Reflecting on 2009

Feeling reflective this morning and inspired by Ronnie 's all-in-one Best of 2009 blog post, here's my Best of 2009.

1. Best Trip.

We got to travel so much over the past year thanks, mostly, to Matt's job change & I loved each and every trip, whether we were out seeing new sites or hanging out in hotel rooms & pools. The whole year has been a trip: Chicago & it's suburbs several times, middle-of-nowhere Indiana, Middle-of-nowhere Illinois, Memphis, Pittsburgh twice, DC, Baltimore...

2. Restaurant Moment.

Chowpatti vegetarian restaurant in Arlington Heights, IL outside of Chicago. The moment that stands out for me is when Seth walked up to the owner & told her that her food "tastes like heaven."

3. Article.

I love most everything Glenn Greenwald & Norman Solomon wrote all year. But the thing that popped into my head was not an article but a series Jason Jones did on the Daily Show called "Behind the Veil" where he travelled through Iran trying to show the real people we might want to think about in between episodes of "all options are on the table" bravado.

4. Book.

Will Tuttle's World Peace Diet. It wasn't at all what I was expecting it to be about, and I almost put it down when I realized it was an argument for a vegan diet. But by a few chapters in, I was quite intrigued by the connections he drew between socially acceptable violence toward people and animals.

5. Night out.

Midnight opening of Half-Blood Prince!

6. Workshop or Conference.

G-Fest. The yearly Godzilla Fan Festival in Chicago. We went there because Seth is such a huge Godzilla fan, but we all had a blast. It's always fun being surrounded by people who are passionate about something!

7. Blog Find.

Waging Nonviolence. Happenings in the world of nonviolent social change.

8. Moment of Peace.

On Flagstaff Hill in Pittsburgh at the Mass Meditation for Peace before the People's March to the G20. Sitting outside on a grass hillside overlooking the city of Pittsburg with a group of people thinking about, praying for, and/or meditating on peace.

9. Challenge.

Has been and still is trying to figure out how to live joyfully *and* ethically in this world. I pretty much feel like my life -- everything I have & do -- is at the expense of someone else, or lots of someone elses, around the planet. I haven't gotten very far in figuring anything out around that conflict or in figuring out anything to do to make a real difference -- makes for lots of sleepless nights.

10. Best Album

Playing for Change -- Songs Around the World. Love the idea of linking people all over the world together through music.

11. Best Place

In a canoe on the Little Miami River near where we live. We had a blast, all 5 of us squished up in that little canoe, and it had been way too long since I'd been swimming in a river. Aaaaaah.

12. New Food.

The cheeseless veggie pizza Leslie made when we had Mom's night out at her house! Happy, happy to discover I could love pizza without cheese!

13. Change you made to the place you live.

Incorporating a work space for Matt to work from home!!!!


14. Rush.

An early morning trail run in the woods on a misty summer morning. No one else around. It was like running through the afterlife-in-the-jungle setting of Thich Nhat Hanh's haunting poem/play The Path of Return Continues the Journey.

"It is neither Hell nor Heaven. And it's not as far away from the world of the living as people generally believe."

15. Best Packaging.

Obama -- same old service to corporate and military interests wrapped in the appearance of & energy of so much "hope and change".

16. Tea of the Year.

I'm more of an iced tea fan than hot tea fan. Loving Panera's fruity-sweet iced green tea and Starbucks' minty iced green tea.

17. Word or Phrase. "2009 was..."

Travel!

18. Shop.

Craig's List, Amazon one-click shopping, and The Hunger Site.

19. Car ride.

My solo trip to Pittsburgh. Left home at around 3:30 a.m. by myself to drive 5 hours to a place I'd never been before for something I really, really wanted to do.

20. New person.

The very nice couple who helped me find my way -- on foot and by bus -- back across Pittsburgh to where I'd parked my car before the disorientingly long and winding March!

And Dona, sweet peacemaker friend, who I'd met through Facebook and spent a day hanging out and hiking with.

21. Project.

Experimenting with vegan cooking and baking.

And the Unschooling-in-Action collages I made from photos I had taken all year that are now framed and hanging on our living room wall. "So many great memories" we keep saying.

22. Start-up.

Fickle Skateboards and Galaxie Skateshop

23. Web tool.

Not new, but new-to-me. My ancient but loved cell phone died this year, and I like being able to upload pictures to my blog or facebook from my new cell phone.

24. Learning Experience

Oh, it's *all* a learning experience!

25. Gift.

Argh, I can't pick just one thing. I'm choosing the gift of gifting, of giving or doing something that brightens someones holiday or regular old day.

26. Insight.

That it's not so much about figuring out how to change anyone else but how/who to be within the situations that exist.

27. Social Web Moment.

The comment thread with my childhood friends' memories of my Mom.

28. Stationery.

A spiral notebook?

29. Biggest Belly Laugh.

It doesn't work so well to tell the story, but it had to do with a Beavis and Butthead moment Matt had while we were all in the car talking about food. "heh, heh...fat nuts."

30. Ad.

Where the Wild Things Are movie trailers.

31. Resolution I wish I'd stuck with.

Trail running. There was always about as much walking in my efforts to run as there was actual running, but it was fun. I quit when my running shoes wore out & it was mid-summer and really hot. New shoes are now on the way, though.

Christmas treats

mmmm, Muddy Buddies

It's Starting To Look and Feel Like Christmas Here

Cold, grey, & dark outside, warm and twinkly in the house.
I'm thinking it's about time to add the smell of cookies baking.

Halloween!!!

Maya the "Very Bat Girl" with neighborhood friends

Seth as Venom

Riley as Ben Franklinstein

Trick or Treat afterparty -- trading and feasting

Remembering the Dreams of MLK

This morning Riley and I listened to Martin Luther King, Jr's famous "I Have a Dream" speech from Washington DC. It is beautiful to hear this set against Obama's inauguration this week and reflect on the progress toward that aspect of King's vision & dream. My kids can't even imagine pre-civil rights America. I can't fully, either, for that matter.

I also listened to another of his speeches that resonates deeply with me, the Riverside Church speech in which he talks about the "giant triplets" of racism, poverty/materialism, and militarism. How sad that we could just change the names of the countries, the types of weapons used, the ethnicities of the victims/"enemies" du jour, and trade "communism" for "terrorism", and this same speech still needs to be heard and acted upon today.

Can you imagine if our children's children could only conceive of all 3 of those "giant triplets" as the stuff of history, long past?

"I don't know about you, I ain't gonna study war no more." -- MLK, Jr


Dreams still waiting to be realized.

Christmas Past

Here's a bit of what last month looked like here. We had a small get-together at the Cincinnati Museum Center with local unschooling families and a met up there a couple more times with our friends, Amie, Sam, & Eric. We went to a really fun charity carnival set up by some homeschool friends (Sara and her boys, Blake & Noah)at their house, and met some new friends there as well. Riley and Maya went to their last pottery class and brought home their abundant projects from previous classes over the last couple of months. There was lots of cleaning and baking and decorating and prepping for Christmas day.



Decorating




A beautiful winter sunset



Museum Center Trips





Playing Spiderman on the flagpole-base-turned-skyscraper



Looking at Christmas books





Making ornaments




Christmas Program at our local library






Christmas Morning

I actually woke up before everyone else and had time to fill the house with candlelight and to spend a long time reflecting, meditating...

"For my heart has become the sacred crib
The birthing place of God-among-us."

--Edward Hays, Prayers for a Planetary Pilgrim




And then the celebrating began

"...a feast for the young of heart,
a feast for finding beneath the tree
gifts to surprise and delight the eternal child."

--Edward Hays, Prayers for a Planetary Pilgrim










"Peace on Earth and justice for all
will only become manifest in our lives
when enough of your sons and daughters
awaken to your divine design
that has made each of us
an emerging Emmanuel."

--Edward Hays, Prayers for a Planetary Pilgrim


Peace & Love to You All

Happy Halloween!!!

It's finally here!!!! We'll be spending the day baking and getting the house ready for our pre-trick-or-treat party.

I found this article about Halloween this morning. I love it but hesitated to post it for reasons I'll explain below.

It touches on so many things I care about. The message about talking to, and even (gasp!) taking candy from strangers reminds me of my own first dilemma about that issue while walking in a park with a then-toddling Riley (now 10). We were approached by a sweet, friendly homeless man who wanted to chat and whose heart seemed truly warmed by the antics of a carefree, joyous little kid. Fear and judgment (the automatic, prejudicial kind) and rote "don't talk to strangers" rules popped into my head and conflicted with compassion and unity and the *other* kind of judgment (as in gut feeling/intuition) that this guy was okay. It was an early instance of rethinking how I wanted to live with my child and started me on a path toward a more mindful, present, principled approach and away from pre-ordained rules and have-to's and because-I-said-so's.

The author also talks about trick-or-treating as an excellent example of free-market economy. I had been thinking the last few days about trick-or-treating as a perfect example of a voluntary "gift economy," something I just heard of recently and have been trying to learn a bit about. I would have thought those were opposite conclusions, but then I don't understand large economic systems very well! There's always more to learn!

The reason I hesitated to post it is that it is obviously anarchist, an ideal I share but, because of the popular & unfortunate image of chaos and violence associated with the word "anarchy," I tend to use the term "voluntaryist" as it is more clearly about nonviolent/peaceful & truly voluntary relationships. I love that the author of this article was able to talk about that kind of anarchist vision: genuine community and genuine, people-driven giving and the motivation of gratitude and joy in contrast to that of force & violence inherent in coercive institutions.

Off my soapbox and into my kitchen...

Happy Halloween!

I carved my first pumpkin!

Can you believe I'm 36 years old and, before today, I had never carved a pumpkin?! My Dad always carved ours when I was a kid, and then for some reason Matt has just always carved the ones we've had together.

Anyway, today I drew & carved the face for Seth's -- he wanted "monster-angry."

Maya drew hers and cut the top off but wanted me to carve the face.

Riley drew and carved his. He didn't like pulling out the "guts," so Maya and Seth and I did that, separating out the seeds for roasting.

We sat outside telling different versions of the Jack-O-Lantern story -- some that I had read and some that they knew from cartoons.

Maya made up a story with hers -- a mystery about a villain that had cancelled Halloween.