I'm lost on a hot night in Texas.

I'm emotionally unmoored, no longer attached to my surroundings, and I've gone out to find solace.

My martial arts friends are also my musician friends, and fans of same.

I'm following a standing invitation on a late weekday night, to come out and hear some music.

Maybe I can take the next day off, maybe I'll just take the sleep dep.. but I follow them all out, and I'm on a street corner in downtown Austin, sweating in the summer night, or huddled alone on a corner in a tiny bar, sipping my Shiner and grinning at the band.

I only recently gave away the boots I used to wear.. they fell apart from the walking and the dancing. I used to slip them on, under my hakama, walking back to my car from aikido class, after training late into exhaustion, training myself into tatters, driving home destroyed, and wondering why I always felt I was going the wrong way..

It's hard to explain, this social activity, I did all by myself.

Being alone in a crowd takes a certain kind of deeply isolated mindset, and that was me, at the time. I knew the band, I knew I was safe. I knew a couple of likely guests, one of them a quiet good friend, teacher and resource.

Things could have gone very, very badly, but they did not.. and I could sit at a table and quietly listen to my heart, and blues to match its tune.

I would walk back to my car in that absolute isolation, drive home in same, and go to sleep alone, next to someone else.

That's why it didn't work.. I am still alone.

I took my first mushroom foray today. No morels or anyone else presented themselves for picking, but the season has been long and cold, and I don't think the mycelium is fruiting just yet. I did find tons and tons of fiddleheads, much later than what I was finding on the C&O. Gambrill's elevation really does have an effect on the arrival of the seasons.

I drove Chuck to work, got into the post gym for my cardio, and got to the dentist's.

I've been spending entirely too much quality time with my dentist lately. Fortunately, he's a great guy, and a good dentist, it's just not my idea of a good time. Luckily, most of my teeth are good.

My reward was a day in the woods.. the silent whisper of the leaves, the birds singing 'each to each' and I am also certain, that they sing to me.

Gambrill is part of the ridge visible from our back windows and porch, and I love to get out there and see what's going on. I tend to pick a certain area to study the markers of the change of seasons. Others may become bored with the same path, while I become deeply enthralled with how different it can be, from month to month. Gambrill seems to be my reference/learning spot.

The wind was blustery and the day cold, unless I was walking uphill.

I got to see a cluster of ladyslipper orchids, and the tree azaleas in bloom, what a treat! I had never seen ladyslippers before. I got pictures, and will post them if they turn out.

Next time, I'm hoping for morels!!

I'm also just happy to get to walk around in the Sky Cathedral.

I have to come out with my experience in these weeks, since Frank left us.

I worked on an ovarian cancer surgery scar today, which would have been exactly the same work I would have done for Frank, the work I planned for him, post-recovery.

I told my client, I thanked her, for letting me do the work.

I am still grieving Frank, and I don't plan to stop, until I am done..

Getting to to the ovarian cancer scar work was a real step in the right direction.

I thanked my client, for letting me do the work, I wanted to do, for the friend I had lost. She thanked me, for being so there with her experience.

She got it, and she was so glad and grateful to be the recipient of my planning, of my compassion, of my pent-up healing intention.

Frank is not letting me go. I didn't figure he would.

I'm not ready to say goodbye, and Frank is not ready to say goodbye to me.

I'm OK with that. He had a lot of Good Work in mind for me, I am still working on understanding it.

The work I am here to do, is bigger than me.

Frank wants you to know, that he keeps reminding me.

I'm listening, is what I want you to know.

The last weekend with Quintin Chambers and the little jodo group here, served as a thoroughgoing wakeup call for my own practice. Crossing sticks with someone nearly twice my age and feeling that authenticity, that gleeful combative edge from QC, was a reality check most of us never have the opportunity to get slapped with. I understand why his students hold him so dear.. because now I do, too.

Admittedly, I've been whining and grumbling and feeling sorry for myself. We started SMR Jodo at my own insistence, because it's been so hard for cg & I to create space to train in. He needs to train, just to keep moving, and I just need to train. My twice separated shoulder and the bulging disk in my neck can't take any more ukemi, but by damn, I'll not put down weapons training. Chuck has been leaning more towards weapons for years, more since the hip replacement, which has really slowed him down.

I didn't really understand what Jodo was about, I just knew it was something good, and what we had done with Peter was incredibly interesting. I didn't understand what Aikido was about, or Kokoro Ryu, or Rolfing for that matter, when I started. I've been coasting on that gut feeling that guides most primates, most of the time.

Like the eight-ball in the corner in the corner pocket, I've just gotten lucky, so many times.

QC asked me why, after having done so many things, I ended up in SMR Jodo.

It flashed through my mind that this was completely backwards, that I should be interviewing HIM.. but..

The reason was the same.

I wanted something I could do for the rest of my life. I like the depth and the variety of the art. I am more naturally a sword person, but there's room for that, and room to grow with other weapons.

I was exposed to a depth of humility, compassion, endless inquiry, passion and talent for teaching, integrity, elegance and simple, savage joy in combat, that just blew me away. And I got to speak conversational German, learn more about that and other languages, exchange puns, and just enjoy sharing with good people.

The first day I spent the morning dealing with a possible ovarian cyst rupture, and accompanying rolling around on the floor at 6am, and doctor visit just to be sure I was all right to practice. It was a bad morning, at least I didn't throw up on the poor cat, who was trying to comfort me.. all I cared about, was that I didn't have to hostess the weekend from a hospital bed.

Chuck got me a hot pack and in to a PA, who pronounced me sound after extensive palpation, discussion, and urine sample. Chuck dropped me off at home, and I finished my (delayed) hostess work, then walked to the Bernard Brown Center where we had rented a wonderful, cheap space for training. I was so pale and sweaty from that little stroll, that Dan S tactfully negotiated a "rest day" for me, not realizing that I wasn't leaving the room.. He kept asking if it was still OK for everyone to stay with us.. Dan is still getting to know me.. heaven help him. Brendan, please provide tech support. 8-)

For me, I'll stand up and show up, if my limbs work, and my nervous system will get me there.

By then, I was starving, which I took as a Good Sign, and got lunch with the group, but I still didn't dress out or attempt to train for the rest of the day, mostly because I was just still too shaky to trust my weapons control. I took a lot of pictures, some of which are quite good due to incredible lighting in the space, and I look forward to sharing them.

We got through the day, got everyone fed, settled, and back to the house. By then I was back to functional.

The morning came, and I got everyone out the door, showed up and dressed out. The weekend progressed pretty normally from there. We learned three new kata, and Joe and QC pushed us out of Seitei into Omote (basically, you're not raw beginners any more).

I'm still the P!nk of budo, I'll do anything I think I can get away with, and laugh my ass off trying.

I found a real kindred soul in QC, and he kicked my @ss, just bowing in.

He settles down slowly on that reconstructed knee, and bows in just like anyone else.

From that start point, my Bad Morning was a coffee spill.

The thing that QC does, with that infectious combat glee, is infuse practice with a real spark of life and death, a real awareness that what we are doing is lethal. QC's training smile is a dragon's grin.. you never forget it, or those eyes rimmed with the blue of time, fixed on you, with humor and perception.. what have you got, where are you going, how will you get there.. always thinking of the riai. Even when nothing else is going on, moving and thinking, all the time. QC is hyperkinetic even at seven plus decades of life. We should all be so vital, so lucky, so motivated.

"That's what we do, we attack the weapon"..

He talked about controlling the line of attack, as I have been taught by Chuck. The angle is not quite as suicidal, most of the time. Many times, I've wondered, how much of that was CG, and how much of that was what he was taught. The options are many, and this beginner's mind can only begin to comprehend.

I understand why Frank Gordon broke down, in private conversation with me, after training in the seminar with Sugano, after his first battle with cancer. he was just so glad to reach those levels of practice, again. I share it because he would want me to, to make my point. I wish we could have a moment like that again, in fact, I had hoped for it. I will always be sorry that we won't (Frank Gordon died of a blood clot after followup cancer surgery).

QC has given me clearer understanding, of the kind of intensity one can attain, despite physical infirmities, in one's practice.

In fact, QC, and Frank, have given me an ever clearer directive in terms of my training.

Ichi Go, Ichi E.

One life, one meeting.

I may never see you again, but I will never forget what I have learned from you.

I will also not wait, to find the sweetness, the intensity of survival, in my training.

To break a lease:

Don't clean up after 2 large dogs pooping and peeing in 3 meters sq with no regard to anyone elses' property lines.

Yell and holler after 10pm on a regular basis

Abuse, denigrate and yell racial epithets at your neighbor at all hours.

Your neighbor looks about like you do..

No conversation below "HOLLER" at any time of day.

Unlicenced vehicles, constant police calls and general disruption at any time of day or night.

Recently, they've started giving the dogs commands in German, so we won't understand.

yeah. umm. talk about Not Paying Attention and Dumbass..

So here I am in what looks like the conservative's chair.

I don't care one bit about pot. People who smoke rarely get in fights, though they shouldn't drive. Most Americans shouldn't drive. No one is more careless, and no one has a higher death rate.

I've been unemployed, and during this time, I was not only working, but desperately looking for full time work, and materially participating in the construction of my own house (built the gable ends, mudded all interior walls, set and mortared slate, finished doors.. )

I was busier when I was "unemployed" than any time I spent holding down some chair for a government agency or company.

Now, I help people and deal with the administrivia, over 40 hrs per week.

Three hours or more of this, I write off to the Vultures. HSA forms, explanation calls, and more.

I can't imagine what it's like for a conforming organization, except that I used to work for one.

I was on both confirmation and collection calls... I hated the organization, and saw the owner dip into the cash box for party money, and said so.. I didn't do well there.

At the same time, I do conscientiously pay my taxes (preferably with education and other fees) I strenuously adhere to local regulations, and I report muthafuckas who don't.

I'm dealing in an awful world right now.

I got a week in Austin, and it was like visiting the idea Disney wants to sell you, where everything is beautiful, and everyone loves you.

It really was.. I actually had delusions of moving back, partially because it was so nice and cool.. but I saw those junipers waiting for me, and I felt the sun pressing me down.. and ..

I miss everyone so much, and it is all so beautiful to see all of you, to be with you and be enlightened, so enlightened and uplifted by your company.. that is the only thing which might draw me back.

Frederick is a thorny world for us right now.

My practice is a heaven on earth, of people who have been waiting for me to show up.

But I am walking in a land of ghosts and demons, a land of what is, and where I was.

In Germany, my neighbors never would have been hideously unsocialized drug addicted redneck ruffian trash.

Here, it just seems to be some kind of casual matter of course.

Back in Texas, I could have just shot them, and moved on.

Here, the state won't do anything, and won't let me do anything. The only choice, is to drag the landlord over the block, dollars sent to the legal profession.

I am praying to my Real Estate Guru Frank Gordon..

Frank, I heard your voice today.. you said to me.. "doggonit, I wasn't supposed to die".

Frank, I put it out to you before, but it was hard to say.

You may have others who listen better, but I am here, and you know my ears, my heart and my mind were always open.

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.)."