Remembering The Alamo, The Arawaks, and Your Anniversary

Julius and I just got back from our "mini-moon" (mini because the big honeymoon adventure is scheduled for next summer). We spent a week on the beach on Lake Huron in Tawas, Michigan, even throwing in a little side-trip to Mackinaw Island for bike-riding and fudge! Then we went to the annual KIPP Summit. This year it was in San Antonio, Texas. While San Antonio itself was a little more theme-parky than we were expecting, we had a great time in a brand-new hotel and meeting and learning from many amazing and energetic young educators. I also visited the Alamo, which is right smack-dab in the middle of the touristy river-walk area we came to call "frontier-land," and I have mixed feelings about why I should remember it. The motto, "Victory or Death" has never resonated with me that strongly. Especially not when, as with the Alamo, it involves a fight for land that gets confused with a fight for freedom or justice. I understand the desire to make "heroes" of the underdogs, but I don't think we'll be fully evolved as humankind until we realize that there is no such thing as a just war. So, I will remember the Alamo as long as people and governments are fighting for land and power instead of for justice for all. KIPP Summit was a good place to remember that, actually. KIPP dares to ask why, in the land of liberty and justice for all, poverty is a leading factor in sub-par education. If you look at our urban centers, it's not hard to see that de-facto racial segregation also exists alongside this phenomenon. Being involved in KIPP is, for many, a powerful way to be a part of the continued civil rights movement. The statistics prove that the civil rights movement isn't finished.

"How's that?" you may ask. "I thought the civil rights movement was in the 50's and 60's."

Well, here's one take. Though I am not even a land-owner myself, I daily take for granted the benefits I reap from white privilege: a leg-up in my daily interactions with people, simply because my white forerunners held the land and the power, oh, since about the first time people of color were enslaved by them. On this continent, that process began around, you got it, early October, 1492. To be fair, Columbus is certainly not the first to take other human beings by force as slaves, maybe not even the first on this continent. He is just the one we "celebrate" each October. If we celebrate anything on that day, it should be the dying out of the worldview that allowed human beings, Columbus and his people, to see other human beings, the native Arawaks, primarily as a people to be subjugated. The first slave ships from Africa to the Americas were not far behind - beginning in the mid-to-late 1500's. Fast-forward to the National Voting Rights Act of 1965. 1965! Just 13 years before I was born! And you question why that "pick-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps" attitude toward making it in the United States does not exactly feel equal-access to all? 400+ years of largely ignored but gross inequality can really mess a culture up. So that's why the civil rights movement isn't completed. And, I'm sorry, but it's heck of a lot more important to me than the Texas revolution. Want to know more about white privilege? Check out Tim Wise's website and blog. For something to really make you think, check out this video of his, The Creation of Whiteness

So, um... also....we got married! It was a wonderful, beautiful, magical day. I have been so happy to hear from many guests that they enjoyed it as much as we did! The guys in the band even said it was one of the coolest, most laid-back weddings they had ever played. Maybe I'll write more about the wedding later. Right now it's just nice being home and being married!

Getting back to the attempted theme of this blog, I still own no car of my own. I wonder if even one year of car sharing and public transport can make up for the carbon emissions of flying from Michigan to Texas and back. I hope so. Just in case it doesn't, I'm still trying. Oh yes! One highlight of KIPP Summit was meeting Sara Cotner, a fellow blogger who was also married on July 19th and who also chose meaning over mammon for her wedding. I hope she doesn't mind my linking to her superb blog about that. So - here's to remembering, in all things, what's really important!

love, Katie

Fairly, not Frilly (....in Philly)

OK - I'm back from my week in the Boston area where I was attending the national convention of the Swedenborgian Church. I volunteered for some things in the church while I was still in school, never expecting the commitments would continue 5+ years. The big perk is that I get to go to Convention and hang out with my mom, my "beta-mom" (Mom's best friend) and lots of good friends.
Now that school's out and convention's over, I can feel, for a short while, that I am actually on vacation. Yet, we are still planning a wedding here!
So - time to open up and introduce you all to the one comic strip I regularly read online. Lynn Johnson's For Better Or For Worse
To call it a "comic" is almost a misnomer. It's more like a whimsical little family-oriented soap opera, with poignant "ah, life" funnies instead of "ha-ha" funnies - though, to be fair, I feel like there must be a "ha-ha" in there somewhere. Over the past few years, I've enjoyed following the drama of character Liz's love life, and it just so happens that we are both getting married soon.
So - though I haven't yet experienced the utter....frazzled-ness? (or shall I use the word "frazzle" itself as a noun?) ... depicted in today's strip exactly - the emotion of urgency and nervousness over the planning is definitely there just beneath the surface.
I also feel compelled to note that, rather than working on the wedding with my mom (though she pitches in as well as she can from 600 miles away and will be working on making cookies by the hundreds for the big event), I am working on it primarily with my almost-HUSBAND, Julius. I am so lucky to have a partner who shares our life's tasks without delineations of "man's work" or "woman's work", even down to the frillier aspects of a wedding (Um - not that our wedding really qualifies as particularly "frilly" as weddings go). Besides, practicing how to work together well and fairly without getting bratty toward each other is just another page out of our ongoing efforts toward better living through Gestalt Therapy. (Maybe I can add a link to that later. For now, you'll just have to look it up.)

Occasionally people ask me, "So, how's the blog going?"

I pitifully answer, "Well, I haven't really been adding to it.....I'm not sure if I'm really comfortable with the personal aspects of blogging...." or something like that.

Part of it is the feeling of, "Is anybody out there?!" and some guilt associated with presuming my life to be worthy of adding to the limitless banter on the web, even though one friend with an absolutely wonderful blog about her children assures me that my life is more interesting than the simple fact that I own no car.
And part of it is not knowing just how much one can reveal about one's life online without becoming vulnerable to some sort of invasion of privacy. Sheesh - Julius and I met on the internet - so you'd think I'd feel plenty savvy - but we used eHarmony, which I'd characterize as the most nit-pickingly careful and safe matching website out there....(for heterosexual people, I should note ... Honestly, I almost quit because this isn't fair but then I actually DID meet the love of my life so, well, I had to give 'em some credit)
Or maybe my reason for not posting on my blog since November is that I've had a ridiculously challenging school year and also the battery-charger for my digital camera died?
Well, at the moment I'm back, and maybe I'll even check in again before gittin' married in July.

Oh yeah - how could I forget? Julius bought a PRI-US! Did my own car-fasting have ANYTHING WHATSOEVER to do with it? Probably not - Julius has been quite keen on the hybrids for some time. Just one more reason I love you, Julius!
But our driving now feels even more guilt and worry-free. Life is so good.

There now. That wasn't so bad, now, was it?