This Blog is Under Attack

Yesterday, out of the blue, for no reason I can discern, I began to receive comments on this blog from a bold, brave, stand-up for America guy called Anonymous who wants to "boycott" American women. 

His comments were filled with the hate and anger typical in men who feel emasculated by the mere presence of a woman whom they perceive to be out of their reach whether in ability, looks or achievement.   However, the most telling detail about this ant, in my opinion, is that not only is he angry, he's a coward.  

It's easy to throw rocks from behind the safety of a computer screen.  It's easy to pound your chest (or what passes as one on Anonymous) and write sweeping insults.     

And poor Anonymous isn't the only one.  There're millions just like him....scared, angry, pathetic little people of both sexes....willing to clog the public forums with the most despicable language, and yet unwilling to allow their names or faces to be known.   That's not free speech .... that's cowardice.  I don't know any women of any nationality interested in being with a coward, unless of course, she's one herself. 

So to Anonymous... What is most patently obvious about you from your comments is that you're a coward.  I'm glad you boycott American women.  I'm sure it's easy from the bottom of that pond.   

Red Sky at Morning - Waiting for Irene

Red sky at morning: sailors' warning;

Red sky at night: sailors' delight. 

The sky this morning is glowing coppery, reddish pink.  You don't grow up on a barrier island without learning how to pay attention to the weather and you don't survive something like the Ash Wednesday Storm of 1962 without acquiring a respect for it. 

I wasn't quite three years old when a perfect confluence of events - a big nor'easter, a spring high tide and a full moon, all conspired to create the conditions which spawned the storm to which the records books still peg.  We lived five blocks from the beach, and five blocks from the bay.  I remember kneeling perched on a dining room chair, watching out the big picture window as the ocean came swirling up the street.  I remember the water lapping at our front steps and flooding the backyard.  

I remember neighbors gathering in our house, friends of my parents from more low-lying points on the island.  One couple had a little boy, just a couple years older than me.   We were watching out the window as night fell and the waters rose and the adults babbled behind us.  Suddenly, Ashie shook me and pointed.  "The gas station's on fire!" he cried.  

Diagonally across the street from my great-grandfather's house, which stood beside ours on the corner, was a gas station.  I looked but didn't see anything.  "No it isn't," I said.  The words had no sooner left my mouth than an enormous plume of blue and orange flame exploded out of one tiny window in the secord floor of the garage, as high as the roof of my great-grandfather's house.  

The adults behind us sprung into action. 

My mother remembers the shadows of the flames dancing on the walls as she ran screaming, for my 13 month old brother.  I remember the enormous civil defense truck that trundled down the alley, and the uniformed men who scooped me up and put me on my grandmother's lap.   I remember my great-grandfather arguing as my father and the other men hustled him down the steps of his battleship of a house. 

I remember my mother spreading blankets on a desk at a building on Wesley Avenue that I forever harbored warm and fuzzy feelings for.  Years later, on a walk to church, I remember asking my grandmother what the building was.  She said it was the telephone company's building and that it was used as a shelter because it was one of the few on the island built of brick. 

I remember waking up in my own bed and wondering if it were all a dream. 

My father said what saved the neighborhood was the fact that it was March, and still cold enough that all the roofs were coated with a thin layer of ice.  Also, everything was saturated by the rain which had fallen more or less steadily for three days, and the fire could only burn to the water line, which on that night, was nearly two feet.  The gas station might've burned down anyway.  So in a way, he said, what saved our houses was the storm itself. 

The world outside my window is absolutely still.  Every now and then a crow cries or a jay calls.  Only the crickets sing.  The dogs have been acting funny since yesterday.  The color has faded and the sky is leaden gray.  It's the sort of weather that would send my grandmother scurrying to close windows and tie up awnings and bring in flower pots. 

May Irene pass gently on her way.  Blessed be. 

Today's the Day

...as in Move Libby Into College Day.  Two of Libby' siblings- her biggest sister Kate and her big brother Jamie, who fortunately has remained a big brother at least in relation to Libby - are coming to help.   The fact that a hurricane named Irene is bearing down on the state adds an extra soupcon of I'm not quite sure what. 

Students at colleges closer to the shore line are being told to evacuate once they've moved their stuff in, but Storrs, CT, just happens to be one of the most geographically safe places in the northern hemisphere.  And we already had an earthquake last week. 

But today...whatever the weekend and Irene brings...is beautiful.  The sun's rising in long golden spears of light, the mist is rising off the ponds.  The birds are calling, the roses are blooming, the world is lush and ripe and beckoning.  I'm feeling rested and strong - all that good eating and those other healthy practices are paying off in terms of energy and awareness.

And I am about to get my life back in a way I haven't had it in more than three decades.  No wonder a hurricane is roaring up the East Coast in a way one hasn't in over fifty years. 

 

Rites of Fall

I woke up cold this morning.  For the first day in months, I was reluctant to leave my snuggled nest of covers.  This morning on the driveway, I saw one fallen red maple leaf.  Fall is on its way. 

My youngest and I have been shopping for college amidst all the back-to-school frenzy.  Libby is the fourth young adult I've sent marching off, armed with sheets and wall hooks and enough Easy Mac to feed a dorm floor.  It's the last time I expect to do this and the last time for anything is always bittersweet.  

I've watched the young mothers in the stores, the ones with lists and wrinkled frowns and children slipping under foot.  They congregate in groups in the back to school aisles, comparing cart contents, nervous as their own kids about what lies ahead, so desperate to do it right.  Relax, I want to tell them.  You screw up more by being overly worried than by allowing nature to take its course. 

Blessed be.

First Harvest

A few weeks ago, on Lammas Eve, I gathered the "first" harvest of my herbs and made bundles to dry on my hearth and on the four altars outside.  The plants have been happy this year, and I had big bunches of white sage and yarrow and sweet annie and mugwort.

It's been a fruitful writing summer too.  So far I've finished the story I wrote for my brother, David.  Written at a third grade level, its a story about a young man named David who lives at home with his parents and works in a mailroom.  When he meets a red-haired girl named Sarah, he's sure he's met the girl of his dreams.  My brother, who has Downs' Syndrome, doesn't care for most books written at his reading level because he's not a child.  But he loves this one, and he's excited about reading it in a way he hasn't in years.  Others who have read have been charmed at the way the story opens up the world of a person with my brother's abilities. Titled How David Met Sarah, it's coming out in October as an ebook on Amazon... I hope you will check it out!

I  also have almost forty thousand words complete of a first draft of a new novel tentatively titled All the Missing Pieces...I'd like to complete the first draft this month and seem to be right on track to do so.  Eating the Angel Way is once again being "re-visioned".... my sense is that the book when it comes out in November, right after Thanksgiving, will offer even more insights than the previous versions.  And there's my new blog... Hecate's Gate...which seems to be off to a great start, thanks to all the wonderful women who have left me comments and offered feedback.  In addition, I've held workshops and retreats and done some mentoring and coaching this summer... all which has left me feeling very satisfied. 

So that's what I've harvested this summer... how about you, Gentle Readers? 

Look for more changes...

...coming soon!  I'm working out a publishing schedule, finishing up a new novel and editing some old stuff... can't wait to share more! 

My response to Susan Campbell's question

Susan Campbell is a columnist in The Hartford Courant.  She's one of the few reasons I continue to read the paper online. 

Dear Ms. Campbell - You asked a really wonderful question in your recent column:

"If Breivik is a perversion, and Christianity is a religion of peace, how does it get twisted, and not just in violent, life-ending ways like Breivik's?"

As someone who has wrestled with the same question for many years, I thought I might offer my answer, because I don't believe the answer lies in either philosophy, or in theology. The answer lies in history. When Christianity became the state of religion of Rome upon the conversion of Constantine, it grafted unto itself the power structure of the Roman Empire. Thus, what had been a cult of the have-nots, became most emphatically the property of the haves. The way Catholic dioceses are organized, for example, and the governing structure of the Vatican, comes down pretty much intact from the Roman beaurocracy created to administer the Empire in Constantine's day.

And the Council that created the current and accepted Canon of Scripture occured after this as well, so of course all the scriptures are skewed in such a way that taken as a whole, they support the power-over world view grafted onto the developing religion. Consequently, all sects of Christianity - especially the so-called fundamentalists - are susceptible to falling prey to these interpretations which I believe are most emphatically not in line with the actual teachings of Jesus.

These are simple facts of history. If you want to know what's gone wrong in a system, I think the easiest place to find the answer is in the beginning. But hardly anyone studies history that far back any more, and certainly the fundamentalists of the Christian world aren't eager to acknowledge the ramifications of that ancient infestation.

Sincerely yours,

Annie Kelleher

Run right over...

...to Amazon.com and check out RUNNING... a debut novel from PATRICE FITZGERALD about the first two women candidates who run for President.  When the past rears its ugly head, is the election already won before a vote gets cast? 

Check out Patrice's very fun story and download it to your Kindle for a great summer read!

Too hot for Viewshound?!

According to Michelle Chabin of Religious News Services, in her recent article for Huffington Post: "Passengers carrying any non-Islamic article of faith (emphasis mine), will not be able to fly code-share flights from the U.S. to Saudi Arabia under Delta Air Line's new partnership with Saudi Arabian Airlines that is set to begin in 2012."

It's time to boycott Delta Airlines. (It's time to lead planeloads of women to Saudi Arabia in protest but that's another post.)

This is what happens when American corporations do business with Saudi Arabia - or really, any other nation that doesn't share what we publicly call our "values."  Delta just exposed Saudi Arabia as the misogynistic, narrow-minded, backward-looking "state" that it is. And this is how low (and how far) our corporations will go to make money. This is why the power of corporations should be limited. They exist solely to make money. The bottom line is that the decision to enter into the partnership with the Saudi airline that necessitated such concessions on Delta's side was money. Do you suppose anyone who signed that agreement really cared what the Saudis might stipulate, as long as the price was right? 

There are many forms of tyranny. The Founding Fathers - bless their 18th century minds - understood two: tyranny from above and tyranny from below. What they didn't understand was the tyranny of greed which has become manifested in the behavior of corporations.

The power structure of a corporation - which evolved out of the Rennaissance and is pre-democratic in origin - is essentially feudal.   The motivation of a corporation - one could argue its primary existence - is fundamentally the desire to make more money, or, more simply - greed.  Those at the top answer ultimately not to the "values" of their shareholders, but their corporation's bottom line. 

We have thrown off our kings and we have a political process. It's time to recognize the new kind of tyranny which has reared its ugly head - and end it. Now.

Note:  This blog was originally submitted to Viewshound to be published as an article,  and was rejected as being too inflammatory. 

Check out my articles on Viewshound!

Go HERE...check out my articles, and  leave me a comment so I know you stopped by!

School's out...

...for just about forever.  Unless, of course, I decide to go back to it. 

Libby's going to college, of course, so my dance with academia isn't entirely over, and I've mulled going back to school myself.  But a big chunk - the part that began in September of 1985 when my oldest daughter marched off to kindergarten at Nether Providence Elementary School in Wallingford, PA, and ended last night - is over. 

At one point, I had a child in college, high school, middle school and elementary school all at once. 

No  more lunches or last minute scrambles for lunch money.  No more runs for the bus.  No more absent notes or phone calls to the nurse.  No more field trips.  No more lost library books.  No more permission slips and emergency contact cards (which all had to be filled out in quadruplicate.)  No more report cards, no more teacher conferences - not that I ever went to too many of those.  (What was the point of going just to hear how well my kids were doing?)

And will I miss it... any of it?  Ask me this time next summer. 

I've survived my children's childhoods

My baby - the last of my four - graduated from high school tonight.  At approximately 7:20 PM EDT, my youngest daughter was handed her diploma amidst all the appropriate pomp and circumstance one small Connecticut town can muster.  Driven inside by the weather, there was something so endearingly Thornton-Wilderish about the whole scene, I half expected the Stage Manager to put in an appearance.

It was all exactly the way I remember mine, the way I remember my daughters' and my son's:   the speeches, the singing, the uncomfortable seats.  The girls always wear white gowns, the boys in a color.  There was even the same wreath of cigar smoke when we exited the building.  Libby distinguished herself admirably among her peers and her siblings...my youngest graduated with the highest GPA and the most academic awards of them all.

But along with the pride, there's a sense of relief.     

"14 years and four graduations is a lot of graduating," I remarked to my oldest daughter, as we took turns dandling Baby Grace on our knees between the speeches.  "But I get a break now."

"Jake won't graduate for another fifteen years," she agreed. 

And he's your kid, I thought silently.  Blessed, blessed be.

Where the bullies hide

I'm hearing a lot about bullying these days on the parent pages and the mommy blogs.  People are talking about bullying, what it is, and how to stop it, naming a problem I have been all too aware of since I was in sixth grade and the target of class-wide bullying.  In retrospect, I understand why it happened. 

My parents, Goddess bless them, recognizing early that I was bright for my age, sent me to first grade instead of kindergarten when I was five.  Although they meant to do what was best for me, to some degree that decision sealed my fate.  Not only did I not learn all those critical life skills everyone is supposed to learn in kindergarten, children who become the targets of bullies are frequently the youngest, the smallest or the brightest child in a class. 

I was all three. 

The whole horrific experience lasted pretty much the whole year, to the point where the following year, when we learned about the Holocaust, I had a good idea what it was like to exist in a Hell from which there was no rescue. 

Then along came my ex-husband, and I learned about bullying on a whole new level.  That was the kind of bullying I encountered when he used his knowledge and familiarity of the legal system against me, filing frivolous actions of every kind, forcing me to use resources I didn't have in my defense.  (Whenever I suggested to members of the bar that the fairest thing the bar association could do was to appoint lawyers to handle divorces for non-attorney spouses for free or at reduced cost, my suggestion was always greeted with shock, horror or laughter.  But it's one way to ensure the playing field stays even.) 

Which brings me to a few years ago, when once again I encountered the same kind of attempted bullying by someone I considered a business associate, partner, attorney, and friend.  When I approached her as a hurt friend, she responded to me as a lawyer to an opponent.  What hurt all the more was that this person purports to be a highly spiritual person, one who supposedly left the practice of law to embrace a more spiritually-inclined way of life - which includes claiming to channel messages from otherworldly energies. 

So after much thought and reflection, I've decided to stand up to that kind of bullying.  It's taken me awhile to come to this place, because I waited to see if she would evince any remorse, contrition, or the slightest awareness she hurt someone who, by her own admission "never let her down, always came through for her, and was always there for her."  But although I've waited a long time, there's been nothing, and so, reluctantly, I've decided to act. 

Bullies come in all guises and in all forms.  Like every other form of evil, in order to exist, they must rely on good people doing nothing.  

Feeling some fire...

Check out my article on Viewshound!

How to succeed in saving a weekend...

...that almost got spoiled by the show last night?  Go see the latest revival of "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying" currently starring Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter) and John Laroquette. 

Laroquette alone is worth the price of the ticket and Daniel Radcliffe is just adorable as "Ponty" - the clever whiz kid who rises from window washer to Chairman of the Board in two acts.  His true love is played by a lovely ingenue making her Broadway debut, and the supporting cast is energetically fun.  Two thumbs up and five stars. 

Knowing when to fold 'em

If life, as some wit once opined, is all about showing up, to my way of thinking there's nothing worse than not knowing when to leave.  Fish and guests, said Ben Franklin, stink after three days.  And old musicians who don't know that their music has turned to mush, stink even worse. 

I know our culture expects us to keep rockin' til we drop.  I know we're all supposed to be in pursuit of Eternal Youth.  I know I'm supposed to find something touching, even epic, in people determined to go rocking and raging into that good night.  

But there's something terrifying in the aspect of an aging rocker, hopping all over a stage like an epileptic monkey.  There's something especially terrifying about the said aging rocker performing in front of an audience full of golf shirts and bald pates reflecting more light than the disco ball hanging in the center of the room.  The way I see it, it's not just terrifying, it's pathetic. 

Last night I attended a show by Southside Johnny at BB King's Blues Club in NYC.  The first four or five songs were so awful, it didn't even sound like music.  Noise is not music, and cranking up the volume doesn't create harmony... it  just creates more noise.  At one point, when the audience was singing along "ooooooh" - Southside quipped "Oh, those are the lyrics you all know." No, I wanted to shout... those are the lyrics this audience can remember. I'm old enough to know there's a difference.


Don't get me wrong.  Everyone's entitled to relive their youth.  Everyone's entitled to enjoy their music - if that's what they want to call it.  But if Southside Johnny wants to remain the blues legend Beloved says he is, someone should do him the favor and tell him to hang up his mic.  Because it's time, Southside... past time.    

Coming out of the Dark

I feel as if I've taken a long trip to a place at once faraway and around the corner, that I've been about as dead as it's possible to be without actually leaving your body.  But little by little, I can feel myself waking up and coming back, because after all, I'm not really dead.  Not yet.

Stuff I've been doing instead of blogging...

1. Cleaning.  I've done my attic, two bedrooms and one bathroom so far.  Even Beloved has caught the bug. 

2. Gardening.  I've discovered the most theraputic thing I can do on any given day, other than staring at the ocean, is weeding.  Go figure. 

3. Soul-searching.  The last couple months have offered me a lot of Life Lessons... the big kind, the ones that make you want to sit up and pay attention.  And listen.

4. Connecting.  There's nothing like Major Life Events to show you who your friends really are.  There've been the friends who've sent cards, sent emails, phoned even though I haven't felt much like talking.  There've been the ones who've read this blog and reached out, even after a silence.  Friends like that have been the most healing of all.  Then there've been the ones who've turned on me and treated me less than kindly... like the one who thought the expression of her sexuality was more important than my expression of my grief.  And fortunately, I am discovering I have more of the former than the latter in my life, and for that I am very, very grateful. 

The Roof Above My Head

"It's winter on the island;
My heart is cold as stone;
Like a house deserted,
I'm roofless and alone..."
                                    From "Waking Ned Divine"*

No one does death quite like the Celts.  No other song quite describes the way I feel.  "Roofless" has a special meaning to me.  My father made his fortune in roofs. 

Not putting them on, mind you, but in inspecting them, in maintaining them and in helping people who didn't understand the value of their investment in the relatively thin layer of wood and asphalt most people have above their heads.  My father, in the words of one who knew him well, didn't just start a business - he created an industry.  No one had heard of a "roofing consultant" until Mike Kelleher came along. 

People don't think about their roofs, Daddy used to say.  They put them up and then they forget about them, until there's a problem.  And when there is a problem, people are at the mercy of contractors who don't necessarily understand exactly what's gone wrong either.  Long before people understood walls, people sought roofs.  The earliest evidence of a roof, in fact, dates back 40,000 years to Siberia. 

My Daddy was neither the rock beneath my feet nor the wind beneath my wings. My Daddy was the roof above my head.  Like the roof over my literal head, I didn't see him often or find it easy to get to him.  I didn't have to be with him to know he was there.  Because like a roof, I could always feel his presence in my life, no matter how far apart we were:  keeping away the storms, sheltering me through the darkness, bearing up no matter what the weather. 

*Click on either text or title to hear the song on YouTube.

Spring Rain

I took a walk yesterday. All around the gardens, in between the raindrops, the first official spring assessment feels to me like visiting old friends you haven't seen in a while. The weather was so extreme this past winter, I was happy to see so much apparently has survived.

The crocuses, the hyacinths and the snowdrops are blooming. The silver willows have burst gold. In patches, the grass is turning emerald green, and the branches of the lilac are swelling with fat buds. The waterfall is foaming and Mr and Mrs Duck showed up exactly a month ago.

This spring has a particularly poignant edge to it. It's a week ago my father died. For years, my father wished he was well enough to travel, well enough to come and see the beautiful place where I live.

As I splashed through the puddles and inspected the beds and the bushes and the buds, I felt very strongly that this year, at last, he has.