My aunts and uncles as youngsters

Terry, Peter, Dad (Tom) and Mary



Peter, Terry and Dad (Tom)



My cute little Dad (Tom)

Berry pickers

Look at all those berries!



Zoom in on the berries!!!!



Years later, still doing the same thing

Who is this woman?

Unknown

Grandpa and family

Grandpa's brother Francis?



Little Grandpa




Grandpa Leaning


Anna and two daughters

Grandpa as a youngster

Grandpa and Rita


Grandpa and Rita


Rita and the greats: Anna and John


John and Anna

Children at St. Anne's

In Juneau or Douglas, Alaska. One of these children is Anna.

My great aunts and uncles: Francis, Helen, Beatrice, Edmond (holding Sarah)


My great aunt Beatrice


My great Aunt Beatrice


My great aunts and uncle: Beatrice, Anne and Edmond


My great aunts: Anne, Dot and Katie

My Great Grandmother and My Grandpa

Grandpa (Hilary), Patty, and Great-Grandmother Anna Egan

Great Grandmother

My great grandmother, Anna Marie (Chamberlain Fontaine) Egan

Don’t mix dreams and politics

I dreamed Barack Obama was at this local meeting I went to. I think I was a member of the press or something. When I stood up to address him, I called him "Mr. Bush," and I was all, "Sorry, I didn't mean that," and then I did it again! Strange. And then later, he was walking with me through Georgetown and I was telling him that he's really got to push the issue of creating a global unit of currency, and I was telling him that's the way to erase poverty. He was telling me I needed to focus more in environmental issues, to which I said, "I know, I have to, Mr, Bush. Oops, sorry. My entire generation has grown up knowing we have inherited a world in environmental crisis." Uh huh.

I pledge no allegiance

I am on the dark side
I have stress right now
Don't we always?
But stresses have occupied my time recently
and I've been a bit distant
but I have deep love for those I may have avoided recently
including you
even if I really should have been avoiding others instead of you
for my own health.

A quick few

1. Saying no now can mean saying yes to something more beautiful later.

2. Checking the pockets of a demin jacket not washed since summer can be wonderfully interesting and valuable.

3. As I was describing earlier, my heart sits on an impossibly precarious precipice, and I thank all those who share live and love with me for joining/supporting/thinking of me on our adventures on Tree Planet.

4. I take life for granted for too many minutes of the day. Plus side: I am recognizing the joy in more of my seconds, minutes, and working up to hours. Lucky us, we get each other. This means you.

5. I still prefer sketch pads and markers and recycled paper journals and flowy pens to the electronica that is blogging.

6. Forgiveness can be mutually beneficial.

7. After five years of full-on war, tonight is soothed by 70s music.

Alive and well in February 2008

Happy to be alive today...

Thinking and reminiscing about LEAP DAY 2000 and remembering what a crazy day that was (aka "The Day That Doesn't Exist"), how thankful I am that we survived that crazy day, and how everything changed that day.

In a crazy twist, I was at the bookstore the other day, and I saw this notecard that has a picture of a guy watching his house burn. It says: "As he watched his house burning to the ground, he kept thinking, 'Now I am finally free.'"

I wasn't necessarily aware of it on Feb. 29th, 2000, but the experience of losing all things material was one of the most liberating external factors in my life, and how that experience really raised the bar for me on what "liberation" means. For this I am thankful. Mostly I am thankful to be alive.

Blessings to my girls who survived with me and are still doing well today.

Not inspirational

I'm so sick of this sexist
racist classist
corrupt self-serving capitalist
human economy that I'm living in. Is it my creation too?

I know, I know, "the economy" is essentially false anyway,
but I can't find sustainable ways to live outside of it....so I reconcile for a while.

And then it festers.

I'm sick of boys' clubs. It's not what you know, it's who you know.
"work within the system to change the system" ...if it doesn't change you first.

I am sick of sacrifice that is less like altruism and more like martyrdom.

I can't get ahead, and I find that when I try, I can't find any ethical ways to do it. I find myself depending more and more on the very structures that in my heart I am was/am working to dissolve and evolve...the structures that lock so many people and good ideas out.

I am getting farther and farther away from my first loyalty,
my loyalty to the earth.

Income comes before ethics, gotta get by...
....it isn't enough to just reconcile.

And I can't single-handedly change all the systems that I find unethical.

I just wonder how many of us are making choices every day that we know in our hearts are not the right choice, the good choice, the evolved choice, but feel powerless in our capacity to make those changes that we know are necessary, good choices left unmade, feeding the dragons that live beside us, inside us...(choices that *surprise* ultimately preserve the rich-richer-poor-poorer economy, no matter which side of the coin we are on as individuals)

A dragon lives inside me too, a dragon that loves the getting human applause for the choices I make, choices that honestly and ultimately wear down the earth in ways that are not balanced, choices that are called success, a success that is about as genuine as carbon credits, and we know this, we all know this, but to change it would take lifetimes and critical masses...so we go with the flow and with the grain.

I need better choices...

How much of this do I really create for myself?

Noodle recipe for one

Yum, my dinner was really good and fast.

Boil soba noodles. While they are cooking, mix together in a bowl a little chopped ginger, some chopped garlic cloves, a good chunk of crunchy peanut butter, some olive oil, a little bit of toasted sesame oil, lime juice, cayenne pepper and cumin. Strain the noodles. Fold the the sauce into the noodles. After it's mixed, add in some chopped green onions. Delightful and easy after a long day!