Category Archives: Sociology

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Happy Centennial, Girl Scouts of America!

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On March 12, 1912, Juliette Low founded the Girl Scouts of America with a troop of 18 girls in Savannah, Georgia.   I became a Brownie Girl Scout on Jan. 21, 1970.  My mother was already a leader with one of my older sisters’ troops.  I stayed in Scouting through my senior year of High School, and then became a Daisy and Brownie leader when my youngest girls were in kindergarten and first grade.  Here is proof of my dedication to this fine organization: my fifth grade school picture.

School picture day just happened to be the same day that I had a meeting after school.  We were encouraged to wear our uniforms to meetings.  So, because I was an obedient child and followed the rules, I have this historic photo to prove that I was a bona fide Girl Scout at the age of 10.  I found it pretty embarrassing at the time, though, to be the only child in uniform for the class composite photo.  Ah well, there’s a nerd in every class.  Oh, this photo also supports the story I told about visiting Hawaii and being mistaken for a boy.  One could also have mistaken me for a chipmunk.

What was great about Girl Scouts?  Camping.  Singing silly songs.  Downhill skiing.  Climbing to the top of the Statue of Liberty in my uniform and platform shoes.  Sneaking out of my tent in the full moonlight and posing as a statue along a State Park road.  Skinny dipping.  Roasting marshmallows.  Learning a whole bunch of useful skills, like swimming and first aid.  Meeting other girls from all over the country at a national event and feeling accepted.  Gaining confidence in my capacity to learn and be responsible.

What will I always retain from Girl Scouts?  My love of the outdoors.  My ability to build a fire.  My enthusiasm for hiking up a mountain in the hot sun. My desire to be helpful and do good deeds.  Here’s proof from this decade:

Team Galasso at the Diabetes fund-raiser

So, Girl Scouts, how about a chorus of the old song:

Girl Scouts together that is our song
Winding the old trails, rocky and long
Learning our motto, living our creed
Girl Scouts together in every good deed.

Happy Birthday, Girls!!

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Celebrate Good Times, Come On!

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Today is my darling baby’s 21st birthday, which in the good ole U. S. of A. means that she can legally purchase and/or be served an alcoholic drink.   Whoo-hoo!  This becomes quite the rite of passage for many people.  It used to be that different states had different legal drinking ages.  Back in the 70s, Illinois had it at 21 and Wisconsin had it at 18, so lots of kids would drive over the border to drink and then drive home drunk.  Not something a mother wants to think about for too long.  In my family of origin, though, drinking was done at home.  The first (and only!) time I got sick from sampling alcohol, I was 10 years old.  My mother made a Greek dinner and my father let me taste Ouzo, retsina, and Metaxa.  I learned how much is too much pretty early.  I also learned that I could get much better alcohol at home than I could at a party with my peers.   For me, it is all about taste.  My father once educated my children at the dinner table by explaining how alcohol is a solvent that releases fragrance and enhances the taste of food.  What is the primary liquid in fine perfumes?  Alcohol.  The pairing of food and drink is a scientific discovery of pleasure.  Coming from my dad, that seemed to be the “right” approach, and I think it has served pretty well.  My kids grew up having tastes in increased measures and never became binge drinkers.  My baby had her first taste when she was baptized at two months old.  The priest dipped his finger in the communion wine and let her suck on it.  She was a full-fledged member from that day on.  Why not?

When I turned 21, I was engaged to be married.  My fiance took me out for a champagne brunch after church.  All through my 20s, I was having babies.  I never went to bars and hardly drank at all.  I have no cultural experience of “the bar scene”, and that amuses Steve no end these days.  I also missed all of the pop music scene from the 80s on.  I am a walking anachronism, it seems.  Oh, well.  I still think I know how to have fun.  I do drink and dance and sing…mostly with family.  Tonight, my kids are going out together to do Broadway karaoke at a gay bar.  Now, I could fit right in with that!  I worked for a children’s musical theater company for 7 years, and my kids were all involved.  We rock the Broadway tunes!  Sadly, though, Mom is not invited.  Not this time, but I hope in the near future.

And now, for the photo journal portion.  My family album reveals “Celebrations, Then & Now”:

It starts with my family of origin. My mom at the piano after serving us a gourmet meal and wine. This was typical. Pictured: my sisters, brother, and a niece. (photo: DKK)

Next: Me & Jim at a church talent show. Yes, a couple of hams with a couple of drinks in them, singing and dancing.

 

So, then what happens? We raise a bunch of talented kids who like to perform and dress up and drink like pirates!

See? It's a theme.

So then my baby gets the bug really bad, and she's really good! (and I can't get this to print any bigger, sorry!)

And she's absolutely fabulous and happy onstage!

And I am incredibly proud of her!

 

And sometimes, we get to play dress up and sing and dance together!

And now, she’s all growed up! (*sniff*)  You are fabulous, Miss Em!  Go rock the scene tonight, celebrate your life, your health, your talent, your livelihood, your friends & family, and the fact that you are here and surrounded by love!!  And I know you won’t forget, that love extends beyond visible boundaries.

Your daddy adores you!

And he now celebrates the remarkable lady you've become with a bigger smile than he could muster with his physical form!

 

 

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What’s Important?

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When I hung around with evangelical Christians, I would frequently hear this phrase: “be in right relationship with”.  That was a core value in life.   I agreed then, and I still agree in some ways.  I very much resonate with the value of relationships.  I am “a lover” by temperament, so to speak, and being engaged with the universe is supremely important to me.  I also have a huge desire to be “right”, but that is exactly the thing I’m now trying to dismantle.  I was a compliant kid.  I was afraid of my father and of all authority.  I wanted to be “good” and “correct” because I wanted to be praised instead of punished!  Now, I find that being “right” is not all that great of a goal.  First of all, it can lead you to be self-righteous and judgmental.  Second, how do you even know what is “right”?  Is it “right” to do everything an authority tells you to?  What if that authority tells you to harm someone else?  See, it gets tricky.  How about if I just say that I want to have a good relationship with everything?  I think that covers it pretty well.

One relationship that I am really working to improve is my relationship with God and Christianity.  It has gone through a huge change in the last few years, one that has many of my friends scratching their heads.  Some of them are downright disappointed in the change and have told me so.  Some have just stopped communicating with me.  I am most in awe of those who are openly listening, talking, challenging, and engaging with me as I rework my theology and practice.  Yesterday was Ash Wednesday.  Instead of going to Church, getting ashes imposed on my forehead, and beginning a 40-day penitential practice (which is an indication of how I participated in that relationship for 47 years), Steve & I finished reading T.S. Eliot’s poem named for the day and discussed post-modern cynicism.  Despite Eliot’s conversion, he doesn’t seem very enthusiastic about life.  This morning, we had breakfast with his Aunt and talked about her church experiences with fasting and confession and Bible study.  Today, I got another e-mail from an old friend who is willing to discuss my journey and walk with me in it.  I’ve known this person since I was about 12 and she was 17.  Replying to her became my top writing priority for the day.  So, I’ve decided to use that material for my post today.  First, a photo or two to open the mind:

What is the value of a sparrow?

A cardinal far from the Vatican

My thoughts for today:

I feel like I have a continual discourse going on in my brain about my relationship with Jesus and the Church.  On any given day, other people enter that conversation and keep it going.  At breakfast, it was Steve & his Aunt Rosie.  As we walked to the library, it was just Steve.  Now you’ve entered the discussion.  Welcome!  Come, have a place on the panel!
The Church.  So much of it is about the social aspect.  Sometimes it acts like a group of people who are all friendly, who share affinities, who enjoy being together and taking care of each other.  Seems there’s nothing wrong with that, but I’m sure that’s not all Jesus meant the Church to be.  What happens when that group disbands, moves away or dies off?  Kind of like your Presbyterian congregation.  Or what happens when that group gets visited by people whom they don’t care for?  People of a different kind who don’t fit into their social circle?  How do they behave?  Is that what Christianity is about?  There is so much intolerance, so much judgment, so much exclusion, that it just seems to represent the worst of society as well.
Theology & Philosophy.  The Church getting down to what it actually believes about the universe.  And why.  I was taught by my Episcopal parents that there are 3 legs on the stool supporting what they believe: Scripture, Tradition and Reason.  My dad held up the Reason leg when he talked about Science. In the face of overwhelming evidence about evolution, for example, there’s no need to dismiss it.  It can be worked in with the other legs.  Scripture is about the story of human life, the salvation story, the emotional story, the behavioral story.  But it’s still a story, a Myth.  It is about Truth, but it isn’t literally true.  I don’t think it’s “true” that we are all sinners, or that we are all fundamentally separate from each other.  If you look at the biological universe, we are all very much interconnected.  I don’t know if there’s any evidence to prove that a historical Jesus even existed, much less that he was resurrected from the dead and will come again.  I still love Jesus’ teaching, whether he’s fiction or fact.  I love how he goes straight to the religious teachers of the day and preaches in their faces about how they have undermined values like compassion, inclusion, humility, spirituality, and forgiveness.  I think if it were possible for him to reappear in the US today, he would go straight to the Conservative Republican Christian Right and do the same thing!  Tradition seems to be aimed at behavior, how we live together.  The thing that is so tricky about behavior is that it needs to change, it needs to be responsive and responsible.  Most people think that Tradition is about keeping things the same.  I think that keeping core values is a good thing, but the way they are expressed should be flexible.
The thing I miss most about The Church is choir!  Singing!  And I have always loved Gospel more than classical, deep down.  Yesterday, Steve put on a new CD; I immediately recognized Odetta’s guitar and voice and purred with delight.  He laughed and said, “Priscilla wants to be a big, black woman!”  It’s so true!  I love the soul, the familiarity with humanity and suffering and the confidence.  I don’t want to be brainwashed or shamed or coerced by guilt.  I want to be free and respected for what I am.  And what am I?  A white Anglo, in part. But I am partly a big, black woman as well because we are all connected here on earth.
Anyway, that’s where the dialogue has me today.  I want to tell you again how much I appreciate you taking the time to engage with me in this part of my journey.  It means a lot.  I really get turned off by the tendency, especially in politics, for people to circle the wagons or form a fortress from which to sling rhetoric while refusing to actually come out peacefully and discuss something.  You know what I mean?  And the media just makes the whole situation worse, little Tweets & comments here and there but no real engagement.  Thanks for being willing to be real, to put your story and your thoughts and your experiences in writing and listen to mine as well.  I respect you for that.  I think that’s how Jesus was, too.  I think of the stories in the Gospel of John especially, of conversations with Samaritans, women, disciples, beggars, and Pharisees.  He didn’t just knock off a sound bite for the media and move on.  And as much as anyone stayed to hear more, he kept interacting.  What a great example!

 

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Groovin’ on a Sunday Afternoon

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*update from yesterday’s post*  She Speaks commented:

“I found an online petition from the site “Democrats 2012″ titled “Where are the women?”  This petition reads:

‘At a House Oversight Committee hearing, House Republicans convened a panel on denying access to birth control coverage with five men and no women. As Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney asked, “Where are the women?”  Join Leader Pelosi in our call to Speaker Boehner, Eric Cantor, Chairman Issa and all House Republicans to demand that women be allowed at the table when discussing women’s health issues. Help us gather 250,000 signatures.’

Here is the link to sign the petition: http://dccc.org/pages/wherearethewomen

I’ve signed. Please help share this information and encourage everyone you know to sign.”

I’ve signed as well.  Please forward to any US citizens you think would like to add their names. *thank you*

 

Okay, on to All About Me.

So, Steve wakes up this morning singing “Tiny Bubbles” (yes, we do this to each other, sharing whatever our brains mumble out first thing upon waking)  …Don Ho…Hawaii…and I go back to being 10 years old, which was my age when I actually traveled to Hawaii.  My 10-year old self got excited about many things in Hawaii.  I thrilled at the choice of coconut or pineapple syrup on my pancakes because I hate maple syrup.  I spent a good 30 minutes at a picnic stop trying to open a coconut by stomping on it with my sneakers.  I had a camera of my own and could take my own pictures, a Brownie Starmite which yielded snapshots that the drugstore processed with a “bonus snap” of about half the size of the original included on the print and separated by a perforated line.  I eagerly tried to pronounce any Hawaiian word just for the fun of letting the syllables bubble out one after another like waves on the beach.  “King Kamehameha”  “Queen Liliuokalani” “Mele Kalikimaka” “hukilau” “elepani”.  I felt daring and adventurous sliding down a lava tube into a lagoon while my mother hyperventilated on the banks.  And I got to go swimming every day!  One other memory that will always stand out about my trip to Hawaii:  I was often mistaken for a boy.

I had a growing out shag haircut in the spring of 1973.  My mother had made me get my shoulder-length blonde hair cut VERY short for our trip “Out West” the summer before.   She was probably thinking of the convenience and the hot weather.  She also insisted that we wear bathing caps whenever we went swimming.  I got the idea that the prime consideration in hairstyles was not attractiveness, and at the time, I didn’t care.  Much.  I do remember the excruciating moment when I debuted the pixie cut at school for the first time.  I was at before-school choir practice on the verge of tears because I felt so self-conscious.  I was wearing a dress with a Peter Pan collar, my vulnerable neck exposed.  I felt whispers behind me.  Then the girl behind me leaned forward to say something, and I imagined she was about to make a comment on my haircut.  I froze, trembling, with blurry eyes.  Turns out she just wanted to ask what page we were on, but the contact ripped me wide open, and I began to cry.  After that, I got used to it and so did others.  Folks in Colorado couldn’t tell if I were a boy or a girl as I scrambled up rocky mountains with my cousin, Christopher, and it didn’t matter to me.  In Hawaii, my hair was a bit longer, but since it was the 70s, boys were also wearing their hair longer.   My family went to a luau one night.  Each of us was greeted by a hostess with an armful of flowers.  My father got a coconut palm hat placed on his head.  My mother and my three older sisters received a beautiful lei of fragrant orchids.  I couldn’t wait to receive my own exquisite necklace.  But what’s this?  Hey!  Why did you give me just a stupid, green headband!  I’m a GIRL, dammit!  Same thing happened on a boat trip a few days later.  The guide/entertainer picked me out as a model to receive something he was fashioning behind me out of palm leaves.  He probably picked me to keep me from getting bored, to amuse my sisters, or just because I was cute and charismatic…in a unisex kind of way.  He placed a headband with a palm “feather” sticking up in the back on my head.  My sisters howled.

So, before puberty, I didn’t care about being a girl very much.  I played with the boy two doors down every day.  When I was alone, I crossed the street into the forest preserve and played in the bushes.  I enjoyed being physical, roller-skating and jump-roping especially, and I enjoyed “helping” my father at the workbench in the basement.  I was not a complete tom-boy, nor was I a girlie-girl.  I was just me, and I was fine.  Then I hit high school at 14 in a brand new state, California.  My mother decided we all should have a lesson on wearing make-up, so we had a Mary Kay consultant visit the house.  I began putting on make-up and styling my hair every day before school.  I also began flirting and listening to “funky” music.  I began to find my groove.

Jim & Me gettin' our groove on for a 60s themed birthday party

As an adult, I think it would be a revelation to have a conversation with two people from my past especially.  One would be the boy I played with every day in grade school, the other would be my first high school boyfriend of more than 2 months.  Both of these boys are now homosexual adults, I’ve since learned.  I would love to ask them what growing up felt like for them, what our relationship taught them about themselves, but sadly, we lost touch long ago.

Finding my groove in high school led me to two of my greatest expressions of freedom and physicality: dance and jazz.  I love to dance.  I have taken dance lessons, and I find that I am way too much “in my head” when I’m trying to learn steps and choreography.  What I really love is just to free-style to anything with a back beat.  Blues, tango, rumba, pop school dances, jazz.  I auditioned and got into our high school jazz choir and loved the freedom of improvisation and the soulful feel of the slower pieces we did.  From high school, I went on to get a degree in Vocal Performance at a women’s college.  I didn’t do any jazz or dancing in those years.  I was trying to be more *ahem*, serious about music.

Steve has a very serious music collection, but on Friday, he picked up something from Goodwill’s CD collection with me in mind.  It’s “The Fabric of Life” by The Nylons.  They’re usually about 4-part a capella vocal jazz, but this CD has percussion and instrumentals as well.  He put it on at breakfast, and I had to get out of my chair and dance!  It felt great!!  My heart rate climbing, my hips swiveling, my shoulders shimmying, my waist stretching and slimming and twisting…I felt alive, physical, ME!  Maybe I’m getting closer to understanding how to live in my own skin after all.

I think many women have a long journey to being themselves.  It’s easier when you’re 10, I think.  It gets pretty complicated through puberty and socialization.  Maybe now as I get closer to hitting 50, I can grow into my own groove, be funky and fine and all me.   I wish I knew more of my gay friends’ journeys as well.  I want to be compassionate to every human and their story of growth.

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Non-resistance

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Yesterday’s post was on Resistance, and the title was inspired by my “I don’t want!” mood.  Today, I am seething a bit about some things, and I’m wondering how to employ non-resistance.  Actually, it’s more like non-violent resistance.  How do I look at something that I feel is unjust and respond in a way that does not blame, shame or reject but does state emphatically my position and reasons and allows me to live out my values?

I don’t know how to re-blog something, so I will give you a link to a post I’ve been following and commenting on that deals with the birth control mandate in President Obama’s Affordable Care Act.

I’m also going to include today’s post from my fellow blogger in the UK.  She has decided to respond to suffering and injustice by sponsoring a girl in Kenya.

I feel that justice matters, that women’s health matters, that population control matters, that compassion matters, and that the internet should be used as a tool to discuss what matters (and that doesn’t include celebrity hook-ups, IMO!).

Not to imply that I don’t also spend time on things that don’t really matter.  Like this afternoon’s Chicago Bulls game.  Which is one reason I’m rather late in posting this.

I also feel that loving the universe matters, and I want to live out that value every day.

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Sentimental, Sacramental or Cynical

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Valentine’s Day.  A Hallmark holiday.  Is it even connected to anything in history?  The Roman Catholic Church removed St. Valentines’ Day from its calendar in 1969 because there was nothing known about the 3 St. Valentines that had been venerated except that one of them was martyred on February 14th.   Chaucer had started the whole romantic connection by writing this verse in 1382 as part of a poem to honor the first anniversary of the engagement of Richard II to Anne of Bohemia:

For this was on seynt Volantynys day
Whan euery bryd comyth there to chese his make.

“For this was on Saint Valentine’s Day, when every bird cometh there to choose his mate.”

Okay.  So what?

Eventually socialization takes over.  We establish a day on the calendar to honor Love and allow traditions to flourish.  It’s good for the economy.  See also Mother’s Day and Sweetest Day.  We grow increasingly attached to our traditions and habits and compartmentalize the celebration of Love to coincide with the day.  That’s what I would call sentimental.  It’s about the past and nostalgia.

But why not forget February 14, the calendar, and time itself, since they are merely social constructs, and instead try to honor every moment as we live it?  The Bell of Mindfulness rings for this moment only.  What are you feeling?  What is happening around you?  Are you fully aware of the miracle of living right now?  If in your awareness, you choose to employ an “outward and visible sign of the inward and spiritual grace” of being mindful, then that’s what I would call a sacrament.

And if the whole thing just strikes you as absurd and unrealistic, then you might be what I would call cynical.  You might connect the day with massacres and treat your loved ones to:

Texas Chainsaw Cupcakes

Whatever your particular taste tends to on Valentine’s Day, I hope you enjoy the flavor!!

 

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Photo Essay: County Grounds

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The Milwaukee County Grounds are steeped in civic history.  The insane asylum, the poor farm and the tuberculosis sanatorium were all situated here in the early 1900s.  The government took on some additional responsibility for “the poor, the destitute and the marginalized” by creating four cemeteries in the area, alternately known as “The Poor Farm Cemetery”, “The Almshouse Cemetery” or “Potter’s Field”.   Today, the buildings are crumbling, the cemeteries are marked with plaques, and the grounds are frequented by hikers and dogs.  There is a monarch butterfly trail that has been carefully maintained by volunteers and the park district has taken over one building there for offices, but the future of this area is uncertain at best.   There is talk of power lines and park development as well as commercial development.   The land lies adjacent to a 6 lane freeway, the medical center complex, and a water reclamation plant.   For now, it is the only open land that I can walk to from my house, yet it maintains a ghostly connection to its civic past.  I often try to overlook the traces of the human community there and photograph only wildlife.  Yesterday, though, I decided to open my eyes to whole of it.  Here are some visuals:

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Chickadee vs. Chicken

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I love black-capped chickadees.  Their distinctive songs are the two-note descending major second and “chick-a-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee”.  They fly around in happy little groups in the dead of winter, impervious to gloom and cold.

In another corner of my neighborhood, there is a robust icon of Milwaukee: Champion Chicken.

Reflection and interior images

The delivery van

I’m not sure there’s a point to this post.  Sometimes I just like to look at the juxtaposition of human stuff and non-human stuff on this planet because it brings up some questions and some emotions.   Yeah, we ate their food.  It’s very close to Steve’s mom’s house, so she treated us to lunch after we shoveled for her.  It was tasty and greasy.  I hadn’t had fried chicken in a long time.  Steve remembers frequenting this place throughout his childhood.  He has an appreciation of American kitsch and collects/recycles/sells it online. Is it history?  Is it eyesore?  Is it embarrassing?

What do you think?

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Zeal for Thy House

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We watched another installment of Simon Schama’s “Power of Art”; this one was on Van Gogh.  I didn’t know that he attempted a career as a missionary and was released for his “over-zealousness”.  That zeal, that fervor exploded in color and paint a few years later.  Perhaps the misfiring of his neurological circuits added to the visions he experienced, but that doesn’t make them any less real, does it?  For the film, an actor portrays him eating an entire tube of chrome yellow.  It is an intensely sensuous clip.  It makes me want to feel the passion myself, love and zeal and lust in an explosion of warm color and bright hope.  I wish I had art sliding around like finger paint beneath my skin.

Making chocolate truffles with my daughter; good gooey creativity

I feel the need to make something.  It’s going to end up being a pot of chili and some yeasty corn bread from scratch.  I wish I had some clay or acrylics lying around to play with, but I suppose it’s just as well I don’t.  I’d feel bad about wasting expensive materials just for the tactile exploration.  Still, I feel a tension within me longing for creative release.  Perhaps that’s because I haven’t been singing regularly for a while, or playing the piano.  I miss getting caught up in the joy of expression.  Do you suppose that our society suffers from creative repression on a massive scale?  With all the technology we have to take creativity out of our hands, are we fueling a psychotic collapse?  What if we staged a revolutionary return to physical creativity, set up mud pie and garden therapy stations, bread dough and needlework,  improvisational dance and percussion…would we see a decline in depression, suicide and domestic violence?

My fingertips get a mild work out typing every day, but it doesn’t feel like enough.  I used to do 8 hours of typing, telephoning, and staring at a screen in a cubicle every day.  It got very old.  I’m lucky to be done with that.  I hope that we don’t press people into that kind of thing more exclusively as our society “progresses”.  It seems pretty soul-killing.  I’d like to set them all free in a wheat field with a box of squishy colors and a canvas and let them stay out all day until the sun sets.  Then invite them to share a bottle of wine with me, some good crusty bread, and listen to them describe their experiences while they show me their work.  I want to hear their zeal and watch it float free into the world…with mine.

 

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New Year, new goals, new reads

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Monday morning, back to work.  Orders for Scholar & Poet Books piled up on our dining room table over the weekend.  We’ll be taking more than 35 packages to the Post Office to be mailed today.  Some are self-help books on diet, procrastination, and clutter management.  Some are theology books, some poetry, some fiction, some children’s books, some history.  Words to buttress a new year of aspirations.  Which words will I apply to my year?

I’m not one for making New Year’s resolutions, really.  The sense of obligation and failure tweaks too much of what I’m trying to outgrow.  It struck me as I was flipping through a book of poetry by a Korean writer that we have our cultural and familial flavors stamped on us pretty early.  Guilt, shame, obligation, work ethic, judgment.  If we are aware and astute, we grow to recognize it.  If we are brave, we engage with it and come to a deeper understanding.  My Anglican family leaned toward perfectionism, rationalism, judgment.  There was always a “right” way to do something.  I want to push myself to get past that kind of assessment  and look more kindly at what is in the world.  I’ve noticed a few things that are: I’m getting older and putting on weight more easily.  Without judging myself too much, I want to be aware of my health and support it.  I’m aware of my desire to write my memoirs.  I want to turn that desire into an artifact.   I’m also aware of my desire to live lightly and gently on the planet.  Without nailing goals to the doors of my consciousness, can I make efforts and decisions that will guide me closer to the life I envision?  We’ll see.

Steve & I finished reading D.H. Lawrence’s The Plumed Serpent, so we set up another book selection.  This is kind of a game for us.  Steve picks a box full of likely candidates and numbers them.  I pick two numbers, look at the books, and choose one.  The reject is then out of the running.  I keep doing this until I’ve gotten down to one book.  This is sometimes an agonizing process because I want to read them all!  This is where I have to tell myself that I can’t make a “wrong” choice.  If we get stuck with something we don’t enjoy, we can always abandon it and choose something else.  If we pass up something intriguing, we can always go back to it.  So, out of 24 books, I came away with Italo Calvino’s The Road to San Giovanni.  I feel bad about putting Rilke’s Letters on Cezanne on the reject stack, but I’ve been dipping into it anyway.  No, I’m not “cheating”.  I am living.  No, I’m not “undisciplined”.  I am feeding myself.  I think of Anne Lamott in Traveling Mercies describing the epiphany she had when she broke through her habits and learned to eat.  It’s not about setting up rules so that you can get neurotic about them.  It’s about feeling a hunger and responding to it.  Choosing what to read, choosing what to eat, choosing how to live.  It can be a simple, graceful process.  Why do we often make it torture?

Joyful possibilities set before us. Happy choosing!