The LA Times has a great front page story today about Mary Ann Wright, a woman who, after 30 years as an Army colonel and diplomat, quit her position to protest the war in Iraq. I loved reading about her transformation, and was especially tickled by this passage:

Offering advice on protest techniques, she said: "I am a brand-new person to this. But it sure seems to me that the physical acts get a lot of attention."

Wright spoke with pride about being ejected from a Senate hearing last fall after excoriating the witness, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice: "You, the Senate, were bamboozled by the administration on Iraq and you cannot be bamboozled again! Stop this woman from killing!"

Within seconds a guard was escorting her out of the room. Wright slipped her arm through his elbow and walked out as if he were her date.

The article ends with these lovely paragraphs:

"She was on the inside, and so she really understands what's going on. And yet she gave up all that power and privilege," Theberge said. "To me, that is the definition of what an active conscience is. And that is her real draw."

After decades of government service, Wright, in turn, has found a new community. The Army officer and diplomat is at home among Americans who are anguishing about this war. "We are on the same sheet of music," she said, adding that she would continue to make her voice heard, as long as the war goes on.

If there is indeed a tunnel we pass through when we die, I hope it will look like this tunnel of books. Can you imagine it--all the books we've ever loved swirling around us, filling us with their stories, saying goodbye?

How beautiful is it that Chile and Liberia have both elected their first women presidents?!! One day we'll have some ovaries in the Oval Office, too...

My trip to the Bay Area last week was such a treat; I feel like I packed two weeks into two days. I saw so many people I adore--old friends, new friends, friends I've known online for years but had never met in person until now, plus my lovely editor (who took me to the pastry shop where she read Self Storage for the first time. So cool to go there now that we're almost done with revisions.) The reading at Diesel was a true pleasure--so many stirring, fun, powerful mama-readers, such a generous, responsive audience. The fabulous Andi Buchanan has written a full account of the evening. I'm sorry I won't be able to fly up again for the Literary Mama reading this coming Saturday!

Now, back to revision-ing...

I received my contributor's copies of The Bedside Guide to No Tell Motel today. The anthology is chock-full of wonderfully strange and sexy poems. It's cool to be part of it (my poem's title is "Prick". And no, it's not what you're thinking. Well, not entirely...)

Kevin Smokler has a fun meditation on the word pulchritude over at his guest blogger stint at Powells.com (he likes the word because it sounds nothing like what it means. "Pulchritudinous" is even more wonderfully dissonant, I think.)

Kevin asks "What are some other words that don't sound like what they mean?" I can't think of any off the top of my head, but I remember that Natalie Goldberg, in one of her books--Wild Mind, maybe?--mentions how beautiful she finds the word "bulimia", even though the meaning is not so lovely. The syllables do roll fluidly off the tongue (which, I suppose, is strangely appropriate!)

My favorite words--luscious and luminous--sound exactly like what they mean, at least to my ears.

I suppose agapanthus sounds more like a disease than a flower, and bilirubin sounds more like a real estate agent than a product of blood...

My friend Jasmina Tesanovic attended the recent massive pro-choice march in Milan. She sends along this powerful chronicle:

The Knights of the Fetuses

"Exit the Silence," the 14 January feminist pro-abortion rally in Milan. It was huge, it was Italian, "La donna e bello."

The march started at the central railway station and ended at the Piazza Duomo, which was packed. It takes well over a hundred thousand people to pack the Duomo's massive plaza, but there they were: mostly women, of all ages. And quite a few men.

A seventy year old beauty holds a banner -- Menopausa (less pausa) / piu Azione (more action). A loud line of painted young girls drives a caterpillar street-puppet, saying: Out of our panties and skirts, priests and fascists. Procreation clerically assisted! Vatican out of homes. We all bear our own crosses!

A woman in a fancy fur coat, with a handsome furred white dog on the leash, stands at the edge of the flowing crowd. A photographer says: I've never seen a faster march. Are women faster than men? The woman in the fur coat stands at the edge of an edgy question: she is a little bit pregnant today...

Abortion is a dangerous issue in Catholic Italy. A peril for your soul to go to hell, while your body would be flung into jail or into a secret clinic. Only yesterday, the new Pope pronounced that RU-486, the pill which kills the fetus without clinical intervention, is even a bigger sin for women, because it is so painless. An actress on the third channel, RAI, the only national television channel uncontrolled by Berlusconi, has a comedy show -- she is asking the new Pope if she is allowed to cook spaghetti tonight, or better yet, maybe some rice.

Anarchist groups, trade union groups, feminist groups, and just women, from all over Italy , arriving in buses, in trains from Verona, Venice, Ravenna, Sienna... The loudest are from Venice, they are chanting and dancing and whistling, they are angry, and they have a lot of followers...

I am joining my Women in Black, the Donne in Nero from Ravenna: they have our international signs shaped like black hands; we kiss and exchange information quickly.

Luisa Morgantini just stormed in and kissed all. They tell me this is a networking turnout, it's grass-roots, pass-the-word organization. Not a word about this in the media, which is deaf, or killed by Berlusconi. There is a parallel demo happening in Rome, named PAX, for the civil unions, between two people, free of churches and dogmas.

A month ago, in the Milan trade union meeting, a woman said; we must do this, our rights are attacked. Two aspects of Italian private life are being reclaimed by the Church: reproductive freedom and civil unions.

A Woman in Black is telling me: the law 194 is endangered, the law that is protecting us women. Now we have so-called social workers who try to persuade pregnant women not to use their rights. This country has gone really bad -- even though the abortion has dropped 40 percent since abortion was legalized.

We are marching in the strict, wealthy downtown of Milan, the luxury shopping district. Oh, says a marcher, look at those gorgeous shoes. How cheap... this is the New Year sales...

Oh shut up, her mother tells her, then glances sideways and exclaims, Oh my god...you are right...

At the stage in the Piazza Duomo, a piece by Franca Rame is read to the massive crowd. She is the wife and coauthor of the Nobel prize winner Dario Fo. She tells how she once had an abortion, and how she could not ask her mother for help, because they were both ashamed to admit the sin.

When I got pregnant as a teen, my mother told me: that is not possible, you are not married. She was a pediatrician, a medical doctor. Now this Italian mother and daughter are walking hand in hand quarreling about Italian shoes. At least mother-daughter relationships have grown better, if not the world and its laws.

Men are here too, quite a few; men of all ages, looking rather happy, straights, hippies, punks, and carrying slogans: Stop the Division...The Movement of Househusbands.

A young man in suit is carrying a baby which has written on its scarf: Freedom for Moms. Nowadays the fetus has been made our biggest enemy...

A woman poet on the podium in Piazza Duomo is reciting her poem:

I am a dangerous woman, I don’t carry bombs or babies,
and I don’t
want
to fight a war for you, I will never forgive, but I
will never sell
your life as you sold mine...

Fetuses, wars, and abortions and babies are all interconnected; fighting against women is no way to grow a nation stricken by wars and poverty.

The women in this crowd look beautiful, 'la donna e bello,' the feminist motto from the Italians Seventies is obvious today. But this crowd of gorgeous women in the center of Milan is invisible to media or to mainstream Italy; because it is an underground smart mob.

As soon as Janis Joplin ends the rally with her screams, these beautiful Cinderellas vanish like bubbles into a no-woman's land. Italy, the US, Serbia, and all the world are repressed by the new fundamentalists. The land of the beautiful has yet to be freed from Popes, Bushes, Berlusconis and other knights of fetuses.

The literary world has been abuzz lately with the recent James Frey fray and the unmasking of JT Leroy . I'm enjoying following the trail of outrage and indignation in the wake of these revelations, and appreciate the important issues about authenticity and artifice in writing that are being raised, but somehow I haven't quite figured out how I feel about the whole mishegas. I think this could be because I have been preoccupied with lies that feel more pressing and dangerous--the blatant lies of our administration. If only the media could latch on to those lies with the same wolf-pack ferocity they've shown with these publishing scandals. Sure, it's compelling to watch literary bad-boys fall from grace (ah, the schaudenfraude), but there are bigger fish than Frey I want to fry.

Yesterday, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would have turned 77. Today, as we honor his legacy, I feel compelled to dip into his words, let them sink in deep. Here are some excerpts from his speech "The Drum Major's Instinct" (which I found on the King Center website):

"Everybody can be great, because everybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve. You don't have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve. You don't have to know Einstein's "Theory of Relativity" to serve. You don't have to know the Second Theory of Thermal Dynamics in Physics to serve. You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love, and you can be that servant."

"Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major. Say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace. Say that I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter. I won't have any money to leave behind. I won't have the fine and luxurious things in life to leave behind. But I just want to leave a committed life behind. And that's all I want to say. If I can help somebody as I pass along, if I can cheer somebody with a word or song, if I can show somebody he is traveling wrong, then my living will not be in vain."

Salon has compiled a collection of stirring and heartbreaking audio recordings from and about Dr. King, and CODEPINK has created a Flash movie to pay tribute to his legacy as a peacemaker. He is still our drum major, and we'll keep drumming, keep marching, keep finding ways to embody his teachings...

Hope to see some of you at the reading in Oakland tonight (I'm not listed on the website since I confirmed at the last minute, but look at the amazing list of people I'm reading with!) See you here in a few days...

I've written an essay for the Women Say No to War campaign.

I found out recently that Diane Wilson, who I interviewed last summer, and whose book, An Unreasonable Woman, I recommended during Buy a Friend a Book Week, is in jail.

Here's the information, from her publisher's website:

Diane Wilson was arrested in Houston on December 5th while infiltrating a fundraiser for recently-indicted U.S. Representative Tom Delay. At the time of her arrest Diane was wanted in Texas on Crimial Trespassing charges from 2002, when she had climbed a tower at Dow Chemical to protest the company's continued irresponsibility following its 1984 chemical disaster in Bhopal, India, where 150,000 people were poisoned. Diane refused to turn herself in for the trespassing charges until Warren Anderson, former CEO of Union Carbide, turned himself in to the Indian government, where he has been wanted for thirteen years for the Culpable Homicide of thousands in Bhopal. Following her arrest in Houston, Diane is currently serving a 120 day sentence for the trespassing charge in Victorial County Jail.

As of December 21, you can now help Diane by donating to the Diane Wilson Support Fund through the Environmental Health Fund (EHF), a 501c3 nonprofit organization. Your contributions are tax deductible and can be sent care of:

Gary Cohen, Executive Director,
Environmental Health Fund
41 Oakview Terrace
Jamaica Plain, MA 02130
Ph: 617-524-6018
Fax: 617-524-7021

Please make checks out to the 'Environmental Health Fund' with 'Diane Wilson Support Fund' in the memo of the check, and thank you for your support!

You can write to Diane (she can only receive letters) at the following address:

Sylvia Diane Wilson
CR # 65510
Victoria County Jail (Calhoun County Inmate)
101 North Glass
Victoria, TX 77901

I learned through CODEPINK that Diane can also receive books, as long as they are sent through a retail distributor like Amazon. She is especially interested in books on meditation and women activists, but any books would help her pass the time. Diane is such an inspiration to me; I can only imagine this experience will make her all the more fired up about her work as an environmental and political activist.

I have read some fabulous books lately, most notably The History of Love by Nicole Krauss and Books and Islands in Ojibwe Country by Louise Erdrich while on our trip (trips are always good for getting some real reading done). I am currently reading Broken Verses by Kamila Shamsie, an utterly gorgeous novel set in Pakistan. I am realizing now that all three books, each in their own way, are about love and language and place; all of them are about deciphering writing (through translation, through pictrographs, through code) to find the enduring truth within. It doesn't hurt that all three are written with such beauty and tenderness, either. I recommend them highly.

Hot on the heels of Andi Buchanan, Sheila Curran is swinging through on her GCC tour. Actually Sheila herself is unable to swing by, but I was able to cobble together a virtual tour stop from the information on her thorough and engaging website.

Sheila is currently promoting her first novel, Diana Lively is Falling Down:

A comedy-of-manners in the tradition of Le Divorce and The Jane Austen Book Club, this novel begins in Oxford, England. Diana, a talented British architect, builds dollhouses so she can tend to her three children and overbearing husband. Enter an Arizona ammunitions tycoon, visiting Oxford to dedicate a small library of Arthurian texts to the memory of his late wife, a fan of Camelot. After meeting Diana and her husband, one of the world’s leading scholars on Arthurian legend, Wally experiences a vision. As a tribute to his wife, he will construct The King Arthur Theme Park and Museum, in Lake Havasu, Arizona, next to the transplanted London Bridge. The next day, Wally makes the college an offer they can’t refuse, and the Livelys are dispatched to spend a year in Arizona. And so our story begins.

The book sounds like great fun; the Q and A section of the website touches upon some important issues, as well:

5. It was hard to tell from reading your book what you thought of the environmental movement out West. Are they flakes, blow-hards or saviors of the modern world?

All three. I’m a rabid environmentalist myself: at the same time, I loath camping, avoid the outdoors at all costs, and, if allowed, would bring an air-conditioner with me to a desert island. What I would like is for this country to get back to our roots in thrift and throw ourselves into preventing waste. Did you know that about half the water use in this country is due to leaks? Did you know that conservation technologies alone would be a win-win towards energy independence? Don’t get me started. Go to the NRDC website, or the Sierra Club or The Nature Conservancy. But remember, the people who react against environmental regulation almost always have a vested interest. As Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has said so eloquently, “You show me a polluter, I’ll show you a subsidy.” What he means by that is simple. If you don’t clean up after yourself, then the taxpayer has to. Which means we’re helping that business pay the cost of its enterprise. How could it be any more simple than that?

Sheila's website is full of all sorts of helpful, playful content, including the genesis of the novel, a Vile Husband contest, and recipes!

Have fun on your GCC tour, Sheila! Best of luck to you and the book!

The recent West Virginia coal mine tragedy has me thinking a lot about the power of language--the power language has to create joy, to bring devastation, to heal. It was words, a mishearing, misinterpretation of words, that led people to believe their loved ones were alive. It was words that later informed people their loved ones hadn't made it after all. These puffs of breath, these small units of sound, can make our hearts soar, make our hearts stop.

I was touched by the fact that the miners chose to write farewell messages to their loved ones. They knew their words would survive them, would carry their love, carry some modicum of comfort, to those they left behind. Words could never in a million years replace the flesh and blood presence of these men, of course, but what a gift for grieving relatives to be able to read "Tell all - I see them on the other side," and "It wasn't bad, I just went to sleep," and "I love you." Think of how much darker the void would have been without those words offering pin pricks of light.

Cindy Sheehan's latest call to action

If I hear one more rendition of "We Shall Overcome" and then watch the vigilers or marchers go home and turn on their TV's and crack open a brewsky content in the fact that they have done something for peace that day, I am going to scream! We can't overcome unless we take the proverbial bull by the horns and overcome!

Hold your vigils and marches in relevant places: such as warmongering local Congressional offices. So many Senators and Congresspeople come to mind. Or in front of a recruiting station. Or Federal Buildings. Or military bases. Then instead of going home and cracking open a beer, or uncorking a bottle of wine, sit down and say "we aren't leaving until you call for an immediate end to the occupation of Iraq." Put your butt on the line for humanity.

Change will not happen until we make it happen. We can't make change happen by wishing or praying that it will happen.

We actually have to do something.

I actually believe vigils do do something; I think it's always good to send concentrated energy for peace out into the world (especially in a visible way). I understand Cindy's point completely, though. We need to move towards real action. And that can take so many forms--sitting one's butt down, or lifting one's pen, or creating new ways to speak to power, to educate the public, to inspire lawmakers to change. I'm trying to decide how best to "do something" in 2006. Do any of you have any specific resolutions/plans for action this year? I'd love to hear about them...

My friend Andi Buchanan (author of the essential book Mother Shock, and editor of the fabulous It's A Boy, Literary Mama, and the forthcoming It's a Girl anthologies) is wrapping up her GCC tour. I would do a big juicy GCC post about her, but I'm going to be part of her book blog tour next month, and thought I'd wait until then (plus, I don't have the time to do the post justice right now.) I'll get to see Andi this Thursday, when I'm going to be part of her anthology reading at Diesel Books in Oakland. I'm very excited! Andi and I have known each other online for years; I feel very close to her, even though we've never met in person. It will be a treat to bring our friendship into the real world!

In lieu of a regular GCC post, take a look at Andi's stunning recent post about maternal judgement on her own blog (which also features links to other GCC stops on her tour.)

Two cool novel-related online discoveries:

Novelist Jane Smiley has a blog over at The Huffington Post.

Novelist Louise Doughty has a new writing-related column, A Novel in a Year, at the Telegraph.

Smiley's blog is an engaging mix of political and literary musings; Doughty's column seems like it will be full of writing prompts and inspiration. Both promise to be a lot of fun...

I love meeting with book groups. In person is best, but if the group isn't local, it's a lot of fun to meet by phone, too. If any of you have book groups out there and would like to arrange a speaker phone visit (or a face-to-face visit if you live in Southern CA), please feel free to email me at gaylebrandeis at gmail dot com. Thanks!

This website explores how the FBI could use Amazon Wish Lists to track subversives. I wonder what the feds would think of my strange little wish list...

I'm very excited; I received a letter today saying that my application to become a member of PEN American Center has been approved.

PEN American Center is the largest of the 141 centers of International PEN, the world’s oldest human rights organization and the oldest international literary organization. International PEN was founded in 1921 to dispel national, ethnic, and racial hatreds and to promote understanding among all countries. PEN American Center, founded a year later, works to advance literature, to defend free expression, and to foster international literary fellowship. The Center has a membership of 2,900 distinguished writers, editors, and translators. In addition to defending writers in prison or in danger of imprisonment for their work, PEN American Center sponsors public literary programs and forums on current issues, sends prominent authors to inner-city schools to encourage reading and writing, administers literary prizes, promotes international literature that might otherwise go unread in the United States, and offers grants and loans to writers facing financial or medical emergencies. In carrying out this work, PEN American Center builds upon the achievements of such dedicated past members as W. H. Auden, James Baldwin, Willa Cather, Robert Frost, Langston Hughes, Thomas Mann, Arthur Miller, Marianne Moore, Susan Sontag, and John Steinbeck.

The line about PEN offering grants and loans to writers facing financial or medical emergencies is especially meaningful to me--I received one of those grants in 1993. I was pregnant with my daughter at the time; our insurance (through the state) covered most of my midwifery care, but not all of it, and we had no idea how we were going to pay the rest of the balance, which amounted to several hundred dollars. My husband was in school, and we were barely scraping by, living on student loans. I applied for a PEN emergency grant, even though I knew they normally went to established writers and I only had a few bylines, a small number of awards, to my name. When I received the generous letter of support (along with a similarly generous check), I couldn't stop crying. I vowed that I would find a way to give back to PEN some day. And now I can.

On another writers-helping-writers note, I found out that my friend Martha O'Connor (author of the fabulous Bitch Posse) and her family were flooded out of their home in Marin. Backspace, an online writers collective (one I've been meaning to join), has set up a relief fund for Martha and her family. I am very grateful for a way to help across the miles.

Inspiring links of the day:

An interview with Marjorie Kowalski Cole, author of Correcting the Landscape, the latest winner of the Bellwether Prize.

Women Say No To War

I forgot to mention that when we got home at 1am last night, we found a Christmas tree lashed to the towering ash tree in our front yard! It was attached to the trunk by a whole bunch of plastic wrap, about six feet up in the air! It was quite a sight. I found it hilarious, but Matt got a little worried, wondering how long it had been there. He was concerned it was like a billboard flashing "No one's home! Go in and take stuff!" Luckily, everything in the house was intact. And it turned out that Arin's mischevious/industrious friends had only put it up the night before. They had to use a ladder. I really wanted to take a picture of it, but Arin had dismantled everything by the time I woke up today (and then it turned out that we lost our camera somewhere on the way home anyway. I hope America West will find it and return it to us. So many precious pictures in that camera.)

The ash tree had dumped almost all of its leaves while we were gone (and I don't think it was because it was frightened by the Christmas-tree wielding boys!) They were everywhere--blanketing the yard, the driveway, the front porch, the sidewalk, the street in front of our house. A whole little ecosystem had developed amid the leaves; a tree stump in the front yard was blooming with the hugest mushrooms I've ever seen. Dozens of them, about the size of salad plates. I should look up some information and try to identify them.

It's quite amazing to see what happens to our yard without any human input. It definitely takes on a real life of its own. Not that we do a lot to tame it when we're here. We pretty much let it run wild, only mow when things are looking really shabby. The hibiscus and birds of paradise plants keep blooming and thriving without any help from us. A tiny kumquat tree by the front steps is fruiting this year--we've been here six years, but only realized it was a kumquat tree last year when a couple of tiny fruits emerged. Now, it's postively springing with them, and we did nothing to encourage it; it has its own internal urges. The Mexican sage under the ash is going strong (although a friend has told me we should prune it if we want it to be healthy. And I keep meaning to, honest. But it keeps putting out velvety purple flowers, regardless.) I love how nature keeps cycling. One day, I'd love to learn how to really care for plants--I hope to have a vegetable garden in the backyard at some point--but I also love watching them do their own thing, without any human attempts at control.

The yard is still covered with leaves, but Arin and his friend (one of the tree bandits) raked up the walkways today, so it looks a little less chaotic. But chaos can be a friend. Entropy can be a friend. Change can be a friend. I wonder what would happen if we never touched a rake again, just watched the leaves decompose, watched what sprouted from their mulch. I'm sure the neighbors would not be too thrilled. But I kind of would be.

Happy 2006, everyone!

We're back from Toronto--a fun, relaxing, exhilarating, love-filled week with my sister and her family in their new house. My kids had their first taste of snow, and I had my first taste of mangosteens in almost 16 years (they were my favorite fruit in Bali, but are forbidden in the US. The white lobes of fruit inside the hard magenta shells are just as delicious and tender as I remembered.) I skated with my sister for the first time in what could be 25 years; we skated together after school, and sometimes before school, almost every day as kids, so this felt very significant. We held hands and spun around super-fast--all I could see was my sister's beautiful laughing face; the rest of the world blurred around us as we whirled, and I was back in that wonderful bubble we created around ourselves as girls. Watching the fierce love between our daughters now fills my heart to bursting; it makes me so happy that our connection will continue to shine long into the future. The future that, as a midwife, my sister is always bearing witness to, not to mention ushering forth. She showed me all of her midwifery equipment; I am in awe of what she can do with her hands. The women of Toronto are so lucky to be in her care.

I am still full from all of the amazing Toronto food--luscious Ethiopian "splint peas", gorgeous little puris filled with chick peas and cilantro and all sorts of tangy sauces on the street in Little India, spicy noodles from Sweet Lulus, glutinous rice rolls from Chinatown, walnut cakes from Koreatown, Jamaican vegetable patties, Portugese custard tarts, etc., etc. Toronto is definitely a great food town. And culture town. Not to mention a progressive town, where even used Kleenex can be recycled and public transport is swift and accessible. Elections are coming up soon--it was slightly disorienting to see red signs for the Liberal party and blue signs for the Conservative party (and it was cool to see signs for the even more liberal NDP and Green parties, as well.)

There were only a few small short-lived blips. My son fell while tobaggoning and sliced his face open, but he's okay (and even thought it was kind of cool that he blacked out for a moment). One of our bags was lost on the flight home, but it arrived today. In Customs, the form asked for countries visited; I wrote "1", and the agent had a good laugh at me (it turned out I was supposed to list the names of countries. Strange that a word person would resort to numbers like that. I had a good laugh when I realized what I had done, too.) There were a couple of other airplane-related frustrations, but all in all, it was a very easy traveling experience (and how cool to see night-time cities glowing through the thick clouds on descent. It looked like nebulae, like something out of a science fiction movie.) Amazing how quickly we can travel thousands of miles. If I think about it too long and hard, I get a little dizzy.

It's good to be home, but I miss our Toronto people so much already. I love you, Elizabeth, Craig and Mollie!

In case I don't have another chance in the hubbub of the holidays--and our trip to Toronto from 12/26-1/1--I want to wish everyone a beautiful, peaceful, joyous holiday season. 2005 has been a punishing year--so much natural and political disaster--but I end it with a sense of hope. We were able to prevent drilling in ANWAR. We were able to put some breaks on the Patriot Act. We were able to help expose the lies of our administration. May 2006 bring even more victories for humanity and the planet (and may it be a fruitful and fulfilling year for all of you on a personal level!)