Jenn, aka JeSais (I know)

Every now and then, its nice to get some sort of confirmation that you are in fact making the right decision…  and so today, when I logged onto the University of New Mexico website…  I found this announcement:

Gregory Martin Named UNM 2008 Outstanding Teacher of the Year

“Most students of creative writing are too good at being students. They are cautious and risk adverse. They have not learned to welcome failure and despair. I want them to stop thinking of themselves as students – with assignments and deadlines imposed by some professor or program – and begin to see themselves as artists, as writers,” says Associate Professor of English Gregory Martin.

He was hired at UNM to implement a creative nonfiction concentration within the creative writing program and his students, who are all required to submit a manuscript for publication in a magazine have been published in literary journals, in anthologies, and had their work read aloud on National Public Radio. Martin mentors student writers with an emphasis on the process of revision and peer review.

Martin has already received the Keleher Award for Outstanding Assistant Professor of English and the Gunter Starkey Teaching Award from UNM’s College of Arts and Sciences. He also wrote “Mountain City”, a memoir of the life of a town of thirty-three people in remote northeastern Nevada. That book received a Washington State Book Award and was named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year.

His students describe him as demanding, inspiring and kind. This fall he will be teaching Senior Honors Thesis, Individual Study, Creative Writing Workshop-Creative Nonfiction, Problems for the Master’s Degree, Problems for the Doctor’s Degree, and Dissertation.

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I’ve already signed up for the Fall Creative Writing Workshop…

So, whether you think that gay marriage somehow undermines the “institution of marriage” or like me (and the California Supreme Court) you think that same-sex couples should have the same rights as different-sex couples…

California Court Affirms Right to Gay Marriage
By ADAM LIPTAK
Published: May 16, 2008

Same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry, the California Supreme Court ruled Thursday.

The court’s 4-to-3 decision, striking down two state laws that had limited marriages to unions between a man and a woman, will make California only the second state, after Massachusetts, to allow same-sex marriages. The decision, which becomes effective in 30 days, is certain to be an issue in the presidential campaign. –continue reading–>

….with a divorce rate of 40-50% (depending on who’s statistics you read) and even higher apparently for born-again Christians the fact is that divorce attorneys will probably reap the benefits of this landmark California Supreme Court decision….

call me a cynic.

Mother’s Day has always been difficult for me… looking at all the ads for special brunches, presents for mom… no mom to celebrate with.

And this year Ralph had his first Mother’s Day without his mom. My sister casually said something about it– right before she went out of town to Rancho La Puerta (an opportunity to go for Free! why don’t I know people like that?). It got me to thinking, however, that maybe I didn’t have to be angry about not having a mother on Mother’s Day. Maybe I could take the day to celebrate, to remember, to appreciate the mother that I had if even for too short a time.

And so I invited Ralph to dinner so we could celebrate our mothers. We got all dressed up. I wore a dress, heels and everything and Ralph wore a nice pair of slacks and a dress coat. My mother would have been proud. 

We went to Rei do Gado a Brazilian churrascaria, had a really fine dinner and toasted our mothers with a fine Malbec.  No special significance having Brazilian food, but it was a place we had both heard was good– and it was. 

And today, in the midst of going through the things that I will soon pack and pay to have moved to Albuquerque…  I found this:

 It only took me some 30 years to figure it out, but it felt good to celebrate rather than be upset or angry. I think I will make this a regular annual event, to celebrate my mother on Mother’s Day.  I’m not making any promises about the upcoming Father’s Day, but I’m going to give it a try.

So whether you are a mother, have a mother or had a mother I hope you had a wonderful mother’s day!  It feels good to celebrate, and remember the mother that I loved when I drew that picture. 

This past weekend’s tour of San Diego with my cousin Katie and Casey included a stop at Chicano Park, and I am embarassed to admit I had never been there before. What an amazing place! And, an inspiring story of community acitivism and a neighborhood’s desire for self-determination.

Hanging out under the freeway offers a unique perspective. More lines. These freeway lines initially divided the community, but in the end served to unite.

And I felt really secure seeing the support structure of the freeway. I always wondered how those bridges stay up:

My cousin Katie the artist was wowed as well, and hopefully inspired since she will be working on some murals in Portland soon.

I’m not sure if this is a regular occurance, but last Sunday several Lowrider car clubs had gathered, showcasing some awesome classic cars, totally restored and tricked out.

Check out the rest of the pictures of Chicano Park.

We also visted the San Diego Mission– another place I had never visited. (In my defense, I have been to the Mission San Luis Rey, also in San Diego County, as well as half of the other Missions in California) Are there places in your community you’ve never visited?

My cousin Katie the artist and her partner Casey just spent some time here this weekend, and we took a trip to see the border.

I can’t help but think of Katie’s most recent work exploring the horizon line “as the factor that draws many views on earth together…”

….and how this line, La Linea, the border, divides us. It is an arbitrary line, a fence between two countries, cutting across social, economic and environmental ecosystems.

We marveled at the crowds at Playas de Tijuana, smelled the churros and watched families play in the sand and surf. And our side of the line was an empty stretch of beach inhabited mostly by Least Tern and Snowy Plovers, guarded by a border patrol agent and a myriad of hidden cameras and underground sensors. It was surreal.

PS: here’s Katie and Casey… aren’t they cute??

and here’s a link to the Photos from our border visit, and a link to Borderfield Friendship Park (which I may point out does not rank high on The Google and was a bit difficult to ferret out).

to giving up ShowTime:

I guess I’ll have to wait.

As you may or may not know, I used to contribute to SanDiego Blog. In fact, I almost bought the domain from Joe Crawford after he moved to Simi Valley, but I decided if I was going to pay $1500 or more for the website, to really make if pay off, I would have to treat the venture like a business. After some careful consideration– taking into account that I already had a job and I’m writing a book– I passed. Some other guy bought it, and in my opinion has run it into the ground. It is now cluttered with ads, and spam comments are allowed to pass through. The saddest part of all is that no one posts on the blog anymore.

There are other community blogs, like the KPBS Cititzen Voices project– but that is strictly political, and of course limited to the six authors selected. Blog San Diego is another community blog, but the focus there is arts and culture. Both have great content, but are hierarchically focused rather than being true Web 2.0 network / social media sites allowing the community itself to determine the content.

So, with the demise of SanDiegoBlog, I was kind of excited to see that the Union Tribune is finally embracing social media. They just launched SD Backyard which appears to be a media rich social networking site.

I admit, I ridiculed one of their early attempts at Web 2.0– “America’s Finest Blog” and still think it is too stiff and boring, but this new site looks promising. Users can participate in online discussions, write their own blogs, flog events, and even upload video.

It will be interesting to see what the community wants the site to be, to see how the Union Tribune handles this site, or whether the publishers will step in. (remember the L.A. Times Wikitorial?)

If I weren’t moving to The Duke City in July I might just jump in and start community blogging there….

Do you community blog? if so, where?

CARMEL VALLEY – A wife and mother eluded the law for 32 years, but now has been jailed for escaping a Detroit prison in 1976.

She has been known as Marie Walsh, wife of Alan Walsh. But the U.S. Marshal’s Service arrested her Thursday as Susan Lefevre, sentenced in 1975 to 10 to 20 years in prison for conspiracy and violation of drug laws. ….CONTINUE READING Wife, mother, prison escapee arrested after 32 years BY Pauline Repard UNION- TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER –>

I’ve been thinking about this a lot since I heard this story on the news last night. I can’t imagine how her family must feel, discovering that the woman they knew as partner, spouse, mom was not who they thought she was.

Then I started to think about the people in my life. I like to think the best of people. I like to think most people will do the right thing when confronted with a moral dilemma. At least for the big things. I like to think I’m a pretty good judge of character… but then you have a delusional, paranoid (former) co-worker who makes wacked out accusations or a friend who turns on you… and you start to wonder.

I had a friend once. We were really tight for a while. BFFs you know. (it’s a girl thing). We were both writers. We talked almost daily on the phone. We walked Torrey Pines Hill a couple times a week– The Hill of Truth we called it, huffing and puffing our man troubles, sweating out our writers blocks, commiserating on the world in general for the mile up that steep hill. She had some success with her writing– a one-act play that was picked up for production at South Coast Rep, and also for a very off-Broadway theater in New York. I even went to the Big Apple with her to see the play. I was going through some tough times and she was a great friend.

Then she was going through some tough times financially and my life was looking up. I was getting back on my emotional feet. She needed money and fast. She was on the verge of being evicted so I helped her get a job at my place of employment. Then the balance of power shifted.

Every time I emailed an article to her or sent over some other bit of information she acted like I was insulting her intelligence or telling her how to do her job. All I was really doing was sharing information– because things change quickly on the internet and its good to keep informed (I would have welcomed any articles she wanted to share).

She didn’t see it that way. The relationship went bad.

It got so bad that I hated coming to work– until the day she announced she had given notice when I had to restrain myself from doing the happy dance. Our friendship didn’t last.

I haven’t even seen her, anywhere, in a very long time. I’m not even sure if she is still writing– I never see her at workshops or at any writerly events around town. In a strange way I miss her (not the drama, the friendship and even the walks up that damn hill). I do hope she is doing well.

I had my blog on blogger for a long time. Blogger is good. Wordpress I like better. I won’t go into all the details for the switcheroo, but suffice it to say that in the transition time here things are gonna look a little messy. Oh well. It’s not like this site if the New York Times or anything!

If anyone has any CSS tips they want to share, or Blogger to Wordpress moving tips to share, let me know!

My dear dear friend Ralph lost his mom last week, and I went out to Chicago (I use the term loosely as his parents had retired to a town called Huntley, which Ralph tells me is the Algonquin word for “way the fuck out there”). Ralph has not lost his sense of humor.

It’s hard to lose a parent at any time. As we age, it means there is no longer a layer of a generation separating us from being elderly ourselves, or separating us from death. It’s a little shocking to look around and all of the sudden realize you are, in essence, the head of the family. I saw this with Ralph this week past. His father, elderly and defeated, his mother now gone and Ralph as oldest son stepped up to his new position as de facto head of the family with grace and strength.

Patricia M Walton was a loving wife and mother and a doting grandmother. Never one to dwell on the past, she looked to the future with strength and optimism. She always looked on the bright side, had a positive outlook, and kept smiling right up to the very end.

In 1958 Pat married Ralph S Walton and became a mother first on August 12, 1964 when Ralph V was born and on April 22, 1969 when Patrick was born. On July 12, 1997 she became a mother again when Eva Venus joined the family upon marrying Patrick. “Pat” became “Grandma Pat” when Ryan was born on January 24, 2002 and again on April 17, 2008 when Elizabeth was born.

Pat worked for several companies, including Garcy Corporation, NBC, Continental Bank, and American National Bank, from which she retired in 1994. When not keeping the rest of the family in line she could be found gardening, reading, working crossword puzzles, watching over the neighborhood children, and feeding birds, squirrels, and various stray animals. The world was Pat’s family and it is a better place for it.

In keeping with Pat’s focus on the future, we are comforted in the fact that she lives on in everyone she has touched. She is still with us in spirit, just not in body.

My heart went out to him as I was able to welcome him into a club I wish I did not even know existed, The Motherless. Sure, when you’re forty-something it sounds overly dramatic but no matter the disfunction(s) of our families, no matter our age, we love our parents and grieve them.

Now… if someone would just get married! It would be way more fun to get together for a wedding and not another funeral.