This is the story of how my grandbunny Fluffy came into our lives. And more.
For a Christmas bonus for me when my daughter was five, I got a gift
certificate from my employer for Dayton's, the former local, 'fancy' department
store in Minneapolis (and other places). It was only for $25 but I appreciated
it.
Over that Christmas, something happened to my daughter. She was very upset
after the incident, entered therapy, struggled. She had been one of the
favorite kids in her kindergarden class. Her teachers had told me "Rosie
is the kind of student every teacher dreams of having. She is well behaved,
very interested in learning and she sets an example for the other
children." But after the incident, I heard reports from those same
teachers about how she had changed dramatically since her two weeks out of town
and, thus, not at school. Note: this was both a kindergarden and day care
business. I chose it because as a single mother with a 9-5 kind of job, half
day day care didn't work for me. So she went to that school on days when
there would have been no school at 'regular' schools. It only had kindergarden
and all day care. It was a good program, actually.
Her teachers began to report that Rosie was picking fights with other children,
disrupting class lessons, refusing to pay attention. Perhaps she was unable to pay attention, caught up in her emotions.
Rosie's Sunday school teacher also began to question what had happened to Rosie.
Rosie only saw that Sunday school teacher for an hour a week so when that woman
asked me, after one Sunday School class, "What has happened to Rosie?"
I decided to sit my five year old down and ask her.
Rosie was acting differently in other venues, too. Once we went to a dinner
party with some of my co-workers and Rosie stole a piece of jewelry from the
hostess. When I confronted her, she said, in an angry tone that did not
resemble the happy angel I had always known, she said "It was your fault
because you didn't buy it for me." She was angry with me. Very angry. I had no duty to buy her adult and 'real' jewerry! She did other
things similar to the jewelry theft and when confronted, she always said
"It was your fault" and she sneered and curled up her face into an
ugly grimace. She was angry. Hurting angry.
I had noticed many changes in my five year old but hearing the Sunday school
teacher note those changes made me realize something had happened. I assumed
that what had happened was that her father had lost his temper during her
Christmas visit with him, maybe he struck her. I was not particularly
concerned when I thought "maybe her dad spanked her". I read
her a bedtime story, tucked her in, tried to create a warm cosy environment
before I said "Rosie, something has happened to you." She hid
under her covers, started crying and said she couldn't tell me, that 'he' said
he would kill me if she told.
I stopped that conversation right there because I knew my antipathy forwards
her father could easily influence the conversation. Plus I was still thinking
that he had spanked her, and being spanked had shocked her. Or he had shown her
his temper. Once when she was in college and I had paid to fly her to see him
for a few days around New Year's, she called me from her cell phone, sitting in
the cold in her dad's car, crying and telling me he had been very angry,
explosively so, frightening her and she had told him she wanted to go
home. Home, for her, was not with me. I think she flew back to Chicago
where her then-boyfriend lived. He was her home then.
I didn't know what to do next about my newly miserable five year old, back in early 1988. I said
to her "I am going to find someone to help us." She said
"But how, how can someone help us. The court says I have to see him."
Yes, this is how the daughter of two lawyers talk. And, for all I know,
her dad had talked to her about court orders around his visitation which, until
this incident, I had always honored, of course.
She was sobbing inconsolably and kept saying "how can you help me? I have
to go there." so I said, to sooth my child, "I don't know what I can
do but I will find out what I can do. I promise I will take care of
you." I said such things over and over to sooth her. She cried so
hard, she snuffled a bit as she first fell asleep. Her soft breath quivering, huffing, tiny sobs. I sat with her until the huffy sobbing stopped.
Then, the very next morning, when I dropped her off at the kindergarden/day
care place, one of her two teachers asked me if I had a few minutes. Then, when
I said I had time to talk, both of the teachers (with assistants in with the
children), one wringing her hands and both of them appearing very
uncomfortable, silently lead me into the kitchen of the little school, closed
the door and we all sat down.
The gal who took the lead was literally wringing her hands as she said "I
don't know how to tell you this and it is very hard for me but given the
significant changes in Rosie's behavior since Christmas, we believe she may
have been molested. We don't see such a dramatic change in a happy child like Rosie
except for something like that."
To which I responded, glad, at least, that I could make the moment easier for
those two good women, "Well, I actually figured out last night that
something happened to her over the holidays, I asked her and she said yes but I
didn't press her to tell me."
The two teachers explained to me that, by law, they were mandated reporters
and they were legally obligated to report suspected child abuse of any kind.
They also said they had the name of a therapist at U. of MN. whose practiced
focussed on molested children and if I took Rosie to see her, they would not
make the mandated report. The therapist would still have to, they said.
And, eventually, Child Protection of Hennepin County got involved, interviewed
my little bunny and made a finding of substantiated child abuse. Please note
that I was not present for the Child Protection interview, or the MD interview,
or the police interview. Nowadays, child who these kinds of professional
suspect abuse interview such a child once but back then, it was one interview
after another. Plus we went to therapy.
The first day we saw that therapist, btw, she asked Rosie if she knew what a
secret was. The little honey said "Yes, a secret is something you
tell your mom." I cheered up to hear that. I interpreted her words to mean she
trusted me. Then the therapist asked Rosie if she ever dreamed when she slept.
To my surprise, Rosie, who has always had superb verbal skills, even at age 5,
said "Yes. I had a dream last night." Then the therapist asked her
what the dream had been about. I was surprised that that therapist had moved so
fast with Rosie, surprised at her questions. The therapist had asked me to keep
quiet and let Rosie do the talking until the therapist drew me into the
conversation so of course I kept quiet.
The therapist asked Rosie to tell her about the dream. "In the dream, I
was in our house in Omaha, inside with my dad and my mom was outside the house
running around because she was being chased by a monster."
Then that therapist asked Rosie if she could draw a picture of the monster. Rosie
said sure. She liked to draw and that children's therapist had a large white
board and many color markers all set up. I suppose the therapist used such
tools regularly.
Rosie drew a picture of a penis. The penis was the monster and she filled up
almost the entire white board with her drawing. She made a long, cylindrical
shape, with bushes around the bottom and little spurts coming out of the top. If
I had not seen it with my own eyes, I would probably not have believed that
therapist if she had tried to describe it to me. Nowadays, I suppose I'd take a
cell phone photo of it. Sometimes I have wished I still had the picture Rosie
drew that day because several years later, she erupted in anger and repeatedly
angrily denounced me for making up the whole thing.
I still have a copy of the child protection report. I so didn't make it up.
I've never had a lot of money, even when I worked. I was working a job job when
Rosie was five. I had saved my Xmas gift certificate, planning to use it to buy
myself something new to wear. In those days, I usually bought myself a new,
cotton knit, summer dress each spring and I had planned to use the $25 towards
my new dress that year.
So Rosie continued in therapy. Sometimes the therapist would call me in for a
bit, mostly not.
Easter approached. I began to talk to Rosie, and talk to myself, about how
to keep her safe during her next, court-ordered visit. I was afraid to withhold
a visit because I had already faced years and many tens of thousands of
dollars, fighting over custody. I did not want to withhold visits and
become embroiled in more legal battle with my ex. So I said that I would
confront her dad and once he knew I knew about the abuse, he would not do again
for fear of being charged.
This triggered new anxieties in Rosie. She must have talked to the therapist
about my, I see now, poor plan to confront the ex and send her for Easter visit
because the therapist had me sit in for part of a session. She had Rosie talk
about her anxiety over going to visit her dad. She told me that I was naive if
I thought telling an abuser that I knew about his abuse would stop him. And I
was not naive, just blind. No one knows better than I do how abusive her dad
could be. Our marriage counselor testified in his deposition that my ex was the
cruelest human being he had ever met and that was in over 20 years of marriage
counseling. I was slipping into my abused victim mentality when I tried
to convince myself I could stop my child's abuse by just telling her dad to
knock it off.
Then the therapist asked me the perfect question. She said "what did you
tell Rosie that night you first confronted her about the changes you saw in
her?"
Bingo. She had me. So I said "I told her that I would protect
her."
Therapist asked, "Do you think she feels protected if you send her for
this Easter visit?"
And I knew in that moment that I had to withhold the visits.
There's a lot more to the story. Tears are streaming down my face and have been
throughout this.
I actually sat down to write about my grandbunny Fluffy. I always called her
Fluffina. "My dear little Fluffina" I would say in a silly, arched tone, playing a goofy impression of talking fancifully.
I decided to spend my $25 Christmas gift certificate on a Gund, white, fluffy
bunny. Easter. A bunny. Made sense. Gunds are great because you can toss them in the washing machine and
keep them clean. Cleanish. They do wear out if your kid makes her the favorite
doll. Rosie slept with Fluffy always, even took her when she left for college.
I sometimes made a fuss about Fluffina, my grandbunny, to make Rosie laugh. I
would ask if Fluffina, my dear little Fluffina could spend one night with me.
At Christmas, Rosie gave me small note cards with 'gifts' such as "I
promise to tidy my room when you ask without complaining." The most
important gift guard, which she gave me for Xmas many years, was "This
coupon good for one night with Fluffy." But whenever I tried to cash in
the Fluffy coupon, Rosie would tell me she just couldn't part with Fluffy, not
even for one night, not even to honor the coupon.
I had good maternal instincts when I decided to buy Fluffina for Rosie. My Rosie
needed something to comfort her. I was always very aware, when we struggled to
cope with the incident (whatever the truth of it may have been, I never fed her
ideas and I believed what she told all those experts. With the child protection
interview, they gave Rosie anatomically correct cloth dolls and asked her to
show what had happened to her. I was not present, although I was in the building. Her play with the anatomically correct dolls was videotaped and I saw it later. I had no input into what she said to that child protection worker. And I had never asked Rosie to tell me what had been done to her. I read the reports. I read what she told child protection, the therapist, the doctor, and the police officer but I never asked her to tell me. Watched videos of her with child protection, a doctor, police. The only reason I know what she did in that child protection interview is because, yes, the child protection worker's report included it.
There were two anatomically correct dolls in the room. The child protection worker asked Rosie if she could show the woman what had happened to her using the dolls. And she did. She demonstrated the male doll placing his penis in the anus of the female doll. I had never before had a conscioius thought of anatomically correct dolls. After that interview, I felt a little violated, thinking I should have known about the dolls. I guess they don't tell parents what they are going to try in such interviews so the parents can't plant ideas in their child.
The incident ruined my life. I believe it is the root of why my daughter has shunned me for sixteen years. When she was in the fifth grade in therapy with a man named Paul, she got to a point where she angrily denounced me for making up the incest. Paul said child predators count on the children's memory erasing what happened.
And about Paul. When Rosie was in the fifth grade, she was having serial panic attacks, was very anxious. Her pediatrician referred us first to a psychiatrist for meds. Rosie and I walked out of the appointment with that psychiatrist for he reeked of cigarette smoke and he wrapped her up in a bear hug upon coming to the reception area to call her in for the consultation. He did not get permission to touch her and my little OCD wretched as he actually lifted her a bit off the floor in his bear hug. Both the unpermitted hug and the reeking cigarette smoke had both of us reeling. She looked at me with so much panic in her eyes. I said "Let's get out of here. This is not the doc for us." And on the way home, we decided meds were not the way to go. So we'd try one on one therapy for Rosie.
Rosie said she would only do therapy if I agreed that I would never talk to Paul about the therapy, never ask him about anything she said. And I never did. I wonder if she ever realized, then or later, what a huge thing she asked of me. I agreed to let her see a therapist that I could not talk to about her therapy because I thought my little girl needed to talk to someone and if honoring her demand would get her to go to therapy, I loved her enough to do it. She was only ten. She needed to talk to some adult, I believed.
Paul agreed to Rosie's terms with one exception. He said he had to interview me once to get her social history. Which he did. That was the only time I talked to him. She saw him for several years, if I remember correctly. I recall that when she developed anorexia and started to see someone, also a male, who specialized in anorexia, she had to let go of Paul. I went to Paul's office to get her records for the new therapist and, sure, we chatted briefly. He said "I never thought she'd take starving herself so far." "Neither did I." And that was all we ever said to one another except during the initial social history.
I disclosed the incident in the initial social history, the only time I talked to Paul about my daughter. He disclosed that Rosie had not mentioned it to him. She got around to it somehow. Maybe Paul brought it up. I don't know because, coming from a place of profound love, I never asked Paul, not once, about what she talked to him about. And I never asked her about her work with Paul. I sat in his reception room for all her appointments. He'd say hello when he came out to get her. But it came up at some point and she was cold fury . . . at me. She screamed, so many times, that it didn't happen, that I had made it up. And I would try to remain calm and remind her that a child therapist, her kindergarden teachers, her Sunday school teacher, a child protection worker, a medical doctor and a couple cops had all concluded the incident had happened. Some of them saw it before I did because, as I learned in this hellish experience, mothers often don't see that their child is being abused because to surface abuse is to surface trouble. It can be a Pandora's Box.
And our incident sure was a Pandora's Box for me. It cost me my only child. And he, her father, is not only her FB pal but also her boyfriend's FB pal. Her abuser gets to have a relationship with her. And I, who gave her so much, including things she knows nothing about, am shunned. And she lies about me to folks in her life, perhaps to explain why she shuns her mother. She tells people I am severely mentally ill. How sadly funny, eh? Our marriage counselor testified under oath, and he was a man who had initially studied for the priesthood and was a very, very good man, that her father was the cruelest human being he, the doc, had met in 20+ years of marriage counseling. That doctor said her father needed extended psychiatric hospitalization, at least five to seven years, and even then, the doctor testified under oath, her father would likely never be well. The doc said he didn't think her father should have any visits with her, at least no unsupervised ones.
But she has a relationship with her father and not with me.
She can think whatever she wants, but I saved her. And I gave up a very great deal to save her.
And I never got to spend a single night with my grandbunny, Fluffina. Fluffina was wearing out last time I saw her, when Rose set off for college. Like all truly loved bunnies, she's probably not around anymore. Just like I am no longer around in my only child's life. I'm all worn out, bled dry. And her father is part of her life. What? Did she want to show up at some event having a parent and she is ashamed of me but not him?
I'm not surprised she still loves him. She never stopped loving him. I learned that one of the cruelest aspects of a parent abusing their child is that the child goes on loving them anyway. A child's love, like a mother's, does not stop because someone has hurt them.
Well. That's how I came to have the one grandbunny, Fluffy. She had a pink threaded nose for a long time but the pink faded. And so have I.
Saturday, June 24, 2017
Friday, June 09, 2017
Sixteen rows of cherry tomatoes, one beautiful Katie Joy
I put it together by myself! My mobility scooter is ready to be ridden!! The hard styrofoam has left little bits of white stuff all around where I unpacked, then assembled it. It was just as easy to put together as the salesperson said. I bought it from a company in Florida because the company offers a five year warranty, including the battery!!
I thought I'd zip out the door as soon as I got it together and the packing debris put in my recycle/trash room but I am wiped out.
I'll take a nap, something I am able to do just about any time. I've always been a napper but lately, I get so fatigued, so totally drained of energy, that I nap more soundly than ever. Except when I was pregnant.
When pregnant with my daughter, who took took took and then shunned me (over sixteen years but who counts? the heartache increases . . ) I wallpapered two walls of her bedroom while pregnant, the two walls with windows, the walls one saw when one stood in the door facing into the room. I thought papering all four walls might make the room seem small. It was a largish bedroom.
I covered those two walls with rainbows. In a couple spots, where I couldn't quite make the wallpaper match perfectly (I hang wallpaper like a master, truly I do), I cut out pieces of unused bits of that wallpaper and made the seams match. I poured my heart and soul into readying that room, that wallpaper, for my child.
And at the end of the day, I sat down on the floor of that room to behold my masterful work. Then I realized I felt more exhausted than I had ever felt in my life. So I just spread out on the floor on my back (hard to lie on a floor stomach down with a 7 month old fetus inside one's uterus!) and rested until her father came home so he could help me get off the floor.
He said nothing about the wallpaper. He yelled at me because he always insisted that I clean up from any chores I was doing while he was at work. Same when I painted the kitchen cabinets (harder than walls, for I used enamel and had to paint so carefully to avoid enamel drips) or wallpapered the kitchen, or wallpapered the front hall, etc. etc. etc. He insisted the house be in pristine conditon and would not listen to my explanations, which he heard as whining laziness, that it was a whole lot more work to clean up a job over and over instead of waiting until the project was over.
Hell, I bought a power drill so I could install the mini-blinds I custom ordered for my baby's room. and I installed the curtain rods with that drill for the new curtains in our living room.
He liked to brag to coworkers and friends that he had married a home improvement contractor. No one but me heard him hound me to have the house perfectly tidy even when I had spent the day painting and/or wallpapering or gardening (and maybe his family, he talked about every detail of our lives with his mom and sisters and if they voiced opprobrium about anything, he would demand that I abide by their preferences). I refused to let his mom and sisters approve my wallpaper, wall colors and, and this was a very very big and neverending discussion, the color to paint the outside of our house.
I went with slate blue and cream trim instead of white. Each color seemed softer, more welcoming. He squawked and squawked about how his mom and sisters had never seen a blue house, never seen cream-toned trip. Sometimes, while still pregnant, I'd drive him around our suburban world and show him all the blue houses. True, most of the blue houses had white dream. I took the position that being just a little different distinguished our house. I did get my colors but they cost me.
And then, oh why oh why am I thinking of these unhappy times -- maybe needing the scooter is operating on a subliminal level and upsetting some aspect of my being that longs to be fully mobile on her own. Nope. I don't mind the scooter. What I mind is that I have heart failure, crippling arthritis and my only child doesn't give a damn.
While pregnant, I asked him to plow a patch of our backyard so I could plant a garden. I had imagined an 8x10' patch but his friend Dave, raised on a farm, went out and rented a rototiller and plowed up a sixteen by forty foot patch of sod. Then my ex informed me I better plant every inch of that patch. When I pleaded that it was too big a garden for me to handle waddling around pregnant and in and out of the hospital several times during that pregnancy (I had a wicked hard pregnancy, I couldn't keep down water much less food so I was hospitalized for long stretches to be fed and given water intravenously. This was more for the baby than me. I lost almost 30 pounds while pregnant but my baby, born a couple weeks early, weighed six pounds eight and one half ounces. All these years later I still love that half ounce. I had never heard a newborn's weight noted up to the half ounce before. or have I heard such a thing since. My baby was special!
Anyway, I bought a packet of seeds, because my husband forbid me to buy starter plants. In hard winter parts of the country, people don't buy starters to be lazy, as he opined. They buy them because the growing season is shortish. I intended to have one row of cherry tomatoes and one row of tomatoes. I was going to sneak in tomato starts but I bought cherry tomato seeds. I put the whole packet of seeds in a row, intending to thin them out to have one row, maybe two rows at the absolute most.
Then I was hospitalized for a week and Dave and my ex saved all those cherry tomatoes. Instead of having a large garden full of many things, I had sixteen rows eight plants per row of cherry tomatoes and only cherry tomatoes. We ended up with a cash crop. If I didn't have a newborn, with my daughter born in June, I joked, we could set up a tomato stand and sell cherry tomatoes. He thought that would be embarassing. I was kidding. We did live along our side yard, along a busy street. I likely would have sold those tomatoes. Or, at least, given them away.
I had no canning supplies and, with a new born by the time those tomatoes were ripe, no time or energy to learn how to can. My husband ordered me -- and his orders were always abusively issued -- to use every single one of those cherry tomatoes. He said it wouldn't go well for me if I wasted any. He forbid me from sharing them weigh neighbors and even forbid sharing them with his relatives.
And I had no other plants. I had asked if he and Dave could plant other things while I was serially hospitalized but he said the garden was full of those cursed cherry tomatoes.
So I simmer pot after pot of those cherry tomatoes, put them in cheap plastic containers, filled our freezer with those tomatoes. And we had a separate, gigantic freezer for his fantasy deer meat I filled that sucker with boiled cherry tomatoes, showed them to him. And, one by one, thawed them and threw them out.
I had a newborn. Cooking gourmet feasts was not on my list of priorities. And he did nothing to help me, not even mow the fucking lawn. He said the price I had to pay for staying with our baby was all the chores. so I would mow our huge lawn (double lot) in bits while my baby napped. I was perpetually mowing that lawn her first summer.
Her second summer, my Katie Joy liked to help me garden. I planted zinnias along our fence that faced the empty lot and could be seen from the passing cars. I planted those zinnias from seed, too, trying to be frugal to justify staying home with my baby. So a time came when I had to thin the zinnias. Luckily, no Dave came around to order me to use every single zinnia start once they got going.
Instead, I had the best helper in the world. Katie loved pulled little plants out of the ground and throwing them in a pile. She pulled lots of perfectly good zinnias. I loved her so. I can see how beautiful she was, I can see the sunlight, I can see her lavendar Oshkosh by gosh overalls with the ruffles on her suspenders. I see the rose-sprigged sun hat on her head. I thanked her each time she pulled up a zinnia and, when she would not notice, I'd replant the good plants.
Back when Dave and my ex were saving all those cursed cherry tomato plants, I pleaded with my husband from my hospital bed to only save two rows. "If you want to go on working, plant beans, squash, lettuce, herbs". He said "You started these cherry tomatoes. It would be a sin to waste them."
I thought I'd zip out the door as soon as I got it together and the packing debris put in my recycle/trash room but I am wiped out.
I'll take a nap, something I am able to do just about any time. I've always been a napper but lately, I get so fatigued, so totally drained of energy, that I nap more soundly than ever. Except when I was pregnant.
When pregnant with my daughter, who took took took and then shunned me (over sixteen years but who counts? the heartache increases . . ) I wallpapered two walls of her bedroom while pregnant, the two walls with windows, the walls one saw when one stood in the door facing into the room. I thought papering all four walls might make the room seem small. It was a largish bedroom.
I covered those two walls with rainbows. In a couple spots, where I couldn't quite make the wallpaper match perfectly (I hang wallpaper like a master, truly I do), I cut out pieces of unused bits of that wallpaper and made the seams match. I poured my heart and soul into readying that room, that wallpaper, for my child.
And at the end of the day, I sat down on the floor of that room to behold my masterful work. Then I realized I felt more exhausted than I had ever felt in my life. So I just spread out on the floor on my back (hard to lie on a floor stomach down with a 7 month old fetus inside one's uterus!) and rested until her father came home so he could help me get off the floor.
He said nothing about the wallpaper. He yelled at me because he always insisted that I clean up from any chores I was doing while he was at work. Same when I painted the kitchen cabinets (harder than walls, for I used enamel and had to paint so carefully to avoid enamel drips) or wallpapered the kitchen, or wallpapered the front hall, etc. etc. etc. He insisted the house be in pristine conditon and would not listen to my explanations, which he heard as whining laziness, that it was a whole lot more work to clean up a job over and over instead of waiting until the project was over.
Hell, I bought a power drill so I could install the mini-blinds I custom ordered for my baby's room. and I installed the curtain rods with that drill for the new curtains in our living room.
He liked to brag to coworkers and friends that he had married a home improvement contractor. No one but me heard him hound me to have the house perfectly tidy even when I had spent the day painting and/or wallpapering or gardening (and maybe his family, he talked about every detail of our lives with his mom and sisters and if they voiced opprobrium about anything, he would demand that I abide by their preferences). I refused to let his mom and sisters approve my wallpaper, wall colors and, and this was a very very big and neverending discussion, the color to paint the outside of our house.
I went with slate blue and cream trim instead of white. Each color seemed softer, more welcoming. He squawked and squawked about how his mom and sisters had never seen a blue house, never seen cream-toned trip. Sometimes, while still pregnant, I'd drive him around our suburban world and show him all the blue houses. True, most of the blue houses had white dream. I took the position that being just a little different distinguished our house. I did get my colors but they cost me.
And then, oh why oh why am I thinking of these unhappy times -- maybe needing the scooter is operating on a subliminal level and upsetting some aspect of my being that longs to be fully mobile on her own. Nope. I don't mind the scooter. What I mind is that I have heart failure, crippling arthritis and my only child doesn't give a damn.
While pregnant, I asked him to plow a patch of our backyard so I could plant a garden. I had imagined an 8x10' patch but his friend Dave, raised on a farm, went out and rented a rototiller and plowed up a sixteen by forty foot patch of sod. Then my ex informed me I better plant every inch of that patch. When I pleaded that it was too big a garden for me to handle waddling around pregnant and in and out of the hospital several times during that pregnancy (I had a wicked hard pregnancy, I couldn't keep down water much less food so I was hospitalized for long stretches to be fed and given water intravenously. This was more for the baby than me. I lost almost 30 pounds while pregnant but my baby, born a couple weeks early, weighed six pounds eight and one half ounces. All these years later I still love that half ounce. I had never heard a newborn's weight noted up to the half ounce before. or have I heard such a thing since. My baby was special!
Anyway, I bought a packet of seeds, because my husband forbid me to buy starter plants. In hard winter parts of the country, people don't buy starters to be lazy, as he opined. They buy them because the growing season is shortish. I intended to have one row of cherry tomatoes and one row of tomatoes. I was going to sneak in tomato starts but I bought cherry tomato seeds. I put the whole packet of seeds in a row, intending to thin them out to have one row, maybe two rows at the absolute most.
Then I was hospitalized for a week and Dave and my ex saved all those cherry tomatoes. Instead of having a large garden full of many things, I had sixteen rows eight plants per row of cherry tomatoes and only cherry tomatoes. We ended up with a cash crop. If I didn't have a newborn, with my daughter born in June, I joked, we could set up a tomato stand and sell cherry tomatoes. He thought that would be embarassing. I was kidding. We did live along our side yard, along a busy street. I likely would have sold those tomatoes. Or, at least, given them away.
I had no canning supplies and, with a new born by the time those tomatoes were ripe, no time or energy to learn how to can. My husband ordered me -- and his orders were always abusively issued -- to use every single one of those cherry tomatoes. He said it wouldn't go well for me if I wasted any. He forbid me from sharing them weigh neighbors and even forbid sharing them with his relatives.
And I had no other plants. I had asked if he and Dave could plant other things while I was serially hospitalized but he said the garden was full of those cursed cherry tomatoes.
So I simmer pot after pot of those cherry tomatoes, put them in cheap plastic containers, filled our freezer with those tomatoes. And we had a separate, gigantic freezer for his fantasy deer meat I filled that sucker with boiled cherry tomatoes, showed them to him. And, one by one, thawed them and threw them out.
I had a newborn. Cooking gourmet feasts was not on my list of priorities. And he did nothing to help me, not even mow the fucking lawn. He said the price I had to pay for staying with our baby was all the chores. so I would mow our huge lawn (double lot) in bits while my baby napped. I was perpetually mowing that lawn her first summer.
Her second summer, my Katie Joy liked to help me garden. I planted zinnias along our fence that faced the empty lot and could be seen from the passing cars. I planted those zinnias from seed, too, trying to be frugal to justify staying home with my baby. So a time came when I had to thin the zinnias. Luckily, no Dave came around to order me to use every single zinnia start once they got going.
Instead, I had the best helper in the world. Katie loved pulled little plants out of the ground and throwing them in a pile. She pulled lots of perfectly good zinnias. I loved her so. I can see how beautiful she was, I can see the sunlight, I can see her lavendar Oshkosh by gosh overalls with the ruffles on her suspenders. I see the rose-sprigged sun hat on her head. I thanked her each time she pulled up a zinnia and, when she would not notice, I'd replant the good plants.
Back when Dave and my ex were saving all those cursed cherry tomato plants, I pleaded with my husband from my hospital bed to only save two rows. "If you want to go on working, plant beans, squash, lettuce, herbs". He said "You started these cherry tomatoes. It would be a sin to waste them."
Wednesday, June 07, 2017
be a transcendentalist
“This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown, or to any man or number of men — go freely with powerful uneducated persons, and with the young, and with the mothers of families — re-examine all you have been told in school or church or in any book, and dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem, and have the richest fluency, not only in its words, but in the silent lines of its lips and face, and between the lashes of your eyes, and in every motion and joint of your body.”
— Walt Whitman, preface to Leaves of Grass
Monday, June 05, 2017
flowers make glee
flowers make glee
among the hills
and set the meadows dancing
all the world with beauty fills
all the world with beauty fills
tears are streaming down my cheek
One of my life's happy perfect moments
was being taught this song
as I worked alongside my daughter
the first spring in our house
she learning some gardening at school
and the two of house singing
joyfully and, it sure seemed to me,
happy and loving together
what happened, Katie
among the hills
and set the meadows dancing
all the world with beauty fills
all the world with beauty fills
tears are streaming down my cheek
One of my life's happy perfect moments
was being taught this song
as I worked alongside my daughter
the first spring in our house
she learning some gardening at school
and the two of house singing
joyfully and, it sure seemed to me,
happy and loving together
what happened, Katie
Saturday, June 03, 2017
don't go back to sleep
The poem is called “A Great Wagon”by Rumi
“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase “each other”
doesn’t make any sense.
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep.”
Friday, June 02, 2017
fury
I was surprised and disappointed to get this note from you.
On 10/30/06, Marc Tognotti < marc@sfnan.org> wrote:
How are you doing? Well, I hope!
Re: this earlier comment of yours, I'm very interested to know your thoughts: "I have a fundamental philosophical disagreement with Kenoli's approach to process. ... at a fundamental level, I don't think Kenoli and I have compatible philosophies about large scale process."
First, knitted into these comments I made about Kenoli's philosophy re: process, I came right out and wrote that I had already tried to write about it to you but it did not feel right to write about it. So I feel a little dissed that you ask me to write about it, ignoring my explicit declaration that it didn't feel right to write about it. Um, why don't you pick up the phone and ask me?! Secondly, I am sick of writing to you with no face-to-face. And third, I don't want to cope with face-to-face time with you even if you should magically find time for me, not if you think it is acceptable to call me adorable or tell me I am a gem and now I see that you can't send me poetry either. You can't do anything right in your interactions with me so it might be best to terminate all interactions. And, fourth, do you know how many questions I have asked you in various emails that you have not acknowledged or answered? And yet you write and ask me to do for you what you do not do for me, which is to answer your question, to give you my time and attention. I'm tired of this dynamic. I'm a bit creeped out that you never, like, want to TALK to me.
Here's another poem I thought of while musing on what a gem you are.
Call me a gem, call me adorable: it's all the same, isn't it? I told you I could not maintain our friendship if you persist in this behavior. I am very angry about what you wrote a few days ago, telling me it is up to me to deal with feeling diminished. First, of course I know that I am responsible for my reactions. Second, I thought I was asking you for help maintaining our friendship while I struggle. Also, I was very hurt by comments you made about my pain because I interpreted some of your comments to suggest that I was trying to avoid pain as if I were, well, not as 'evolved as you. I don't believe you know more about love than I do: far from it. I believe you are delusional. Well, I have lots to say but now I am filling up with anger and pain and I really don't want to spread my anger and pain in your direction. I have been in quite a lot of pain where you are concerned. I am tired of being in so much pain. I am feeling like a masochist, subjecting myself to this pain. I was, and remain, so hurt that you seemed to imply that I was trying to avoid pain in some kind of copout. I think I confront my pain as well as any human being could. And another thing. . . . well, I just don't want to say more and hurt myself, or, perhaps, you. I have tried to tell you a few things that I, like, really, REALLY want to tell you but I veer into anger. I'll try again sometime and send you my thoughts when I can write them out without gasping with pain (this is a good way to know if I have been unkind: if it hurts me to write it, I have probably said something I should not have said).
AND ALSO (I am a fury) reread what you wrote about why it 'irritates' when people call you adorable: you suggested that it diminishes you because, inter alia, the person declaring you to be adorable might be managing a power dynamic and they are calling you adorable to relegate you to a different power dynamic. I pick up on YOUR words and say, yes, this is what it feels like for me and then you brush me off, seize upon my choice of YOUR LANGUAGE and tell me I am responsibility for feeling diminished. I am still in a fury over your inconsistency and lack of fairness and your dismissiveness
This poem once thrilled me, especially during my high happy epoch, and I still recall it on occasion — like now.
I don't want you to share poetry with me anymore.
I don't want the kind of special friendship you offer me, marc. One of the central themes that I relied on as I raised Katie was that each of us gets to want what we want. We don't always get what we want, of course, but it is very important, I always taught katie (and I believe this) to let ourselves want what we want. I resent very much some things you have written about how you don't understand why Kenoli wants the kind of love he says he wants or that I want the kind of love I want. . . I really resent it that you have said I am conventional. Marc, your behavior at conferences is very conventional: get back in touch with me after you have treated men the way you treated me in May and the way you treated Marcela in August and then you might be able to convince me that you are doing something evolutional, beyond ordinary conventions of love. What I think you are doing is a classic ploy of the unhappily married man: you are looking outside your marriage for what you aren't getting at home and you are selfishly, albiet unconsciously, using women. I don't know if you had sex with Marcela although, of course, I assume you did not. No, you aren't looking for sex that you aren't getting at home: you are looking for soft, feminine women with whom you can be soft and get validated in ways I assume Karen does not validate you. it is okay for you to want what you want but I believe there are some aspects of denial in the story you tell yourself about what you are doing with women. Also, I wonder if you choose fat women to play your evolutionary love games because you do not see them as sexual objects and perhaps you think we have less feelings than more attractive women? There were times at Marconi when you draped yourself around Marcela: I was not the only person who noticed, of course. If you are being all 'new thought' about love when you act like that, why aren't you doing that to men? No, I am convinced you are working out some issues, just like all of us are working out some issues. . . . and you have every right to behave any way you choose. . . but I choke a bit on your claim that you are doing something new and fine related to love. . . how I chafe that you said i was being conventional. Yes, I want something conventional: I want someone to love and adore me in a committed relationship. It really hurt me that you wrote that about me being conventional: you aren't an idiot plus I have told you so much about my life. I am lonely and vulnerable and I want to change that. The same with Kenoli. It is so unfair for you to pontificate about loftier forms of friendship when you have so much in your life that I do not have: you have a mate, you have a home, you have a farm, you have work, you have relationships with your family, you are supported financially by a mate, you have people to share your life with. You have all the things conventional people want and it feels like a little slap for you to suggest that there is something wrong with me wanting these things because they are conventional. Yes, I've had a fine time writing to you but I don't want to keep it up: it is getting flatter by the day. The funny thing is that it wouldn't have taken much to keep me excited about writing to you: it's not like I am going to actually enter into a romantic relationship with you or any other male on the planet. It's not like I've asked you to give me much. But you have told me just one time too many that you'd LIKED to write to me but you don't have the time: give that line a rest, Marc. You have time to do everything you want to do. If you actually answered some of the questions I have asked you from time to time. . . well, I think I might have been able to shift the feelings that I have had. If you had treated me like a real friend instead of this special category you seem to have put me in. . . . I don't know. I just know I am hurting a lot and I am tired of hurting.
I know my request last week for you to stop telling me I am adorable was unreasonable. I have too many rules for what you can do that is acceptable.
And why the fuck am I wasting my time telling you this? What I think shouldn't matter to you at all because all that matters to you is what goes on inside you. After reading the things you wrote to me last week when you dissed me for asking you to not say I am adorable (calling me a gem is the same damned thing), the way you told me, basically, that I am on my own and you will not calibrate your behavior to help me. . . . well, I found myself thinking maybe I had it right when I tried to stay isolated from people. . . . I mean, after all, if all that matters is what goes on inside me, what are people for anyway? There is really no need to talk to others.
Love rays eternelle,
oh, yeah, right back at you. I'm not proposing that we aren't friends or that I won't love you a whole lot forever because I will. I'm just saying I've had enough.
You can write me tomes if you like and not get enough attention from me.
MT (=Mr. Tall)
I have a new label for you: the love ranger (as in the lone ranger). There is an element of danger to your love experiments, the way you go around unleashing the love in women that you pick out of the crowd. How do you know these women need what you have to offer? Why is it that you don't give it to men?
Well, you catch my drift.
I have been very sad for the last few days, grieving the loss of you. But for now, I can't maintain this friendship. If I had any doubts, they were dispelled when you wrote to me today and told me I was a gem. That demonstrated to me that you are going to go on being you: and of course you must go on being you. Well, I have to be me: I'm tired, I'm vulnerable, I'm lonely, i'm in pain and the energy that gets moving inside me related to you is just not working for me.
You know I am inexperienced in friendships with males.
Oh, here is something I have to address before we end our contact: you are a fool to be staying in your relationship with karen, esp. in the way you wrote about it, saying you are going to find love within the choices you have already made. I know anything I could say would just sound biased to you but I really think that as your friend I simply wince when I feel how this dogged choice really affects you. It is playing with fire to do what you are doing. Each day you are making choices that will affect future choices and making choices that limit you from your destiny. True, none of us can escape our destiny . . . . but we can, I believe, avoid a lot of tangles and brambles. I know it must sound biased but as your friend. I am aghast (and so, I think, is Kenoli) that you doggedly stay with Karen. I don't say this with an attendant fantasy that you would be available to me if you did: I am certain I don't have this fantasy. Sometimes I think you stay with her because you don't want to give up free rent, or give up the mission or the farm.
I may as well tell you what Mark Jones told me in our seven hour talk. I started to talk to you about this at Marconi. I said "Mark Jones said you have been encouraging me to love" and then you went off with Marcela. Geez, some folks might posit that you dashed off with Marcela to avoid the conversation: that is what it felt like to me. But then Mark told me that he has had platonic friendships w/women and sometimes inadvertently sent them
The Right Thing
Let others probe the mystery if they can.
Time-harried prisoners of Shall and Will—
The right thing happens to the happy man.
The bird flies out, the bird flies back again;
The hill becomes the valley, and is still;
Let others delve that mystery if they can.
God bless the roots!—Body and soul are one!
The small become the great, the great the small;
The right thing happens to the happy man.
Child of the dark, he can out leap the sun,
His being single, and that being all:
The right thing happens to the happy man.
Or he sits still, a solid figure when
The self-destructive shake the common wall;
Takes to himself what mystery he can,
And, praising change as the slow night comes on,
Wills what he would, surrendering his will
Till mystery is no more: No more he can.
The right thing happens to the happy man.
On 10/22/06 11:34 PM, "Tree Fitzpatrick" wrote:
I went to one of their conventions when I was doing corporate OD work. It was so,well, . . not me.
But,having said that, I think you and Kenoli should pitch a workshop to ODNetwork for next year's convention. I know a lot about how they pick presenters from working with Kathie. They are always looking to present different stuff. And it fits with my belief that you and Kenoli should look for the intersection between corporations and communities: to help organizations interface with all stakeholders, not just shareholders. A natural market for you.
Also, the time to write a business plan is long before you write a fundraising plan. I bet the OD work you and Kenoli are doing amounts to what I consider a biz plan. I'm not talking about a biz plan to be used for financing but one to set intention.
Also, I don't think I am ever going to have advice for your business. I'd like to have something to offer you guys because I want to spend time with you but I think all I have to offer is loving friendship. I have all kinds of ideas, some of them must be good, but I suspect you guys are doing just fine. You just need to hold steady and what you want will come to you. If I could have been of any use, it would have been in the OD work itself, mission/vision, clear intention, that kind of thing and you did not seem interested in including me in any of that work, which is just fine, it is your work, not mine.
Also, I have a fundamental philosophical disagreement with Kenoli's approach to process. I could talk to you about this sometime if you are interested. I've tried to write and tell you but it doesn't feel right to write it. It is a visceral thing but something I feel very deeply: at a fundamental level, I don't think Kenoli and I have compatible philosophies about large scale process.
--
Love rays,
Tree Fitzpatrick
http://thecultureoflove.blogspot.com/
. . . the great and incalculable grace of love, which says, with Augustine, "I want you to be," without being able to give any particular reason for such supreme and unsurpassable affirmation. -- Hannah Arendt
Phone: 650-967-9260
1335 Montecito Ave #35
Mountain View, CA 94043
On 10/30/06, Marc Tognotti < marc@sfnan.org> wrote:
How are you doing? Well, I hope!
Re: this earlier comment of yours, I'm very interested to know your thoughts: "I have a fundamental philosophical disagreement with Kenoli's approach to process. ... at a fundamental level, I don't think Kenoli and I have compatible philosophies about large scale process."
First, knitted into these comments I made about Kenoli's philosophy re: process, I came right out and wrote that I had already tried to write about it to you but it did not feel right to write about it. So I feel a little dissed that you ask me to write about it, ignoring my explicit declaration that it didn't feel right to write about it. Um, why don't you pick up the phone and ask me?! Secondly, I am sick of writing to you with no face-to-face. And third, I don't want to cope with face-to-face time with you even if you should magically find time for me, not if you think it is acceptable to call me adorable or tell me I am a gem and now I see that you can't send me poetry either. You can't do anything right in your interactions with me so it might be best to terminate all interactions. And, fourth, do you know how many questions I have asked you in various emails that you have not acknowledged or answered? And yet you write and ask me to do for you what you do not do for me, which is to answer your question, to give you my time and attention. I'm tired of this dynamic. I'm a bit creeped out that you never, like, want to TALK to me.
Here's another poem I thought of while musing on what a gem you are.
Call me a gem, call me adorable: it's all the same, isn't it? I told you I could not maintain our friendship if you persist in this behavior. I am very angry about what you wrote a few days ago, telling me it is up to me to deal with feeling diminished. First, of course I know that I am responsible for my reactions. Second, I thought I was asking you for help maintaining our friendship while I struggle. Also, I was very hurt by comments you made about my pain because I interpreted some of your comments to suggest that I was trying to avoid pain as if I were, well, not as 'evolved as you. I don't believe you know more about love than I do: far from it. I believe you are delusional. Well, I have lots to say but now I am filling up with anger and pain and I really don't want to spread my anger and pain in your direction. I have been in quite a lot of pain where you are concerned. I am tired of being in so much pain. I am feeling like a masochist, subjecting myself to this pain. I was, and remain, so hurt that you seemed to imply that I was trying to avoid pain in some kind of copout. I think I confront my pain as well as any human being could. And another thing. . . . well, I just don't want to say more and hurt myself, or, perhaps, you. I have tried to tell you a few things that I, like, really, REALLY want to tell you but I veer into anger. I'll try again sometime and send you my thoughts when I can write them out without gasping with pain (this is a good way to know if I have been unkind: if it hurts me to write it, I have probably said something I should not have said).
AND ALSO (I am a fury) reread what you wrote about why it 'irritates' when people call you adorable: you suggested that it diminishes you because, inter alia, the person declaring you to be adorable might be managing a power dynamic and they are calling you adorable to relegate you to a different power dynamic. I pick up on YOUR words and say, yes, this is what it feels like for me and then you brush me off, seize upon my choice of YOUR LANGUAGE and tell me I am responsibility for feeling diminished. I am still in a fury over your inconsistency and lack of fairness and your dismissiveness
This poem once thrilled me, especially during my high happy epoch, and I still recall it on occasion — like now.
I don't want you to share poetry with me anymore.
I don't want the kind of special friendship you offer me, marc. One of the central themes that I relied on as I raised Katie was that each of us gets to want what we want. We don't always get what we want, of course, but it is very important, I always taught katie (and I believe this) to let ourselves want what we want. I resent very much some things you have written about how you don't understand why Kenoli wants the kind of love he says he wants or that I want the kind of love I want. . . I really resent it that you have said I am conventional. Marc, your behavior at conferences is very conventional: get back in touch with me after you have treated men the way you treated me in May and the way you treated Marcela in August and then you might be able to convince me that you are doing something evolutional, beyond ordinary conventions of love. What I think you are doing is a classic ploy of the unhappily married man: you are looking outside your marriage for what you aren't getting at home and you are selfishly, albiet unconsciously, using women. I don't know if you had sex with Marcela although, of course, I assume you did not. No, you aren't looking for sex that you aren't getting at home: you are looking for soft, feminine women with whom you can be soft and get validated in ways I assume Karen does not validate you. it is okay for you to want what you want but I believe there are some aspects of denial in the story you tell yourself about what you are doing with women. Also, I wonder if you choose fat women to play your evolutionary love games because you do not see them as sexual objects and perhaps you think we have less feelings than more attractive women? There were times at Marconi when you draped yourself around Marcela: I was not the only person who noticed, of course. If you are being all 'new thought' about love when you act like that, why aren't you doing that to men? No, I am convinced you are working out some issues, just like all of us are working out some issues. . . . and you have every right to behave any way you choose. . . but I choke a bit on your claim that you are doing something new and fine related to love. . . how I chafe that you said i was being conventional. Yes, I want something conventional: I want someone to love and adore me in a committed relationship. It really hurt me that you wrote that about me being conventional: you aren't an idiot plus I have told you so much about my life. I am lonely and vulnerable and I want to change that. The same with Kenoli. It is so unfair for you to pontificate about loftier forms of friendship when you have so much in your life that I do not have: you have a mate, you have a home, you have a farm, you have work, you have relationships with your family, you are supported financially by a mate, you have people to share your life with. You have all the things conventional people want and it feels like a little slap for you to suggest that there is something wrong with me wanting these things because they are conventional. Yes, I've had a fine time writing to you but I don't want to keep it up: it is getting flatter by the day. The funny thing is that it wouldn't have taken much to keep me excited about writing to you: it's not like I am going to actually enter into a romantic relationship with you or any other male on the planet. It's not like I've asked you to give me much. But you have told me just one time too many that you'd LIKED to write to me but you don't have the time: give that line a rest, Marc. You have time to do everything you want to do. If you actually answered some of the questions I have asked you from time to time. . . well, I think I might have been able to shift the feelings that I have had. If you had treated me like a real friend instead of this special category you seem to have put me in. . . . I don't know. I just know I am hurting a lot and I am tired of hurting.
I know my request last week for you to stop telling me I am adorable was unreasonable. I have too many rules for what you can do that is acceptable.
And why the fuck am I wasting my time telling you this? What I think shouldn't matter to you at all because all that matters to you is what goes on inside you. After reading the things you wrote to me last week when you dissed me for asking you to not say I am adorable (calling me a gem is the same damned thing), the way you told me, basically, that I am on my own and you will not calibrate your behavior to help me. . . . well, I found myself thinking maybe I had it right when I tried to stay isolated from people. . . . I mean, after all, if all that matters is what goes on inside me, what are people for anyway? There is really no need to talk to others.
Love rays eternelle,
oh, yeah, right back at you. I'm not proposing that we aren't friends or that I won't love you a whole lot forever because I will. I'm just saying I've had enough.
You can write me tomes if you like and not get enough attention from me.
MT (=Mr. Tall)
I have a new label for you: the love ranger (as in the lone ranger). There is an element of danger to your love experiments, the way you go around unleashing the love in women that you pick out of the crowd. How do you know these women need what you have to offer? Why is it that you don't give it to men?
Well, you catch my drift.
I have been very sad for the last few days, grieving the loss of you. But for now, I can't maintain this friendship. If I had any doubts, they were dispelled when you wrote to me today and told me I was a gem. That demonstrated to me that you are going to go on being you: and of course you must go on being you. Well, I have to be me: I'm tired, I'm vulnerable, I'm lonely, i'm in pain and the energy that gets moving inside me related to you is just not working for me.
You know I am inexperienced in friendships with males.
Oh, here is something I have to address before we end our contact: you are a fool to be staying in your relationship with karen, esp. in the way you wrote about it, saying you are going to find love within the choices you have already made. I know anything I could say would just sound biased to you but I really think that as your friend I simply wince when I feel how this dogged choice really affects you. It is playing with fire to do what you are doing. Each day you are making choices that will affect future choices and making choices that limit you from your destiny. True, none of us can escape our destiny . . . . but we can, I believe, avoid a lot of tangles and brambles. I know it must sound biased but as your friend. I am aghast (and so, I think, is Kenoli) that you doggedly stay with Karen. I don't say this with an attendant fantasy that you would be available to me if you did: I am certain I don't have this fantasy. Sometimes I think you stay with her because you don't want to give up free rent, or give up the mission or the farm.
I may as well tell you what Mark Jones told me in our seven hour talk. I started to talk to you about this at Marconi. I said "Mark Jones said you have been encouraging me to love" and then you went off with Marcela. Geez, some folks might posit that you dashed off with Marcela to avoid the conversation: that is what it felt like to me. But then Mark told me that he has had platonic friendships w/women and sometimes inadvertently sent them
The Right Thing
Let others probe the mystery if they can.
Time-harried prisoners of Shall and Will—
The right thing happens to the happy man.
The bird flies out, the bird flies back again;
The hill becomes the valley, and is still;
Let others delve that mystery if they can.
God bless the roots!—Body and soul are one!
The small become the great, the great the small;
The right thing happens to the happy man.
Child of the dark, he can out leap the sun,
His being single, and that being all:
The right thing happens to the happy man.
Or he sits still, a solid figure when
The self-destructive shake the common wall;
Takes to himself what mystery he can,
And, praising change as the slow night comes on,
Wills what he would, surrendering his will
Till mystery is no more: No more he can.
The right thing happens to the happy man.
On 10/22/06 11:34 PM, "Tree Fitzpatrick" wrote:
I went to one of their conventions when I was doing corporate OD work. It was so,well, . . not me.
But,having said that, I think you and Kenoli should pitch a workshop to ODNetwork for next year's convention. I know a lot about how they pick presenters from working with Kathie. They are always looking to present different stuff. And it fits with my belief that you and Kenoli should look for the intersection between corporations and communities: to help organizations interface with all stakeholders, not just shareholders. A natural market for you.
Also, the time to write a business plan is long before you write a fundraising plan. I bet the OD work you and Kenoli are doing amounts to what I consider a biz plan. I'm not talking about a biz plan to be used for financing but one to set intention.
Also, I don't think I am ever going to have advice for your business. I'd like to have something to offer you guys because I want to spend time with you but I think all I have to offer is loving friendship. I have all kinds of ideas, some of them must be good, but I suspect you guys are doing just fine. You just need to hold steady and what you want will come to you. If I could have been of any use, it would have been in the OD work itself, mission/vision, clear intention, that kind of thing and you did not seem interested in including me in any of that work, which is just fine, it is your work, not mine.
Also, I have a fundamental philosophical disagreement with Kenoli's approach to process. I could talk to you about this sometime if you are interested. I've tried to write and tell you but it doesn't feel right to write it. It is a visceral thing but something I feel very deeply: at a fundamental level, I don't think Kenoli and I have compatible philosophies about large scale process.
--
Love rays,
Tree Fitzpatrick
http://thecultureoflove.blogspot.com/
. . . the great and incalculable grace of love, which says, with Augustine, "I want you to be," without being able to give any particular reason for such supreme and unsurpassable affirmation. -- Hannah Arendt
Phone: 650-967-9260
1335 Montecito Ave #35
Mountain View, CA 94043
