Wednesday, January 03, 2007

Welcome, 2007!

Happy New Year, all!

I thought I’d try to beat Radhika to the punch and blast out our first blog of 2007.

She’s pointed out that it’s a lot easier to blog when you are angry about something. I agree. I am a lot more eloquent when I have something to rage against. But I am feeling pretty blessed.

And it’s not that I don’t have the opportunity to find something that would enrage me. Turned on NPR earlier and heard the former President Bush proclaiming that dead President Ford could have stepped out of a Norman Rockwell painting. Huh? Isn’t that a completely bizarre thing to say at the man’s funeral?

The 3000th American serviceperson died in Iraq this weekend, along with Saddam Hussein. Am I the only one that is utterly horrified by both events? What I see as more blood on our hands is, to American leadership, only more insignificant blood under the bridge, I guess.

But the local still wins out. A dear friend called last week to say that she is recently married and newly pregnant. She’s one of those friends who drifts in and out of my life periodically, always leaving deep memories and warmth. She asked for advice and I’m sending her some of my favorite books on home birthing and compassionate child raising. She’s going to be an amazing mother.

I am part of an ecovillage project in upstate New York. This amazing group of people gathered a few weeks before Christmas and decided, and not without great debate, that we would govern ourselves by consensus. For those who would roll their eyes at this, I submit that ecovillages, and all other culture changing, world saving things, cannot possibly be governed by any other style of decision making.

This year I’ll be finishing up a PhD, in the Decision Sciences. I already consider myself a researcher, and a fairly good one at that, but we need to save up enough box tops, endure the requisite hazing, before we are permitted to stand among our peers, so I trudge forward. And luckily, I have a terrific sponsor, and fantastic friends, who are helping me garner the strength.

In February, my beautiful, deeply passionate, and endlessly enduring daughter will turn 4 years old. Followed in June by the one year birthday of her brother. As she debates evening television choice with her father in the adjoining room, and her brother sleeps, I am simply struck by how lucky I am.

It doesn’t make good blogging, I’m afraid, but I am living a charmed life.

But stay tuned anyway.