Thinking out loud about my year of blogging

One year ago today I started blogging in earnest. This is my 347th post.

I’m particularly grateful to Pat Denino, who’s been blogging at Wandering Wonderings for several years. Without her encouragement, I never would have started.

In November 2004, Pat (I didn't know her) responded to my request to provide housing in Columbus, Ohio for recount observers and attorneys who were willing to travel to Ohio to challenge Bush’s election. Now I visit Pat at least once a year and was welcome even during her cancer treatments. Pat's hair has now grown back.

I’m also grateful to Janie Sheppard, in the photo below with her partner Bill Radtkey and their best friends, Heidi and Gerry. On July 2nd, I posted What do skateboarding and blogging have in common? I decided I ought to give up blogging as I did skateboarding a few years ago. Janie encouraged me to continue. Without her support, I wouldn’t have made it this long.

Janie sends my posts to her political allies and has been my guest blogger at least four times, here, here, here and here. She spearheaded a local to impeach Cheney, culminating in a hearing before the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors last August 14th.

Additionally, Janie, Bill, Heidi and Jerry welcome me to their home on weekends. Each time I visit, Bill prepares hot cereal made with steel cut oats and serves it with yogurt, fruit, and nuts. At their home, I get to think out loud, which is why I’m so comfortable with them.

Thanks to all of you who have posted a comment, e-mailed me about something I posted, or simply told me that you appreciate my blog.

If not now, when? Take 30 minutes or less to show your support for impeaching Cheney

1. Want to know what to do? Go to Action Plan: Cheney Impeachment Resolution.

2. Do you need to know that what you will do will make a difference? Go to Janie on impeachment, a three-minute radio interview of Janie Sheppard, which aired last night on KZYX, 91.5 FM in Ukiah, California.

3. Are you ready to take action?

A. Call the Capitol Switchboard number (202-225- 3121) and ask to be put through to the offices of John Conyers, Chairman, and the nine Democratic representatives on the House Judiciary Committee who are opposed to allowing a vote on the resolution to impeach Cheney: Howard Berman, Frederick Boucher, Artur Davis, William Delahunt, Zoe Lofgren, Jerrold Nadler, Linda Sanchez, Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Adam B. Schiff.

B. Go here if you want to fax or mail a letter.

4. The message: Express your support for Cheney impeachment resolution H. Res. 799 and urge the House Judiciary Committee to make passing this resolution its top priority, hold a hearing on the resolution as quickly as possible, and work hard to swiftly move the resolution out of committee and on to full debate and consideration by the entire House.

If you're uncertain whether or not Cheney deserves to be impeached, find a comfortable chair, put your feet up, and read Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency. This may take longer than 30 minutes, but this four-part description of Cheney's use and abuse of power, published in the Washington Post last June, is worth every minute.

(picture of Cheney: Worth1000.com)

An extraordinary woman writes about her extraordinary experiences..and her book is reviewed by another extraordinary woman!

My introduction: Quite a few years ago, I met Laura Fogg in front of a bakery in my hometown. Laura lives in Ukiah, California, 60 miles north of me. She, too, was interested in whitewater kayaking.

We never went kayaking together, but a year or so ago I joined my political ally and close friend, Janie Sheppard,* for hikes in the hills outside of Ukiah, and Laura was in the group that takes hikes together every week-end.

Slowly I learned about Laura’s many talents. She quilts. She designed and tiled her shower, creating an incredible Venus rising out of a shell. She rode her bike to the August 14th Mendocino County Board of Supervisors impeachment public hearing. An extraordinary woman.

Last week Janie contacted me about her review of Laura’s new book, Traveling Blind: Life Lessons from Unlikely Teachers. My first thought: Laura writes books in addition to all her other creative activities? My second thought: I want to post Janie’s book review. On September 7th, I posted Janie’s review of a book about an Israeli and Palestinian. Janie is also a gifted writer, another extraordinary woman.

Janie’s introduction: “Upfront disclosure: the author of this wonderful book is a good friend. That said, I will tell you a bit about what I learned about Laura, her profession, and her students. I don’t know what I expected, but I couldn’t put down the book. I became engrossed in the stories.

“Laura is a mobility instructor, meaning that she teaches children who are missing one or more senses how to get around in the world: How to walk around town with a cane, how to order a meal, how to shop, and, perhaps most important, how to have friends. I had never heard of a mobility instructor before meeting Laura. Now, having read her book, I am an advocate for such instructors. Below are some excerpts to give you inklings of what to expect.”

The book: Janie selects three vignettes: Nicole, a blind infant; Forrest, who contracted meningitis and only lived three years; and Michelle, who lost her vision gradually and was terminally ill. In her book, Laura lamented, “I still had to get up in the morning and take a shower and go to work and cook meals for my own children, even though Michelle was dying.”

Janie ends her review with a reference to Laura’s own close call with death. “I won’t reveal how this happened, but you will learn how she comes to relate her own experience to Michelle’s dying and how she comes to learn perhaps the hardest lesson, that her sorrow for Michelle was more for her own spirit, really her own ego. This book is nothing if not brutally honest….[T]his is a book for anyone who wants to dig deeply into the human spirit in its many manifestations.”

Janie’s review is posted at Amazon.com. Medusa Muse, the publisher, has a thumbnail sketch of Laura and short review of Traveling Blind here.

* Janie has either been my guest blogger or the subject of my post here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

(photos of Traveling Blind and Laura: Medusa's Muse)

A review of THE LEMON TREE by Sandy Tolan

From guest blogger Janie Sheppard:

On advice of a good friend I recommended that my book group read Sandy Tolan’s THE LEMON TREE. It was a good read and we learned a lot.

Through the story of an Israeli woman and a Palestinian man (not romantic although I wanted it to be . . .), Sandy Tolman lays out the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Dalia’s family came to the newly minted Israel with her family, refugees from Bulgaria, where they had survived World War II due to the grace of local officials who “suspended” a deportation order that, had it been executed, would have sent them to death camps.

Bashir’s father built a house in Al-Ramla, within what was to have been an Arab state under the 1947 United Nations Partition Plan. Instead, after Ben-Gurion declared Israel’s independence and war between the Arabs and the Jews resulted in the capture of Al-Ramla for Israel, Bashir’s family was forced to leave. Dalia’s family claimed Bashir’s family home.

The two meet in 1967, after the June war that resulted in Israeli occupation of the West Bank, which paradoxically resulted in Palestinians being able to visit their old towns. When Bashir knocked at the gate of what had become Dalia’s home, she graciously invited him in to make himself at home.

Dalia & Bashir

The two families eventually become acquainted and the friendship that began then continues to this day.

The story could have been told as a heartwarming story of two families that somehow manage to transcend their histories. That’s not what happened. Dalia is an Israeli through and through and Bashir remains a displaced Palestinian, longing to return home.

The strength of this book lies in the meticulous telling of the feelings and the histories. For starters, the reader learns that the Soviet Union supported a two-state vision for Palestine over a binational democratic state for all the people of Palestine. The United Nations mediator who advocated for placing Al-Ramla in Jordan, a move that would have allowed Bashir’s family to return home, was assassinated by the Stern Gang, a Jewish militia. UN Resolution 194 declared in 1947 that Arab refugees should be permitted to return to their homes. In 1967 Resolution 242 would supplant that resolution, calling instead for acknowledgement of the integrity of “every State in the area”, which, decoded, meant foregoing the right of return. The United Nations having given up on a right of return, the Soviet Union and the United States supporting separate states, it is no wonder to me that Palestinians are so angry. It is this anger that Bill Clinton failed to grasp when he failed to get Yasser Afafat to agree to a peace plan in 2000.

In the paperback edition, 264 of the 362 pages constitute the narrative while the remaining third contains a bibliography, source notes and an index. You can listen to a NPR Fresh Air interview with Sandy Tolan here

No longer do I feel totally ignorant about why Palestinians are so angry. Thanks to Sandy Tolan, I get it.

(THE LEMON TREE book cover: NPR.org; photo of Dalia and Bashir – PBS.org)