultaneously, an unelected far right-wing industrialist is rapidly dismantling pieces of the global public health safety net)."

And so it goes. Sad and scary times. And it's happening all over, in the National Park Services, the Kennedy Center, and all across the federal workforce.

_________________

Pic: Huck and Max aren't ready for me to take this picture. Max is like: Mom! Do you mind? I just want to pee! We had a massive snowstorm--Huck is wading in snow.