Asakiyume mita

There's a scene early on in Miyazaki's Spirited Away when day suddenly turns to night--a sweep of nightfall crossing the scene, and with the darkness come the spirits, disembarking to visit the tea house. Chihiro's reality changes around her in an instant.

This happened to me yesterday evening when I was waiting at international arrivals in Logan Airport for Wakanomori's plane to touch town. It wasn't crowded--a few people sitting on chairs in the waiting area, a few random people like me, airport staff. I decided to walk the length of the arrivals floor. Down one way, then back to the center, where a big door with "Customs and Immigration: Do Not Enter" disgorges new arrivals, and then down the other direction, past where people were sitting on chairs and on the floor.

Oh but wait. This was a lot of people. And an awful lot of small kids. It was families. And each family had a bright-colored fleece blanket on the floor, sometimes two. Some children were sleeping. There were big plastic bags here and there.

( another world )

If only all the world's trauma could all be addressed with a kit.

Having failed on the weekend to get to a protest in Amherst (because I decided to walk a fairy path--or should I say a ferris path--to get there, and that took longer than I bargained on), today I took myself to Holyoke, where I got to be part of an impressively organized, inspiring protest.

These women organized it. I didn't catch their names, but one teaches ethnic studies at Holyoke High School.


( photos )

It finished with a commitment to continue the work; the one white speaker urged white attendees to speak to relatives and friends and educate them about white supremacy and making systemic change.

Now I just pray that everyone's mask wearing and the fact that we were outdoors at least somewhat makes up for our lack of social distancing. It's terrible that a disease that steals your breath away lurks for those who are protesting a death by asphyxiation.

I finally saw this movie, which sovay has written about eloquently several times. It's a retelling, more or less, of The Scarlet Pimpernel, starring (and directed by) Leslie Howard, who played the Scarlet Pimpernel in the 1934 film. Pimpernel Smith was made in 1941 and set in 1939; in this version, it's a mild-mannered archaeology professor who spirits people out of Nazi Germany.

It's a *smashing* film. I loved the 1934 Scarlet Pimpernel, but I love this version equally well, maybe better. The ending soliloquy was like lightning, and if you feel dispirited about the voracious viciousness of the power structure today, it may electrify you as well. I'm going to quote sovay's post, because no one can say it better than she has:

The final soliloquy is still as good as everyone remembers—hauntingly prescient, spoken as prophecy in a year in which the outcome of World War II was far from assured. A thin-faced professor in the shadows of a railway station, unarmed at gunpoint, his eyes glinting like a cat's in the dark. An anti-Nazi picture made during the Blitz by a Jewish man, his half-immigrant's quintessential Englishness carefully learned, deeply felt. He did not live to see the winning of the war his character so confidently predicted; he vanished into history like the last word into a curl of cigarette smoke and shadows of their own spiraled up around his disappearance. If he foretold his own death, he made a spell of it:

"May a dead man say a few words to you, for your enlightenment? You will never rule the world, because you are doomed. All of you who have demoralized and corrupted a nation are doomed. Tonight you will take the first step along a dark road from which there is no turning back. You will have to go on and on, from one madness to another, leaving behind you a wilderness of misery and hatred, and still you will have to go on—because you will find no horizon, and see no dawn, until at last you are lost and destroyed. You are doomed, captain of murderers, and one day, sooner or later, you will remember my words."

I have thought of them more and more often these last four years. He was right then, that ghost speaking out of the dark. May he still be right now.

If you want to see just the monologue--but really I recommend the whole film, because there are so many brilliant moments (bleeding scarecrow and aftermath! "American journalists" tour a concentration camp!)--you can view it here. The lines quoted above start at 2.21, but you won't want to miss what comes before (the whole scene is 5.30 minutes).

Wakanomori and I went for a walk in a place where water was bubbling up everywhere. I didn't have a camera, so he obliged me by taking this. You can hardly see that it's water, but it is--you can tell by the ripples (click through to see the photo bigger):



I loved the little pools of smooth stones, set in frames of leaves, all underwater.

The sound was beautiful too--he took recordings.

In other non-pandemic news, I finished reading Children of Ruin! Loved the ending; I'll try to share more on Wednesday. And I've been reading fun short things online, plus doing an excellent beta read.

Plus the marvelous CSE Cooney is doing an audio version of The Gown of Harmonies! She's created a home studio to do it in, just marvelous. So if we can get that out in the world, maybe we can reach a new audience and raise more money for the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts. I'm thrilled and honored that she's doing this--it's a real donation of effort.

Love to one and all.

I don't remember whether I've talked about Beautiful Day here before--it's a Rhode Island nonprofit that helps refugees gain job skills through working making granola. Granola, you may ask? Yes, granola. But now they have a youth refugee program:

"Trainees attend weekly classes where they learn the ins and outs of succeeding on a job. This is not as easy as it may seem. The American work world is complicated, even for those who were born here. It's not always easy to know how to respond to a demanding boss or a troublesome colleague. What do you do if you have to miss a day? What is the appropriate way to dress? Is it ok to ask questions or to admit you don't understand? How do you make friends, respond politely, ask for a raise? These are challenging questions and if you have spent most of your life in a refugee camp and are not familiar with American work culture, they are even harder."

Here's their first graduating class


The young people come from Ethiopia, Uganda, Rwanda, Congo, and Malawi.

And here's their instructor, Maliss Men-Coletta, a former refugee herself:

"Maliss is a former refugee herself, coming to America as a child from a refugee camp in Thailand after her family fled Cambodia to escape the genocide that resulted in the deaths of 25% of the population. Maliss can relate to what these young people have been through. This is one thing that makes her such an extraordinary teacher. The other is her extensive teaching background. Before coming to Beautiful Day, Maliss worked at the International Institute of Rhode Island as a case manager and teacher where she assisted immigrants and refugees to become self sufficient."

You can donate to Beautiful Day here, or just bop around the website and find out more about the organization. (Quotations are from a newsletter I receive from the organization.)

Last year I fundraised here for the Hot Chocolate Run, which raises money for Safe Passage, an organization that helps people recover/escape from domestic violence. This year, I wasn't going to fundraise; I don't know why not really--just a kind of psychic tiredness, maybe.

But I remembered stories that two women in my classes told me about what they had suffered at the hands of their boyfriends/husbands. ( TW abuse )

And so I thought, y'know. I can get over my psychic tiredness. So--if you are in a financial spot where you're able to donate, I--and many others--will be very grateful. Fundraising page is here.

Tomorrow the second session of my jail job starts. It's been, so far, highly rewarding and highly stressful. So anyway, from tomorrow I'll be back to pretty much only posting on Fridays and weekends, probably.

But so today I thought I'd share something I'm proud of, a small thing, but maybe by way of encouraging everyone else out there to be proud of similar things that you do. We have to celebrate the small victories--it's our food for keeping on going.

It's this:



This is a guard rail for a bridge over a small stream. There's a pretty significant drop--like 30 feet maybe? It's hard to tell from the photo, but the sidewalk slopes down toward the guard rail and the drop, presumably so rainwater can drain off. But it also means if you're a little kid on a tricycle or your first two-wheeler and you're doing haphazard little-kid steering, you're going to maybe veer that way.

Now look at the vertical element that supports the guard rail. Do you see how it's in two pieces (not counting that black thing between the vertical element and the actual rail)? A low piece and then a piece that raises it up?

About a year ago, my neighbor and I were walking here. This area is a development, and the road was still under construction (it still is under construction, further up), although the bridge, sidewalk, and guardrail were already in place. The thing was, the guardrail was fastened to the lower vertical element only--there was no upper piece. It only came up to my shins. "This seems really dangerous," my friend said, and I agreed. The road is a gentle incline as you look up it, or a decline coming the other direction--it was too easy to imagine some kid coming down and going over the nonfunctional guardrail.

"We should tell someone," I said. We thought vaguely about the town's highway department--but the road is still under construction. Better, I thought, to talk to the guys *making* it and see if they'd fix it.

So I kept my eyes open, and eventually I happened to be passing by on a day when people were working on the road. First I asked a young guy about the guard rail, explaining my concern. He thought it was probably too late to do anything about it, but he referred me over to an older guy. After I got done talking to the older guy, he sighed a deep sigh and said he'd talk to "the owner" (I guess the developer?)

And I went away thinking, Well, they probably won't do anything, but at least I've mentioned it.

And then some weeks later I was walking through, and I saw they'd added the second bit of metal to the vertical element, raising the height of the guardrail. I felt a HUGE SENSE OF TRIUMPH!

I mean, I still think they could have done it better--like set the guard rail into the concrete **before** the point at which the concrete slopes downward. But raising the guard rail definitely make things safer.

Sometimes when you speak up, things do change, and if you happen to notice this, take joy. There's enough depressing stuff around that we have to cultivate the joy.

It was raining and about 37 degrees F/3 degrees C, so Wakanomori and I got bundled into many layers to join a crowd of 6,000 other participants in the Hot Chocolate Run.

Here is my outfit! Thanks to you all, I was able to raise $228.63, which meant I was given a red cap to wear and a special red number bib.





During the race, the wish cards gradually got soggy and fell off--let's think to ourselves that at that moment, the wish was promised fulfillment. Three wishes managed to hang on the whole time--let's put a favorable spin on that too and imagine they got the support of a full 5 kilometers.

I think my pace will be somewhat lower than last year, but that's okay. It's not even up yet--they only have results for people who ran it in 27 minutes or less... which is not me. (I'm also fretting that maybe the chip was broken and they're not going to have recorded my run at all, which would be a HUGE HUGE TRAGEDY and I will shed many bitter tears ... yeah no. I know I really ran it, and the money is already safely in their hands, and so todo bien, todo bien.)

ETA: They did post the times--yay! I ran a whole minute and 4 hundredths of a second slower than last year. Boo!

For a couple of year's I've participated in Northampton's annual Hot Chocolate Run, held in December. It's a huge event, attracting thousands, and at the end of the run you're given a mug of, yes, hot chocolate. Wakanomori's done it many more years than I have, so we have quite a collection of mugs.

The run raises money for Safe Passage, an organization that helps families that have lived with domestic violence. I'm a very lackluster fundraiser; I'm too aware that there are many important causes out there and that people are by and large already doing what they can, etc.

But I have an idea of something I want to do. I want to run with people's wishes. A 5k race is 3.1 miles, so I'm thinking something like this:

For a donation of $3.10, I will write your wish on a piece of paper, pin it to me, and carry it with me when I run. That way I'll be running not only to help those who've suffered from domestic violence, but also your particular wish. World peace? A new refrigerator? Send me your wish and I'll take it on a 5k race. That'll definitely give it a push toward coming true.

I want to run covered in wishes so do take me up on this offer! ~ ~Here is the fundraising page.~ ~
If you donate more than $3.10, you can send me multiple wishes! You can leave it/them down in comments, or you can use the DW messaging system.

Thing One: Marathon
Over this past weekend, Wakanomori ran a marathon in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom (I love that name--what a name!), way up by the Canadian border. Even though the mountains there are not 14,000-foot crags like in the Rockies, there's a high, lonely, mountainous air to it--you feel Up There.

It was a very tiny, intimate marathon. Here is the group taking off--not just marathoners, but people running a 17-miler and a half-marathon as well. There were also bicyclists, but they took off from a different spot.



( more about the marathon )

Thing Two: Jury Right/Duty

In the class I help out in, the students were reading about qualifications for serving on a jury. Someone asked when women started being allowed to serve. No one knew for sure. I thought it would be around the time women got the right to vote. WRONG.

As late as 1942 only twenty-eight state laws allowed women to serve as jurors, but these also gave them the right to claim exemption based on their sex. The Civil Rights Act of 1957 gave women the right to serve on federal juries, but not until 1973 could women serve on juries in all fifty states.
(Source)

These little reminders of the lack of recognition of women's full rights and responsibilities as fellow humans freak me out.

Thing Three: Catalogue

Sometimes the best guesses of algorithms are wrong. I have some ideas of how my name might have come up as a good candidate for a catalogue of Catholic church accoutrements; nevertheless, it's a faulty assumption. I will not be ordering any vestments, devotional statues, candle stands, or intinction sets.** I like that I *could*, though.

**I've learned from the catalogue that that's what you call the equipment that holds the stuff for the sacrament of the Eucharist. ETA: Or rather, that was my guess, but I found out from amaebi that actually it's the set-up for when you're going to dip the host in the wine.