Love the pearl necklace with bare feet. That is so me.


Wilma Flintstone


Who 's Your Inner Sexy Cartoon Chick ?
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We're back in Denver, where it's warmish (50s) and sunny... Lazarus and I took a nice walk this afternoon and it felt wonderful to go outside in just two layers and without having to brace myself against the cold. I had a good time in Philly with my parents, but we only went out a few times, and if I hadn't been in winter hibernation mode, I'd have gone stir crazy.

As it was, I stayed indoors, listened to mom and dad enjoy Laz's company, and spent way too much time on Ebay bidding on fabric. I have such strange obsessions... I did procure some good flannels from various Ebayers for my Arden Baby line of two-sided quilted flannel blankets... And, in my usual roundabout way, I found an amazing source for batiks that happens to be just up the road, in Boulder. That's where I'll get materials for the Arden Baby batik rompers with patch-panel insets that will go into production, I hope, in another month or so, along with the bright and beautiful Arden Baby Guatemalan cotton overalls. More on all THAT later.

I realized today, cleaning up the bedroom and office upstairs, that thinking about my (now former) house doesn't make me cry anymore. I might be saying this too hastily -- I had middle-of-the-night sobbing fits last week thinking of Lazarus' nursery and the fruit cocktail tree we planted last year -- but for today, at least, I'm doing okay with all this. Of course, on Monday, Antonio mentioned going down to Magdalena (NM) next week to hang out for a while at William's house, go scout out the property, get to know the area better... something about the way he was talking made me wonder if he's thinking about us moving there sooner rather than later. That would make me so happy, I think... I've been craving New Mexico the entire seven-plus years I've been gone, and it's just getting more acute now that we don't really have a home. With the profit from selling our California house, we could start developing our little slice of heaven -- get the well dug and septic system put in, start the process to get power out there, and... just go stand on the mesa and get high on the pinon-laced air and the deep blue sky.

I'm ready.

Well, THIS is ironic... right now it's 19 degrees here in Philly and 19 degrees in Denver -- Fahrenheit and Celsius, respectively. (19 Celsius translates to 66 Fahrenheit, which means it's downright balmy out there on the Front Range.) Lucky for my half-frozen hide, though, the forecast calls for mid-50s (F) to continue in Denver for the rest of the week. Good thing, or I'd just stay on the damn plane and go on to Hawaii.

And Laz would be wearing this outfit (and probably this expression, too) when we got off that plane and rolled into the warm sunshine:

Remember when the trees had leaves, mama?

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My little subcontractor, wrestling with Windows...

I know I should know better than to travel to Philadelphia in January and then bitch about the weather, but dang -- it hasn't gotten above 30 since I got here nine days ago, and probably won't for the next week, either. Back in Denver -- "oh, wow, you moved to Colorado from L.A.? Are you just totally freezing all the time??" -- it's been in the 60s, and of course that won't last more than a week. I'll leave here next week and Philly will get their usual January thaw, and I'll hit Denver around the same time as some monster cold front from the Yukon blasting bountiful, frosty tidings from the Bering Sea.

I know I left California of my own free will. (repeat after me, Anna...) I know I don't miss the traffic, smog, crowds, or too-fast pace of life there. I know I complained endlessly while I lived there and dreamt aloud, to anyone and everyone within earshot, of getting sprung, someday, and I know I've complained endlessly since I left that I miss my house and blah blah blah. Come spring, when the sun stays up for more than a few half-hearted hours and the days warm up more than sporadically, I'll have a better attitude about everything. I promise.

Laz's uncle Charles came down from New York to see us -- I miss seeing my brother more often and am trying to talk him into coming out to ski (and visit us non-skiers) in Colorado. Laz got in on the act, too, wooing uncle with well-spun tales of pristine trails and that oxygen-thin high-altitude bliss you get only in the Rockies...

Trust me, uncle, it's a blast -- you've never seen skiing like this...

Sometimes, when a child is born, the world does change. On January 15, 1929, Martin Luther King, Jr., came into the world, and in his too-short lifetime he helped transform it into a better place. Far from perfect, but better.

I pulled the following from Stanford's MLKJr Papers Project (sorry for the funky spacing and formatting; I'm still working on those HTML skills).

	I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal." . . . I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
. . . When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!
--Martin Luther King, Jr., speaking on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. on August 28, 1963 (see the full text of this speech here)

Here's some bad news (reporting) -- deconstruction, anyone? This crap makes me mad -- from the opening line the article makes an assumption that others have soundly refuted (Mothering mag has some good resources here). Not to mention the article's unbelievable racism.

"Research finds more bed-sharing with babies"

"More infants in the United States are sleeping in their parents' beds - a practice that can be deadly for babies.

"The percentage of infants who usually slept in a bed with an adult more than doubled from 5.5 percent to 12.8 percent between 1993 and 2000, according to a study led by Marian Willinger of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

"The practice is strongly influenced by cultural factors.

"The study found black infants were four times as likely as white babies to share an adult's bed, and Asian babies were almost three times as likely. Infants whose mothers were under 18 were more likely to bed-share; the practice also was more common in poor households.

"'They may not have a crib or bassinet for the baby, so the only place the baby can sleep is in the bed,' said Angelita Covington, an Atlanta pediatrician. Some parents, she said, may take their babies into their beds because it is a practice passed down through generations.

"Covington, who works in a community health center that sees mostly poor people, said she discouraged bed-sharing.

"The study, which appears in the January issue of Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, warns that babies can fall out of bed and get hurt, or can suffocate when an adult rolls over or the child becomes trapped between the mattress and the bed frame. Other research suggests bed-sharing can raise the risk of sudden infant death syndrome.

"According to a 1999 study by the Consumer Product Safety Commission, an average of 64 young children die each year while sleeping in bed with their parents or other adults.

"Some have suggested bed-sharing has benefits, such as promoting breast-feeding.

"In this study, researchers from the National Institutes of Health concluded there needed to be more study on the benefits or hazards.

"The study was based on a telephone survey of a nationally representative group of 8,453 people."

Interpretation of the study results, however, was based on a narrow, privileged, crib-manufacturer-sponsored viewpoint that people universally don't know what's best for their children. Aside from the AP writer's complete lack of objectivity, present from the opening salvo, the cultural biases in this piece and in the study it reports on are staggering. "Cultural practices" is a code term for presumed ignorance anyway, but the study and article writers just had to add that people of color, poor families, and teenaged moms all do this more often than financially comfortable white people who of course "know better." And then the article writer just had to throw in that 1999 "study" by the oh-so-objective Consumer Product Safety Commission -- an organization that gets a lot of support (financial and otherwise) from crib and other baby gear manufacturers. By the way.

Lazarus and I took off for Philly today to see Grandma and Grandpa -- it's already been four months since they last saw him. And what a four months it has been... well, I've gone on and on and on about events in the past few months, so I'll just leave it at that. I'm hoping the change of scenery will do me some good -- this winter rut is getting deeper and muckier.

This was Laz's second cross-country flight, and did great, again. He had his mama to entertain him, and just in case he got tired of me I brought a few props -- mardi gras beads, the two little Audubon birds his papa bought him at the airport, and, of course, his binky to help him pop his little ears. And my camera --

Here goes the airplane: wwwvvvvoooosssshhhh...

Mama, when things get really bad, just find something to chew on. You'll feel better, really you will.

I think our house is officially sold -- escrow closed yesterday, unless someone is lying to us... it was quite an ordeal, not throughout but just yesterday, the "last possible day" (according to several involved) for funding, etc., because someone who didn't do their job a month ago decided Monday night to throw a monkey wrench into things. So we spent most of yesterday -- a beautiful 60+ degree day -- inside on the phone, looking up old records, faxing stuff, and sweating things out until we got reasonable assurances that everything would go through after all.

Funny thing was, we were about to go out around lunchtime but I couldn't find my keys *anywhere* -- a sudden problem I've had nowhere but here -- and while I was searching for them we got the first alarm/phone call. If we'd missed that call, we'd have come home to no check in the mail and quite possibly an expired deal. And I didn't find my keys until four hours later, after we'd made the last call.... Yesterday was just a bad day. Not just because of the troubles but also because my house isn't my house anymore. I'm really happy for the woman who bought it -- it's her first house; she has two kids and is moving from east LA, and our realtor says she "absolutely loves it"... but I still sort of can't believe I let this happen. We went to Home Depot today to pick up a few things, and as I was strolling through tile, flooring and carpeting, paint, etc., I got so sad... I almost wondered why we bothered buying a house and fixing it up, putting all that energy into it. But I thought it would be my home for a long time -- more than two years, at least. Time to make it worthwhile to put down some roots and invest myself in the place. Pick out paint and tile and window treatments, and plant a baby fruit tree that won't start bearing for four or five more years, and dream about what we might do next.

But I also know I made this decision consciously. This is a lot harder than I thought it would be -- both giving up my home and moving into a smaller, older house that isn't mine, but I keep telling myself to have faith that this passage will take us to the next, even better place. Both physically and spiritually. Here's the view I have in mind, that might keep me going through this darkish winter:

had to post something today just to see the cool date... (yeah, I'm a geek -- I *still* get excited when I look at the clock and it says "12:34")... but I also had to post this... time to buy up cheap land in the northern territories. If I get a lot and get it now, I can start me up a nature preserve. Then if Dubya and his cronies decide they need to drill for more oil up north, I can Just Say No. Trade your damn Hummer in for a Honda FCX, I'll tell 'em, and donate the rest to Greenpeace, and kiss my environmentalist tree-hugging butt. In a perfect world, that's just how the conversation would go, I know it.

Minute Shift in Temperature Has Had a Major Effect on Earth, Studies Show
Species are migrating northward because of 1-degree increase in last 100 years, data reveal. It also has sped up spring flowering, egg hatching.
By Usha Lee McFarling, Los Angeles Times

Gradual warming over the last 100 years has forced a global movement of animals and plants northward, and it has sped up such perennial spring activities as flowering and egg hatching across the globe -- two signals that the Earth and its denizens are dramatically responding to a minute shift in temperature, according to two studies published today.

One study showed that animals have shifted north an average of nearly four miles per decade. Another study showed that animals are migrating, hatching eggs and bearing young an average of five days earlier than they did at the start of the 20th century, when the average global temperature was 1 degree cooler.

That 1 degree, according to the studies, has left "climatic fingerprints" -- pushing dozens of butterfly and songbird species into new territories, prompting birds and frogs to lay eggs earlier and causing tree lines to march up mountain slopes.

In some cases, the shifts have been dramatic. The common murre, an Arctic seabird, breeds 24 days earlier than it did decades ago. And some checker-spot butterflies shifted their range northward by nearly 60 miles in the last century.

Although many individual shifts in timing and range have been reported by field biologists, the studies published in today's issue of Nature are the first to establish that a variety of organisms in myriad habitats are responding in similar ways to climatic change.

"There is a consistent signal," said Terry L. Root, a biologist at Stanford University and lead author of one report. "Animals and plants are being strongly affected by the warming of the globe."

... for the full story, see the Los Angeles Times article here (registration required) or the Nature abstracts and article links here.

And the oil wars keep on burnin', and the big wheels of progress keep on turnin'.... Hey Dubya, don't forget that we're animals, too -- all part of this ecosystem you and your buddies are hell-bent on fucking up. "Animals" includes you... unless you and your cronies are pod people, which I guess would explain your complete disregard for environmental and other earth-bound issues.