MaryAlice Musings and More

Last week I was feeling the "speed of light" feeling about the summer days, this week although busy and lots of things to do, I am experiencing the expansiveness of each day.  The weather has been quite lovely, somewhat cooler than normal, but the hot sun still feels warm on my cheeks.  I have been eating out of doors many days,  and enjoying a cup of coffee and paper in the morning sun.  It is the last days of July and my body has settled into the rhythms of the light, the position of the sun, the buzzing of the bees, and the birds singing wildly.  I have taken several Fridays off of work and enjoy the stretch of the weekend,  summer trips are planned, and a longer time off in September.  What luxury, how lucky I am to be able to have these kinds of choices.  I spend my workdays focused on how people can be a part of our workforce, can have health insurance, coordinated self directed care - people make jokes about pushing people into work.  I have noticed over a number of ye...

I am in my 11th month of blogging.  It all started as a way for me to share my experiences as I prepared for and recovered from throat and nose surgery for my sleep apnea.  I wanted to connect and to find a way to share my process of recovery.  This desire to somehow create a way for someone else to read my words, and with the reality that I have hardly any idea of the ways this reading on a "website" would touch something in you or if it would at all.   It has been risky feeling at times to share, some people have asked if I am worried about doing a blog, does it feel safe?  Blogging for me has felt like a way to pause, a reflection, less of a time to tell a full story, more of way to share a question to explore a discovery, to acknowledge an appreciation.   I was worried that I had lost my urge my desire to tap away at this keyboard-blogging away, but the urge returns.  My awareness of cycles, my ability to disclose even within myself opens and closes. Summer days continue ...

I am struck by how few moments there are where I  experience that hardly moving moment, that evokes the lazy, hazy days of summer.  I feel a catch in my throat and an opening in my heart as I experience glimpses of the endless summer.   These moments seem fleeting, but when I catch one oh my-how precious.  I find myself this summer wondering to within and out loud to others, what has happened to the slowing down of inside work,  of the recognition in the workplace that vacations are happening, work loads adjusted, that there is this time for rejuvenation, for appreciating and adjusting to the light, to the heat, to the season of growing.   For me my more internal moments of sharing have felt less accessible, I have these pull and urge to just be in the moment, to enjoy summer.  There has been lots of outside activities, enjoying music, my patio, outdoor eating and drinking, laughing, and connecting.   Blogging seemed out of touch, what of my experience do I want to touch with yours?  A...

This weekend was the Twin Cities Gay Pride Celebration - people around here say it is the second largest in the nation.  For me it is always a remembrance of how much has occurred since Stonewall, and the Daughters of Bilitis, and the Mattachine Society.  Our world as gay, lesbian, transgender, bisexual, queer is much different than in the early days of organizing for our civil rights.  Having come out in 1975, and moved to Madison, WI (it had the largest density zipcode of lesbians in the United States) where I was in thick of lesbian rights,  equal opportunity,   EEOC,  Affirmative Action, Women's Studies, Lysistrata, and an amazing number of lesbian.  I lived in the arms of lesbian and women's culture.  It was the extension of my wildly left political work in the late 60's and a way back to the political as personal when I realized that I was a lesbian, and saw that as a choice, and as a significant part of who I was.   So as I walked through the rows of vendors, (gay sh...

Oh,  I do love summer.  As the humidity and temperatures rise, I found myself all week, just smiling.  Heat, summer heat, sun, and afternoon rain, it is all good.  Especially good in June.  I like the feel of freshly washed sheets, the sound of the breeze rustling, as I steal a few moments of the afternoon.  Summer reads and quick naps.  Oh it is so good, it is these days that tug me back and forth from the here and now, to days long ago - carefree and smiling and feeling as if summer lasts forever and that one day takes so long to be done.  It is great to have days that tap deep appreciation, just being in the moment.  The sun so bright in the late afternoon.  I ordered a basket for Electra Karma today.  Big enough for a book, some water, a few supplies as I pedal my way through more endless days of summer. 

I have been gifted a new bike.  It is purple,  it has white wall tires,  to put the brakes on you push the pedal backward.  Who remembers when that was the ONLY way a bike stopped?  She has a really big seat.  Three gears, and oh so pretty.   She came with the name Karma, and she has Elektra written all over her.   I am thinking she is Electra Karma,  a descendent of the Greek Goddess of Clouds with Silver Linings.   This bike was bought when hopes and dreams of time in Minneapolis seemed very real, and life took another turn.  So Karma the bike was sitting in storage.  So now I get to find out what journeys will happen for me as summer begins, and I am am learning how to be a better bike rider and toodling around on my purple bike, pink helmet and a way big smile on my face!

The MN War  on Unallotment has begun!  Yesterday the Gov, that would be Pawlenty who is voluntarily leaving his job at the end of 2010 (he is not running for a third term) announced his proposed cuts in order to balance the state budget.  All on his own strong back!  The MN War  article (just hit the link!) goes to an article in the MinnPost (online newspaper mostly anchored by former MSP Journalist from the two dailies here - it is great!)   Turning the volume down on this is going to be impossible, and it might be one of the better community organizing tools to come around in a long time!   No one has ever unalloted at this level before.  At the press conference that Pawlenty held to announce that he would not run for a third term - he said the legislative session ended just fine.  So here we are - only one very good senator, the MN Supreme Court is deliberating and writing their opinion, the RNC says that they will take Norm Coleman's case to the U.S. Supreme Court if this rulin...