The Rebel Jesus...

And on this day, I have to post the lyrics to my favorite Christmas song, The Rebel Jesus. It's a little obvious in places, but it captures my feelings, on the holiday but especially the man, entirely. If you can get your hands on it, please get the Martha Wainwright version on the McGarrigle Christmas CD. I had heard the Jackson Brown version before as we also have the Chiefton's CD on which this originally appeared, but Martha Wainwright recorded the version which really is moving. Enjoy your Christmas!

The streets are filled with laughter and light
And the music of the season
And the merchants' windows are all bright
With the faces of the children
And the families hurrying to their homes
As the sky darkens and freezes
Will be gathering around the hearths and tables
Giving thanks for all God's graces
And the birth of the rebel Jesus

They call him by the "Prince of Peace"
And they call him by "The Saviour"
And they pray to him upon the sea
And in every bold endeavor
As they fill his churches with their pride and gold
And their faith in him increases
But they've turned the nature that I worshipped in
From a temple to a robber's den
In the words of the rebel Jesus

We guard our world with locks and guns
And we guard our fine possessions
And once a year when Christmas comes
We give to our relations
And perhaps we give a little to the poor
If the generosity should seize us
But if any one of us should interfere
In the business of why there are poor
They get the same as the rebel Jesus

But pardon me if I have seemed
To take the tone of judgement
For I've no wish to come between
This day and your enjoyment
In this life of hardship and of earthly toil
We have need for anything that frees us
So I bid you pleasure and I bid you cheer
From a heathen and a pagan
On the side of the rebel Jesus.

Hanukkah, oh Hanukkah!

Last night we had our Hanukkah party, which was every bit the bacchanalian affair, minus, uh, the sex and drugs. [There was homemade lemon liquor, and that's sort of bacchanalian, right?] We had my two wacky, wonderful friends of "Germanically-oppressed" heritage (and not one of us is from the same background, which shows you just how busy those Germans were in the early-to-mid twentieth century with the business of oppression), and their mutual families, as well as my mother and our son's honorary uncle. It was such a warm and festive night. The kids went wilding, of course, and we had our fill of latkes, mock chopped liver, three different salads, stuffed mushrooms, spicy olives, eggplant caviar, donuts, cream cheeze blintzes, sugar cookies: what a feast! John peeled and grated ten pounds of potatoes and chopped three pounds of onions - with nary a complaint, as the man is decent and good, and, I suspect, also paying penance for his German heritage - and I did most of the other food-related jobs.

During the Jewish holidays, I always get very sentimental, missing my grandparents. My grandparents were not religious, but they did celebrate the holidays in that way that secular Jews do: with food. As my kitchen filled with that heady scent of lots of hot oil, something uncommon here as I seldom fry, I was transported back to my grandmother, and she to me. Food has a deeply emotional pull to us, as we know. I remember a party I was at once years ago, I must have been sixteen or so. My grandmother had brought rugelach, an Ashkenazi Jewish pastry wrapped in a crescent around a sweet filling, usually preserves, dried fruit and nuts, and baked. A middle-aged man my grandmother had just met, a friend of a friend, closed his eyes in pleasure as he took a bite, sighing: he too was transported to his own childhood, to his mother's or grandmother's rugelach, to warm memories and comfort. Swept away, he impulsively leaned over and kissed my grandmother on the cheek, causing her to giggle. She was both a nurturer - she loved to nourish people, which is probably the root of my love of cooking for others - and a shameless, though always innocent, flirt. From Proust's infamous madeleine to M.F.K. Fisher's ever-elegant prose, musings on food and its profound affect on the human spirit has been explored with depth but it is never quite enough.

Once again, I feel grateful to be able to revisit these old foods while still maintaining my commitment to veganism. The latkes I made were not missing anything by their absence of chicken ovum: in fact, they were more meaningful because I could pay tribute to my grandmother and, oh, yeah, the Maccabees, on my terms, in my unique way. Plus, they rocked! I also feel grateful to have such wonderful, supportive and passionate friends with big appetites, who showed up, variously, wearing big ol' sequins and bearing luscious European dark chocolates. (I just ran off and gobbled the last two squares.) I am blessed.

Shalom, everyone.

PS - Can I just tell a little cute thing about my son? Of course I can. It's my blog. Anyway, he creates holidays for our cat. Hanukkah has been re-imagined as "Hanu-meow" for Clover, during which time she celebrates the Miracle, which was the day that she beat our dog in a race. Never mind that she is a nine-month-old kitten and he's a thirteen-year-old, partially stroke-addled basset hound - this is apparently miraculous enough to celebrate and who am I to begrudge a little celebration? Happy Hanu-meow, Clover...

So this is Christmas...

The last few weeks have been a whirlwind of activity around here, trying to finish up one intense self-imposed deadline (I would say "Mission accomplished!" but that term is pretty much meaningless and tainted with ugliness post-W) and contending with all the busyness of the season. There is so much to do around here this time of year, not just buying gifts, decorating and whatnot. There are Santa-commandeered 'L' trains to catch, Tchaikovsky-scored ballets to view, cranberries to string and pine cones to spread with peanut butter and roll in bird seed, and on and on. Mind you, we haven't done any of those things yet, but it still takes up my time thinking about all the festive and enriching activities that we are currently missing. So I am actively absorbing my time in a state of neurosis, which is perhaps the purest expression of my holiday spirit seeing as I am of the Semitic, desert-wandering orientation.

For what it's worth, I'm not all that impressed with Hanukkah either, which kind of seems like an also-ran this time of year, though we do celebrate and will be having a little vegan latke-devouring party - maybe we should make it into a competition? - at our house Tuesday night with a couple of my shiksa friends and their families, my mother and Justice's adopted uncle. I'm looking forward to this very much. It has always struck me as comical and perhaps very telling that at the foundation of nearly every (or is it every?) Jewish holiday story is the hard kernel of oppression. Even Purim, the supposedly fun Jewish holiday, has the threat of the annihilation of the tribe at it's core. I think that in my heart of hearts, I have a distinctly Jewish soul, so I cannot help but find this to be very funny. (My friend - a fellow Jewess - and I were belting out "Sunrise, Sunset" together a few weeks ago and after we sang, "One season following another, laden with happiness and tears...," I pointed out that this is the summation of the Jewish character in two neat lines. Of course we laughed and laughed.) Anyway, some Chanukkah (yes, I'm spelling it different this time, and it occurs to me that maybe there are so many different spelling of the holiday because Jews are an argumentative, contrarian people) ideas: we will dance the Hora, which my son picked up at his cousin's Bat Mitzvah last weekend, and, oh, I think this is a good one: I want to go Hannukah caroling. That's right! Our neighbors to the south, Ed and his adult son, will be hearing about dreidels fashioned out of clay, and our neighbor to the north, a lively Jamaican woman, will be treated to "Chiri Bim." Because that's the sort of neighbor I am. To me, it's just hilarious, this subverting of Christmas traditions, and there's this added layer of, "Wow, maybe people will see how invasive and arrogant it feels when it seems like the rest of the world assumes you are a religion that you are not." Welcome to the Jewish experience!

Anyway, latkes, salads, Star of David-shaped cookies, perhaps even an attempt at vegan blintzes, something I have not had since I was a teen. Sounds good, right? Hopefully once Chrismakkah is over, I'll be able to post more vegan feminist-y screeds. For now, though, the bed is beckoning me.

Shalom, everyone.

Update schmupdate...

Well, I've been swept up in all the holiday madness and a close deadline so I've been unable to update. I will as soon as a) I have more time, and b) I have something interesting to report. Hopefully that will be sooner than later.

Shalom, everyone.

This violent world...

We have a list of the things my son is afraid of these days, updated daily, practically by the hour. On this list are:

Frankenstein
Vampires
Witches
Mad Scientists
Monsters
The Headless Horseman
Aliens
Ghosts
The Grim Reaper
Someone Shooting Him
Going To Jail
Not Waking Up In The Morning
The Dark
Meteors
Dinosaurs Walking Around Downtown
Falling Airplanes
Barking Dogs
People Walking Outside Our Home
Cloudy Days
Sunny Days
(and as of an hour or so ago) Zombies

This list is titled "Things To Not Fear." Each time he speaks to me or his father about one of his recent anxieties, we look at the title of the page, remind him that this is a page listing things one does not need to fear, and we have him put a little check mark next to the fear in question. We have a separate sheet of paper, titled "Things To Fear," upon which we have listed items like touching fire, broken glass, crossing the street without looking. We review this as well.

My son has always been someone we would call cautious, trepidatious. This characteristic revealed itself from his earliest contact with the world outside the womb: he is the child who would hang on to my legs before venturing out, the child who we never had to worry about rushing ahead of us down the street. Instead, he is the one with the magnifying lens, stopping every few feet to examine a new leaf, an interesting insect. As I am someone who always seems to be in a hurry, jam-packing my day with sundry activities, he has taught me a lot about slowing down, about noticing and appreciating things that are, you know, supposed to be influential to writers. It has not always been easy to take my natural pace down several good notches, and I have not always done it with grace, but in my more generous moments I see how much this little soul, looking through the bushes for robin's eggs, studying tracks in the snow, has changed me for the better. He has helped to reconnect me to the better days in my childhood, and he has helped me to see that there was, in fact, happiness there. He has also helped me to see the value of taking things in at a deeper level.

This recent stuff, though, has been one of the more challenging things that I've gone through as a mother. My son needs nearly constant reassurance that his life is not being threatened by Something Out There. In keeping with the pastel purple childhood recommended by Rudolf Steiner, since my son was born, we have steered away from television, from most media, in fact; I don't even listen to public radio, so much am I trying to protect my son from news about car bombs and terrorism. Somehow, though, all that ugly stuff has started to filter into his world. It was inevitable unless we wanted to raise my son in a very cloistered, isolated way, which we do not. Still, this recent spate of anxieties, which seems to be him trying to adapt to this violent world and creating a generalized internal fearfulness in response, has been a bracing blast of cold, hard reality into our generally pretty free-spirited home. How it has taken hold of our son and entered our home, I am not exactly sure, though I do suspect a large cause has been being exposed to all the other kindergarten children, kids who can talk about shooting others and going to jail and falling airplanes with a jovial grin. Not my son, though. He takes it all very seriously.

When my son was discharged from Children's Memorial Hospital, where he had been sequestered for six days after he was born, the first thing we did after changing him into the purple tie-dye onesie we had picked up for him a few weeks before at a Madison hippie shop, was put Bob Marley on the car radio. I sat in back of the car with him as my husband drove, squeezing his tiny hand in mine, staring at this alien being with the big, soft eyes, and sang along, "Don't worry about a thing, 'cause every little thing is gonna be all right..." The very first thing I felt he needed after six long days of hospital sounds - of beeps and intercom pages and crying babies - was beautiful, peaceful reassurance. And for me, nobody quite does beautiful, peaceful reassurance like Bob Marley. Given my childhood, that so much was spent under a malevolent, threatening dictatorship, raising my son in a protected, gentle way was absolutely imperative to me. I know there are parents who vehemently disagree with this approach, implying that those who do are raising coddled, unrealistic children, and maybe they're right. Maybe I should have been exposing my son to the ugliness of this world early on, and maybe I am to blame for his current state of struggling to process it all. I am willing to accept that this is so, but I am unwilling to sacrifice his childhood so he, at six, can digest violence better. I am asking myself a lot of questions right now, and this is pushing me to be the best mother of my particular son that I can be, knowing that being a mother is an active, adaptive, dynamic role. I return, again and again, to walking the path that is uniquely our own, one of joyful engagement with the things we value: creative expression, community, independence, non-violence.

I guess what I am saying with this post is that I'd like the violent assholes of the world to just, you know, cut it out. We were eating dinner last weekend at our favorite Indian restaurant, and the radio was playing loudly in the kitchen. He heard about Mumbai that night, of the killing of Americans in the hotels there, in the restaurants. I tried to distract him but he'd already heard enough. He stopped eating and sat silently for a moment. "Mom," he said, "I don't ever want to go to India." Now India, the birthplace of vegetarianism and Gandhi and satyagraha, is a boogeyman to my son, too.

I know that we'll get through this. But in the meantime, really, could all the violent people of the world just take over a little island together somewhere?

Obligatory Thanksgiving Post From a Disaffected Vegan...

The past couple of days have been a monsoon of food preparation around here and the sink seems to be filling itself up with implements in various stages of encrustation: every skillet pan we own, the blender (three times over), the Kitchenaid mixer bowl, whisks, spatulas, knives, the slow cooker, wooden spoons, baking pans, and on and on. We had Thanksgiving dinner with my mother last night, for which I made tofu filled with a brown rice-veggie stuffing, an attempt at this decidedly non-vegan, Lipton-y noodle dish my mother used to make (wasn't as good, I have to admit, but I think it can be if I tinker with it a little) and a soy pumpkin ice cream pie from a cute local shop, The Brown Cow. Today is our main Thanksgiving meal. We will be joining friends for a vegan Thanksgiving meal together. This is one of my favorite days of the year.

We have been sharing Thanksgiving together for - who knows? - maybe ten years. There are usually about thirty of us who gather for this meal, many of whom have family out of town, and many others who just can't bare the gory sight of a bird's carcass on a day that is supposed to be about gratitude. [That last part is in full knowledge of all the plagues and violence and Howard Zinn-type of information we now have about the founding of this country; I meant more the revised version that Marcy lectured that ingrate Peppermint Patty about at Charlie Brown's Thanksgiving fiasco.] For this meal, our group of assorted friends morphs into a family for the night, a family of the best kind: a consciously created one. It is always an impressive feast. This year I made a white bean cassoulet with what I think will be a fantastic tempeh-shallot confit (this is from Robin Robertson's wonderful slow-cooker cookbook), a clementine orange and pomegranate kanten and a pumpkin-lemon swirl cheesecake. These items will share the stage with dozens of lovely, hearty dishes. As Sly Stone sang, everybody is a star. It will be beautiful as it always is on Thanksgiving.

Some people are surprised that I don't spend Thanksgiving Day with my mother and biological family. It took us a while to decide to cut-and-run but since we did it, Thanksgiving has transformed from one of my most loathed days of the year into one of my most favorite. I will always remember being the fifteen-year-old lone vegetarian at the Thanksgiving table and told to "eat around it" with "it" being in nearly everything in addition to the main course: the gravy, the stuffing, even pieces in the rice. Um, could you pass the cranberry sauce? No turkey there, right? It is not usually fun for omnivores to chow down in front of vegans on Thanksgiving either, let's be honest about it, as we are the elephant in the room, seemingly ever-ready to pop a Meet Your Meat video in the family VCR or sighing melodramatically in disgust. (I think that there were probably a few years there where I was covered in graphic buttons and an insufferable dinner guest.) Given all that, when we finally bit the bullet and said, "You know what? I think we'll just go to the vegan Thanksgiving this year," there was palpable relief felt by everyone. This way, they can eat their bird carcass in relative peace and we can enjoy all the good stuff. (Yes, I cannot resist the lure of the snark, even today.) My mother does have my brother and his wife's extended family of TV-watching-enthusiasts to celebrate the day with, though, so she's not alone. See? Everyone's happy. (I realize how arrogant I sound, especially to my dear friend, O. - no, she's not Oprah - who is probably reading this right now saying, See how self-righteous you sound? based on a conversation we had earlier in the week. Yes, dear O., I am painfully aware but I have to ask: is it possible for me to have certain values and a consistency of applying these values to my life without being labeled self-righteous? Given the framing of the debate, it seems that I am self-righteous if I am consistent and hypocritical if I am not. Can I possibly win - or, rather, not lose - in this situation? It seems that either way is designed for me to lose. I say this with love, of course, O., as well as my patented blend of self-righteousness and arrogance...)

Confusing parenthetical asides notwithstanding, I have a lot to be grateful for this Thanksgiving. They are, in no particular order:

My wonderful husband, who just gets. um, wonderfuller every year. We have gone through some dark times the past couple of years, but we have done it together and with new grace each time. That being said, we could both use a little less wisdom these days, and it certainly seems like we're on this path. I love him so much.

My son, who has enriched my life in so many ways that to speak of it is diminishing. He has taught me more about what I want in my life - and what I do not want - than anyone else ever could. He fills my heart, and this is where I turn into a walking John Denver song, so I will stop.

My friends, who are such a unique, smart and kick-ass group of people. Whether they agree with me or challenge me, they are always cherished and loved.

My animals, who teach me to curl up in the sun and give back everything I get many times over.

That lovable wingnut Sarah Palin, for throwing the election, and Barack Obama for being there when she threw it. For the rest of the country for finally, finally waking up.

For my health and energy, always in abundance.

For finishing the first draft of my novel and for the people who have supported me throughout.

For my new red hat with pink cat ears from the crafter from Madison.

For creative inspiration, wherever I find it.

For my renewed commitment to getting published.

For the sense of optimism and hope that is so much more bountiful this year.

May you all have a cozy and meaningful Thanksgiving this year.

Shalom, everyone.

A Pythonesque exchange with Comcast...

So! After having very spotty service for a couple of weeks, we finally scheduled for our friendly neighborhood Comcast technician to visit. I had waited home during the arranged hours (3:00 - 7:00) only to have no one show up. A technician called a little after 7:00 and told John that he would be at our place in twenty minutes. Twenty minutes went by, thirty minutes, you get the picture. John called the Comcast office to find out what was going on and the person who he talked to said, "Oh. That call was canceled." John said, "What? I didn't cancel the visit." What do you think was the perfect corporate, totally devoid of any trace of humanity, response to this? "I didn't say you canceled it, sir." [Later that evening, when talking to some poor soul who happened to answer his irate call, we had another Pythonesque moment: after hearing John describe what had happened, the Comcast employee said, "Our records show that the visit was canceled at 8:22." John looked down at the phone in disbelief, then, barely maintaining his composure yelled, "That's now. It's 8:22 right now!"]

The next day, after leaving messages with assorted managers and filling their voicemail capacity with our tale of woe, we received a phone call from another technician who confidently assured John that he would be at our home in ten minutes. Do I need to tell you that this previously scheduled visit also ended with John becoming all Tourette's Syndrome-y and twitchy when the appointment was inexplicably and internally canceled by Comcast?

Corporations make me feel all warm and snuggly inside... I could bask in the good-natured glow of corporate warmth all winter.

Shalom, everyone.