September is Suicide Prevention Month

September is Suicide Prevention Month, amazingly, among the other months that it is: National Preparedness Month, Childhood Obesity Month, Life Insurance Awareness Month (really guys, Life insurance AND suicide in the same month?), National Chiari Malformantion Awareness Month (really must look that one up), National Childhood Cancer Awareness Month (as if that is not every month!), National Guide Dog Month, National Hispanic Heritage Month, National Honey Month, Lymphoma Awareness Month, National Ovarian Cancer Awareness Month, National Prostate Cancer Awareness Month, Leukemia Awareness Month (I suppose there was no way of just saying National Cancer Month and then dealing with ALL the Cancers?  As someone who has lost people to cancers I am not making fun, I am genuinely wondering about making things with great impact and information... I guess not.), National Sickle Cell Awareness Month, National Yoga Month (Yoga will stop all the illnesses... well, maybe not, couldn't hurt to try though).

But I was thinking of it being National Suicide Month today when the inquest was concluded on the lovely Josh Burdette of 9:30 Club fame, and has ascertained that suicide was the cause of death.

I knew Josh Burdette to see him, I knew him to say hello, because not only was I (less so these days) a 9:30 club regular, but I volunteer with a voter registration group that works with the club.  I went to a show that 9:30 put on at the Strathmore and was surprised to see Josh there, he looked a little out of place, but it was reassuring to me that in that strange environment at least some familiar 9:30 club attributes remained, and Josh was one of them.

I noticed the other day that his birthday fell just a few days after the day he died, and I was reminded of another friend who had killed himself in a similar circumstance, just a few days before his birthday in his thirties. I wondered if it was something to do with the expectations of life we make, the choices we make, or a spur-of-the-moment decision.  The answer to that question does not actually matter.  What matters is that beautiful lives are gone, and that it is our job to remember.

If we knew what was in people's hearts we would do things differently, I always say. 

My friend Dan.

Same trousers, Wrong trousers

I have been wearing the same trousers to work (mostly) for about 2 weeks now.

Same Jeans by The View, a band from Dundee, where I used to live.

So far, no one has said anything...

They are nice enough, (grey-ish, black and white checker-ish) professional, they fit alright...

strangely enough for me...

No one at work has yet commented on these trousers.  Which is strange, given that the trousers are attending my job as frequently as I am, and given that in the past I have been issued A GREAT DEAL of (unwanted, unasked for, and sometimes rude) fashion advice WTF! from ladies at work.  (I don't want to dress like the ladies at work, and YOU do not want me to dress like the ladies at work!)

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Clearly this in not one of the ladies at work, but merely an illustration of their kind of office attire.

Anyway, it's the closet, the closet has once again sucked in all my work clothes and my will to live and my will to clean.

I am looking for a job up in Albany, NY, (Mr. Cereal has relocated) and while I do I'm packing, and my room and my things are feeling vengeful and making my life difficult.  I cannot find weather appropriate clothes.  I cannot find clothes that fit.  I cannot find anything in the vortex/black hole/dumpster/bin/skip that is my room.

If there were ever a time for emergency clothes THAT TIME IS NOW.

So... I leave you with this cliffhanger. WILL M dive into the closet tonight and unearth different trousers? WHAT will she wear to the horrifyingly scary business conference development extravaganza at a convention center on Thursday?  WHEN will the insomnia end???

Pants!

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Yeah, this image really grosses me out.  But there you go... Spaghetti pants.

Punchline first, then joke.

My sister: Do you want to come over and get a pizza and watch tv?
Me: no, I'm anxious and I wouldn't be comfortable. I just want to be at home where I can do my stuff.
My sister: Ok.  I hope you get the ants out of your pants.
Me: Imma put these ants in YOUR pants.
My sister: Ok!
My sister: Pants!
My sister: Spaghetti!
Me: You're spaghetti pants!
My sister: I like that one.

So, clearly I have been shirking my responsibilities with this blog.  Meanwhile I have been focusing on tumblr, which requires less typing.  And before you think about how LAZY that is, think about tendonitis.  I think it's been exacerbated by packing and moving big boxes of books.

Mr. Cereal and I are planning on cohabitation.  In a deconsecrated church.  In upstate New York.  When I put it like that it sounds an awful lot like squatting.  But it's not.  The place we're going to live is really beautiful, and I will have enough room to DO things, like making things, and organizing things.  I'm really excited. 
I am less excited about all the moving and the packing.  I love my books.  They seem to love me a lot less.  Unless they are into sadism, in which case they are showing their love the only way they know how.

This is my bad time of year.  This is the time of year where I want to hole up and do nothing but hibernate.  So having to DO THINGS like organize, pack, look for a new job, look for a new car, organize a car loan, be pleasant, leave the house, all of it is draining and daunting, and TIRING.  I'm freaking exhausted all the time.
But not too tired to call my awesome sister spaghetti pants.

Dr. King (not disneyfied)

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I am responsible for the social media at work, so it's my job to find nice, innocuous quotes on knowledge, leadership, learning and other stuff to post on twitter and facebook.  Nice quotes made by nice people.  Inoffensive people. Uncontroversial quotes by uncontroversial people.  In my research I sometimes come across good quotes by people that I can't use.  Does it matter who said something if it's the right thing? Does this change the fact that the words are good?  Do the beliefs of the people taint their words and the meaning of the words?

I believe that they do.

What I was struck by in my research was how so much of what Dr. King said in the 1960s is still incredibly relevant today.  (For instance, Dr. King said  “Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane.” As we struggle to find a way to provide access to fair health care for all in this country, this is timely indeed.)

Most of the information floating around on the internet (facebook, twitter, et al) around the time of Dr. King's birthday (15 January, observed as a public holiday on the third Monday of January) has (and will) refer to his non-violence and his compassion.  I'm afraid that with time the Civil Rights struggle has become disneyfied.  

Dr. King's room hours after he was shot (Steve Schapiro, photographer, 1968) source

The more time that elapses, the more memory softens the struggle by all those who fought for Civil Rights and endured oppression and injustice.  

This is not to discount his wonderful compassion.  As he said, “Never, never be afraid to do what's right, especially if the well-being of a person or animal is at stake. Society's punishments are small compared to the wounds we inflict on our soul when we look the other way.”  I have found this to be true, and I would rather risk my safety to do something than stand by idly by.

 

So, while some may be celebrating Dr. King's non-violence and reliance on love as opposed to hate (both of which I also celebrate!), I will be concentrating instead on his courage and fortitude.  Just because time has passed it does make the struggle for Civil Rights any less harrowing and horrifying.  Just because it ended reasonably well and we can remember it with the "I Have a Dream" speech does not mean that we should not also remember that it is a struggle that remains on-going.

I leave you with this,  “Courage faces fear and thereby masters it” -- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

No Natural Fibers

Strangely, the title "No Natural Fibers" made me think of this song, "No Sunlight".  The human/stuffed monkey brain works in mysterious ways...

So, while getting dressed today I chose (through all fault of my own) no natural fibers.  Once I chose what have to be the world's ugliest trousers (which I think I will soon be giving away, as they are INCREDIBLY unflattering as well, and weirdly shaped), the die was cast, and the unflattering, mademade-fiber-outfit fairly built itself!

See for yourself!  View the hideousness in all its manmade fiber glory!!

Am I right?

In other news, I have not accomplished all that I had wanted to in my little sweatshop.  But sometimes my goals are bigger than my eyes (my eyes are bigger my stomach, or something).  But I have made headway in some areas.  Mr. Cereal's Christmas gifts are underway (yes, it is January), my sister's birthday gifts are underway (her birthday is Friday, and I am searching for something that needs to be worked on.... I bought it at Thanksgiving and it may be (I am hoping!) in my blackhole of a closet).  My stepbrother's gift is coming along nicely (Christmas!).  There are still things under the tree for folks... and cards to make and gifts to wrap...

For years now I've been slowing down at Christmas time. I feel the innate guilt of a defunct catholic over late cards and gifts (I do enjoy sending mail and post!), plus my own special guilt. I really do want to send things.  But somehow my mind is plotting against me.

What's really important, though, is my little sister's birthday.  

I remember the day she was born in 1980.  She is the best thing that ever happened to me and I love her to pieces.  She normally has a crappy birthday (she does not always get the friends she deserves) and I am trying to make her days special.  So this just serves as a special kick-in-the-ass talk to myself, reminding me not to let myself down, to treat her as well as I should, as well as I want to.  To treat her as well as you treat the person who is the best thing to ever happen to you.  The one person you remember since BEFORE they were born.

She doesn't always show it, but she's HYSTERICALLY funny.  And she is always super smart (like Russian super computer!).  And she's my person, even though she sometimes wishes she had more people.
As the Amish say-- a-woo-woo.

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Emergency trousers?

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I, like others, often struggle with what to say on the spur of the moment, like when confronted with a hideous baby, or when someone makes me really salty eggs (or, perhaps, more likely, when I make someone else really salty eggs, as eggs and chicken are my worst things to make and I have now made them both for Mr. Cereal.  I have done the opposite of what most people would do-- purely unintentionally, I assure you-- and cooked things I cannot cook first, rather than cooking my best things.  WHAT WAS I THINKING?  Dear reader, I was not thinking at all.).

I like the idea of storing some things up for emergencies--
like what to say in an emergency
and now have thought that maybe I should invest some-- time? money? effort?-- something in emergency trousers.

I like to imagine emergency trousers-- or indeed, emergency clothes of any sort-- as being the kind of thing that could save you!  There you are, you need something to wear for a special interview, an important date, or, the one special piece of clothing you are convinced will cause someone to see you the way you were always convinced they would.  Magical clothing which could save you.  Emergency sweatshirt which feels like a hug.  Big comfy emergency socks which warm you up just thinking about them. Underwear which are so ugly that they will convince you not to sleep with the wrong person.  Clothing that will save you, even from yourself.

And so, maybe it's not new clothing at all that would be suited to being emergency clothing.  New sweatshirts don't hug you the same.  New jeans aren't broken in right.  But the sweatshirt that you stole from your sister and you're not supposed to be wearing is the one that makes you feel beautiful and it's the one you were wearing when something good happened to you.  That flannel you loved that she left under your pillow when she went away to college was way better than one you could buy in a shop...
Old clothes are emergency clothes.  Old clothes soothe you and save you and help you.  I am an old clothes person. I am like used clothes, like the velveteen rabbit, I'm all worn in, but hopefully you love me better for it.

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the things we leave behind

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“Second hand books are wild books, homeless books; they have come together in vast flocks of variegated feather, and have a charm which the domesticated volumes of the library lack”
- Virginia Woolf



 Ever since I started reading I have been entranced by the things I have found within books.  These have included pressed flowers, postcards, receipts, lists, monopoly cards, and tickets.  The books I have with names and inscriptions are outnumbered by those which are not my own, though I have a few Shel Silverstein books inscribed to me from my parents, and a few others from dear friends.  I try, when gifting someone a book, to put in a book mark, a book plate, or something of that sort.  On rare and special occasions I have been known to fill lovely books with related ephemera-- such as a copy of A Very Long Engagement filled with associated postcards and photographs placed in just the right pages.

This article lists things found in a secondhand book shop in Oxford.  There's something romantic, mysterious, nostalgic, about these items.  At least that is the way I've always felt about what I find in books.  There were a job lot of one woman's collection in my local used bookstore, and I was so taken with her taste and her bookplates that I was tempted to buy up whatever I could of her collection, just so they weren't separated.  I am, obviously a sentimental fool.  Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, I couldn't afford to at the time, and the books went to their separate homes.

I do love new books, don't get me wrong, there is something amazing about being the first person to own a book.  But there is something even better about being one in a line of book owners.  (I have to say that when a book comes to me I am often the last person to own it, at least in my lifetime.  Though I do try to pass books along when I can.)  I guess I will take my books any way I can get them, preferably in paper.

Back to the point...
Not only is there an article, there is an exhibition.  The exhibition features writer Wayne Gooderham's collection of books inscribed with personal messages of all kinds.  Information about the exhibition here, and Gooderham's blog full of the book dedications here.

And, a little song about secondhand stores, sort of.