Yes, it was a really really big snow

The big snow has moved on, and Denver is very quiet tonight. Unlike in many places, people here seemed genuinely thrilled to see all this snow -- not only does it help with the drought, but it's just so cool to get time off from work or school to play in it or just watch it keep piling up and bury everything in sight. Thirty inches of heavy wet snow did a pretty good job of burying my car:



We bundled Lazarus up and took him out onto the sidewalk that Antonio and Bob managed to keep clear all day and night, and he just stared. It's all white and fluffy, mama -- what the heck happened out here? And where's your car? Here he is on a frosty throne:



So, yeah, this turned out to be a Really Big Storm. By the time all that snow melts, I should be packed and ready to move down to Magdalena. And not a moment too soon, given this unpleasant but not unexpected turn of events.

Okay, so maybe this will be a big snow after all...

Here's my car, around 5:30 this afternoon:



It's been snowing since about 10:00 last night, heavy and wet and mostly sideways, from the northeast. This evening on the news I heard that this storm "is just getting started" and that Denver metro could get 35 to 50 inches of snow by Thursday morning.

I'll consider it a Really Big Storm when it buries my car altogether and obscures that California license place I never bothered to change over. I figure that'll happen sometime tomorrow morning -- wager, anyone? I'll say 5:15 a.m. Whoever guesses closest gets a spring weekend stay at the A&A B&B in lovely Magdalena, New Mexico.

It just occurred to me that the last Really Big Storm I lived through was ten years ago this month -- maybe even this week -- and that a few months later I packed up and moved to New Mexico. I love signs from above, or coincidences, or however you want to interpret such parallels. My interpretation: it's time to go.

In his letter to George W. on the eve of this insane war against Iraq, Michael Moore wrote:

"Of the 535 members of Congress, only ONE (Sen. Johnson of South Dakota) has an enlisted son or daughter in the armed forces! If you really want to stand up for America, please send your twin daughters over to Kuwait right now and let them don their chemical warfare suits. And let's see every member of Congress with a child of military age also sacrifice their kids for this war effort. What's that you say? You don't THINK so? Well, hey, guess what -- we don't think so either!"

Dubya said last night that the only sure thing about war is sacrifice. Who's sacrificing here? Not him, not his hawk flock.

First, the good stuff: Lazarus celebrating Mardi Gras in style--



Now the other stuff: some strange parallels cropped up today, and we're quite possibly in for a wild week. At least one tornado hit east of Denver this afternoon, around the same time George W. Bush told the nation and the world that Saddam had 48 hours to leave Iraq or face attack "at a time of our choosing." In the next 48 hours, Denver will probably get between one and four feet of snow, and Dubya will probably launch war against Iraq. I'm glad we just went food shopping and that I have plenty of projects to keep me busy while we're socked in, because I don't think I'll want to be watching the news much this week.

Let me close with some good words:

"One country can win a war but it takes more than one country to win peace." --French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin, 3/17/2003

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

I knew deep in my heart, through these past few difficult months, that this was all happening for a good reason. To give up my beloved home, leave our friends, come to a place I don't know and live in a house that isn't home -- it was all so hard and yet I knew I had to do it. Like Kevin Costner's character in Field of Dreams -- I gotta do this even though I don't know why the hell I'm doing it.

Then took the other, just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.

Now, much sooner than I expected, comes the payoff (there had to be a payoff, right?): Antonio and I visited Magdalena, New Mexico, last week, just to get away, and decided it was time to move there. To seal the deal, we bought a run-down old store in "downtown" Magdalena. Yes, we've officially gone off the deep end and are checking out of the rat race for good, moving to a dusty small town in the middle of nowhere. Lazarus has already charmed half the town so we had to promise to take him back soon... That house back in California that I've been missing so much these last months? It gave us either the windfall we needed to finally do what we want or enough rope to hang ourselves. Perhaps both. But we get to go back to New Mexico, finally, and we're finally doing what we've talked about for years and never had the courage OR the chance to do.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
--Robert Frost

We have a LOT of work to do on our little store (starting with a new roof, then plumbing, then heating...), but I'm more excited than I've been in a long time... I know because I'm watching those HGTV home renovation/decorating shows again and conjuring all sorts of mischief. We do have a "tenant" who owns all the stuff in the shop (mostly books, some antiques and artifacts, and some nice local arts); if he decides to stay, we'll probably split the store roughly 50-50 and add a coffeeshop/thrift store/crafts store. A few community-building ideas we have include kids' arts-and-crafts days once or twice a month, weekly story hours, and book clubs for older kids. Since we own it outright (doesn't take much of an outlay in Magdalena), we can take time to learn what the community wants and needs instead of worrying about making a big profit right away -- just enough to renovate, pay the utilities and taxes, and feed ourselves.

So you wanna see? Okay, first the front exterior, facing south on 1st St./Rt. 60 --



Here's the left side (from the front), facing west:



and here's the right side, facing east and telling a story of the building's construction (an older woman built it herself years ago; she started here on the east side, where you can see she hadn't yet mastered bricklaying, but by the time she got around the back and then to the front she had gotten the hang of it):



Here's a small front room display, and a view from a back room looking toward the front:



For this we sold our beautiful house???? Damn straight. I can't frickin' wait, and I can't believe how lucky we are.

Oh, and we'll be living in William's lovely little house on Spruce St., where the view from the kitchen window goes something like this:

It's a quiet day in the neighborhood...

ooh yeah, I'm bad.

Lazarus and I finally made it outside today, after four (five?) days of being housebound. It was a beautiful 55-ish degree day, perfectly clear and bright, and even though he and I are both still coughing, I knew better than to squander this opportunity to get some air and light. Laz and I just went over to 32nd Avenue and walked around for a bit; I got a monstrous burrito, walked and window-shopped (and did some market research for my soon-to-be-born biz), and stopped for a decaf mocha before heading home. Lots of moms and dads and babes were out, it seemed -- I wanted to rush at them and beg for friendship, but I learned back in 4th grade that that move doesn't yield the hoped-for results.

We need to get out more.

First, the good stuff: Lazarus is doing much better after a week or so with a cold and ear/throat infection and then a sudden, scary allergic reaction to amoxicillin. His beautiful baby face, bright red and splotchy yesterday, is back to just rosy and healthy today. And he's happy again, too:



Now for some bad stuff: Justice Dept. Drafts Sweeping Expansion of Anti-Terrorism Act. Although the DoJ has denied its existence, "Patriot II" will, according to the Center for Public Integrity, "give the government broad, sweeping new powers to increase domestic intelligence-gathering, surveillance and law enforcement prerogatives, and simultaneously decrease judicial review and public access to information." Some people think this is entirely appropriate. Terrorism and the axis of evil and all. No, we the people don't need access to infomation -- "Let them have duct tape!" cries King George II.

It has come to this -- Code Orange Alert and duct tape. Years from now, how will I explain to Lazarus the state of things during his first year of life? It seems like the grim opener to one of those early, un-Disney-fied fairy tales that scared the crap out of kids but also gave them a glimpse of true evil as well as life happily ever after. Heroes and heroines of yore, however, had more compelling advisors than Don Rumsfeld and John Ashcroft, and certainly more effective implements than duct tape to ward off evil and slay dragons.

It's snowing here on the Front Range, and I can actually be glad both because Denver needs it so desperately and (on a more selfish note) we had some really nice days since I got back last week. We keep getting funky little power flickers, though... reminds me of the good ol' days of rolling blackouts back in California, '00-'01, when Enron and friends decided it would be great sport (and money) to manipulate power supplies. So we poor schmucks, chastened to not be so profligate, had to turn off Christmas lights and wait till nighttime to do laundry and inch our hazardous way through darkened traffic lights, and Ken Lay's money-meter spinned faster than ever.

ANYhoo, just before the snow came today, we spent the day with Keri's sister and family out in the beautiful rolling hills. Laz (who at this moment refuses to nap and is trying to cajole me into playing who-can-blow-the-messiest-spit-bubbles with him) got to watch two beautiful horses gallop around a ring, and the sight amused him mightily:



Then he got his first taste of the cowboy's way:

Oh, ma, I want one of these... So do I, lil' guy. Soon, baby, soon, somehow.

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


Wilma Flintstone


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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.