Was reminded the other night of the dramatic, charged moments right after Allison and Christina had been born (25 years ago this month): There was “Roth baby # 1,” aka Allison, who’d scored a perfect score on the Apgar and was therefore an instant star in that operating room (It was a high-risk birth and there were lots of medical people milling around in case something went wrong). And there was scrawny Christina, “Roth baby # 2,” instantly delivered to Intensive Care. And there was me, feeling such pride and such fear simultaneously! 

Maybe that intense moment on November 2, 1983 was teaching me to think about and to feel two very different things at the same time. Certainly this past week I have been both elated that Obama won and constantly wondering how KT’s faring in jail (At least KT got to vote for Obama before being sentenced). Come to think of it, this mindset’s very much informing this week’s column for the Somerville Journal.

Another example: Last night, Lynn threw a very sweet birthday party for Nesto (Nesto: told you I’d mention you in my blog. So there!) Many of the guests were young people affiliated with the Louis D. Brown Peace Institute which, tragically, may close because of state cutbacks. These young people were so delightfully playful, so comfortable with their elders, so FUN, obviously, in part, because they’ve been doing such important work and have received some excellent training. So I laughed and teased and tossed rubbery anemone-like tossables back and forth with these 16-29 year olds, all the while feeling so sad that the Institute may have to shut it doors. (I’m linking the Institute’s website if you want more info.)

What a week! What a rollercoaster ride! Tuesday night, at a bar with other aging Somerville progressives (and their kids), after Obama had won Ohio,  I danced. Such joy! Thursday, I tearfully said goodbye to a dear friend who’d been sentenced to 90 days for, essentially, Napping While Black. (His extensive CORI was part of the proceedings, too. Apparently there ain’t no such thing as redemption in the criminal justice system)

My friend’s lawyer, as cynical as they come (who wouldn’t be, given the insane world he navigates daily) was confident that NWB Guy would be out by Christmas. “It’s a whole new world,” Cynical Guy noted.

As noted when I guest-blogged for Hope, last Wednesday’s meals-and-sharing dinner conversation got a little heated (I’ll link what I wrote when Hope posts it.) At one point I tried (foolishly) to persuade “An Angry Black Man” to treat me like the person he’d known for 2 years instead of lumping me with the rest of the “White Devils” he was railing against. Kevin, another man at the table, decided to come to my defense. “Patricia’s like the cook on the slave ship who’s really nice to you and gives you extra food,” he said.

What? (Or, as I read on Hope’s blog that someone else’s mother said: WTF?)

Hard as it is to admit this, there is a painful truth in Kevin’s metaphor. (Simile, actually) When it comes to today’s systemic racism, I am complicit. Actually, the painful truth gets more horrific: I could have quit my cook job. But how do I get off this present-day ship?

How’s this for a writing prompt: It’s October 9, 2008; you’re 63 years old. You have been given the opportunity to address the students of the segregated high school you graduated from in 1962. What would you say?

Can you imagine what a thrill it was to look out into E.C. Glass’s capacious auditorium last week, to see an almost 50-50, racially-mixed audience, to sit on the stage listening to the stories that Lynda and Owen told, to hear 1,500 students say “AHHH,” when I told them that Owen sat alone in the school cafeteria his first day, and to see those students give the 3 of us —and fellow speaker Patrick Lumbumba from Kenya—a standing ovation?

Check out the link page for more info.

Back in the spring, when Nathan Gwirtz, the incomparable creator of this website (Thanks again, Nathan!) asked if I wanted to allow people to add comments, I said “No way!” Hard as it is to admit, my skin’s a little more thin and tender than I’d prefer. The bruising comments left on The Somerville Journal’s answering machine re my columns, for example, then printed in the paper’s “Speakout” section, upset me. And at the Women, Action, Media conference I attended a few months ago, I heard far too many scary stories of mean-spirited, nasty comments left on other women’s blogs. So: No.

A few things are encouraging me to rethink that decision.

1. A couple of weeks ago I went to a panel discussion on the media and civil liberties sponsored by, who else, the ACLU. One of the panelists raved, almost starry-eyed, about the media revolution and how blogs, UTube, Twitter et al fundamentally change how all of us can access information (Indeed, a young man with a camcorder was documenting the evening for his blog. He happened to be a September 11th conspiracy-theory advocate: everybody’s got a shtick.) Do I want commentary re Way Opens and this site to be a part of that new way to access info?

2. After a fun-filled but exhausting trip to Kentucky, I got sick last week. Really sick. But clicking on sites about the Palin-Couric interview—and the comments about that interview—or David Letterman’s rants when stood up by John McCain—ditto—or reading the hundreds of comments from people all over the country after Friday night’s presidential debate takes almost no effort at all. Click. Scroll. Click. Encouraged by the ACLU panelists to move out of my comfort zone, i.e. to read comments from people who don’t espouse my personal beliefs, I did. And, yes, sometimes it almost hurt to read some of the garbage I read. But, and here’s what was far more, ahem, telling: There’s some really thoughtful people out there whose opinions, I found, are helping to shape my own. Hmm.

3. Yesterday I heard an artist talk about her current exhibit of elaborate, intricate pen drawings which are now on exhibit at the Boston Public Library. Like most artists, she’d left a guest book at the library for exhibit viewers to write in; so far, these comments have filled 8 books! The public has lots to say about her work,she explained excitedly, from little drawings and one-sentence comments, to, as she said, “theses!” A “guest book,” I thought. Would calling a newly added section something vaguely old-fashioned like “guest book” encourage civility? Thoughtful discourse?

Dunno.

“Walk cheerfully over the earth,” George Fox advised,”answering that of God in everyone.” A couple of weeks ago, I took an illuminating walk  while on a vacation in the NW: One foggy, misty afternoon, my husband, my step-daughter, and I walked for almost an hour through the dunes of Oregon in bare feet! It’s probably been fifty years since I’ve walked that long and that far without wearing shoes.  Call me crazy but it seemed as if my feet were a little surprised to be unsheathed and unprotected but also, as happens in yoga class, pretty excited to be asked to do what nature intended for them to do. My toes reaching into the sand with every step, the muscles in my calves doing new work, aware with every step how I planted now this foot, now the other, I mused how I complain that I never hear Quakers talk about Fox’s “cheerfully” yet I, an inveterate walker, never consider how I walk! In yoga, in preparation for any standing pose, we’re often instructed to give attention to the four corners of our feet, the placement of our toes, etc. etc. Needless to say, I now consider the word “grounded” in a new, toe-tingly way!