Friday, February 29, 2008

Doing It For The Cause


I am an activist. There is a cause I am willing to sign online petitions for. A fight so good that I will boastfully declare it's valid enough for a blog in hopes to rally others to speak out and stop the atrocity.

Polaroid...please don't go.
We always look good on you because you wash out our flaws.
You make us want to jump on the bed in our undies amongst a splay of prints, camera in hand, snapping, laughing.
You are like a photobooth in the privacy of our own home.
You provide us with the ability to take naughty photos with instant printed satisfaction.
What will Dash Snow do now?

The petition is here. Your help is needed!

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Thursday, February 28, 2008

A Southern Man Tells Better Jokes


I have such an affection for a Southern-style of life. I'm talking taking a hollow-wheel pickup to the local store, spreading chicken feed on a farm, three-wheeling in the woods, dirt bike racing, and being able to stare up at the stars from a porch with nothing around for miles. Someday, I hope to drive my RV all over the country following the NASCAR circuit. I want to have a '77 Nova in starlight blue parked in the barn next to my tractor. But I will never give up my heels...ever. I can do all those things in them...and if there's mud, there's always Frye boots.

What's odd though, is that I grew up with concrete. My first house on Forbell Street in East New York, Brooklyn, maybe had one tree on the block. I spent most of my years on 77th Street in Ozone Park where I vividly remember the day the Parks Department came and planted trees in front of each row house stoop. They looked like sticks, held up by other sticks. I don't ever remember seeing leaves. We had a yard, but it was Astroturfed.

When my parents took the family upstate on a trip to the Catskills, my sister and I were in awe of the mountains. We went on a kids outing with the hotel to a bowling alley and I remember being on the bus and the other kids started moaning about how they smelled manure. We figured it out from the odor, but we had never heard that word before.

Later that year, when I was twelve, we moved to the "country" to a small town called Montgomery in Orange County, New York. I hated it. Oddly I didn't feel safe. I was scared of the vastness, but I didn't feel secure in Queens either since our home was broken into while we were there. I also didn't like the way the locals said "orange" and "banana." There was a twang to it, and I didn't understand why since we were further north. Something happened, albeit briefly, that I started to tell my parents that I didn't like the South or Southerners, and I honestly don't know why. It may have had something to do with a girl who had just moved from Tennessee and was new at my school. I didn't like her...but I can't remember why.

I eventually went to college further upstate, but then moved back down to Brooklyn, my birthplace, where I still live and where I dream of driving a '54 Chevy truck. I am engaged to a Southern man who was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and spent most of his life in Savannah, Georgia. I am a member of Earnhardt Nation and I think Cooley is a stand-out on the new Drive-By Truckers record...but I do wish Isbell was still in the band, though "Chicago Promenade" off of his solo album gives me chills.

I'm getting hitched in the French Quarter of New Orleans and I love reading this Kentucky man's blog who I don't even know. My neice's name is Tennessee and she is the most amazing being I have ever met. To see her grow and learn with my own eyes is bigger than Jesus, and it taught me that there are things in this life that really don't matter and there are other things that really really do.


*Art by Wes Freed. He's amazing.

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Easy, Heart


We give hearts filled with chocolate, we nibble on sugary heart-shaped candies, we draw hearts on cards, and we cross our hearts…but we really don’t hope to die. And we really don’t treat our heart, or the hearts of others, as good as we should.

People die of broken hearts. They really do. It happens a lot in the elderly. When a significant other dies, the other one, even if not ill, dies soon after.

If someone is going through great pain in matters of the heart, it can literally kill a person.

Two people in my life are going through a tremendously tough time right now. I love them both with all of my heart, and they are both in so much pain that I wish I could put a bandaid on the situation and make it all better. But I can’t. And now tomorrow is Valentine’s Day and the waves of pain will rise perhaps higher. The heart monitor will probably indicate increased levels, the stress will go higher and higher, things will be consumed in hopes to make the feelings all go away, but they won’t…it will all still be there in the morning, only with more stress, more strain, more pain.

Every time we hurt another person, and I mean hurt deeply, it’s like taking a piece of their heart, chipping away at its health, causing profound hurt and harm.

This Valentine’s Day, I hope we all treat the hearts of others with kindness.