Anniversaries

Overall, I love anniversaries. I think the contemporary American (of which I am one) far too easily gets all wound up in the "here & now" that we forget the stepping stones that got us here in the first place. (Then again, I'm a geek who reads the Declaration of Independence every July 4, so consider the source.)

Seriously - commemorating important events is a lovely thing. And by "important events," I don't just mean the huge things Hallmark makes cards for - birthdays, wedding anniversaries (and those guys are serious about this sort of thing!), and so forth. So many seemingly tiny things go into making you who you are and we often don't slow down enough to notice the change in scenery, so we might not have the exact date circled on the calendar of our hearts. That doesn't mean it isn't important.

But some dates are emblazoned on our hearts, etched in acid. Yesterday was an anniversary of that sort. Two years ago, a young woman named Du'a Khalil Aswad was viciously murdered by a crowd intent on slaying her to avenge her family's warped sense of honor. Look here and here, but I refuse to post a link to the actual killing, which was unbelievably captured by cell phone cameras held by members of the slavering mob.

It took the crowd a half hour to kill her. No one even tried to intervene.

She was 17. And she'll always be 17.

Please honor Du'a. Make today a new anniversary - make a difference. Sure, there are sites you can go to and add your name to a tribute to Du'a (like this one) but that may not be your cause, which is fine by me. Just make a difference. Take the extra two seconds to actually say "hi" to the teenager bagging your groceries. Smile at someone in the hallway at work. Take ten minutes to walk the long way, get outside to see the dogwoods in bloom, and know that there is beauty in the world.

Humans do some reprehensible things to each other and right now, it seems like it's happening more and more. But remember - it's only news because it's unusual. Most of us aren't like that. And we have a responsibility to remind those around us (and us, as far as that goes) of that fact.

Burn the Floor!

So yesterday Stacked Librarian and I hied ourselves to the Queen City to watch an international group of absurdedly-flexible dancers whirl about and toss their shiny hair. This was part of Stacked Librarian's birthday present; I was merely a tag-along. The long-touring show "Burn the Floor" takes ballroom dancing far, far away from the pasted prettiness of yards of pink net and Brilliantined hair.

Now, I must say that I'm not a dancer. My rhythmic abilities are pretty much limited to walking and the occasional muttered counting of "four, three, two . . . drat, which way?" in a Zumba class at the Y. However, I can greatly admire the strength and skills involved in dancing, which is not an especially easy art. In addition to precision training and cat-like balance, many of these routines involve strength and stamina way beyond what it may appear.

Dancers as delicate wusses? Tell you what, Drake, you try holding a girl upside-down and flinging her about all while keeping the beat and smiling. Then do it eight times a week. And if you're a girl, try doing this stuff backwards and in high heels.

You can get a taste for what I'm talking about here.

It was enough to forget the rainy mist that made driving a curse and (almost) enough to forgive the "planners" of Charlotte for their liking of one-way streets and very short green lights. I once heard that San Antonio was planned by a drunk on a blind mule and I think that person may have been run out of Charlotte for making too much sense in his style of urban planning. But that's me.

By the way, have you been watching Dollhouse? I'm still slightly behind, but I'm beginning to like what I see. If you're interested, check out my musings over here.

First Day of Spring!

We all seem to have weathered winter and come out on the other side. It's been a tough one, no doubt about it. Even the revered Weather Pig, the Great Gallumphing Groundhawg, who predicts the end of winter in my old hometown, is glad to see the final weeks of winter tick away.

Outside, my scrawny azalea bushes are trying mightily to bloom and there's just something heart-warming about that effort. Oh, sure the forsythia has been showing off for a week or more, but my azaleas have to exert more effort due to my devotion to the principles of Darwinian gardening. ("Good luck, boys! You're on your own!" is about all my plants can expect and they know it.) And no, the lush azaleas in this post are (alas) not mine.

St. Patrick's Day has come and gone. That's a day that is often used to mark the beginning of the planting season. Growing up, it seemed that many people used that as the day to start breaking up the garden plot and maybe even set out potatoes and onions. I'm not that ambitious about my garden, which is still a tangle and will be so for a while yet. (See earlier notes on Darwinian gardening.)

Even so, I'm feeling better about things. Warm weather will do that for you. I may even sort through the clutter in the shed and see if I can find a shovel and hoe to work on that garden patch.

Soon.

In the meantime, I'm speaking at Gardner-Webb University on popular culture in the classroom, including a comparison of Whedon's dark Slayer, Faith, to St. Luke's Prodigal Son. Hansel & Gretel will make an appearance in that one, too. How, you may ask? Well, details can be found here. Should be fun - stop by if you can!

Signs of Crispiness!

Certain things ought to be crisp. Snappy comebacks, breakfast cereal and, with a little creative spelling, Kremes. However, Mockingbird probably ought not to be so golden-brown around the edges of her temper.

Spring break is looming and, once lists of lists of things/errands/chores are tended to, it's off to the calm blue ocean for a few days which will (hopefully) be characterized by large amounts of sugared junk food (I gave up the scale for Lent, you see), and a total lack of binary code and things that go "ping!"

Aside from the calendar, how could I tell it was time to get out of Dodge for a bit? Well . . .

1. Turkey vultures (they're buzzards, all right? Large, hulking carrion birds looking for something stinky and dead) roosting in disturbingly large numbers in several trees in my neighborhood. Seriously, it's like I'm an extra in a National Geographic special about the Shelby-geti. Shudder.
2. Weather that whipsaws from eight inches of snow to eighty-two degrees in the space of a week. 'Taint natural.
3. Having a sinking feeling every time I look at the headlines. Every day, I'm expecting to read "Torrential Rain of Toads Soaks Town." It's bad out there, sure, but I still don't think the Apocalypse is coming to town. But lately, it's harder to remember that.
4. Being so focused on multi-tasking (remember the lists of lists I mentioned), that I managed to dribble both toothpaste froth and salad dressing on my clothes today. The only bright spot was that these were two separate incidents, rather than indicating that I was brushing my teeth while eating. (Although, given the way things have been lately, that's not as far-fetched as you might think, more's the pity.)
5. Feeling my own internal jack-in-the-box getting closer and closer to the "YAAAHH!" point.

So it's off to a porch swing, the new Christopher Moore book (a re-telling of King Lear in his own inimitable style), and an adjusted perspective.

Back soon.

In Praise of Rainy Days

February in my neck of the woods continues her schizoid ways. Today, the final day of the month, is grey and rainy with (get this) a decent chance of a major snowstorm developing tomorrow night. March may well come in like a lion. My poor daffodils - it's either leave them to freeze or cut them all today.

Sigh.

I took care of grocery shopping yesterday, so I have a good supply of milk and bread, in case the Big One actually hits. (Let's not get distracted by the weirdness of laying in a supply of quickly-perishable items in Southern storm preparation. It's just what we do, and I needed both milk and bread.)

Overall, it's a great day to stay inside and be lazy. I don't get to do that very often, so I am trying hard to enjoy it. I have work to do (don't we all), but it seems very easy to put it off on a day like today. I doubt I get any further out of the house today than the mailbox.

And good for me, I say!

Spear and Magic Helmet!

I'm a romantic, so this may come as a shock, but I've never been a fan of Valentine's Day. That's been true whether I've been in a relationship or not (although, truth be told, I've had a few years that were distinguished by a strain of openly vehement anti-V sentiment). I just don't like the idea too much - if you love somebody, they should know it all the time. You ought not to need a day circled on the calendar to remind you to tell them. And then it tends to be overdone - I mean, all of a sudden, you say to yourself, "Hey, I love so-and-so. I think I'll run out and get a balloon bouquet and a stuffed red bear"??? This makes very little sense to me.

What made sense to me was getting tickets to "Bugs Bunny on Broadway" and sneaking to the Internet to buy plastic Viking helmets and a huge skein of yarn to make Brunhilda braids (fastened on with duct tape, no less!) as a surprise.

It's safe to say that quite a while ago, I needed to accept that what makes sense to me doesn't necessarily make sense to most others folks.

The long and short of it - we had a fabulous time! "Bugs Bunny on Broadway" is based on the concept of live music and pre-recorded cartoons - sort of like old-style silent movies with a live organ providing the music. Only these cartoons are the very cream of American animation. C'mon, don't you remember Elmer and Bugs doing a seven-minute version of Wagner's "Ring Cycle"?

Of course you do. And so did I.

This was the symphony, after all, so FryDaddy and I dressed to the nines. And then donned our helmets. Children were amused, adults were delighted, and we were tickled. If I do say so myself, we did a pretty fair imitation.

Happy V-Day, everybody!

Digging in the Dirt

Like the groundhog, my neighbors and I have come blinking into the light. After a week or so of too-cold (with the added insult of no snow) temperatures, we've been graced with a couple of way above average balmy days. These are days that make hooky seem like not just a good idea, but a moral imperative. (Honestly, I think I smelled charcoal last night as someone celebrated by cooking out!) I cut off the heat pump and flung open the windows. Spooky's gotten some much-needed long walks and I spent a calm hour today re-potting some houseplants that badly needed it.

Which got me to thinking.

I've heard that you need to re-pot your plants at least once every two years. In that time, the plant's roots have sucked all the nutrients from the soil and, if you don't put the plant in fresh soil, the poor thing will essentially starve.

There's much I can learn from a philodendron.

Sure, winter's not over yet, not even here where it's been a mild one. But we can all use some new soil every now and then. Shake off the doldrums of grey skies, cold temperatures and bad news (I swear, watching the news is like reading Revelation these days) and try something different around your roots. Like what? Here are five ideas to get you started.

1. Make curry for dinner instead of the spaghetti you have every Tuesday.
2. Try a kickboxing class.
3. Take up needlepoint.
4. Listen to country-&-western instead of NPR for a day.
5. Throw the diet into the ditch and have buttered popcorn for dinner.

True, not everything you try is likely to be a smashing success, but who knows? You just may discover a whole new way of looking at the world.

Not bad for February.