Donate your support to the International Rett Syndrome Foundation! ›
I finally got a fundraising page set up through FirstGiving.com! Like I mentioned in my first post, I’m running the Twin Cities Marathon on October 2nd and am asking friends and family for their support by pledging a financial contribution that will benefit the IRSF. You can pledge $1 per mile of the marathon (26.3) or any amount that you can comfortably manage - every dollar counts! Right now, my goal is to raise $500 by October - just less than 20 people / $26 pledge.
Your support - financial and moral - is much appreciated! Keep watching the blog for more updates on the marathon training and fundraising.
Reblogged from runstephrun/Originally from runstephrun
10 months ago on July 08, 2011 at 09:30am
At St. Paul 'wet house,' liquor can be their life -- and death ›
Reading this story broke my heart and stirred up all kinds of feelings. I’m torn about how I feel about the wet house concept. On the one hand, they do provide a sense of belonging and humane treatment to a population considered to be social pariahs. On the other hand, there is a part of me that agrees with the idea that there is always hope of recovery.
When I read this article, there is a part of me that is uncomfortable with the objectification of these people. People suffer from alcoholism. Alcoholism is a disease that is systemic in nature. It harms not just the individual, but anyone close to him or her. Alcohol serves to soothe the pain of existential problems - loneliness, lack of meaning in life, physical conditions. I know first hand because my father has been self-medicating with alcohol for as long as I can remember. In the last year, I have finally been candid with him about how alcohol has affected our family and my concern for his health. I pleaded with him to consider giving up drinking so that he could increase the chances of walking me down the aisle or meeting his future hypothetical grandchildren. All he could do was apologize and say, “I’m sorry, my darling. This is how I am. It’s my disease.” My heart broke for the thousandth time, but at least we had an understanding.
This piece bothers me because it talks about providing these people with humane treatment, yet the characterization provides little insight into who they really are as people. Who is Mr. Britton if you take the label “alcoholic” out of the picture? What were his hopes and dreams? Who mattered to them before this current life of isolation? I would have liked more information on the demographics of these facilities, which seem to be overwhelmingly occupied by men….which in itself is an issue worthy of dissection.
People often wonder why I am always at the Vegas Lounge. It’s a townie bar with lots of older folks who are there almost every day and almost always drunk. The other night, even I had had enough as I tried to have a conversation with a gentleman that kept going in circles because he was clearly too intoxicated to know right from left. You’ll find people who are drunk at any old bar in Northeast, but at the Vegas Lounge…there are the drunk people who also really love to sing. It doesn’t take Freud to make the connection with my own original karaoke idol, my father. When my father is singing, I don’t think about the familiar Heineken smell in the air or all the times that he couldn’t come to one of my choir concerts because he was drinking. I hear the sadness in his voice as he sings about love lost. I feel the power harnessed in a Neil Diamond tune that is not possible in his every day life where he is reminded that he is an immigrant and does not belong in this country. That is humanity.
For all those who feel that these institutions enable alcoholism, sure that’s true if you’re simply looking at the behavior and taking a completely individualistic “the person is the problem” approach to the disease. From a more holistic, humanistic point of view, I think they’re doing more good than harm. The people who work at the wet houses have incredible compassion. Given my history, I don’t think I could ever work in that setting.
Well, I didn’t intend for this to become a personal confession. But that’s what the piece set off for me. Wow, this is like TMI Tuesday.
1 year ago on February 22, 2011 at 12:15pm
A text transcript between my dad and I.
- Me: Whoa a magazine is paying me to use three of my pics!
- Tatang (that's Filipino for "father"): Wow...did u ask why n d price?
- Me: I post some of the photos I take online. Not much, 10$ per photo. It is a gardening mag. I have had other websites use my photos and I realized I should start asking for money.
- Tatang: Ya u s/d have. they saw something amazing in ur pics sellable n thats money. im so proud of u.
- I am going to save this text in my phone forever, saved along with two texts from my dad that read exactly the same message: "Happy birthday, darling" *Tear*
1 year ago on January 26, 2011 at 08:20pm
Graison-18 months or thereabouts, March 2010
Look at that face and tell me that your ovaries (or non-existent ovaries) are not aching.
1 year ago on January 03, 2011 at 01:04am
Cousins with Ice Cream, March 2010
Amidst all my moping over 2010, I forgot about the smaller joys and lessons over the year. When I visited home in March, I spent some time with some of my cousins and their children (all under the age of 5!). Melaina, Graison, Sara, Ethan, Lucas, and Emma (from L to R) showed me one of life’s most purely joyful experiences: little kids eating ice cream (and watching them eat ice cream!).
1 year ago on January 03, 2011 at 12:56am
Mom drawing | 07.03.10
I made a triptych in Photoshop! Great tutorial here.
1 year ago on November 24, 2010 at 11:24pm
You can’t go home again.
It’s almost 11:30am, the day before Thanksgiving. I should have been on the road from Minneapolis to Chicago an hour and a half ago in order to avoid traffic for the 6 hour drive. Instead, I’m trying to find every reason not to go. The wintery mix of rain and snow heading to the Metro. I have no clean clothes to pack. At home in Minneapolis, I have a million things to do - papers to grade, research to work on, books to read, photos to edit, blog posts to write, interviews to transcribe, the other armwarmer to knit, files to alphabetize. All things I’d rather do than to go back home this Thanksgiving.
Home doesn’t await me in Buffalo Grove, merely semblances of my youth. What’s left represents most everything that I’ve moved to three different states in the last 6 years to escape. It’s my high school’s ten year reunion this weekend. For months, my friends have been asking each other, “Are you going to reunion?” and making half-promises that “if you go, I’ll go,” a suicide pact to venture back into the awkward days of adolescence together. The closer this weekend drew near, the weight of the invisible cloak I wore for most of high school grew heavier. Screw this, I thought. Why put myself back into a situation I know that I will be miserable in? And pay $80 to be miserable in a bar with a group of people who I barely talked to in high school, much less in the last ten years. Maybe I’ll reconnect with an old friend or acquaintance for those 4 hours - but then what? I go back to my life in Minneapolis, they will go back to life in Bucktown or Wicker Park with their $50K job, partner, maybe a kid, definitely a dog. We will maybe become Facebook friends and then never talk again.
Then there’s the opportunity to spend time with my ex-boyfriend (the Ex of 8 years) who is in town visiting from the East Coast and bringing his girlfriend of almost a year - the first girlfriend his parents are to meet after me and our breakup almost 4 years ago. The blond girlfriend who is studying to be a lawyer and, oh, does competitive ballroom dancing on the side with crater-sized dimples to match the Ex’s (No, we’ve never met, I did “research” on Facebook). They’re going to hang out and karaoke with our mutual friends. KARAOKE! (Ugh!) I only found out about the visit after another friend decided to include me on an email to make plans which my ex so thoughtfully originally left me out of (“I didn’t want to make things awkward for either of you,” he later explained). I decided that sans my own karaoke-singing, incredibly attractive, intelligent and witty personal companion - I am more likely than not to come out of that situation a neurotic wreck. So, nix that.
But among the things that I am avoiding the most is what I also hold most dear. With my parents’ impending separation and the imminent foreclosure of the house I called home for more than 20 years, “going home” will never be the same. I’m scared to face the boxes of crap that my mom has been saving for me to go through. I am afraid to talk to my relatives who are going to ask what is going to happen to my parents. I don’t want to see my dad’s belongings in the room that my now-dead grandmother used to live in while my mom keeps their bedroom exactly the same, his side of the bed kept warm just in case he decides to come back. I don’t want to face my dad, who isn’t even talking to me because he believes that I have lowered myself into an unrespectable person and educator by getting a tattoo and sticking up for my mother in the breakdown of their marriage. I don’t want to try to give him a kiss on the cheek or even a weak “Hi, Tatang,” only to be turned away from or met with nothing more than a grumble (my Filipino dad is more Midwestern than he’d like to admit). I don’t want to spend my Thanksgiving in a fragmented way across different parts of my family - my dad at one aunt and uncles, my mom and brother and I at another.
I just talked to my mom on the phone a few minutes ago, and she begged me to come home. She assured me that everything was going to be okay and that people were looking forward to my visit. Thanksgiving is supposed to be a gathering of people who choose to come together in celebration. Warmth. Gratitude. Love. I wish that I felt those things waited for me back “home.” I suppose I have a 6 hour drive ahead of me to figure out where I will find some in the next few days.
1 year ago on November 24, 2010 at 12:05pm
