The poor cat finally got sick enough to need to go to the vet.

Of course she had a bladder infection peak during the blizzard of 2010. I would have walked her over the bridge to the vet, if I had to.

I took her drugged body out of the cage, to fly her back to the US.. it was horrible because none of us wanted to go, and here we made this great sacrifice to go the wrong direction, as far as we were concerned.

This time, we were lucky enough to get to bring her back home.

She is napping on the couch cushions after docilely accepting her antibiotics, and enthusiastically nomming the treats I put down for her after that.

We get so attached to our family, it isn't a bit wrong, to take such pains over two legs and four.

You know, you might be following in my footsteps, if you aren't paying attention..

First of all, don't ruin your body. Repair it, keep it, sustain it. You live there.

Second of all, know when to quit,

Know when to rest.

The answer is, as early and often as possible.

The fight will wait for you.

Trust me, it will..

I miss Brie that does not taste like piss!

What is wrong with marketers, that you think we will eat that shit? next time, I will come back and feed it to them .

I love Trader Joe's for their Mimolette, a cheese I discovered on a morning's walk in Alsace, and fell MADLY in love with.. I will buy the oldest, most diseased-looking Mimolette and have a crazy love affair with it and some damn good red wine.

The mulled wine I am sipping is Catalunya, mulled with German spices and plentiful slices of fresh peeled ginger and Deutsche Glueheweingewuerz..

So it's all wrong, but it's delicious.

John Mayer says that when you are dreaming with a broken heart, the giving up, is the hardest part.

I do not, and I never will, give up.

It is not in my nature.

I do not give up on anything, on any issue, ever.

I may change my mind, but I never surrender.

Anything I decide on, or decide to fight for, is well considered, and immutable.

Part of my great, terrible heart's loyalty, lies forever in Bavaria.

I love that land's great independent spirit, their loyalty, their indomitability, and their deep, crazy enjoyment of life in the extremes their environment offers.

A Texan of Irish and German descent, I am extracted from, and thrive on, extremes.

I am ruled by one thing.. a steady pull to the rational.

This is one of the things I love about my German roots: A real examination of reality.

The balance is my lyrical, intuitive leap Irish side, that I can make these intuitive bounds to understanding of things no one has seen, or has thought of grasping.

Then I am the norm of America, I am the median of our inspiration.

Measure intuition with reason.

Find the answers, and leap again.

What I miss, is a land where it all works together.

I miss the land of Robert Schleip, of Jean-Pierre Barral and my dear teacher Peter Schwind.

I'm living in a half-life land, where I'm pushing the boundaries of my own profession (and they need pushed in a big Zamboni kinda way) and I am having this conversation with a PT I have found who is basically going to save my ass... because he has trained with the osteopaths and he does nerve and visceral work, and no one in this area has elevated to that level I am so used to).

I had to raise my profession for myself.

I listened quietly.

I took it in, I received. I also received some extremely badass nerve and visceral work, full of Q&A.

And then I told him, that yes, I took the classes for the PTs and the osteopaths, but I took them in German.

As long as he wasn't teaching in German, I told him.. while holding his quite honest, very level and interested gaze.. as long as he wasn't teaching in German, I could follow him.

I am terribly ashamed, that he would ever mistake my profession for massage therapy, or assume that Rolfers couldn't keep up with PTs and osteopaths.

I kept up with them in German, and French-accented English. I learned about the Falx Cerebri and cranial nerves..

I encourage my colleagues to continue to improve their reputation, until I don't have to deal with this particular hurdle.

In other words, most other professions think Rolfers are cultists, narrow-minded morons, and not able to keep up with basic physical therapy principles, nerve paths or basic anatomy. This makes me so very sick..

I kept up with classes with professional osteopaths, physical therapists, and other professionals, in a language not my own.

German.

If you could do the same, then you can talk about me.

Otherwise, sit down.

Ich hatte es gelearnt. und Du?

Ja, aber nein.

Keine Frage.

Und Mehr?

Hasst Du NICHST..

There are some terribly rude things I can say at this point, at which I will take a moment of grace.. and silence.. then I will speak my mind.

I miss COMPETENCE, RESPONSIBILITY, and INTELLIGENCE.

My ex-pat friends get me..

We miss things at varying levels, depending on our attachment to them.

I couldn't care less about that football thing this weekend.

It's so not a part of any relevant, measurable reality.

I have NO use for anything they are selling.

I miss our great warm German house with the huge thick walls and capacious basement.

Our house here is Exactly the Right Size for us, and my best investment last year was a beautiful, efficient soapstone wood stove. This stove is right now keeping us a cozy 70F with virtually no effort and only a couple substantial logs.

It's so hard to talk about this displacement.

It's so hard to say how dishonest, how careless, how uselessly aggressive and stupid Americans seem, after participating in European society.

The vultures stink and hang about our house, and we have to find a way to banish them.

I have pretty much Had It.. it's bad enough, to get transplanted into rude society, without society being all kinds of intentionally rude.

I'm getting a good start on a walk in the shoes of my clients, yet again.

Something in my neck has gone awry.. I have dull pain at c4-5, mild bilateral parasthesia, and a constant low-grade dural headache. And my stomach is at its limit for NSAIDs..

The thing I really want to do is go back to Germany, to my dear teachers and ask for help. I should have gotten on those tables back in the fall when I had a chance.

The number of people here with the level of training I was used to back there, is vanishingly scarce. My dear friend & colleague CS saved me when I got back from Europe and landed hard, with a session that left me ice-cold and shaking.

I'm not sure what it is, there in my neck, but he walked right up to it and started the deconstruction. I love that about CS, he's stupid fearless like me, but we do it in such different ways. He gets in people's faces right away, and they know he's serious. I wait too long, and by the time they've pissed me off, I've gone thermonuclear.

I'm working on that balance.

I'm never NOT serious (quite silly, but never, ever lacking intent), but people take the diffident aspect more easily than the meter of sharp, folded steel I use for a backbone.

The wood stove's glass face is billowing purplish blue, which tells me the new cord of wood we ordered and stacked today is burning clean & hot. This wonderful invention of natural soapstone and cast iron, with a catalytic combustor to clean its emissions, has made our chilly, heat-pump-afflicted house a home. It has certainly made CG and the cat a LOT happier! well me too, in my weaker moments.

Mostly I think hot tea and more clothing can cure all chills, but I don't have 10 inches of titanium in my femur.

The wood stove, some Chardonnay spritzer after a nice chili dinner Chuck served, and a hot bath he is waiting for me in, are the features in my life tonight. Sure itnwas Zero Fahrenheit this morning, and will be 12F tonight, but the wood stove is stoked, the insulated curtains are closed, and the snow on the roof is holding fast.

I am the luckiest of the lucky..

My pains are my study and my learning, and I am open to the learning, and able to pay it all forward.

I just want you to know..

It didn't come easy.

None of this came easy.

I got a lucky break named Chuck Gordon.

He got me through school, and now he's reaping the benefits of a partner who feeds him, buys him beer, pays half the mortgage, makes him go to the gym, and pesters him about his budo.

I started out a the daughter of a poor black child (my dad didn't know he was white until he was about 8, due to being raised by black household help) who wanted to be a lawyer and ended up a postal worker for 30 years.

My mother was the daughter of a civil engineer, a polymath and would-be scholar whose abusive background robbed her of her potential.

She is a professional Spanish-English translator helping immigrants get their GEDs and become functional members of US society.

People like me don't get to go to Europe, we don't get to buy nice cars.

We don't get good health insurance without a good job. We tend to freeze in those jobs, from sheer fear.

I have a bigger, better opportunity.

Even when I am in trouble.

I've made it through all kinds of crazy.

These days, my life is a kind of freefall..

"The world has made me the man of my dreams" (M'shell Ndegeocello)

I am standing in a profoundly centered place.

I earned it, and I was given it.

If I had not earned it, I would not have been given it.

Last year, I made more than my father ever made in one year.

I talked to him tonight, and he told me.

"Others have excuses, I have my reasons why". (Nickel Creek)

There is a beautiful, delicate place where we can combine our vocations, avocations, passions and talent, and some years of hard work, fear and absolute, abject risk to make something happen which surpasses our own being.

I got to do that.

I really got to step into a training program which prepared me to help people in some unprecedented ways, very mechanical, very basic.

Then I got to do it, in one of the most stressful of places.. an Army post.

I did some work with German people as well, as they kept calling me, and I had to start a practice on the German side, speaking German, with the help of a German apothecary owner.

Once I had made my way in the German and Army environments (the struggles in the latter were epic) just showing up and setting up a practice in Frederick was a freakin' cake walk. Hell, practicing with German clients in German was a cake walk, compared to dealing with the Army. Some clients preferred to see me off post.

My ambition shows up in some very weird ways..

I want SI to have its own legislative movement, I want us away from massage.

It is not relevant, applicable, or helpful for us. I wish it was.. But we really need to pick up our own torch and keep moving.

Once upon a time, I was the train wreck "waiting to happen" well I've happened, and I'm over it.

I'm as ruined as I care to be, and I will do what I can to spare anyone following my bitter steps, a little suffering.

Don't try so hard. Every little bit you try, helps you. Stay with that.

Ask what you are compensating for. You may never get an answer, but at least you will have asked.

Don't think breaking yourself, means anything.

There are ways to experience breaking, that won't hurt you.

Try them first.. because physical injuries last. Don't accept emotional injury either.

Find healthy challenges. NEVER accept abuse.

Don't ever turn your development over to anyone else.

NO ONE CAN DO THIS FOR YOU.

I don't care what level you are working on, no guru can see you.

You have to do your own Work, and you have to be uncompromising.

It is ugly, it is terrible, it is uncomfortable and, in the end, liberating.

Freedom can be awful, too.

Welcome to my freefall.

A day of relatively heavy snow has passed.

We visited a friend up on little Sugarloaf Mountain, where the snow was naturally a bit heavier. Our little Element made its way (with me as pilot) safely through the slick fluff back into town, where we ran a few errands and scurried home for dinner.

I really wasn't either frightened or nervous about the snow. Watching the carcasses of the trucks and SUVs of the careless, reckless and just plain DUMB on the sides of the roads back to Fredneck, I was completely equanimous.

In low gear, no hurry, with the natives keeping their distance, a little sliding here and there, we just kept on keepin' on.

It's like my budo practice these days.

There is absolutely nothing to be frightened of.

I have already survived a couple decades, and have pretty minor problems to deal with.

The problem is, keeping it that way.

To this end, my jujutsu practice is limited to none. Chuck has the same problem, still unsure of his new prosthetic. There are still some bugs to work out, but I am optimistic. It's kind of my job.

Now, I am learning the art of just putting one foot in front of the other.

I am finally learning from my teacher.

When he is not teaching me so much, more responding to direct requests on specific subjects of my interest.

Something funny happened today.. someone called my SMR kata "sexy".. a nice enough guy for me to be endlessly amused. I am both flattered & flummoxed.

I started my budo training in 1989. I was about 20. Now I'm past 40, with some career-ending injuries. I should be done, but I won't quit.

I started with aikido in 1989, took it back up in 92, and pursued kenjutsu, aikijutsu, judo, and wing tsun, with a little kickboxing on the side until 1999.

At this point, personal development separated me from my partner, and I struck out North into Indiana, trying out Kokoro Ryu Jujutsu with one Chuck Gordon. It was, and may still be, an extant sogo-budo derived from Sekiguchi Ryu, painful, violent and uncompromising. It is not physically pleasant to practice, and I am not sure how much of it I can still do, but I would like to try, because it is a valid, dying art, and not many do it the way my teacher does, especially since his teacher has gone.. and he has not been back to find what his teacher may have left him to do.

I am the poster grrrl with no poster.. I love swords, sticks, Pretty Sharp Things, implements of Mayhem and horrible things to do with people you love, and to people who Bother you.

I carried my father's switchblade in high school, and once answered the door with a King Charles II sabre in my hand, when I didn't appreciate the caller. It was Texas, what was a girl with no gun to do?

I wore heavy boots to make my point to young men in junior high, before I figured out knives. I was dysnumeric, pathologically shy, cross-dominant clumsy, and unsocialized. Growing up is hard for everyone.

Thank you Ani DeFranco:

"I don't try to give my life meaning, by demeaning you,

and I'd like to state for the record,

I did everything that I could do.. "

I've done a few crazy things in my life.. nothing big but I ended up with some interesting stories. I found a home in martial arts where my energy and aggression could find a positive direction. I don't really think of my gender when I take something on. I'm fortunate enough to live in a time when it's not a big deal.

I used my ability to focus, learned in the dojo, when dealing with the local Army Morale, Welfare and Recreation personnel, when they wouldn't give me space to work in, or pay me. I also used my Secret Weapon (aka Chuck) and I methodically & consistently brought down consequences on everyone who crossed me. I went out of my way to help those who helped me.

Eventually I was free to serve the Soldiers and their families, but I had to fight the system to do it. That's the Arrrmy..

Now I move on, with three feet of razor steel ever in my attitude, and almost four feet of oak increasingly at my service.

Meanwhile, as I am learning the basic Seitei of SMR, someone calls my kata.. "SEXY" . My (other, male) partner burst out laughing.

These guys are great, they have welcomed a couple of orphans and been very kind, patient & welcoming (some initial puzzlement, and who could blame them!). They practice quality budo and are nice folks. The guy I am picking on is very nice, and generous as a sempai & training partner, but he does say some strange things. SMR is enjoyable training, and the kata are sticking in my mind fairly well.

I'm neither here nor there on his comment, it's funny and..

if you think lethal intent is sexy, well..

Whatever.

Budo babes must bear their burdens.

8-/

It's a more mysterious process, finding one's own way in one's own calling.

I'm not really sure it's in the writing department.

I'm not sure where it is.

I intend to explore the mediums.

There is something not just calling to me, but really beckoning me to do some kind of work, as it has for all this time.

It's not writing (too frustrating) It's, I just don't know what it is.

Sure I can write, but my feelings and expressions bruise, they mangle, I write like I train, I am generations of intention to survive, and that is uncompromising.

My ideas launch themselves as uncompromising predators, and the system reacts to protect itself.

My choice is to make a steady diet of my opponents and thrive on it, or starve my own protective instincts for my organization, my family.

Why do my opinions bruise and mangle? Is it my colleagues' inability to adapt? am I asking too much?

Surely my colleagues are at least as intelligent and inquisitive as I am... if not..

I can read and understand every word of the Fascia Research Congress.

Can you?

I don't have a college degree, and I can still out-phrase anyone who does, in my specialty. If I can't, I can at least ask intelligent questions. BTW, there are no college degrees in in connective tissue in the US. We are WAY behind the times.

Wikipedia is your friend, and it's best you got caught up ASAP.

It starts with a kid who feels so isolated, she might as well have grown up on the moon.

I used to walk down the street and try to decide which way I would go, to run away from home.

Usually when I was due for a switching from my mother, who didn't understand, or ask, why I had to stay after school. She just figured I had been bad, when in fact I had simply been bad at math, and my teacher wanted to help me out.

I walked down the street, and I was too pathologically shy to ask people to let me in. I sat on the neighbor's porch, hoping she would see me and ask me in. I was supposed to be cutting a switch for myself, and I sat there.

She had a beautiful 6-month-old baby girl, and I never wanted that kid to face what I had to face, and I thought about that.. later I babysat her, and now the little girl is a lovely young woman with two kids of her own who will never, ever have to cut their own switch.

Yes, Liz, that was me. Your mom asked me what I was doing there, and I couldn't tell her "escaping child abuse". I didn't know. And I didn't escape it. I was completely mute.

You were the closest thing I had to my own kid, and I'm proud of you, and my brother, who is the other one.

The things my parents did to me, I would never do to anyone.

They didn't know, and they did far better by me, than they themselves received.

I just tried to do better than that.

Dear Sir or Madam,

As a member of this theoretically representative democracy, I and most of the people I know are not feeling represented at all, at this time.

Mr Lieberman is the dog in the manger, Mr Nelson beside him, grabbing benefits for themselves in the face of the New York Times/CBS News Poll showing 72% of respondents in favor of a government administered health plan.

http://crooksandliars.com/howie-klein/americans-want-real-health-care-reform

Opponents of abortion represent only, at most, 25% of American, composed of evangelical christians and catholics.

If you recall, our nation is a secular one, perhaps you should review our constitution and the bill of rights you are sworn to uphold. There should be a test to enter public office, composed of random questions from both.

Keep in mind: Article II, Section 1.8 does not actually contain "So Help Me God".

Article VI, Section 3 ".. no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office.. "

In fact, the religious minority is NOT allowed to tell everyone else what to believe, or what to do. No one is.

If you don't like abortion, and don't want to allow it, don't worry. People who believe as you do, won't get one. That's less than a quarter of the population (http://www.religioustolerance.org/rel_rate.htm). You don't have the right to tell anyone else what to do.

It's a far worse decision than 25% of the population telling the rest of them they have to get circumcised, wear headscarfs, or panty hose.

Shame on you! Shame on you for violating our Constitution, shame on you for condemning so many young women to death and poverty.

Shame on you, parties to this incredibly violative agreement. I, and countless thousands, are disgusted with you.

When young people are FULLY educated about reproductive health and given free, affordable access to conventional, healthy family planning tools and ideas for reaching adulthood without reproductive mishaps, they have a higher success rate than if they are just told to pretend they will never be faced with the choice, or that choices are easy.

http://stats.org/stories/contrac_v_abst_dec12_06.htm

Furthermore, senior officials were INTENTIONALLY left out of technical, rational discussions on Morning After birth control: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5427939

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow.. in the sanctuary, thou art with me.. and I listen..

http://www.ippf.org/en/Resources/Reports-reviews/Death+and+Denial.htm

Perhaps you don't understand, that pregnancy in poverty, breeds pregnancy..

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2528810/

If you truly wish to prevent abortion, make SCIENTIFIC sex education mandatory in junior high, make sure that access to science-based family planning is freely available with NO questions, barriers or "state interrogations". Put minority "faith-based" services in their place- voluntary and elective.

To quote the great philosopher Bessie Smith; "Ain't Nobody's Business, If I Do".

I've got a big fat check sent off to NARAL, Planned Parenthood, and whoever is running against you in the next election, if you aren't paying attention to the great big percentage of Female-Americans who are tired of your misinformation, your misogyny, and your willful ignorance of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

Perhaps you should go pay our governing document a visit. It is a more reasonable document, than the one you laid your hand on, when you were sworn in. Furthermore, it was the document you swore to uphold. The other only works for a small percentage of the populace.

Thank you for your time and attention: Please don't send me a condescending letter about how you are working to protect me from the nasty old health reform bill or choice advocacy. I will be counting every one of these communications as a violation, and sending double my original donation to NARAL, or your opponent in the coming year, for every one of these automatic miscommunications/deliberate insults.

I can afford it.

You can't.

Emily D Gordon

Frederick, Maryland

We're dressed up and mostly prepared for the holidays..

It seems like I haven't been anywhere for the holidays for a decade now, that I wasn't homesick for somewhere else.

We've just had a lovely batch of snow, he got an extra day off and I am quite busy with my practice.

I have a full-time job now, between managing the practice, and actually "practicing".

I'm listening to Thomas Friedman talk about traveling between Europe and the US being like "travelling between the Jetsons & the Flintstones".

He's right. We may have pioneered, but we are lost in a political morass of past loyalties keeping new ideas, technologies, even rational science from improving our lives.

We took high-speed trains across Europe, safe, sound, well fed and catered to. The most expensive train took us across Europe for less than $450 in less than 7 hours.

We still talk about going back, because no one here can get enough momentum to go forward.

I am writing to express my dire disappointment in our representative democracy's ability to 1. uphold the constitution and 2. accurately represent the American People.

We have the Capacity for Reason. We need only the Opportunity to learn about it.

You may NOT legislate reproductive morality, without the taint of minority religious prejudice.

You may not pass laws about abortion, which are not tainted by extremist minority religious practice. You may also pass laws about circumcision or clitoridectomy, before you pass laws about what a free person may do within the confines of his or her body. If you would not consider these laws, do not consider any about or having to do with a a woman and any state of her body. If men could get pregnant, it would not be in question.

First of all, in case you have forgotten, our constitution does not sponsor any state religion.

Therefore, no specific religious rules may be applied or enforced.

Article II, Section 1.8 does not actually contain "So Help Me God".

Article VI, Section 3 ".. no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office.. "

I propose that unintentional or unwilling pregnancy be defined as "Involuntary Servitude", that is, slavery to BOTH the father, and the fetus. In fact, this is the biological state of the gestating mother, willing or not.

To say otherwise is to profess a profound misunderstanding of biology, which is rampant due to education cuts in both biology and reproductive education in the public system. Some products of our miseducation system prove the point by denying both evolution and climate change, and ending up in the Senate by no benefit of intellect.

THEREFORE: Amendment XIII, Section 1, constitutionally excludes human beings, including women, from involuntary servitude and slavery via unwanted pregnancy, and places the onus on the state to both prevent (!) and resolve this situation, when it unfortunately occurs.

THEREFORE: Access to Family Planning should be both free and freely accessible. That is, public education should contain SCIENTIFICALLY BASED information about sperm, eggs, intromission and TECHNICAL methods of avoiding impregnation. All other methods of education are based in either culture or religion and are not technically sound, and furthermore result in higher rates of pregnancy AND ABORTION.

Furthermore, senior officials were INTENTIONALLY left out of technical, rational discussions on Morning After birth control: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5427939

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow.. in the sanctuary, thou art with me.. and I listen..

http://www.ippf.org/en/Resources/Reports-reviews/Death+and+Denial.htm

I cannot stand this information- Would you send %52 of the population, from Nancy Pelosi to Madonna, back into the kitchen to make babies and bake cookies?

If you would, please sign up with the Taliban and leave your Senate or House post immediately, so that I can use you for target practice with the highest caliber weapon I can get my hands on, and train my sisters to use as well.

Perhaps you don't understand, that pregnancy in poverty, breeds pregnancy..

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2528810/

Perhaps I should thank you for precipitating grounds for a revolution on the part of any one of our %52, who is Paying Attention. You don't care about anything but making your religious benefactors happy.

Maybe you should care about the people you represent.

Maybe you should care about what happens to women, and their children, should they care to have them.. and should they care to have them, how they care for them. If you don't care, the %52 will let you know, if you pass or fail. So far, it's an EPIC FAIL. Shame on you, if you can't convince your colleagues, that their minority religious beliefs are WORSE than equivalent to forced circumcisions (male and female) and if they have not given birth themselves, (most members of the Senate or Congress have NOT!) if they would willingly and freely pass an entire coconut through their nether regions, as often as they have been willing to engage in carnal knowledge and/or intercourse. This thought process may have saved our august elected representative bodies much trouble, should it have been in any part, undertaken. Tiger, should have taken notes. Character epic FAIL.

Ask them if they would have enjoyed that process, as well as paying for college tuition for said coconut.

Then, perhaps, the Family Planning agenda begins to make some sense to the conceptual reproductive virgin, as some 85% of our supposedly "Representative" body are trying to come to terms with.

You do not Represent, if you don't stand up for us.

We are +%52.

We outnumber you.

We are mobilizing, we are Paying Attention. .

You are religious minorities with no right to regulate the MAJORITY.

We are speaking, and we are the majority. Many more than you think, are not religious.

http://ffrf.org/fttoday/1999/December99/news.html

You have no business legislating anything, anyone, by any power or religion.

This is a secular state, a free country.

Legislatively, religion does not, and should not, exist.

http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_prac2.htm:

"By about the year 2042, non-Christians will outnumber the Christians in the U.S."

Against Choice? Change it to "Pro-Slavery" and be honest about your agenda.

I've got a length of sheepskin written a long time ago, says I'm right.

Yeah, I actually read the muthafrakka.

Read it yourself, and keep your job.

I read the research, and I will do my very best to spread it around, and Pay Attention.

I will be aiding, abetting, assisting, and SENDING LOTS OF MONEY to everyone who supports this free agenda, and aiding, assisting, and abetting EVERYONE who opposes you, if you don't.

Trust me, I'm Santa, I'm keeping names & bank numbers.

Just keep this in mind:

"By about the year 2042, non-Christians will outnumber the Christians in the U.S."

Keep abortion language out of health care discussions.

Those who believe as you do, won't get abortions.

The rest, you have NO RIGHT to legislate.

Therefore, you have discharged your duty.

Go home, and let the rest of us take on the duty, commensurate with the rest of the Modern Western Civilization, of taking care so that our population does not drive us all into bankruptcy with unanswered health needs.

http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/2005/2005-11.html--

"Increasing adolescent abortion rates show positive correlation with increasing belief and worship of a creator, and negative correlation with increasing non-theism and acceptance of evolution; again rates are uniquely high in the U.S. (Figure 8). Claims that secular cultures aggravate abortion rates (John Paul II) are therefore contradicted by the quantitative data. Early adolescent pregnancy and birth have dropped in the developed democracies (Abma et al.; Singh and Darroch), but rates are two to dozens of times higher in the U.S. where the decline has been more modest (Figure 9). Broad correlations between decreasing theism and increasing pregnancy and birth are present, with Austria and especially Ireland being partial exceptions. Darroch et al. found that age of first intercourse, number of sexual partners and similar issues among teens do not exhibit wide disparity or a consistent pattern among the prosperous democracies they sampled, including the U.S. A detailed comparison of sexual practices in France and the U.S. observed little difference except that the French tend - contrary to common impression - to be somewhat more conservative (Gagnon et al.)."

The Texan has come back to the American Continent.

Not willingly.

Our feet dragged through Schiphol to the fateful plane which would drag us, from our final flight for some years, from our beloved Europa.

I didn't know I needed to check in online with United instead of Lufthansa, and kind of freaked out when we couldn't figure it out.

We also looked at each other, full of the knowledge that we wouldn't be so bad off, making our way in Europe.

Hell, we put a national health care system in Afghanistan, but we won't do it for ourselves..

Plenty is a funny place.

A couple of decades ago, I bought my first thanksgiving turkey.

I left it out to thaw too long in the Texas heat, and the giant thing (I had splurged) began to stink, and I realized I had to throw it out.

Twenty bucks was a little less than a days' work, in those days, for me, and it was heartbreaking.

I had wanted to cook it in the apartment I had just rented with a friend from school.. I'd like to say we were college roommates, but she was in college, and I was just getting by.

I remember the sickening thud as the carcass hit the bottom of the dumpster.. it was as if my dreams of independence had fallen to the bottom of the cheap metal container along with the poor wasted turkey's rotted flesh. I remember slinking sheepishly to my dad's for thanksgiving. That man is going to be very surprised when St Peter hands him a sainthood for making some effort to raise this loose cannon.

That Christmas, I went into the vacant lot behind our sleazy apartment complex with a spare hacksaw and brought in a scraggly little cedar tree for us to decorate.

We couldn't afford ornaments, and used stuffed toys & lingerie.. it was the Snoopy & Woodstock Crossdress Christmas.

This holiday is very different.

I have the capacity to make a comfortable living, within decent means. I will never be rich, except by the imagination of the rest of the world, especially without decent public health care.

Meanwhile, cg's job keeps us in health care at relatively minimal cost, and we have, on our travels, collected some luxury items unavailable in what most consider "normal" circumstances.

The turkey this year was ordered from a farmer's market, and will be lovingly brined & smoked.

Why does it matter, if I drink my beer from a Chodovar mug?

What do I care, if I drink wine from a plastic cup, or a Neuhaus crystal wine glass?

Can I put votives in the unmatched clarity of Neuhaus cups, and let them shine in great wide swathes of warmth?

Who cares, what sparkles on my Festivus tree?

Me..

I have a story carried in every touch of these things.. I refuse to follow my mother's hoarder habits, but I do have a story, and I have the same deeply kinesthetic memory.

I bought the mugs with the Labrador's face from Chodovar.

We picked out the wine glasses in Neuhaus by our dearly loved long-time home in the Oberpfalz, and bought the funny cups to hold the votives, in the shop Naydy showed us.

Naydy showed it to us, and that makes it even better.

The ornaments, we bought a little here and there at German Christmas markets, and it brings back the warmth & comfort we found there.

Some, we travelled to Cesky Krumlov for, and loved the adventure of getting there, staying there, and finding the crazy little discount store at the foot of the castle on the river.

We bought boxes and boxes of really crazy ornaments there, from Scottish Santas, to birds, to penguins (given away) and leopard print ornaments and all kinds of beautiful sparkly fragile madness.

Every bit of it has a story.

My fellow travellers and I, we bear the burden and the blessing, of being homesick for several places at once.

I think we all have the hunger, and the homesickness.. for me, I'm just so grateful to not be desperate over every little thing.. for however long this plenty lasts.. and trust me, I do not believe so much in luck.

More like, the opportunity for hard work, and the opportunity to make good, help others, and live reasonably well, conscientiously.. as honest folk do.. when they make it.

I hope I've made it.

I never trust that the other shoe won't drop, and I know life balances on many threads.

But, for now.. deep gratitude, and a willingness to keep it all going.

Crazy on Richard Thompson's "persuasion"

I am in the spell of the Bavarian forest.

There is nothing like having this massive resource, just a quarter hour by walking or bicycle, from your front door.

There is so much there, from blueberries, to cranberries, to chanterelles, and just the experience of Being there..

It's like being in love with someone no one ever met or heard of. Well, that's my life in general, so no surprises.

My love is in the forest, and will remain everso.

My heart is broken, when I cannot be there.

I am in a place where the forest is at my toes, but I need a car to get there.

My life not being centered around a car, I am stuck in urban inanity..

and I have to find a solution.

Can't I just walk down the street, into the forest?

Can't I..?

My travels describe a crazy pair of zig-zags. The one between Austin and Indianapolis was pretty much without angst. I was still in the US, but no longer in Austin.

That was bad enough.

Then I was no longer in the US.. in less than a year and a half, Chuck had his long-sought-after job in Germany, unfortunately under an insane person, and we had something like two weeks to arrange for everything to go across the Atlantic. We took the cat by default, and now she's the 20-yr-old Trans-Atlantic Kitty of Mystery.

Enter a state of galactic freefall.

We were met in Frankfurt by longtime friends who will be friends forever, Andy & Joachim.

One met us and hugged us as we got out of customs and inspections, Andy, you saved my emotional life in Europe. You probably know that, as a longtime emigrant. That, after the fanny-pack incident. Will Americans never cease in their convenient inventions? ;-)

Joachim instigated my intellectual curiosity, simply by living in a building with holes in it.

My whole (tiny) hands fit in the cavities in the foundation of his apartment building.

"What are these?"

"50-cal holes from the Allies on their attack of Frankfurt"

If my hands could have cried in these stone cavities, they would have.

My hands have ever since been alert to historical information..

Then, we proceeded through the Frankische Schweiz, quite reminiscent of Central Texas in its limestone vertical relief.

The first day on post, after these adventures, I wakened to obscenities and prolonged screaming.

Some troopie had melted down, and they sent the Krankenwagen (German ambulance) after him. Prolonged screaming, accusations, and the people bending over the afflicted will never entirely leave my consciousness.

First the MPs came, to tuck him in their Jeep, where the accusations continued, muffled.

Well.. here I am.. I thought..

and I also knew, at that point, that German society was going to be better for me than Army society.

I also knew that my empathy for the plight of the American soldier, my respect and my support, was going to have to be unwavering.

I spent the next six years, dancing along those lines.

One of the great wonders of my life, is the path bodywork has taken me on.

Something happened, when I first discovered Structural Integration, something about the authenticity, the intensity, and the necessary integrity, caught my mind's eye.

A huge part of my personal experience in Germany was my monthly train trips and weeklong sojourns in Munich for the European Rolfing Association's (ERA) training program.

Very early in my European experience, I got on that train, and went by myself. Chuck was always and ever my "net" but I only ever called on him when I got stoned out of my gourd on chocolate croissants (this is true) and called him from Schwandorf on the "wrong train". The conductor was an angel and guided me to Weiden, where Chuck picked me up like a stray hay bale. Every other trip was mostly pro forma, on time, relaxing and delightful. Chuck would pick me up in Weiden or just at home in Pressath, where he would greet me with his own Tex-Mex dinners to soothe the soul of the hungry, haunted traveller. He "got" that problem, as no one else would.

I started in Agathareid, south of Munich, on a sheep ranch. I am leaning on a pelt from one of the mix-breed sheep from there, it warms my back and brings amusing memories of attempting to haggle with a German. Doesn't work.. he got his Euro, and I have the loveliest fluffy lambskin ever, for exactly what he wanted. He sounded just like my dad, raising the price as I tried to lower it. I laughed out loud and flashed the cash. He got what he wanted, and so did I.

I resisted the group living, until I fell in love with my roommates. One French home nurse, an adorable Sicilian girl who was always in my lap once she realized that I was a martial artist who had no personal boundaries either, and I loved her for her vivacious openness and just because she was so beautiful and affectionate, and a singer. I confess to lifting a shirt the singer left behind, a black stretchy number she left stinking of her sweat until I washed it about five times. Her voice in the room's shower left us all breathless.. no singer can resist the resonance of water.

The food was beyond amazing, even to my uneducated palate. Wild leeks, homegrown mutton & chicken, breads & cheese. It was a kind of "kindergarten" for me, in terms of Bavarian life & custom. One of my goals is to go back and do this "Spectrum of Rolfing" again someday, as a more mature Rolfer. I would love to do it every year. I wonder if the beer & cigarette addicted donkey is still there.

So I fell in love with Rolfing, like a man might fall in love with that singer. I met Tom Meyers, had him autograph my copy of Anatomy Trains, met France Hatt-Arnold, Dorit Schatz (who "got" me from "hello") Sasha B, and Christoph Sommer (who let me know that growing up was optional, which really sold me).. I fell in love with these crazy people, and even more so, I fell in love with the idea of really changing people. I fell in love with the idea of *really* changing.

I took the stinky shirt home, and I washed it, and I thought of her, and I thought of what I had learned. I got my first three Rolfing sessions and my feet stopped hurting. The old calluses peeled off my feet, and were replaced by reconfigured ones. My knees stopped hurting.

I was sold.

So the resistant, hard-headed provincial was sold on so many levels, simply by falling in love.

My father and I connect over family, history & politics, for the most part.

He was talking to me (in one of our semi-weekly phone conversations) about all the crazy things he did with me as a kid.

He says he was drunk most of the time, but I don't recall any change in his behavior until he really "got into it" and then he was pretty sedentary and sometimes obnoxious.

Mostly, when we were doing things, I wasn't aware of him being in an altered state.

One of the things I remember, is taking the flat-bottom john-boat out on the Colorado river in flood stage. I don't know why this was a good idea.

We shot out of the boat dock into the streaming chop, torn downriver until we could struggle to the other side. Then, with clumsy geometry, and me at 9-10 years old climbing the riverside trees to pull the boat along, we pulled ourselves upstream, to shoot back across, paddling like hell to hit that boat ramp on the way back across the vicious swollen river. I think I had poison ivy welts for weeks.

Keep in mind that rainfall in Texas happens a couple times a year, in 5-10 inch increments. Formerly dry creekbeds kill people every year, much less racing rivers.

I think we went out for Pit BBQ in celebration of having not drowned.

Somehow, I was already inured to this kind of thing. Some of my earliest memories are of being strapped to my dad's back, with a fly from a flyrod whizzing around my head. I remember trying to see the colors.

He told me about another adventure in which he put me on his back, and hiked up a waterfall.

When he looked down, he told me, he almost fainted. I don't remember. I remember getting better at rock-scrambling.

At age 9, he put a pistol in my hand, and taught me to shoot. He was very proud that I 1. didn't kill anyone and 2. hit my targets (I remember refusing to shoot turtles).

I think my lack of fear had some roots in his late 60s model VW Beetle which had no floor in places, all rotted out. I remember the road passing by, under my feet. I knew I could fall out, but I knew I wouldn't.

He also told me the story of teaching me and my friend Terri how to use a recurve bow in our back yard. He said we spent all day out there. I think we wanted to be Jedis. We were 13-14, the age all girls should be learning to use weapons!

Central Texas is also Snake Central, and he told me about a little snake that came up on the bank where we were fishing, and that he picked me up and held me over his head until it slithered past. I remember being outside the boat in another incident with a snake being very interested in the bait I was reeling in, and his lifting my fairly sturdy (nearly 100#) 10-year-old self out of the water and putting me in the boat.

My dad was this great, bald & burly creature with long arms and hands like slabs of butcher-block, smelling of gasoline, mown grass and WD-40.

As I grew, I got to nearly his height, with his length of waist, arm, and hardness of bone & muscle. My hands are still small, and my features more dainty, but I am still the kid who climbed the trees to pull the boat upstream, picked up the pistol with confidence & curiosity, and hopped in and out of boats without thinking about it.

I told him today, he had raised a fearless kid, and the subtext went unsaid.

He raised a fearless woman. Without meaning to, just being a dad, and doing what he did.

Whatever else wasn't perfect, he did that for me.

Since then, I've found myself dealing with fear, and fearful situations, in a way I realize most people are unable to step into.

I think my dad is starting to figure out what he did right.

It certainly wasn't anyone's model of how to raise a "young lady" and to this day, I can't set the table or fold a napkin.

I can, however, plant & raise, or find, something for that table, cook it well & competently, and do it all as ethically & humanely as possible.

Other Dad-taught talents include talking to owls & coyotes, knowing the wingbeats of a duck or dove, and being able to catch fish anywhere there is water.

It simply doesn't occur to me to be fearful, most of the time.

Even when I maybe should be.