[CWM] Ninth Sunday After Pentecost [2007-07-29]

( one of his disciples said to him, 'Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples. )

***

Tallessyn told us a story from Trelawney.
She's in Northern Ireland, and there's a town called "Derry" which got renamed "Londonderry" by the Protestants.  So there's this enclave of Irish Republican Catholics which has this big gable mural of black letters on white background saying: "You Are Now Entering Free Derry."
For Pride, the white was painted pink :)

*

Will asked me what I was gonna do with my Mondays and Wednesdays now that ASL class is over.  Without hesitation I said, "Now can I go to the gym after work again," and he shuddered.  I was amused, 'cause I've gotten used to a very different culture.

We were talking about Convo, and I mentioned how I'd been looking at the schedule and it's 10pm Vespers and 7am "greet the morning," and said that the last time I went to a convention, we didn't sleep, but that's 'cause we were getting drunk and making out with people, which I didn't expect would happen at Convo.  He said: You never know; I'm hoping.

I talked about what Eric had said about how Convo would ask me to change the world and how I would respond: Yeah, no.  I said that I was going to hear brilliant academics speak and that I'd forgotten that there was an additional purpose to Convo.  He said there'd be plenty of that (the brilliant academic stuff) at Convo and that I should always feel free to take time for myself when I needed it (he had been saying that Marla was gonna be doing like everything during Convo, and I'd commented that in looking at the schedule I felt I could skip a bunch because I wasn't gonna do the world-changing).

[above two paragraphs edited for comprehensibility]

He said and I'm more okay with evangelical style worship, right?, and I was like yeah I guess.  He said there was a lot of that at Convo.  I didn't mention that I tend to approach worship services as academic exercises, so....

He got asked to preach by MOSAIC, so I'm sad that I'll be getting in too late to see that.

Marla's gonna be blogging Convo.  Yes, I asked for the URL.  She said if I had any "experiences" (good or bad) at Convo that I wanted to tell the world about, to let her know, because she didn't think the blog should be all her, that there should be other voices (guest-bloggers).

*

Tiffany's going to a Methodist Conference at Oxford (Christ Church -- yes, having studied at Oxford I always ask "which college?" now when people mention Oxford) around the time I'm in England.  I told her I was tempted to crash her Methodist conference, and she said actually she'll have a lot of blocks of free time and it would be great to see me and she'd send me the schedule.  (Not that I'm trying to avoid you, of course.)

"Our shelter from the stormy blast, And our eternal home."

Root Vegetable Poem
by Tisha Turk (from Getting Out Alive)

The man who sells me sunchokes
folds the top of the bag and tells me:
If they dry up, just plant them. He sounds
so certain. I'm sure he's right. These
surviving roots, tiny and heavy
in my palm, they'll come through
one way or another. Onions hang
in strings from the rafters of the attic,
rows of carrots wrapped in paper
line their basement crate, potatoes
packed in sand guard the coldest wall.
I'm not yet dreaming of asparagus,
snap peas, strawberries, mint. I want
what lasts through the long winter.

I am making vegetable stew for a girl
who will never taste it, who wrote me
an essay about sexism, the best
in the class, and a letter saying
she doesn't want a body anymore.
Under the summer sun she was already
pale and thin. Now, I imagine, her bones
are cold, too close to the surface.
She's tired of the flesh, its grease
and softness. She wants to be raw,
paper-skinned, small and hard as roots
readied for winter. She wants
to dry up and not be planted, to let go
of what binds her to the ground.
I wish I could tell her to take root
in her own self, to tell her there's still
something inside her that could grow.

Instead I stir the onions, add salt
and wine, scrub parsnips, dice turnips,
pull sunchokes from the paper bags
stacked along the cellar wall:
protection from what howls outside
and in. These roots have their own voices,
rustling against each other, speaking
into the wind. These days I'll listen
to anything that knows how to breathe
underground, anything that digs deep
and holds on. I can hear them whispering
to both of us: the body is worth saving,
the body is worth getting out alive.

---

In other news, I am rethinking my choice to bring jeans to Europe instead of dress pants.  They are so effing heavy.  (I mean, wearing them, not that packing them is gonna make my luggage exceed airline regulations.)

I have also been considering wearing my new black sneakers to work, despite the fact that obviously they'll be hotter than the flats I've been wearing, because I like having heft on my feet.  These sneakers are very imperfect, but they'll do; and they're solid black, so they're not gonna look unprofessional at a glance.

I look forward to the winter when I can go back to comfortably wearing boots, though.  Today wasn't particularly miserable (one point mid-afternon I checked weather.com and it said: 83F, feels like 86F, 57% humidity, 67F dewpoint), but every time I walked somewhere outside I ended up sweating and sticky, and I just don't enjoy that.  It boggles my mind that there are people who actively enjoy this (hi, paper_crystals).

"counting down from seven-three-oh"

("Restless" Subject line idea shamelessly stolen from Amy.)

It is Neville Longbottom's birthday, and marginalia is celebrating with fic lists.

Kita writes:

In an interview about the fashion concious set of Madmen, VK talks at length about how he has none at all. And then shares the following:

"When I was in eighth grade, I decided I would dress as a girl for Halloween," he said. "No one recognized me. In fact, I got asked to the homecoming dance."

And then Kita's head esploded.

Thanks to kartheiser_grl for the interview transcript.

maechi informs me that Joss is doing a webcomic (and reminds me that his Runaways arc is ending soon -- but still, does the man ever take a break?).

antheia tells me that the BBC plans to film "Ripper" as a 90-minute TV movie, and ASH is on board.  (S9 comics spoilers in the next item down.)

maechi linked to some articles about The Sarah Connor Chronicles which include a censorship issue which makes me sad.  To quote from the first article:

According to the BBC, scenes in the pilot that include a school shooting (putting young John in jeopardy and setting the stage for the show) are going to be revised due to the recent shootings at Virginia Tech.  Fox Entertainment chairman Peter Liguori said that the scenes would be changed, although he defended their inclusion in the original script.

Liguori said, "This woman is charged with protecting and preparing her son to be the future leader of the resistance.  The one single place a parent has to give up control of their child is school."

jennyo has been posting about Bionic Woman.  maechi links to an an article stating that Isaiah Washington's character will only be a six-episode guest arc.  It still makes me ill that anybody hired him, though.

The daily_deviant "miscegenation" tag debacle has been linked all over now, but I particularly liked minim_calibre's phrasing: "If you still don't think that there are any race issues in fandom, read this and think again."
After you read witchqueen's post, liviapenn has a round-up of other posts.
[I've only read a few posts on this issue so far, and I did read a few defending the mods with arguments which I was sympathetic to, but I am inclined to side with those who are arguing that the term and its usage in d_d are problematic.]