i will never kiss anyone who doesn't burn me like the sun

i so love jens lenkman. i am harboring a serious deep infatuation with him. he has kept me company on many many miles on rural highways recently. (thanks casey).

there are so many things that i haven't been able to keep up with all of them.

things on tap and occupying my brain:

1. cnn's abuse of interactive media
2. larry king's poll tonight: is polygamy immoral? (it may well be, but does he ever -- has he ever once polled the audience: is war immoral?)
3. the beautiful moon
4. small town living
5. blurting out inappropriate things to small children especially at the market when i am at the sprouts table. this week, i told a little girl to look out because a tornado was coming. (it was very windy and she told me she was dorothy (she was rocking a sundress and ruby red crocs on and a beanie baby called toto)
6. renegotiating boundaries with faculty colleagues in the Programs' office (i told a senior woman that i realized that i was the unwitting source of information for the College's grapevine. to which she promptly replied, i never told anyone that you may go back to Michigan.) [so fucking telling.]
   
7. clear thinking without medication: is it possible? for me, i mean.
   
8. i am invited to a dinner party on saturday where we as guests are meant to help with an intervention with the dog. i am not making this up.
9. my neighbors' fallow fields are turning green -- no height yet just real green in orderly rows. their cattle are fattening up too. almost time to ship those beasts off to an industrial feed lot.
10. my schemes for planting on the sidelot.
11. my schemes for unplugging from everything but my iPod while i sit at the beach in a little more than a week.
12. i supped on indian food and artisinal gelato in my tiny town tonight with my yoga teacher, scott.
    
13. the email that took two hours to compose as a reply to a missive from peggy this afternoon: seriously: is it good news that she will be our director again?
14. i convened a meeting last week for a subcommittee related to the legacy of freedom summer on our campus (the volunteers trained here in oxford in non-violence before going to work in freedom schools, or in before being killed in the cases of chaney, schwerner and goodman). why is that each person who came to meeting set up a follow-up coffee or lunch with me immediately after? why isn't the work of the committee held during the committee meeting? i don't really go for all this back-channel communications.
15. it has been nearly one year that anyone from my diss committee has insulted me electronically or face to face for that matter.
    
16. flint, michigan -- in every way. christina and i are finally getting to work together on storytelling project and we worked on it earlier this week first with union members and then with academicians at UMFlint -- talk about culture shock <-- wheeling between those meetings blew me. out and away. i was confused, deeply touched, and exhausted thereafter. some quick observations before i forget:

• we went on tuesday to the UAW retirees meeting before lunch and bingo.
  
• we didn't park christina's honda civic in the lot of the UAW because there was a huge red white and blue painted sign explaining not so politely that among other things her car would be towed.
  
• goulash=hamburger helper
• america works when you buy american
• the children of sit-down strikers still weep for the fear they felt when their dads were locked in at chevy in the hole
  
• how much we owe to union labor and the efforts of pioneers of local 659
• union leadership implored those in attendance not to take this election personally; they need to look beyond the fact that he is black man and she is a woman, they need to vote on the issues and vote right to get these clowns out of washington. even kissypoo hoffa realizes that he made a mistake now. these are direct quotes from the meeting.
  

• on the pavement outside the flint county jail, people write notes in sidewalk chalk so that the inmates inside can read well wishes and information.