Grandma

My grandmother died April 28, 2005.

(from her obit)
She was born in Kansas, August 23, 1920.
She was a lifelong Akron resident since childhood. She loved her family, and will be especially remembered for the baked goods she so freely gave to family, friends, and many others. She prayed daily rosaries for loved ones and other intentions. She was always willing to help in any way.
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When I was a kid, my grandmother would come down a couple of times during the summer, and spend about a week. Grandma was an early riser, unlike my mom. So in the mornings, Mom would still be asleep, while Grandma and I would look through magazines together, and talk about stuff that grandmothers talk to their 8 year old grandaughters about, and we would sit in the rocking chair together. I loved that. Every Easter we went to her house to watch The Wizard of Oz. It was a tradition. One Christmas, she bought me the bestest doll in the world. Grandma understood that dolls must be immediately undressed, and dressed again, and she never teased me for that.

She always brought presents not only for me, but for my friends as well. When I was 3 my parents had the audacity to provide me with a baby brother. Grandma was the only person who seemed to understand the trauma of this event, and the only person who understood that it was important that I get a beautiful grandma-crocheted blanket for my baby doll, to match the one Mommy got for her baby. If I got a gift, my brother got a gift, and if my brother got a gift, I got a gift. Good thing our birthdays were within 10 days of each other. At Christmas, my brother and I would sit with Grandma during Mass, while Mom and Dad, and my Aunt and Uncle sang and played in the folk group. We spent every Christmas, every birthday, every Easter, every Thanksgiving together with Grandma, and my Aunt and Uncle.



Grandma was the youngest of 4, children of immigrants. Great grandma and great grandpa came from a town in Russia that had been settled by German immigrants. So they were immigrants twice removed, I guess. My great Grandmother died when Grandma was 12, and 4 years later Grandma had to drop out of school to help support her family. that was in 1936.



She got married young, and had my mom in 1942. My Aunt was born in 48. Shortly afterwards, my grandfather lost his freaking mind, and Grandma was a divorced, single mother of two little girls. One of her greatest achievements was the creation of a strong family bond with her daughters.



They always have been very close, and Mom and her sister are still very close. Grandma was the matriarch who held our family together. Strong lady, in those days, to ignore the stupid people who thought the divorce was somehow her fault, to provide her daughters with love, education, and self-respect. Both my Aunt and my Mother finished college, married men who love them deeply, and are living happy lives.



My grandmother was raised Roman Catholic. She was very devout, yet never chastised me for having oldestboy and not getting married. When he was born, she lived about a block away from the hospital they took him to, and she went every single day to visit him in the neonatal ICU. I remember her getting mad because the hat they put on him was pink instead of blue. Years later, when I finally came out as a NeoPagan, she wasn't happy about it, but she accepted that I knew what I was doing, and never told me that I was going to hell, or anything at all like that. Grandma never judged people, and I wish I could be more like her. She left me one of her rosaries, and I keep it on my altar. My NeoPagan altar. Somehow, I think both my Goddess, and her God understand. Grandma was never about the punishing God, she was about the forgiving God, the loving God, the Jesus who loved all mankind. That's what she was about.



She always wanted a brown-eyed great grandaughter. What she got was a brown-eyed great grandson who looked almost exactly like her. He was like her in another way... Grandma battled Lymphoma 3 times, and beat it back each time. Babyguy got Leukemia when he was 2 1/2, and he beat that as well. So Grandma knew exactly what the chemo he was going through felt like, and she could sympathize. She prayed a rosary for him every single day.

Grandma baked. cookies, pies, cakes, you name it, she baked it. Christmas came, and she was the main cookie-maker for just about everyone. Birthdays brought the best birthday cakes, including decadent chocolate cake. 4th of July brought Spumoni cake. Christmas brought about a dozen different kinds of cookies, including double chocolate cherry bourbon balls. visits during the rest of the year brought peanutbutter cookies, and toll house cookies. When I was very small, when we left her house, she would put together a "poke" full of treats for me to eat on the way home. At one point, when I was in college she told me that she was leaving all her baking stuff, and her cookbooks to me. After she died, my aunt gave me a box filled with cookbooks, and cuttings, and notebooks with recipes in her handwriting. One of the greatest treasures I have.

Both my parents are musical. So are my Aunt and Uncle. My parents eventually started a folk group mass at their church, and my aunt and uncle started one at their church. When I was little, Dad would bring his guitar, his recorders, and at one point-his banjo-, mom would bring her tambourine and afuji, and Mom and Dad and my Aunt and Uncle would all get together and play the songs they sang in church every sunday. My Aunt and Uncle had the same instruments that Mom and Dad had, with the addition of krumhorns, so it was 4 people singing and playing. Grandma loved it. As we all got older, and my brother and I grew up, and we didn't get together as much, the musical endings to our get togethers gradually faded. After a while, we only got together around Thanksgiving, New Year's, 4th of July. And with all the talking, eating, playing with great-grandchildren, and talking, there never seemed to be time for singing. At Grandma's funeral Mass, the four of them all played together for the last time for Grandma.

I'm betting she loved it.

What if anti-abortion activists weren’t sexist?

This isn't my post.. this post belongs to lwfern, a much more organized and thoughtful person than I...

Read and comment on the original @ What if anti-abortion activists weren't sexist?

What if anti-abortion activists weren’t sexist?

The Michigan GOP unanimously approved an anti-abortion position recently, which opposes abortion in cases where the woman was raped, as well as cases where her life would be in danger from pregnancy or childbirth.

The underlying presumptions are that:

1. The government has a compelling interest in mandating the use of our bodies to preserve the life of another.
2. Hardship or inconvenience, to include losing a job because of unapproved time off from work, future lost wages, or failing a semester at school do not release us from this basic responsibility.
3. Health risks, up to and including death, do not release us from this obligation.
4. Our obligation to society to save another life through use of our donor-bodies is not negated by disowning responsibility for creating the situation.
5. The financial burden of doing what’s necessary to sustain that life falls upon the donor-body, even if they do not have an interest in preserving the recipient’s life.

In the spirit of cooperation, I thought I’d suggest some additional legislation to support their platform. Here's what I have so far:


1. All citizens over the age of 16 are required to donate blood as often as eligible, i.e. every 56 days.
a. Citizens will be responsible for the cost of donating blood, as well as for the cost of supplying that blood to the recipient.
b. Those persons who fail to report on the 56th day after their previous donation will be charged with a felony offense.

2. All citizens between the ages of 18 and 60 are required to enter the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP) Registry.
a. Citizens will be required to pay a fee ranging from $50 to $100 for tissue matching.
b. Those citizens who are a match will be required to undergo surgery, at a doctor’s convenience, with little or no warning. Surgery will last approximately 45-90 minutes, will be done under general or regional anesthesia, and will entail insertion of a needle from the back of the pelvic bone to extract the marrow.
c. The donor-body (or their insurance) will be responsible for the total cost of this operation (for the donor and the recipient), which runs approximately $250,000.
d. Failure to participate in this important life-saving program is a felony.

3. Citizens are required to provide organ donations when requested by the government. Organs required may include: kidneys, lungs, hearts, pancreas, intestines, and liver.
a. The government recognizes that in some cases these operations may prove life-threatening to the donor (particularly the heart transplant), and sympathizes with this hardship; however a threat to the life of the donor is not an acceptable reason to avoid saving another innocent life.
b. Those citizens who are a match for a recipient will undergo surgery at the surgeons convenience, and should expect a recovery time ranging from weeks to months.
c. The donor-body, or their insurance, will be required to pick up the full medical cost for both the removal of the organ as well as the surgery to transplant it into the recipient. Costs may range anywhere from $25,000 to $367,000 depending on region, and type of transplant.
d. Failure to participate in this program is a felony.

4. Cadaver Harvesting
a. All deceased persons will be inspected for possible organ donation. Those candidates found usable will have organs donated. The immediate family will be responsible for the cost of organ removal, as well as the procedure to transplant the organs into the recipients.

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So, anyone think the anti-choice forces will man up and be equitable?

OMG ponies!!!!

Tired of CAPTCHAs? KittenAuth Offers a Cute Alternative to End Comment Spam

Ok, this is adorable.

Here's the test....

changed my profile pic

to the Kanji for 'kaze' (wind). see it, right over there?====>

I like it, it looks like the square root of boat.

High School, drugs, and lit. connections?

I'd like to point out the plotline of anything by Cormier: there's this kid, and his life sucks, and then? he dies. or his life gets worse. or both.

this is why kids in high school do drugs. depressing literature.

C'mon, you've got the Grapes of Wrath: life sucks, you're poor, then some guy who's dying breastfeeds off ya. the end. Anything by Dostoyesvski. That book about the dude who turned into a roach, Metamorphosis, by Kafka. Does anything good ever happen to that guy? Does Godot ever show up? Does the proverbial bear use cottonelle?

The Catcher in the Rye (one of my favorite books, by the way).. does Holden get better? no. does anything really happen in the entire book? well, he gets drunk. yay. then he breaks his sister's record. then he goes to see her. then he gets away. the end. He ends it right before the good part where he goes really nuts. What's up with that?

Depressing. The Jungle? good diet aid. The Crucible? yay! perjury is fun! or not. The Scarlett Letter? yeah. You have sex and horrible things happen. Might as well be an episode of Buffy. (seriously.. she has sex with Angel and what... he turns evil. go figure. Kids, just say no to sex with soul-cursed vampires. and ministers with spines made of silly putty)

Shakespeare. I actually like Shakespeare. when it's performed by competent actors. Have you heard your average High School student read Shakespeare? it's enough to make you slash your wrists, drown yourself in a pond, or better yet- pour poison in your ear. (If you really want to know the truth.)

Anything by Chekhov. Chekhov's grocery list would be depressing. Chekhov's journal of how he had the most amazing sex in the universe with three goddesses and a midget would be depressing. because it's Chekhov.

Lord of the Flies. Your plane crashes, and not only does Dharma NOT give you a handy dandy food drop, you have to paint your body and kill a pig. with a stick. Where's Locke when you really need him, eh?

How come we never got to read Heinlein in school? Starship Troopers would be an excellent High School Lit class book. (and no.. it's nothing like the movie. I think the filmakers read the back of the book, and took it from there.)And it's not depressing. Stranger in a Strange Land, Time Enough for Love- more great ones. How about Marion Zimmer Bradley's Mists of Avalon? should be required reading in High School. nope.. not depressing and dry enough, I guess. How about Potok's The Chosen and The Promise? better than Great Expectations, any day.

While I'm pretending, I'm going to require Stephen King's The Stand as well. imo, it's his best work. And the good guys win. yay!

Then I'll make them watch Mononoke Hime and tell me who they think is "the bad guy" 'cause that'll be interesting. Then they won't need happy pills anymore, right?

Oh what am I thinking?

Overheard

From my 7 year old:

"They share the same DNA, that's why they're brothers."

Hee. Smart kid, wonder where he learned about DNA, or have I been watching way too much CSI?

Yet Another reason why George Clooney rocks.

Clooney takes aim at 'Gawker Stalker' site

An excellent plan.

Yeah, I know that an actor's job is, partially, "hey, look at me!" but that doesn't mean they want some idiot taking pictures of them while they're shopping for suppositories, ya know? Considering that there are quite a few people out there who think that an actor's Character is a Real Person, I'd say that telling said morons where to find the actors is not very bright, if not outright obnoxious.

Seriously, people need to pay less attention to celebrities. Too many attention whores are considered "talented" because they have good handlers. And are willing to barf up lunch. An Actor's job is to perform a character, and in some cases, promote the production.

That's it. All the rest is gravy, and Marlene Dietrich might have had the right idea. Privacy is highly underated.