Emma

It's tough to be a twin. No one can tell you apart, even when you get different haircuts and wear different clothes. And you always have to share--clothes, your room, hair pretties, toys...even posts on your mom's blog.

Well, today Emma, this one's all yours.

Emma


Talking to Nana

Nov. 23, 2006

I'll do a Morgan post tomorrow.

Bemidji was grand fun, by the way! It was great to see everyone. And the parade (and all that candy--and Santa riding on the fire truck!) is something the girls will be talking about for a loooooong time.

Hello? Is this thing on?

Emma loves it when the camera comes out.

Look! I'm a monkey!


Morgan does not love it when the camera comes out.

Mom, will you stop taking my picture already!

November 23, 2006

In other news...yeah, I know, another big long stretch with no updates. What's been happening? Well, I finished the novel's (third) rewrite on November 1st and am now editing, editing, editing as fast and as furiously as I can, for I want this thing out of my life in 2007 and off making the reject rounds--so I can start all over again with the shitty first draft of another novel that I wrote in 2004 and then shelved to go back to this thing. Man! What a crazy, masochistic thing this writing gig is.

And, um. That's about it. I have no life. I work, I come home, I run the girls hither, thither, and yon, and I write in every spare minute I can find. Wheee! Glamorous stuff, let me tell you.

Oh, and Pete got Lasik, and I was laid low by the plague (not really the plague; it's just our pet name for the germ-crud-sickness the children periodically bring home from school) for a few weeks there, and today we're heading up to Bemidji to visit Pete's extended family.

That is all.

The Day Before Election Day

[Excerpt] ....So I have a practical suggestion for those of you who are principals, superintendents, school board members, and teachers: Go home from here and revise your core curriculum. Yes, teach the three Rs; teach the ABCs; make sure your kids learn algebra, biology, and calculus. But teach them about the American Revolution – that it isn’t just about white men in powdered wigs carrying muskets in a time long gone. It’s about slaves who rose up and women who wouldn’t be denied and unwelcome immigrants and exploited workers who against great odds claimed the revolution as their own and breathed life into it.

Teach your kids they don’t have to accept what they have been handed. Teach them they are not only equal citizens under the law, but equal sons and daughters – heirs, everyone – of that revolution, and that it is their right to claim it as their own. Teach them to shake the torpor that has been prescribed for them by calculating elders and ideologues. Teach them there is only one force strong enough to counter the power of organized money today, and that is the power of organized people. They are waiting for this message; the kids in your schools have been made to feel as victims, powerless, ashamed, inferior, and disenfranchised. Tell them it’s a great big lie – despite their poverty, circumstance, and the long odds they’ve been handed, they have the power to make the world over again, in their image. - Bill Moyers, America 101

Yes, yes, consider the source, liberal stinking bias, et cetera. But whatever your political persuasion, I believe that Moyers' speeech in its entirity is worth reading and thinking and talking about. What kind of a country are we shaping for our children--and their children?

Are we fiddling while Rome burns?

I'd end this with a reminder to go vote on Tuesday...but I think y'all are already more than aware that we're at the tail end of a particularly nasty and mean-spirited mid-term election. So. Go, Vikings?

Untitled

This shot reminds me of the Greek myth of Icarus.


October 1, 2006

...They passed Samos and Delos on the left and Lebynthos on the right, then Icarus, exulting in his career, began to leave the guidance of his companion and soar upward as if to reach heaven. The nearness of the blazing sun softened the wax which held the feathers together, and they came off. He fluttered with his arms, but no feathers remained to hold the air. While his mouth uttered cries to his father, it was submerged in the blue waters of the sea, which thenceforth was called by his name. His father cried, "Icarus, Icarus, where are you?" At last he saw the feathers floating on the water, and bitterly lamenting his own arts, he buried the body and called the land Icaria in memory of his child. Daedalus arrived safe in Sicily, where he built a temple to Apollo, and hung up his wings, an offering to the god. - Wikipedia