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Saturday, September 26, 2009

Devouring Dora

Tovi has been begging me to immortalize his (and Reuben's) current true love in cake for about 4 months now. "You make Dora cupcakes, Mommy! Pleeeeeease!" Damn you, Nick Jr.

I guess Dora is good practice for me for that day in the future when my lads will bring home the girls of their dreams, so I take their devotion to her in stride. Sure, I find Dora has some annoying personal traits: a whiny voice, a zeppelin head. Her hairstyle could be more flattering. On the upside, she appears to like animals and languages, so she scores some points there. She is adventurous and outdoorsy, if not a little bossy. I am pleased that Dora seems to embrace a politics of fairness, although she definitely skirts around the tough issues.

So, years fom now when Toe or Roo brings home the girl with piercings or who claims to have had "a bad experience with dogs," maybe I will be a little more tolerant. So what if she is writing her grad thesis on the Twilight novels, which she loves? So what if she doesn't like to go camping? So what if she is....Republican?!?!?!

Breathe. Prepare. Remember.

As long as the little blimp-head believes in the Lion of Judah and loves my boy, everything else will fall into place somehow. And if it doesn't, Momma Tiger will just eat her up.

Sat, September 26, 2009 | link

Thursday, September 24, 2009

Ordinary Miracles

Since Toe was born, even when he was still a tiny, vegetative lump in a receiving blanket, I have been telling him Grandpa Bobo and His Little Dog Hobo stories. In his older life, my dad's nickname was Grandpa Bobo, and if you had known my dad--basically a sort of Jim Rockford/Pa Jode/Walter Mondale hybrid--you'd now how hard it was for him to graciously recieve such a goofy term of endearment. He did, though, typically with a shake of the head and a chuckle.

Anyway, maybe it was just the sound of my voice, or the special FX (whistling winds, crunhing leaves, swishing snow, chirping birds, bubbling water, barking dogs...), but the stories always seemed to put our little insomniac to sleep. Even now, when ADHD meds and rigorous outdoor activity and warm milk and soft music won't do it, a good Grandpa Bobo story sometimes will.

The stories themselves aren't anything to write home about. They have names like Grandpa Bobo and His Little Dog Hobo Pick Apples or Grandpa Bobo and His Little Dog Hobo Plant a Garden, or...Visit the Big City or ...And the Big Blizzard. You get the picture. The stories always star straight-talking Grandpa Bobo, living the simple life with cherrful gusto on his little farm with Hobo, the barking mutt whose "woof woof" vocabulary is always interpreted for the listener. Sometimes there are guest stars such as "The Naughty Racoon" or "The Sneaky Gopher" or "The Rusty Tractor." Other humans are not really needed to develop the themes in a Grandpa Bobo story, I am not sure why. Grandpa Bobo stories alway end with Grandpa B and his little dog Hobo taking a well-deserved and satified rest in Grandpa B.'s great big chair. This after a long adventurous day and a yummy healthful snack. At the end of every children's story told in our house, everybody sleeps.

Of course for me, Grandpa Bobo stories serve another purpose too. When you have children as an orphaned adult, one of the hardest things is coming to terms with the fact that your kids will never know your parents. And when your parents were magnificent people, you search yor brain for ways to help your children somehow know who they were, so see them as more than a photograph or a name on a family tree. Whenever I tel Toe (and now Roo too) a Grandpa B story, I am telling him a little about myself, sharing my grief a little, celebrating my love a little, and saying to my son, this is part of wher you came from, Boy. It's a glorious sadness wrapped in joy and a folksy little tale.

So, yesterday, Toe was having a pretty bad day. Up at 4:30 a.m., he comes into my room, puts his little mug two inches from my face and chirps his usual, "Good morning, Mommy! I can't sleep anymore!" From there, the day pretty much went downhill. Restless energy, emotional outbursts, agitation, the wiggles in that little body. By about 4 p.m. we were both dragging, and Toe's overstimulated brain just wouldn't surrender.

Then he did something that instantly made the world disappear. He crawled up into my lap where I was reading (our own big chair, which Toe calls "the thinking chair...") and said, "Mommy, I want to hear a Grandpa Bobo story."

So Grandpa Bobo and his little dog Hobo went on an autum trip. Leaves crunched, the van swayed, apple pie and hot cocoa were eaten, deer were spotted, trees were identified, and at the end, everyone fell asleep in the big chair. Including Toe.

Thu, September 24, 2009 | link

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Reubenesque

If it weren't for the scar on my belly and post-traumatic nightmare images of screaming in the middle of his C-section, I would swear this child was left on our doorstep by gypsies. Okay, and he does look like a mini-me version of his biological gandpappy, too, so there's that.

As Roo nears 3, his personality is blossoming. But some days we ask ourselves, who is this child? Somewhere in our recessive genetic code, perhaps we were realted to the following:

aKurt Barthel: of German descent (yah, see?), founding father of American nudism, led a parade of buff-bare folks through New York in the 1920s to have a big naked picnic on the bluffs near the Hudson
aRobert Schumann: also of the Germanic heritage, hmmm?, wholeheartedly obsessed bibliophile, died in 1920 at which time he was said to have the finest personal library ever compiled
aJoey Chestnut: definitely not German, so probably no relation, but...#1 ranked "food warrior" in the International Federation of Competitive Eaters worldwide watch list (yes, there really, there is one)
aFerdinand Vandeveer von Hayden: probably Dutch in origin, but Holland is really just Germany's bedroom community, biggest dinosaur freak in American history
aHai Ngoc: no doubt 100% Vietnamese (but you never know--Reuben does seem to love tropical weather), man who has not slept for 11, 700 consecutive nights--that's 33 years, my friends
aWolfgang Steinlitz: so German it is almost criminal, lover of the folk music and the stringed instruments

Hey, wait. A nudist book-loving, foodie, archeology-bent insomniac Pete Seeger fan? Okay, I guess that's not such a stretch.

Tue, September 22, 2009 | link

Saturday, September 19, 2009

For the Love of Israel

ראש השנה שמח

When the High Holy Days start, my heart is with Israel. I always think of my lovely friend Barbara, a South African Talmudic Jew who once asked me why a Lefty Nazarene Shicksa would want to be friends with her. I could have told her it was because I loved the serene beauty of the shabbat dinners she invited me to, or because I valued the endlessly entertaining Yiddish I'd learned from her above all earthly things, or because after shopping with her I knew the meaning of those many mysterious little kosher product symols: U, K, Pareve. Partly I loved her for her fabulous bread and how earnestly she taught me to bless it, as if she were imparting to me the very instructions for my earthly survival. I like that she understood why out of the hundreds of pictures I had from my time in Germany, I hadn't shot a single one when I toured Belsen.

The real answer to Barbara's question was, why wouldn't I be friends with her? A smart, dog-loving chick with a hippie streak, passionate ideals and crazy stories about her time on an Israeli kibbutz. A kind woman full of faith and with an enormous heart. Why would I not love her just because I am a Germanic light-haired Christian and a Democrat, and where did she ever get that idea?

Oh yeah. Mainstream media.

As a Christian, I know from my Bible that one of my greatest commissions in life is to love and support the Jewish nation as a people, something that is hard for many modern, Hellenized Christians to fully embrace and that is impossible for many non-Christians to wrap their heads around. I know that the Apostle Paul reminds me of the debt we Gentile Christians owe to Israel for our blessings in Christ, and that it is our divine duty to aid the Jewish nation in earthly matters:

[They] were pleased to make a contribution among the saints in Jerusalem. They were pleased to do it, and indeed they owe it to them. For if the gentiles have shared in the Jews' spiritual blessings, they owe it to the Jews to share with them their material blessings. Rom 15:26-27

In the United States, where the politics have so damaged and skewed the image of the true Christian commission, I can understand why Barbara may have felt her uncertanties about someone carrying that now-demonized label of "Christian". So much is always being made in political news of Republican vs. Democrat on the issues of faith, and the Isreal conundrum is no different: missile programs and the threat of terrorism, unethical nation-building and national security, ethnic cleansing and Gaza settlements, Zionist expansion. Whether or not my President or my governor or my senator or my church family stands shoulder to shoulder with Israel, I know that they should be. I don't need FOX news or Michele Bachmann to tell me what that means, because my God already has, accurately and infallibly.

Whenever you question whether or not the Bible really means to express a moral imperative for the love of Israel, remember that Satan's first words were, "Has God indeed said...?" and stop questioning. Then go and bake your best Jewish friend an orange honey cake that will knock her Rosh Hoshana socks off, and give all the glory to Hashem!

Sat, September 19, 2009 | link

Thursday, September 17, 2009

A boy, a girl, a bird, a peacock...

Check it out. So here'e the three-ring circus event planned for our house tonight. BlueCollar Hubby and I plan to watch the season premier of one of our favorite gulity pleasure shows, The Office (how can we not like it: wide-eyed Pam and Jim meet and fall in love while working in mind-numbing atmosphere of moronic corporate oppressors--not so unlike hooking up while working for ethically questionable academic administrators at Big 10 University) while simultaneously monitoring realtime Twitter commentary from Rainn Wilson (aka Dwight Shrute) and attempting to put two hyperactive insomniac preschoolers to bed.

We are so 2009! Have to run so we can carb up now for the big sprint!

Thu, September 17, 2009 | link

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

The Swedes are coming! The Swedes are coming!

Yippee! We just signed a contract with the Lovaas Institute for Toe's intensive in-home ABA therapy! After a long wait and much ado, our names came to the top of the list, and by the end of the month a small band of merry and decicated therapists will be descending upon our lilliputian home to work their anti-autism magic (well, it's more like roll-up-your-sleeves sweat labor than magic, but shhhh...don't tell Toe!). Since Swedes are know to be impossibly finicky and we are known to be impossibly untidy, the next step is OH NO, START CLEANING! BlueCollar Hubby and I have opted to initially blame the disorder
in the BS Haus on the fact that we live in an "historic Craftsman home," and then just spend nights scrubbing. Not something those of you who enjoy modern architecture in your homes (ie: you can eat sushi sans utensils off your newly installed laminate flooring) may understand, but it's an issue. We will, in our own hip-foxy way, be a living reenactment of The Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe.

BTW, if you are not familiar with Applied Behavioral Analysis (and why would you be?), there's a very egghead decalogue definition at the ABA International website, or you can get skip the pretense and read the online ABA For Dummies (like me) version here. Basically it is a teaching/therapy approach based on the Lovaas Study of 1987 which has the greatest success rate for helping kids with ASDs shake off the shackles of autistic impediments and develop as regular kids. It is an amazing program and we are lucky and thankful to get this going. Typically this treatment isn't covered by medical insurance, but we were able to successfully appeal for an exception. In some states, parent groups have successfully lobbied for ABA therapy to become a legally mandated medical option for kids with ASDs. In other places, there are people who have mortgaged their homes who are working 4 jobs just to get their kids the treatment. ABA therapy can cost up to $100,000 per year, and so many are suffering without it and advocating for its provision to families.

Um, and they may be Norwegians.

Wed, September 16, 2009 | link

Monday, September 14, 2009

Dude, where's my weather?

A breath thou art, Servile to all the skyey influences...
~William Shakespeare

Is this Minnesota, or did I fall into some Rumpelstilskin sleep and wake up in mild, temperate, relentlessly sunny Southern California? Did anybody see Neil Simon's I Ought to Be in Pictures, the movie version? Poor Walter Matthau, a cranky down-on-his-luck screenwriter transplanted from Brooklyn to Hollywood--his daughter comes to visit and tries to open the shades in his perpetrually darkened house. "No! Don't!" he howls and snaps them shut. "The damn sun--it gets in everywhere--even the cracks!" Hey, you know, Shakespeare was heliophobic, if you want to call it that. And that's my mood. That's the bone I have to pick with the atmosphere. What kind of meteorological monotony is this?

I live in MN for a reason, okay. People think it's my friends and family and the exceptional standard of living (and they're plusses, sure), but really it's the weather (okay, and also that it's a blue state). I want the volatility, the daily 3 p.m. storm warnings and civil defense sirens. I want the freak show of green cloudbanks pitching hail and brontophobic dogs shaking in the basement . Straight line winds, squall lines, heat lightning, something. And winters! Where are the blizzards of my childhood? Snow so deep you had to tunnel out your door, so constant we sculpted barcaloungers out of permasnow in the back yard we could sit in til April. Igloos for the dogs, snowdays, whiteouts, power outages and road closures. What the Fujita?

I'm tired of the whims of the jet stream, waltzing back and forth over the Twin Cities like a Taxi dancer with a full card. Taking her party north to Alexandria or Duluth, south to Madison or Milwaukee. And Chicago, Chicago, Chicago. With the museums and the hot dogs, the Drake and Cusack family, with Hyde Park and Navy Pier and Giordano's Pizza and the Cubbies, don't they have enough already?

Of course, I can't say I didn't see this climate change coming. You may have noticed, I am a little bit of a weather geek and therefore I pay attention. My fist tipoff that we were in for a little trouble here was my 7th grade Earth Science teacher. I have a vague memory of his potent and odious warning just before Algebra, Spring 1982: Yah, we're right on the border here between arid grassland and lush forest. West, that's prairie dry. East, that's your moisture. A little change in rainfall, a little drought or extra heat...then we're the Badlands. Bless him, God rest his soul. He knew it. We are getting hotter, drier, more boring. We are wearing sunglasses now and erecting al fresco cafes in alarming abundance. We have become predictable. Monotonous weather bites. It can also make you buggy, and that's one I am holding on to. Read Weather Influences by Edwin Grant Dexter or take at a look at Forbes' list of "America's Wildest Weather Ciites" to feel my pain. And don't forget to keep in touch when I move to that rusty modular home down there in Tornado alley.

Mon, September 14, 2009 | link

Sunday, September 13, 2009

Shabbat Surrender

On a Sunday afternoon, my belly full of the sweet fruit of the Spirit, my mind renewed by worship and the Word, I have to lay down my sword. I give. I’m tired. I’m so ever-loving tired of religio-political infighting, scandal, lies and name-calling. Left, right, left right. This morning I woke up with an ache from clenched teeth and a queasy stomach from midnight committee meetings on Health Care Reform --and those meetings were just in my head. Glenn Beck, Teabaggers, Joe Wilson, Death Panels. Max Blumenthal’s book blaming Focus on the Family and homeschooling for a troubled young man’s killing spree. Why does a lunatic fringe get to do PR for my religion? Who said the either the Far Right or the muckraking anti-Christian Far-Right haters know the nature of my God and what he really teaches? A pox on both their houses.

It’s hard for me to retreat to my tent. I’m an advocate by nature, a slave to my Father’s Truth. Let me be the first to say it. Today, I’m not fired up. I’m not ready to go.

Gary Younge of The Nation wrote Wednesday:
It's not difficult to ridicule the American right. Its peculiar blend of paranoia, mania, fantasy and misanthropy has been given full rein these past few months. Those who demanded in July to see Obama's birth certificate (which does exist) ended August invoking the British healthcare system's "death panels" (which do not). That most of their claims were verifiably false was of little consequence--to them at least. At one point they insisted that if scientist Stephen Hawking were British and subject to the National Health Service, he would be dead, even though Hawking is British, alive and grateful to the NHS for his care.

Lion of Judah, help me! I just want there to be truth! I just want God’s family to acknowledge the moral imperatives in this world instead of sticking to some Sharks vs. Jets routine based on political ideological entrenchments. Everyone should have enough. If a man asks you for your tunic, you give it. They will know we are Christians by our love. These are not Woodstock Free Love Pie in the Sky ideologies of a dewy-eyed fool. These are our beliefs based on holy scripture.

Does it really have to get any more complicated than that?

Sun, September 13, 2009 | link

Friday, September 11, 2009

Pres. Obama at Target Center TOMORROW

Holy mother of all perfect traffic storms, Batman! Tomorrow Obama rallies at the Target Center at 12:30 p.m. (doors open at 9:30 FYI), just 20 minutes after the Twins game starts at the Dome. Oh, and there's that third little downtown Mpls. event--the grand opening of Gopher Stadium (and they're playing the Marines or somesuch big attractive group of men...). Fire up your helicopters!

Fri, September 11, 2009 | link

Thursday, September 10, 2009

Oh, Edvard!

Poor Toe. In this first day of school 2009 pic he looks like a cross between a Playskool version of Munch's Scream and the bobblehead of trepidation...

See you in 3 hours little buddy!

Thu, September 10, 2009 | link

If I could Tweet

God save the songbirds, BlueCollar Daughter is now on Twitter. My first tweet in life was:

Had a much more peacey time last night having instituted martial law with the children. Worked a lot better than marshmallow law ever did.

Other Tweets considered:

Thinking about ABA therapy and ASDs and ADHD and HCR makes my head kinda bloaty.

Why doesn’t Café Latte make a gluten-free German chocolate cherry torte…boo.

Thu, September 10, 2009 | link

Too Bad They Can't Court-Order Common Sense

MPR reports in this story that retailer Abercrombie and Fitch is court-ordered to pay $115K in fines to a young autistic girl and her family for refusing to let a caregiver (her sister) accompany the kid into the dressing room at their MOA store. Even after sister and the mom explain the girl’s disability and need for accommodations to the power-crazed clerk and her god-complex “assistant manager,” they are told to just buy all the clothes they’re interested in and try them on at home. Whah? A violation of human rights? Yah, says the court. You do not want to know what I say.

Be extra thoughtful this month with someone you know who has an invisible illness (over 20 million of us do), or take a moment to think about your perception of differently-abled individuals. Increase awareness, understanding and compassion.

Thu, September 10, 2009 | link

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

A Tale of Two Kiddies

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...

Summer. Admit it. You loved it, but now that school's in, your heart leaps a little. If you have kids, you know it's true. Those tyrannical little Brown Shirts and their endlessly energetic enthusiasm, bullying you into sunshine and happiness. It's hard to settle down to enjoy a really good depressing book about the tragedies of history or the miseries of the future when all day long it's ice cream and giggles and butterflies. No more catching frogs and stargazing. Let's get back to the long slow deathmarch of adulthood.

...it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness...

No more popsicles and popcorn for dinner amid the canopy of pinetrees and the hum of fireflies. The garden has yielded, and there is no campy excuse for chocolate and melted sugar on a cracker as the evening meal. It's time to put up vegetables rich in lycopene and feel the sweet burn of capsaicin in your mouth. It's time to bake the bread so high in fiber a slice stands alone on the plate, like a little soldier on guard for the condition of your colon. Write 50 times on the blackboard: I will not play in puddles.

...it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity...

"Look at this rock, Daddy!" (picks up and shows Daddy 12th rock in 5 minutes)
"Yeah, Tovi, that's nice. That's called 'Leverite." (mock astonishment; swats horsefly)
"Wow..what's that?" (doesn't wait for an answer; scratches mosquito bite on ankle, runs ahead on path, already fixated on rock 13)
"That means we 'leave 'er right' here." (tosses rock)

...it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness...

Back to school
New crayons
Black-eyed Susans
Fat bees
Scampering squirrels
Turning leaves
Cider
Season premiers
Thanksgiving
Board games and jigsaw puzzles
Football
Sweaters
Frosty breath
Tobaggons
Icicles
Chili
Snow Days
Christmas
Hockey
Featherbeds
Winter Carnival
Cocoa
Windchill
Fender-benders
Chapped lips
Xcel bills
Perpetual midnight
SAD

...it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair; we had everything before us, we had nothing before us...

"The water was no doubt drawn from the well and walesweep. There was no sink, and the family washing probably was done in the river…how they must have dreaded the long winter!"
("How the Fathers of New England Kept House in the Early Days," New York Times, Dec. 19, 1897)

...we were all going directly to Heaven, we were all going the other way...

Wed, September 9, 2009 | link

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Schoolhouse Rocks

I'm so used to being erroneously called a socialist, I didn't flinch when they started calling our president one. But getting all hot and bothered by a presidential chat with school kids on their first day back? Calling it a Communist Manifesto? Accusing the Prez of indoctrinating their young minds with socialist propaganda? Refusing to send the kiddos to school so they don't have to listen to the big bad president? Did I fall asleep and wake up in a Ray Bradbury yarn?

Read the complete text of Obama's speech to be delivered at 10:00 a.m., and don't keep the kids home. Unless you consider flamthrowing language like "work hard and do your homework" propaganda. They'll probably be listening to their iPods or fighting over who gets to hold the new classroom pet gerbil anyway.

Tue, September 8, 2009 | link

The Ice Cometh

The state Office of Energy Security, which represents users’ interests, has examined Xcel’s proposal and believes the utility should only get an increase of $73 million...

In preparation for our 2009 winter heating season, the author presents:

ECONOMY: A HIGH OCTANE POEM

Flaming Armageddon!

Washed out pipelines,

atoms split—dancing aglow on the head of a pin and

war and war and rumors of war.

Dagnabbit it,

wouldn’t you know,

just where the dinosaurs croaked leaving all their luscious,

precious liquid bones

is the rich, vast, untouchable heathen desert?

Who thought when the end came

the harbinger would be a $12 Hershey Bar

and layers of 3M Thinsulate on a 2 year-old?

Who thought the energy would run out first,

like someone drained the sun

and deposited in its place

a cold, soulless stone,

a majestic hockey arena,

a beautiful, empty and well-lit 24 hour British Petroleum?

Tue, September 8, 2009 | link

Monday, September 7, 2009

Ode a ma famille

You know it's a Braun family BBQ if...

There are people on the guestlist with names like Uncle Noony, Uncle Poopy, Tante Chicken, Uncle Monster Steve, Wildebeest, Snickers, Katybird and Yellow-Shirt-Friend

There is lively discussion of the use of leeches and maggots in the modern medical treatment of necrotic tissue during the appetizer course

At least one child emulates at least one dog by eating grass and vomits like dog in the corner of the yard

An inter-active "Lego Pit" is as essential as food

The grillmaster loses at least part of one appendage to an "unexpected" flameup

A "Flaunt Your Belly" contest is held

tickelbelly.jog.jpg

Beverages can be seen shooting out of noses

You can call out, "Hey, Cuz!" and everyone looks up

A game of bean-bag toss becomes cutthroat

Something is served called "firechips"

One is burdened by the force of familial love

Everybody gets a turn

Everybody "helps out"

Everybody has fun

Events not pictured: a chair breaks, cats flee, the police come and pain medication is needed.

Mon, September 7, 2009 | link

Friday, September 4, 2009

My Time in San Quentin

The following is a guest blog by BlueCollar Hubby...

BlueCollar Daughter (a.k.a. My Beautiful Wife) has been egging me on to contribute a post to her blog. Until now, I have refrained, as my writing skills pale in comparison to hers. Yesterday, however, I found a used copy of a CD I have wanted for years. I was reminded of it recently when a Facebook Friend sent me a link to this amazing performance of “Folsom Prison Blues” by five year old Wesley http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDbAxhV2ofM on YouTube. So I went out and found a cheap used copy of “Johnny Cash at San Quentin”.

Now, I am not a country music fan by any means. I am a fan of great albums. A good album is hard to come by. These days more so than ever. Beginning with Napster in the 90’s and ITunes of today, the album has largely been replaced with the single song purchase (or theft). Sure, you can find the obscure song that you heard once or you can buy the Rolling Stones live in Yokohama version of “Sympathy for the Devil” because someone told you that it is so much better than the Live in Detroit version. But what you don’t get by an individual song purchase is the ‘album experience’. Each song builds off the previous one and adds to those songs that follow. A great album shares many similarities to a good novel. Skipping to track 3 because you really like that one is fine for 90% of the albums out there but for those rare few, you are joining the program midstream.

In the case of this album, it’s a recording of the first show Johnny Cash performed at San Quentin. Here is a man walking into one of the toughest prisons in America with his wife and in-laws by his side. The year is 1969 and the prison was not overflowing with country music fans. Talk about pressure. You choose the wrong song or say the wrong thing, you find yourself with 1000 men with very little to lose in adding another murder to their sentence. But as the recording proceeds, you witness this amazing transformation from these prisoners just passing an evening by to them truly being moved by the music. There are former inmates today who still reference that evening as life transforming. And listening to this 40 year old recording I am also moved. I feel their pain, their hopes, their fears. I feel the monotony of their lives, the bitterness of lost years, and sorrow for past deeds that cannot be undone—the hope for redemption. As the album draws to a close, I feel as though I have shared this past hour with them and they with me. I will never forget the time I spent with this great soulful musician and the inmates of San Quentin.

BlueCollar Hubby

Fri, September 4, 2009 | link

Thursday, September 3, 2009

I Am A Union Maid

Labor Day is a big holiday in the BlueCollar house.

We celebrate, we picnic, we fraternize, we advocate, we mourn, we debate, we organize, we remember and comemorate--and we always, always talk about the truth.

There are some strange ideas out there about who labor union members and organizers are.
Socialists, Commies, old white guys on the take, thugs, mafia sympathizers, pinkos. A lot of people think of migrant workers or truck drivers when they think of unions--maybe factories and school teachers. Some only think Jimmy Hoffa. Education about what labor unions are and do is so quickly passing out of the national psyche that there are now organizations, such as the The American Labor Studies Center and certain faculty of CURA at the University of MN who seek to reasearch, gather and disperse educational information about organized labor to the public. The truth is union members are higly educated white collar professionals as well as blue collar skilled workers. They are and have been men, women and children--families of all kinds, of all ethcnic origins and social and occupational profiles. Many of us are patriots and followers of Christ, not America-bashing atheists (though I don't speak for everyone--as with any group there is a huge diversity). We are just people working hard, lobbying for fairness, expecting justice and nothing less.

I have been a union maid since I was eight years old and I picketed with my father for the UAW. Both my sons attended their first AFL-CIO Labor Day picnics at Harriet Island while enwombed, so I guess you can call them union lads. BlueCollar Hubby is a poster boy for the necessary protections of worker rights, and I've been the poster girl at his side. If you want to see who unions are, look at the BlueCollar Beloveds page. That goofy looking Gemanic couple with the adorable tow-headed little boys and disobedient dogs. That's who we are.

This year is especially momentous for us. With a progressive president and congress in place, serious work is being done to gain support for and pass late Senator Edward Kennedy's Employee Free Choice Act of 2009 (introduced in March 2009) which is in the U.S. House right now (read the bill itself, or for an easier-to-read summary, view an AFL-CIO compiled pdf at www.aflcio.org/joinaunion/voiceatwork/efca/upload/EFCA_Summary_09.pdfsummary).
The bipartisan bill addresses what have been growing concerns in these tough economic times: the dissolution of the middle class (largely due to the disappearance of living wage jobs that offer benefits, contracts and security), the threat to job security by those who attempt to organize unions or lobby for existing contract rights (hmmm...anyone we know?) and the failure of employers to obey the inconsistently-enforced and often toothless employee organizing laws.

You can help in the fight for a more broadly-shared American prosperity by supporting a worker's right to living wages, job safety and health benefits. Do this by contacting your local congressional representative and asking her/him to support the Employee Free Choice Act, or donate to the Turn Around America Fund which lobbies in support of this bill.

And join us for fun and music at Congressman Keith Ellison's Labor Day Picnic at Boom island in Minneapolis, Sept.7 from 1-3 p.m.!

From Woody Guthrie's Union Maid...

This union maid was wise
To the tricks of company spies
She couldn't be fooled by a company stools
She'd always organize the guys
She'd always get her way
When she struck for higher pay
She'd show her card to the National Guard And this is what she'd say

You girls who want to be free
Just take a tip from me
Get you a man who's a union man
And join the Ladies Auxiliary
Married life ain't hard
When you've got a union card
And a union man has a happy life
When he's got a union wife

Thu, September 3, 2009 | link

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

You can't scare me, I'm sticking to the union...

We’re not your classic heroes. We’re the other guys.
--William H. Macy as “The Shoveller” in Mystery Men

AFSCME Local 3800:
They may officially be the Association of Federal, State, County and Municipal Employees, but these collective bargainers are better denoted as Advocating Fairness and Seeking Change in Minnesota Employment. Of course to me, who has a great big mushy spot in her heart for them, they will always be the “All-Fabulous Squad of Comrades Masterminding Equity.” Our guys and gals of justice are the unsung superheroes of labor relations, and they helped make it possible for BlueCollar Hubby to finally, FINALLY, receive his deserved severance from Shame On U. Heated meetings in the batcave (er, the Coffman basement?), the flash of a kelly-green cape, wizardry with words and contract language—the A-Team has leapt into the fray of higher education evildoers and come out victorious for Joe Employee (aka Steve Employee, aka Grievance Boy, aka Captain Longsuffering).
For years and years and years of protection on the streets of Gotham Our heartfelt
thanks to just some of those caped crusaders who do their acronym justice:

NO CRYIN' RYAN
BIG MAC GLADDY
THAT'S THE FACT A'ZUC
TALK THE TALK WALKER
MAKE MAGIC MIKE
AHERN THE BURNER

Tue, September 1, 2009 | link

ThEre Is NO SNoOze BuTTon oN My CHiLD

Chinua Achebe had it half right. Things and mommies fall apart...

Up again at 4 a.m, I realize my eldest son has inherited my recessive farmer gene, although perhaps in a freakishly mutated form that may spell the end of me. Before the birds even stir he is here with me in the predawn, reading books about Jedi Knights and playfully jabbing me with his lightsaber (and now that I think of it, it may be my crazy gene). If we were indeed farmers, we'd be out pulling a fortune from the teats of cows or injecting our pigs with antibiotics right about now. As it is I get only Birdie, fat as a footstool, blinking in the lamplight, wondering if, mistress, may I please have my chow early? Blue Collar Hubby, Roo, Baby Schumer and Skeeter lie down the hall in a snoring heap in my room, tangled together and clutching the bed like shipwreck survivors on a raft.

Is this divine punishment, a kharmic retirbution for the fact that as a wee child I never needed more than 6 to 7 hours of sleep? I remember being the only kindergartner whose bedtime was extended to 10 p.m. I'd lie in my bed reluctantly, reading stories to my me-sized stuffed Pink Panther, listening to the distant drone of the 10 o'clock news. Only by sports would I succumb. Then by 5 a.m. I was up "helping" my dad get ready for work. Poor Dad, he always looked genuinely happy to see me bound down the stairs as he fumbled groggily with the coffeepot. What he must really have been thinking is, What in the H-E-double-hockey-sticks is wrong with this child? Or, maybe like me now, he just hung his head and thought, Help me, LORD.

The American Academy of Pediatrics assures me that, despite public perception and some misinformation in the medical community (and the strenuous wishes of parents everywhere), it is not unhealthy nor unheard of for some of us, even as wee children, to need so little slumber. Somehow this fact doesn't comfort me as I thought it would. Nor does the fact that I married a man who travels to distant galaxies through a rip in the space/time continuum in his sleep and is wholly unreachable for 9-10 hours a night.

So, I take comfort in this. There are some things you can only do well before 5 a.m.

Play ding-dong ditch on your neighbor, leaving a plate of warm chocolate chip scones on her porch as a penance (beware, Sunny...)

Watch the wake-up routine of your neighbor's rooster

Follow a parade of young gangsters skulking home after the graveyard shift at gangster HQ
But not much comfort.

Toe's chatter jolts me back to reality. Can we go in the dark and see the stars, Mommy? So I wrap a blanket around us and waddle out into the crisp end of summer air with my boy. We sit on the cold cement stoop and look up into the sky as the 76G MTC bus roars by, taking yuppies downtown for their day at, say, the Capitol. And what I really take comfort in is the fact that these are the same stars my dad looked at, maybe searching the heavens for endurance just like me, as my ecstatic child twirls away into the dawn.

Tue, September 1, 2009 | link

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aUpdated August 2009