Changing

If you can't change the people around you, change the people around you. Roy Boehm

Visual Thesaurus

Very nifty visual writing tool!

Randomness . . .

I've got green eyes, am 5'10" and weigh around 110. There is no overt exercise in my life, I was born this way. I'm tall and thin, but eat whatever I want. Seriously, the amount of food I consume in a day horrifies my girlfriends.

I just turned 40, and am pretty excited about it because now, somebody, somewhere, is going to have to take me seriously on the basis of my age alone. I am Pirate Queen all year long!

This year my daughter turned 21 and we went to Portland. We bought amazing little black dresses, oversize dark sunglasses and took pictures of ourselves at Tiffanys early in the morning. We giggled ourselves sick. Yeah - I'm THAT girl.

I have two kids (1 boy, 1 girl), 1 dog and 1 cat. I don't like the cat, and the fact that I feed her is proof that God has a sense of ironic humor.

I am dating the most amazing man in the world. I don't know how God saved Ian for me, for all these years, but He did, and I am grateful. To be loved like I am, every single day, is a treasure that every human being should receive. He says I am his happy ending, and I believe he is mine.

I love my job and I like being a girl, but can do boy jobs if I have to: I assembled my own barbecue and a free-standing, portable regulation basketball system. Both work.

I like black coffee, tea, ginger ale, red wine and Guiness. I love to cook but dislike the cleanup. In my fridge right now I have some sashimi from last night's sushi, some roast lamb, carne asada, and chicken fried steak with gravy. I love fine food, but am always ready for a really good hamburger or taco - and burnt marshmallows . . and spaghetti. I . . . am a carnivore. Sometimes at night, I crave Carl's Jr.

I'm quirky. There's no getting around it. I try to blend in, but camouflage isn't my style - I get tired of people running into me and saying, "Sorry, I didn't see you there!" I know exactly who I am, but I'm happy to let you come to your own conclusion about me. I don't like being the center of attention but I'm no wallflower, though I can be a bit shy when I'm nervous - the question is, what makes me nervous?

Three things I am certain of: God is real; whole milk is one of the yummiest things on the planet; I am loved.

I am teaching myself to play the piano. It's harder than I thought, but I conquered Fur Elise and my dog almost doesn't twitch at all anymore.

Things I'm drawn to: British humor (Hot Fuzz was just damn funny), Patrick McManus, art, Roman Military History, Agatha Christie's Poirot and Miss Marple, camping, learning anything new, cotton candy, REM, the way snow smells and how it turns a midnight sky pink when it's falling, books, old movies, Looney Toons, tea, and Stock (it's a flower). Simple things make me happy.

What would I say, if I had the undivided attention of the world for 30 seconds?

"Whatever you feel you must do, do it with kindness. If it cannot be done with kindness, perhaps it should not be done." Lisa Jenkins 2/16/09

Cardiac Obliteration

A bit painful for me. I've removed this post.

On Choosing What I Believe (working draft)

Beliefs are, by nature, absolute and, as such, very few are manifest in my life. I have more fingers on my hands than things I believe. I suppose I fear binding myself to restrictive codes that neither accommodate for the needs of others nor recognize the value in diversity. Yet, I cannot sail through this sea of people, and leave it better in my wake, without these bearings, by which I navigate.

In the midst of anger and hurt, I can choose to hold tightly to the anchor of blame placed with those I find at fault, though I believe that if I am unwilling to extend forgiveness to others, I cannot be forgiven for all the hurt I have caused. And so, I choose to forgive.

In the depths of misery, I can drown in despair though I believe that to deny hope is to disallow the dream of improved circumstances for myself and others. And so, I choose to hope.

Confronted by another’s seemingly unfathomable choice, I can ridicule their morals and customs, though I believe that we all face choices with less than palatable options. And so, I choose to empathize.

Awash in prejudice, I can foster the acceptance of ignorance, though I believe that knowledge can ease the fears born of the unknown, and will yield tolerance. And so, I choose to learn.

Faced with hate, I can forever abandon the author of each callous deed, though I believe that I can love someone in spite of their flaws, and without agreeing with their actions; for this is how I am accepted. And so, I choose to love.

Spouting religion, I can condemn others for not adhering to the tenets of men as fallible as I, though I believe that it is better to have a relationship with God than to be religious. And so, I choose relationship.

My inner compass, momentarily jarred by waves of conflict or distress, will, more often than not, right itself before those around me suffer too much damage. Given time, I rally against the cross-winds of emotion to choose a response that runs contrary to my own selfish, human reactions. Love, forgiveness, hope, empathy, knowledge, relationship, and tolerance serve as the stars by which I chart my course. Should I run aground in the shallows of selfishness, I will endeavor to take a new tack. And choose what I believe.

Stuff I Read

The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
The Wheel of Time Series by Robert Jordan
Post Secret (various contributors)
The Swiss Family Robinson by Johann David
The Once and Future King by T.H. White
The Alchemist by Paolo Cohelo
Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman
The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley

I read Sharon Kay Penman, Patrick McManus, Jane Austen, Dorothy Parker, Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Madeleine L'Engle, Patricia A. McKillip, Charles Dickens, Shel Silverstein, Agatha Christie, Bernard Cornwell . . . Poetry, Fiction, History, Humour, Fantasy . . . truthfully, I read so much there is no way for me to list everything I love about literature. I own hundreds of books and I read them all, all the time.

I'm currently reading The Gormenghast Trilogy by Mervyn Peake, The Portable Dorothy Parker, and Inkspell by Cornelia Funke. Oh, and The Bible - always.

R.I.P John Updike

The Batter Who Mattered by John Updike

Ted took his time leaving this world, and he's not quite out of it yet. He is cryonically frozen in Arizona, drained of blood and upside down but pretty much intact, waiting for what resurrection technology can eventually produce. This bizarre turn in the Williams saga, which two of his three children claim to be his own wish, accords with a general perception among his admirers that there was something about him extremely precious, something worth preserving.

To those of us who saw him at the plate, he seemed the concentrated essence of baseball: a tall, long-necked man wringing the bat handle and snapping the slender implement of Kentucky ash back and forth, back and forth, in his impatience to hit the ball, to win the battle of wits and eye-hand coordination that, inning after inning, pits the solitary batter against the nine opposing men on the field.

For most of two decades -- 1939 to 1960, with time out for service in two wars -- he was the leading reason that people went to Red Sox games in Boston. In those decades he played on the American League All-Star team 18 times and had the highest overall batting average, .344. The decades since his retirement, full of careers uninterrupted by national service and bolstered by a livelier ball and new techniques of physical conditioning, have seen him slip lower in the record lists; his home run total of 521, third behind Babe Ruth and Jimmie Foxx in 1960, is now tied for 12th, with Willie McCovey. Just last season, the phenomenal Barry Bonds broke one of Williams's records -- his on-base percentage of .551, set in 1941. Bonds also, in each of his last two years, exceeded by a good margin a total in which Williams for many years had ranked second only to Ruth, that of walks drawn in a single season.

One Williams statistic, however, gathers luster rather than dust as the years go by -- his 1941 season average, .406. For more than 60 years he has remained the last of the .400 hitters, his final average nailed down in a doubleheader in Philadelphia that he could have sat out; he was batting .39955, which rounds up to .400, but elected to play and went six-for-eight in the two games. In fact, he hit .400 or higher in three seasons, counting the truncated bits of 1952 and '53, when he was drafted into the Korean War. In 1957 he hit .388, including three home runs in five official at-bats when he came off a sickbed to pinch-hit. That year and the next, he twice became the oldest man to win a batting title. These latter seasons, when he was playing with an accumulated, underpublicized burden of aches and pains for indifferent teams, cemented his claim as the greatest hitter of his era, an era that included Joe DiMaggio and Stan Musial.

When an athlete or opera singer or exhilarating personality dies, it is the live performance we remember, the unduplicable presence, the shimmer and sparkle and poignancy, perceived from however far back a row in the audience. The swing -- the coiled wait, the popped hip, the long and graceful follow-through that left his body yearning toward first base -- was a grand motion, never a lunge or a hasty fending or a minimalist Ruthian swat; it took up a lot of space and seemed fully serious in its sweep. At 6-foot-3, he was one of the taller men on the field, and we in the crowd brought with us an awareness of his dangerous rage to excel; of his on-field tantrums; of his spats with the press, his struggles with marriage and his failure, as the years ground on, to make it back to a World Series and redeem his weak performance in 1946. We knew he never tipped his hat to the crowd when he hit a home run, and many of us loved him more for it, not less. He was focusing on his task. Success and failure in baseball are right out there for all to see. We could read in his body language that he wanted to be the best, that this was more than a game or a livelihood for him. He was paid, toward the end of his career, a record $125,000 a season, and after his worst season, his only sub-.300 season, in 1959, he asked management for a pay cut.

In that long stretch after 1946, as the excellent Sox teams of the 40's yielded to the mediocre 50's teams, Ted kept up the show. The intensity, the handsome lankiness, the electric aura as the lineup worked around to his appearance were summer constants. Fenway Park, in those days, was not always full; the advance-ticket crowds from Maine and New Hampshire hadn't yet materialized in that thinner era. I bought in for a few dollars to his last game, and the park was more than half empty.

He hit a home run in his last time at bat, an event I wrote about, in part because his departure, which took with it the heart of Boston baseball, had been so poorly attended.

With retirement, slowly, he became what William Butler Yeats called ''a smiling public man.'' The stern, temperamental baseball perfectionist dropped his concentrated air of work in progress and joined us on the sidelines. He managed a team, the Washington Senators, with acumen and patience. He faithfully showed up at Red Sox spring training and was generous -- in a voice bellicose in part because flying jets in Korea had half-deafened him -- with advice and praise. He fished as obsessively as he had analyzed the geometry of the strike zone. He continued to be the symbol of the Jimmy Fund, which he had animated with a thousand personal encouragements of cancer-stricken children. He used his Hall of Fame acceptance speech to plead for the admission of the great players of the old Negro leagues; in an age when the major leagues brimmed with unreconstructed rednecks, he welcomed baseball's integration and befriended the Red Sox's belated black recruits.

He drew closer to his three children, and the public drew closer to him. The new journalism generated interviews in which his language, long held to the locker room, was revealed as bumptiously obscene and enthusiastic. Compared now with DiMaggio, he appeared more open, less wary, with nothing to hide and everything to share, as the darkness of failing eyesight, the helplessness of strokes and daily dialysis and the desperate operations that the wealthy and famous must endure closed in. On two occasions his aging body was hauled to Boston, and he made a show of tipping his cap to the crowd. But we didn't need that. The crowd and Ted had always shared what was important, a belief that this boy's game mattered terrifically.

A Darker Thing

Last week my co-worker asked me if I thought it was “a sign of trouble” that she was pre-self medicating herself with aspirin to avert the sugar-headache she was going to get from eating a plate of chocolate covered cookies.

Without missing a beat, I replied, “Gosh, I don’t know. Is it bad to take depressants to get to sleep after I’ve taken stimulants to stay awake? Judy Garland much?”

And then I giggled. Because, even though the subject matter was dicey, I was witty.

My co-worker looked at me with a blank face. I’m not certain she’s ever watched The Wizard of Oz, Meet Me in St. Louis, or The Pirate. She does not know who Judy Garland is.

Sadly, she didn’t get the joke. Even sadder, she didn’t get the reference.

Yes, Virginia, it is bad to pre-self medicate oneself in order to compensate for the anticipated effects of indulgence.

Are You Paying Attention?

So familiar, so so painfully familiar!

Frozen Moment In Time

I Am Somebody

I Am Somebody
by Lisa Jenkins

Does it matter so much to you,
what shapes the words I speak?
The silences I show this world
tell more of who I am.

The why, the where, the when and how
are nothing more than sound.
The noise shatters and I am heard;
I am somebody, found.

Name That Rant

Yesterday, Adolf Hitler and his sisters, JoyceLynn Aryan Nation and Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie, were removed from the family's New Jersey home by the Division of Youth and Family Services. See more here.

Wow. Seriously? Are we to believe these people had their children's best interests in mind when they chose these names?

I recently was handed the spelling for a newborn boy: Jahzen Stiv (pronounced Jason Steve). Five years from now his parents will be lamenting, "Gosh, I don't know why Jahzen has such trouble with Reading and Spelling.".

There are twin girls from my parents' last town of residence named Ima and Ura. Not so bad, you think? Their last name: Pig. Go ahead, say the names out loud, I'll wait. Kids on the playground aren't cruel enough? These parents needed to provide a head start in berating their own children? It's just mean.

In this valley, there is a young girl named Djur'Majesty. Can you imagine her Freshman year in High School?

I'm all for individuality, creativity and honoring family names handed down through generations. I know boys, with the last name Wolf, named Blue and Grey. My own children are named Morganne Ashlei and Colton Briar. These are unique names with character and, here's an important component, accepted spellings that reflect our Celtic heritage.

Parents aren't marketing a new car when they christen a child, they are defining the first impressions of a lifetime. If they cannot show compassion and care when choosing the identifier their child will carry for eternity, I see very little encouragement that they will provide the nurturing and guidance needed to raise that child to be a kind, productive, contributing member of society.

Here's what I've thought for quite some time now: if you can't name a child responsibly, you don't deserve the gift and YOU DON'T GET ONE!