Grassroots Ball Agonistes: The crisis of the people-made ball

Update: With a mere 25% of the original number of people who asked to be signed up on our emailing list responding to our poll, representing a very small percentage of the more than 1200 tickets that represented almost two months ago now, we had to make the decision to cancel the event. The reasons why are contained in this post, written December 24, 2008. Christmas Eve.

We are truly sorry to see this end so differently than we imagined in the first flush of the post-election euphoria. To all of those who showed such enthusiasm and unwavering support, thank you.


Perhaps you have been checking here for news from time to time, wondering what's happening, if anything at all. I have sworn myself to a sort of discretion, a virtual white-out of news on the Ball because it is a complex and delicate business to organize, but we are in the final hours of decision-making, and we are not all of the same mind.

Wait. That's what happens in government, too.

We all felt so monolithically committed in our support for Obama, even while we fought monumentally over whether he was right or wrong to vote for the FISA bill this year, or right or wrong not to hate Hillary Clinton forever, or to pay her campaign debt, that it was always rather surprising to find ourselves in désarroi.

But that is what is starting to interest me the most, oddly; it's the process itself, how we can start with a shared dream, build momentum from one another's excitement and passion, discover our points of désaccord, experience let-down, frustration, and even anger as we encounter difficulties, set-backs and conflicts, and then -- out of respect for one another and the importance of our relationships and work -- sit down and think about how to proceed, even manage to at all because the people involved are as important to all of us as the success of the project itself.

How many times in the MYBO listservs did the atmosphere become tense, did a voice or two speak out and remind us all of why we were there, and that we hold one another in esteem, did cooler heads prevail and we go on? It's the same. It's a process that can teach us all a lot that we can use in our lives, at home, at work, in political action. Speak your heart, as well as your mind, and do it from that place in yourself.

The ball has been hard. Harder than we imagined when we started out. I suppose no one starts out imagining the obstacles, or no one would ever begin anything. Those of us working to put it all together have made many discoveries about people -- most heartening, some laughable. There are some flakes out there, and they are not all falling to the ground to blanket Chicago in snow for its white Christmas.

We succeeded, and we failed. Or, perhaps better said, we have met with success and with failure. We have raised money that can be considered significant from among the individuals supporting our ball, and we nearly did from an individual, who chose in the end not to, without ever really making that choice final, or clear. Inference is sometimes good enough, or has to be.

There have been successes that have been very important to me. Yesterday, a $50 contribution arrived in the PayPal account from someone who has nothing to gain from their contribution to help make the ball happen, other than perhaps to help make sure there's a ball to be able to purchase a ticket to, and at a price that is close to "grassroots". That person might have thought that their $50 was "nothing" compared to others' $2,000, $1,000 or $500 (non tax deductible) donations, but that isn't how it felt to me when I heard about it. I felt indebted to that person and grateful for their gesture of support, that is really a gesture of belief in the dream that I had, that the other organizers had, that the more than 600 people who contacted us to get themselves and their friends and family on our list for news of the ball, when the tickets would be available had, too.

And the people who have joined us to offer their time and energy, their encouragement, their contacts, anything they had, and offered their thanks for our efforts. No matter what happens to this ball, I will carry forward this group of people like a community that will live inside me. I don't know how to visit that place, or see all those people, but knowing they are there is about enough. I know that one day there will be another project, another mission, and I will reach out to them, or they will reach out to me.

Today, we will be asking everyone on our lists to go to the website and take a survey. The answers to the three questions will be "Yes, I still planning to purchase tickets to the Grassroots Ball for the people of Mybarackobama.com to meet and celebrate our victory in Washington, DC on January 19, and hurry up!", "No, thank you, I have already made other plans for the inauguration," and "No. I just can't get to Washington, after all."

We need to know if 700 people sure will purchase tickets so that we can make the deposit on the space in downtown Washington with confidence. It can hold up to 1,500, and we have the option to grow the event to that capacity if ticket sales are strong.

We have become timid about committing our sponsor's money in an event that might have lost its momentum without our knowing it, especially in such uncertain times. Asking you is our best way to know if your silence has been your polite and remarkable patience, or proof of your loss of interest.

Like Barack said to us throughout the campaign, more and more frequently as the numbers coming to see him grew beyond anyone's wildest imagings, this ball was never about we, the organizers, it's about you, and it's for you if you want it. If you don't, that's fine. Personally, I can accept hearing that, but I can't as easily accept ending it all because we are worried the time and the opportunity are already behind us without having asked you if they are.

We shall see what happens today, and in the next hours, and then we will know.

For those wondering why nothing has been happening on the website, we decided spontaneously to communicate via our email lists rather than continue to promote a ball there that was at risk of not happening owing to fund-raising disappointments and their impact on the ticket prices that we could offer.

As it stands, they would be a minimum of $175, possibly closer to $200, and we would try to offer a percentage of the total tickets available at the $100 level for those whose means are limited. As we had always intended with our "Joe-the-Plumber" Ticket Plan, we would ask everyone to stop and think before purchasing and ask themselves if they really needed that $100 ticket, or if they could leave it for someone who does, each according to his conscience, and the fiscal philosophy Barack Obama laid out to Sam Wurtzenbacher in Ohio.

Please go to http://www.grassrootsballdc2009.com and take the poll to tell us if you will be buying tickets for the ball. Please have each person in your party take the poll so that we get an accurate read on the number of tickets we are sure to sell. To do that, each person needs to register on the website and then take the poll. If we get a strong enough response, we go ahead. It's that simple. We need to sell 700 tickets.

Thank you, everyone.



http://www.grassrootsballdc2009.com
....

All I want for Christmas...

Is a nugget of clean, pleasant-smelling coal in my stocking!

http://action.thisisreality.org/page/invite/RCOALergyTAF

Now, where can I find some? Do barbecue briquettes count?

The Center for American Progress's (many said Obama's policy thinkers -- wonks -- are these guys) conducted an analysis that showed that the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity companies' "paltry" investment in carbon capture storage technology shows that these companies, so publically convinced of being the future in "Clean Coal, America's Power", privately, in the Halls of government, lobby deals knowing they aren't the answer:

The coal and utility industries have spent millions of dollars to oppose mandatory reductions in global warming pollution until CCS is commercialized. Yet their paltry CCS research investment demonstrates that the ads and other public clean coal activities are merely designed to delay global warming solutions without suffering a public relations black eye. Meanwhile, atmospheric greenhouse gas levels grow, ice sheets melt, hurricanes become more ferocious, and the day of reckoning for the Earth looms closer.

And here's our new Vice President, Joe Biden, on renewable energy sources and "clean coal" in Maumee, OH...

That's at least one more Chinese import we can do without.

Merry Christmas, everyone (celebrating it)!

Actually, I am off to buy speakers for the family computer to we can hear these above an occasional whisper, when we get any sound at all. That'll give Sam something to open (he is the main benefactor), since his main present is a week of snowboarding in the l'Alpe d'Huez with a group of friends from his school. Here, check out the webcams.

I volunteered to cook and make their beds, but Sam wasn't having any of that. I'll have to wait for Chamonix in February for my yearly pilgrimage to the rapidly moving glaciers up in Argentières. Scientists have been flying over them, photographing from helicopter to measure the rate of change.

If you don't believe global warming, ask everyone wondering if they are going to enjoy four-season golf, outdoor tennis and hiking in the high alps in 40 years.

....

Time for the holidays

Oh! Oh! Oh! They are upon us, and I am unprepared, and unwilling to prepare. I am trying to get into the right mood. Really.

This helps...



It reminds me of our Black Labs in Chamonix every year. What is it with dogs and snow? Baccarat's glee and even her mother Rapide's willingness to put up with her snow-fueled, run-and-slide, full-force attacks is reason enough to put up with having two dogs in the hotel room every February, when precious little else is encouragement. They snore, and they are up at 6:57 am every morning, which would be fine, except that Sam is never good on his promise to "get up early this year and get to the slopes first thing," which leaves me with 2 1/2 hours of saying, "Sam. Get up. Sam? Sa-am. Get.up.now. Your hot chocolate is getting cold," before he props himself up with semi-focused sleepy eyes trained on Eurosport at the end of the bed and croissant flakes snow on his bare chest and the sheets.

At least they don't smell bad.

Rapide and Baccarat in the snow is the only thing that can possibly motivate Sam to come and walk them with me, camera in hand. I'd love to show you, but I can't get the Iomega external disk drive to work with the old desktop computer without a call to ASUS to see if I can update the Bios to solve the problem, and then there's the issue of the 3.5" "floppy" drive not working, which effectively prevents me from copying the Bios update file to a "floppy" so I can use EZFlash, and the laptop (finally) went off to Dell today. So, no access to any of the mini-videos Sam has taken of two dogs making the best of less than 54" of freshly fallen snow.

Does everything ever manage to be in synch with computer peripherals and drivers and read/write materials nowadays, or is that really why everyone just goes out and gets a whole new damn computer so often?
....

Black tie is so

"George Bush, Texas Nouveau Riche, Wall Street, 20th century.
Wear the Exact Outfit of Steve Jobs for $458."

To an inaugural ball?

Casual January 20?

I don't know. I don't think so. That's just not working for me. How about you?

Do parents insist that their kids wear something appropriate for "the occasion" anymore, or is a plaid shirt, North Face fleece vest and a pair of hiking sneakers -- black long-sleeved t-shirt and expensive jeans if you're as cool as Steve Jobs -- good for every occasion these days?

I thought even guys were sick of being "dressed down" all the time? Or was that just a marketing stunt placed in the New York Times fashion section to get men to start buying clothes again rather then searching the bottom of their hamper before heading to work?

Come on, even my son loved wearing his first tuxedo when he was in kindergarden (He dressed as James Bond for Halloween specifically so he could wear one, and James Bond is pretty cool, too.), and he had a suit, 5 dress shirts, 5 ties, and a nice overcoat before his 16th birthday. He insisted. I just taught him how to use a pants hanger.

Barack has reportedly bought his first new tux in 15 years, and, as Katharine Q. Seelye headlines her December 8 article in the New York Times, "In a New Tux, Obama Seeks the Proper Tone."

Yes, in a new tux, and as everyone knows by now, that new tux will be union made in America. Jobs, guys. It's about jobs for Americans, too. And, wait, are those Levi's Jobs is wearing? (I can't quite make out the pocket stitching detail.) Where are those American Levi's made these days?

Uh-oh.

ShoppingBlog.com reports, "Barack Obama is getting a new tuxedo. His current tux is fifteen years old. The new tux will be union-made by Hart Schaffner Marx." You can get one, too, at Nordstroms for just $895, according to MSNBC's report (see below).

And, according to a Women's Wear Daily report in the same post, "Bruce Raynor, the general president of Unite Here, the big apparel union, talked to Women's Wear Daily about the President-Elect's new tuxedo," and here's what he had to say:

Raynor told WWD that he was recently on a phone call with the President-elect and six other union presidents when the talk turned to what Obama would wear on the big day, which is expected to draw from 1 million to 4 million people to Washington. "As soon as he got on the phone, he told me he was working on his new tuxedo from Hart Schaffner Marx," Raynor said. "He said after 15 years, it is time for a new one." The Chicago-based men's wear firm, founded in 1883, was one of the first clothing companies to enter into a collective bargaining agreement with a union in 1911. Homi Patel, president, chairman and chief executive officer of parent Hartmarx Corp. said he is working with the President-elect's staff to determine whether Obama will wear a suit with a topcoat to the inauguration ceremony.

I don't see anything about comfy jeans and understated black t-shirts there.

But let's see what Henri Bendel (That's in New York City, on Fifth Avenue, guys.) stylist to the celebrities Seth Rabinowitz had to say on MSNBC...

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Mmmm, nope. No jeans there, either. Obama's too cool and elegant for jeans, Seth says, and "he's a really athletically built guy, so they're very excited about getting their hands on him [pause... gulp... did I really just say that?] and designing for him."

I guess you guys are just going to have to get dressed for this occasion. It's what your president would do, and he's no George W. Bush. Besides, Michelle would smack him and not speak to him for a week if he pulled on a pair of jeans and a Stave Jobs t. And that older black woman who was a little miffed when we said that our ball tickets wouldn't be free and replied, "I certainly expect that it will, and I intend to pay for an occasion for this Occasion"? She'd be knock him right upside the head, right alongside Michelle.

By the way, I hear the Texans at the Texas State Ball over at the Gaylord on the 20th are planning to wear their boots and Wranglers to Texas Two-step.

No Texas nouveau riche black tie over there.

Oh, and George W. Bush? He's from Greenwich, Connecticut. But you knew that, right?

....

The garden side goes yellow

(finally)

Today Joaquim himself came with Georges. I asked where José was, and he said, "When you said that he did such wonderful work, I had to come and do some of it myself!"

"I knew it!"

"But I never should have told you that, now you know something about me --" He laughed.

"As if I didn't know that already. I saw," I looked at Georges and he nodded, "how you took it when I complimented José's work. You're supposed to be proud of what they do, not jealous! Prideful. Just prideful!"

He was delighted with himself for today's work. The yellow has always been sort of the pride of the affair, no matter how critical the brown is.

"I have one regret," another one regret, "you know what it is? It's the brown. You were right. It's much better very dark."

"You see? I wanted it almost black. You need the contrast, but it scared everyone. We'll get it with the stain."

Yup. We'll get it with the stain.

....

Elegance is as Baccarat does

Dogs, renovations and inaugural balls. A life.

Baccarat

November 2, 2008

This is how my dog looks at me. Waiting. At my disposition. Ready. Whenever I am.

"Posing, did I hear you ask? No," she chuckled, "that's Bacs for you. She always lies that way when observing me. I got lucky with the camera this time."

It happened to be in my hand, and turned on, which it always should be. I don't know why we don't have built-in cameras, actually.

"What's that, you say? We practically do? Oh, like our cell phones and PDAs and everything else that takes pictures. Gotcha'."

Gotcha'. Almost makes me miss Sarah Palin.

You Betcha'.

Wink!

....

There's a renovation goin' on 'round here

(remember?)

There was a week when I nearly forgot.

Georges and José were called away to do a small job to pick up some additional income. This was part of the understanding, that since ours is a big job they would do some smaller jobs here and there to pick up additional revenue, but so was a finish date of mid-November for the exterior of the house. I'll let you judge for yourself if it looks done.

The entry courtyard masonry work counts, too.

Hm... nope. Not in my opinion.

Well, we gave up on mid-November by the end of October, and Audouin was able to digest that better after our dinner with Joaquim, back when he nearly walked off the job when we said we thought the ochre was a bit greenish, and certainly not like the approved sample.

Well, in our defense, it wasn't.

In his defense, we were comparing it to the wrong sample.

It turned out that he had completely covered the right sample the day he mixed what we thought was the wrong one that I hoped was the right one, which it turned out that it was.

Are you following?

He proved it by chipping off the wrong sample, and there it was, the right sample. Let me not tell you how aggrieved he was. Let me not tell you how aggravated I was that he had covered it with a wrong one.

Joaquim and Audouin really needed to meet and talk face-to-face anyway so that Audouin could understand why I had Joaquim doing this job, and why it is sometimes best to put up with slow progress rather than a bad job done fast, or, a fast job done badly, and so that we could get to the bottom of the color issue and find that we all had egg on our faces.

And remember, next time you're in a bind with two men, steak and apple pie with cinnamon (I scored big points there. See? I told you, Texas.) help every time.

....

And, there's maybe still going to be a ball, too.

We continue to struggle to get enough funding together to get the ticket prices where we feel they need to be, and some are losing heart. It's understandable. Early on, things went so fast that it felt like God was on our side, and not Sarah Palin's. We thought that Barack's democratic ascension to the presidency was proof enough of that (Just kiddin' ya'. Gosh, can't ya' take a little joke anymore?), and then the ball seemed to be manifest destiny, too.

Then, one major sponsor turned out to be -- um -- how can I put this politely? -- not serious?

Then, another decided to perhaps leave his money with the PIC for greater -- um -- effect?

Then, we had to lose the Reagan Center because -- um -- that's life?

Then, just when all seemed bleakest, word came that another sponsor was actually still considering underwriting our grassroots ball for the volunteers, a beverage company asked if we were still looking for sponsors (ya-ah), and a won-der-ful group in Northern California, whose mission is "to protect that area's wild and rural places and to support the peoples who are part of these native landscapes through volunteer-driven environmental and cultural education, land use advocacy and career development" said they would like to sponsor the ball and attend.

If this sponsorship comes through with enough to help bring our ticket prices down, or with support from some of the others still possible, it will be a dream come true on so many levels -- financial, philosophical, political, organizational, you name it. This is why we voted the Republicans out of Dodge, although I know that Barack wouldn't like my partisan tone (I am pretty much unrepentent), and even though I have met some through the Obama campaign who have given me Hope that Barack might not be nuts when he asks us to try and get along.

Still, I am a litte tiny bit worried that maybe there is something wrong with him if Republicans can support him. Not that there's anything wrong with Repubicans per se. I am just a progressive. Nothing much to do with that No-man's-land "centrist" stuff that basically means "I can find something to agree with everyone about".

Oh, I know that is the stuff of governance and plain old getting along and getting on, but there have to be some values worth defending to the tooth (and I think that Rahm was really pretty awful with George Lakoff. Really.). I keep hoping that these Obama Republicans are just as sick of being stuck and having unpardonably pitiful and impitoyable leadership in the White House, of being publically embarrassed in front of the entire world, although I don't know how much they agree with me that private insurance is not the way to finance health care for everyone and maintain price controls. Government has a role and a responsibility for the public's welfare. Really.

Anyway, if we got their sponsorship, it just might mean that the Maker did mean for us to have a ball. Note the Deist tone.

But, then there is the Peace Ball on January 20 at the Old Post Office, being sponsored by Democracy Now! I had heard about it some time back, but I didn't recognize the name associated with it. Some man. I heard they had $25 tickets, and I was so impressed that I wanted to give up and go have a good cry.

We'd never get to $25 tickets, short of a miracle, on which the world seems pretty short these days. Still, we were close enough to the beginning of our efforts to imagine that fund-raising could go wildly well-enough... nope. Well, they didn't either. They went for $165.

Now the 2009 Inaugural Peace Ball is selling last tickets for $1,000 and has an impressive list of confirmed speakers, as today's email from Amy Goodman (I got a blog reaction for that one) says:

You will be united with hundreds of friends who believe in,
support and work tirelessly for peace, social justice -- and independent media. Confirmed speakers include Alice Walker, Amy Goodman, Eve Ensler, Barbara Ehrenreich, Howard Zinn, Dick Gregory, Laura Flanders, and with performances by Jackson Browne, Michael Franti, Bernice Johnson Reagon, Toshi Reagon, Fertile Ground, Kate Clinton, and Holly Near.

And do you know who Kate Clinton is? My high school English teacher from junior year.

Not only do I need to walk with Thich Nhat Hanh, who -- according to one of our most wonderful helpers and supporters -- will be walking through the poorer sections of Washington with Ogegeko Ottoman of the Center for the Advancement for Nonviolence (see my earlier blog post about my feelings about the impact of this inauguration on a city strained economically already), but I positively need to see Kate Clinton.

Funny I never thought to Google her.

Kate Clinton is a self-described "fumerist," or feminist humorist, who has set out to prove that being lesbian can be, and often is, funny. She was raised in a large Catholic family. In young adulthood she was a "pre-Michael J. Fox conservative" who attended Le Moyne College,^[1] a small Jesuit liberal arts college, and went on to teach high school English and coach.

In addition to comedy appearances and one-woman-shows such as Correct Me If I'm Right, All Het Up and Kate's Out Is In, she has written two books, Don't Get Me Started and What the L. She has written monthly columns for The Progressive and The Advocate.

She has made numerous appearances on television, and has served as grand marshal of gay pride parades. Clinton has produced several comedy albums, which was performed successfully in an off-Broadway production, published a book entitled Don't Get Me Started, and is working on a second book. When the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan began, she was a part-time commentator on CNN.^[2]

Kate Clinton lives in New York City & Provincetown with her partner, Urvashi Vaid. Her 2006 tour marks her 25th anniversary as a professional stand-up comedian.

Clinton performed on Cyndi Lauper's True Colors Tour 2008.

Note the reference to teaching high school English. Yeah.

We were "Ms. Clinton's" last class at Jamesville-DeWitt High School in 1978. She was amazing. She was hysterical. She was awesome, although we didn't say that yet. When class got too noisy, Ms. Clinton stood up on her desk in the front of the room and delivered her lecture every other word. Yup.

Once, we heard a knock on the window. Heads turned to see who was out there.

Ms. Clinton.

Yup. We'd gotten a little noisy and hadn't noticed she had headed out the door, around the corner and out through the main entrance to get out attention. It worked.

One day at the end of the year, Ms. Clinton announced that she was taking a year to drive across country to Alaska in a beat up VW bus to write. She ended up one of the West Village's leading comedians, who happens to be gay and headlines the gay pride headlines. My brother nearly fell over backwards when I said, "Really? Kate Clinton is performing? But, that's my high school English teacher."

Ms. Landfear was another one, and wonderful, too.

Hi, Ms, Landfear!

God, I might have to go to DC now, even if I can't make this Ball work. I also can't possibly pay $1,000 even to find Kate Clinton after all these years.

Hi, Ms. Clinton, it's me! I.



Ah, Kate. Good to hear you again, and you look marvellous! Sounds just like junior year English class, except that the topic then was literature.

I need another miracle now, after the other one that hasn't happened yet.

....

Rudolf the red-nosed

Christmas tree?

I didn't feel like celebrating Christmas this year. I still don't.

Yesterday, I sighed that I supposed that I was heading over to Florosny to look at the trees. Audouin roused himself from in front of the television, where he was fighting a headache and falling asleep after a terrible night on duty at the hospital.

"Tu veux que je viens avec toi?" I was hoping for more of a "Wait! Let me change my shoes, and I'll be right with you. I love picking out Christmas trees!" This is the first time in, oh let me count the Christmasses (2002, 2003, 2004... 2008 = 7 Christmasses), 7 years that he has participated in getting the sapin de Noël. Usually, Sam comes with me. Sam is, however, growing up and was having a writing tutoring session with Asmaa at the hospital. It was sort of a now or never get a Christmas tree this year, which disappointed Audouin more in what it said about me than the fact of not having one of my pretty Christmas trees this year.

"Non, non. C'est bien."

"Tu n'as pas besoin de moi pour le charger?"

"Ils ont les gens pour m'assister." I headed out the door, very much wishing I had said something more like, "I'd love to have your company. That would mean so much to me. Thank you." It was gray and chilly as a trod across the worn grass, covered with bits of stone and chaux. I opened the gate, turned the Voyager around in the street, and there was Audouin, closing the gate behind him. I opened the passenger door.

"Je pensais que tu restais."

"J'ai préferé être avec toi." Merci. I threw the V6 into drive and drove off up the road out of the village, toward my favorite, my one and only garden store.

I am nearly as picky as was my mother (and still is, if her returns to LL Bean's tree department are keeping up apace) when I was little and learning how one shops for a Christmas tree. This involved a first trip to Brang's Garden Center up on Genesee Street, at the corner of Maple Drive. It was usually snowing, and my little sister and I were bundled up in ski jackets with red knit mittens with strings up our sleeves and across our backs, which didn't prevent us from losing two mittens each instead of one. The young man would dutifully pull out one tree after another from the others, leaning against the wood rails of the racks of trees, and then, holding the tree on display for my mother's decision firmly by the trunk, he would bang it down on the ground a couple of times to make its snow-covered branches, scrunched tight to it from being pressed together with all the others, drop just like they would at home, pulled farther down by the weight of our accumulated glass balls and strings of colored bulbs (we were transitioning from the tuna noodle casserole -- my favorite pre-ski supper -- and Jell-O mold Christmas tree, but hadn't evolved all the way to tiny white blinking lights yet).

Mom would shake her head, while we nodded in support of her judgement, and looked more than a little longingly at the lights inside the warm store with the cash register for those who had decided they had found the right tree, and off we went in the car, feeling our mittens gradually soften and sodden in the heat, to criss-cross the town until we found the right tree.
Dad drove and never (that we heard) complained. Maybe he appreciated perfection in his Christmas trees as much as Mom did, and as we were learning to do, but what I suppose I really learned was to never go to more than two stores. That's my limit. Find the store with the best trees and become a faithful client, up until last year when I realized that Florosny sells them, too. Naturally.

Audouin followed me to the next to last greenhouse in the series, sensing that I was a seasoned veteran and knew where I was going, and doing his level best to be supportive and agreeable (we have been a little tense lately, ever since he brought up twice in one week that his youngest son would like to come live with us every other week, which he would also like very much, and to which I would prefer another difficult wisdom tooth extraction). Alright, I was appreciating it very much, but I didn't tell him. I suspect the truth is that as soon as I let up my guard, he'll spring the request on me again.

We gazed at the enormously fat and squat trees leaning in heaps, standing in their root bags, or stuck into the log bases that are actually quite a nice French addition to the Christmas tradition, even though you can't water the tree. I learned to appreciate these petits trees when I saw my sister-in-law's. I have even secretely pined for one ever since, but I don't dare tell Audouin or Sam, who are used to my majestic confections.

Besides, what would I do with all the ornaments I couldn't fit on it tastefully?

"Il y en a plus là-bas," dis-je, turning my head toward the last greenhouse. His followed.

"Oui, je les vois." We headed to the farthest corner of the store, but what I saw were the banana trees and a few decorative olive trees trained on "tiges". I looked farther into the corner, and there were the trees I expected to find, piled on two palettes. I pulled one Nordmann upright that looked promising. They don't smell Christmasy like the Epiceas, but they have softer green needles with bluish undersides, and hold them longer. I began to tear off the netting with my cold hands.

"Tu as le droit de faire ça? Tu es sure?" Always the worrier, my husband is constantly concerned that I am breaking some other unwritten rule.

"Yes, I have the right to take the netting off the tree. How else can we actually see it? Tu n'aurais pas un couteau dans ta poche," I asked, pretty sure that he had given up that practical and usually useless habit sometime when I wasn't paying attention.

"Non, mais tu es sure que tu as le droit de faire ça?"

"Oui, et aide-moi." We got the netting off, looked at the tree with its long branches pressed to its trunk. I asked him to grip it by the trunk and bang it down a couple of times, you know, like you supposed to do, but he wasn't quite as cooperative as those young men at Brang's and all over Syracuse, NY.

"Aie!" he looked at me, "Ca pique." I looked back somewhat accusingly and suggested he was a little over-sensitive. "Mais il y a des épines. Ca fait mal aux mains." He was injured in his pride. I thought of his surgeon's hands, not made for banging down Christmas trees bare-handed. Not that those guys at Brang's or anywhere else hadn't worn gloves to do that.

I pushed down the branches, and looked at the tree, which bulged out on one side and had only slightly more branches at the top than the others that had nearly three-feet of bare top. They've been blaming this on the heat wave of the summer of 2003 for some time now. We both turned and looked around us for the next likely candidate for our living room, when Victor came around the corner. Saved.

Only not.

He trumped my tree choice with his announcement that his work there was done. Audouin understood before I did. He had to explain what Victor was saying to me. It took a minute.

"Vous partez? C'est fini ici? Vous partez?" The next day would be his last. Today. Last week, Chloé died, and this week, Victor goes to a garden center in les Alluets le Roi in two more. "It's on the way to Ikea," I consoled myself, while I listened to him explain the situation to us again. I knew it by heart. I couldn't blame him: 500 euros more a month, after taxes. He has a wife, two kids and a Golden Retriever who need to eat and have a nice life. I can understand that.

What I cannot understand is why Florosny never understood how to run their business to make, rather than to lose, 300,000 euros a year and pay him every centime he's worth to accomplish it. You go to Delbard, Truffault and Jardiland and tell me if you find the same range of plants of the same quality. I defie you to tell me that you do.

You won't.

So, this is as far as I got with the ornaments this morning. I let Wisp cuddle with me for an extra hour, worrying about the ball (ah, the Grassroots Ball, another story and another sigh), before I got up to make coffee and start adding the ornaments to the lights I strung last night, while Audouin watched something on television. Oh, yeah, the end of the season race drivers' competition at Wembley. Joyeux Noël.

I opened the box of red and the box of gold balls, the "base balls", as I have come to think of them. The ones from Ikea. I hung one red one, and then another. Stepped back to stare at the tree. They were hung at the same height on either side of the tree and looked ridiculous. Eyes.

I went and got another, a red one, a nose, hung a few gold ones from the antlers, and reached for the camera.

Rudolf the red-nosed Christmas tree.

It took another hour to load the digital camera software onto the desktop computer, since my laptop has been non-functional for nearly two months now. Dell. Say no more, say no more.

That's the real reason, or one of them, for why you haven't heard much from Sisyphe of late.

Joyeuse préparations pour les fêtes de fin d'année, tout le monde.

Me? I am heading to Ikea for furniture for Sam's room. That will surely make the difference between motivation to succeed and disdain for everything school means, starting with the teachers and the work. His friends are getting into Princeton, Barnard, and Northwestern early decision, and to McGill and Oxford and King's. Let's hope that that, along with a more organized room and a bigger desk, will make a student of a quality brain going to academic waste.

But, if anyone can persevere in that task, Sam can. I have never met a more stubborn person in my life. Convinced is how he would probably prefer to characterize himself. Sam marches to his own tune. Let's hope life likes the music.
....

Chloé

Chloé in the last ray of afternoon sun
May 21, 2005

Chloé

February 21, 1999 to December 6, 2008
....

She's cold, wrapped in a pink towel on my lap. She chills my legs. It froze last night, where she lay dead under a car in the parking area across from the village's only business, a restaurant and bar, Le Petit Diablotin. Since Saturday morning, we had all walked through there, calling out to her, hoping to hear a thin meow from an even thinner cat. Some sign that we could still help her.

The owner of the bar called a little before noon to tell me that he had found our cat, "au moins, je pense que c'est elle, comme dans sa photo. Mais, il faut que je vous le dise," he paused, "elle est morte." I knew.

I had gone there Monday with a note from Chloé and a picture of her below it. It asked whoever might have found her and taken her home, thinking she had been abandoned, so miserable did she look, so thin and weak these last weeks, or who might find her dead to return her to us so that we could care for her, or know that she was dead and bury her. Cry finally.

She was one of three kittens from the same litter that we got when they were 8 weeks old. Sam and I had moved into our 2-bedroom railroad apartment in one of two post-war brick apartment buildings in the center of Greenwich, built by a family recently emigrated from Italy. They were still in the same family. Two stories, two up and two down. We had the lower floor apartment on the south side, full of sun if it had few other advantages. I could only be proud that we were no longer living in the attic of a house, turned into a studio apartment in an affluent neighborhood, even if you did have to walk through my room to get to the living room from the kitchen and Sam's room. It wasn't much, but it was a real apartment. It's what I could afford as a single mother and architect living where the work was.

We settled in some furniture from Ikea, put a couple of rugs too small for the bare wood floor in the living room down, stuff from the garage at my parents' house that wasn't good enough for their house anymore, and we thought that what we needed, what we could have now, what any family needs to be complete would be a pet. Sam wanted a cat. So did I. I'd always had cats, and like I'd teach Sam to ski, even if it wasn't really in my means, because my father taught me to ski, we'd have a cat. Actually, we decided we'd need two. One and another to keep that one company while we were at school and work.

I asked around, family, friends, for anyone who knew of someone looking to place kittens. It didn't take long before my sister called -- that was two years before I had email, a PC at home, imagine -- to say that one of her colleagues knew someone looking for homes for a couple of kittens. I said yes right away, and a couple of days later I received a note in the mail with a photo tucked inside. It was from the woman giving the kittens away. There were three in the photo, two black and white and one white with gray and marmalade marks. They played on a blue and pink flowered sofa, all three on one cushion with room to spare. She asked if we could possibly take the third, as well, for whatever reasons she gave. It didn't matter. We would, and we drove to Philly the next weekend to pick them up, at a meeting point in a hotel parking lot.

There they were, in a large hamster cage. Chloé, Shadow and Nuts. Nuts got off lucky. He was almost named Neil Armstrong by a 7 1/2 year old boy, who had visited the Air and Space Museum at the Smithsonian the summer before.

"Don't you think it might be a little hard to call him? 'Neil Armstrong, here Neil Armstrong, kitty, kitty, kitty'?" I asked Sam. He thought about it a moment and acknowledged the truth of this.

"What do you think we could name him that might be a little easier?" He thought a second longer and said,

"Nuts." He also had recently received another Beanie Baby from my other sister, the squirrel named Nuts. Naturally, my stepfather had the perfect réplique when we brought him home from the vet later, neutered.

"Okay, Nuts." I had wanted Chloé and Zoé, but Sam nixed that.

"Shadow, Mom. She's black, like a shadow." We had looked at the picture together. She was. Kids get to decide these things. Chloé, Shadow and Nuts.

It was better that way. When Sam started 6th grade in Paris, there were skinny twin girls in his class, Chloé and Zoé. Terribly unoriginal.

Nuts was the first to be sick. We didn't know which of the three of them was peeing everywhere but where they were supposed to, including on my bed from time to time, but mostly on the bath mat. We suspected Shadow, the one who had been the most timid, but the vet found nothing wrong and said that she is a very affectionate cat. Still, they gave us valium for her, in case she was peeing for psychological reasons. We drugged the poor thing for awhile, and gave up. She was out of it, and there was still cat pee on the bath mat.

We finally caught Nuts peeing there one afternoon. The tests showed kidney failure, but he made it from that afternoon in June or so of 2001 all the way to France, to be put down and buried in our garden on May 4, 2004, only a little more than 5 years old.

Then Chloé, just like Nuts.

Chloé was everywhere in my pictures. I spent most of most months of the year these last few years working in what was an abandoned terraced garden, and there was hardly a picture I took in which Chloé wasn't somewhere in it, luxuriating in the Nepata or sun, keeping me company in her own way. It was Shadow who followed me everywhere, like a dog, always just a few feet away.

She was a cat who couldn't live without our affection. She was always like that. The day Sam and I picked them up and drove back to Greenwich, while the two other kittens crouched together in the cage, Chloé stood up on her rear paws and reached to us. She wanted to be held. I am not sure if a cat ever spent more time pressed against her humans than Chloé did, especially these last few weeks at night.

Audouin always said that it's disgusting to have a cat in bed, but Wisp was the first to have the rare privilege when we found her and brought her home. She was so thin and weak, starved. She had spent so many cold, wet nights wherever she could to stay alive. She slept on a towel against me at the side of the bed until she was well. Then Chloé these past few weeks. Two? Three? I don't remember.

"This time you'll let her die, won't you? She's sad and sick. We can't keep taking her to the vet for IV treatments. Think of what it will cost, and she'll still die. Let her go this time."

I didn't answer. I'd do what I needed to do when the time came, and I knew he would let me. Meanwhile, he said nothing about her sleeping on my chest all night. She needed to be there, and for once, she wasn't making me miserable, trying to lick my face all night long. She just curled up and slept, her front paws tucked under her chest, and I barely felt her, that's how skinny she had become. Like Wisp when Audouin brought her home from the woods at the center of the boucle de la Seine, she sort of crouched when she walked, as though her hips and legs had already done all they could to carry her around and were exhausted from the effort.

I watched her eyes. That's where you could see when she was very dehydrated. That's when I knew she was sick like Nuts a year ago last September. A week of IV then, and she recovered enough to go on until July. Another week in July -- the vet cut the price of treatment, very kindly -- and she made it until Saturday.

Friday evening, I stopped at the vet to get more of her kidney diet food. I was overdue. She had been eating the same thing as the other two cats for a little while, and now I can feel horrible about that. Such an easy thing to go buy the special food, and I hadn't done it. I nearly said to the technician that I was going to bring her in for a blood test, almost made the appointment, and the next evening at the dinner table, Audouin looked at me and said, "Have you seen Chloé today?"

"No. Why? Haven't you?" He said his daughter had noticed that she hadn't been around like usual.

"She's gone to die," I said.

And she had. We searched for her, looking under ever bush and hedgerow, in the boat enclosure and where the workers store their tools, in the garage, and in the gardens around our own. We didn't look under the white delivery car across from Le Petit Diablotin, where she had gone to lie down, almost as though she were comfortable on a bit of warm pavement, although no pavement had been warm these last days in a very wet, cold early December, and died.

I can't keep her on my lap. We'll wait for Sam and Audouin to come home, and then we'll bury her where Audouin suggested. Where I changed the soil and planted the rhododendron and the dogwood these last two years, and like with Nuts some four and a half years ago, I will have to fight myself not to go and get her when it is cold and raining at night. Accept that the life is gone, even if it is hard to believe, and with her, another piece of those years when Sam was a child and I was working to make a life full of love for him and me.

Baccarat licked her, and Rapide and Wisp (with whom she fought protracted battles over territory), came to see. Shadow, who returned to the spot where she watched us bury Nuts and slept near it, sat on it, didn't care.

"She died peacefully," Audouin said over the phone, "It's only sad that she died alone, but she died peacefully. It makes me sad, too."

Chloé, like the smooth stone you throw into the still water, and watch the ripples stretch out in wide rings, the reminder of the stone you held in your hand, until they are no more, and all that remains is the memory of the stone.

I'll miss her markings, those curved V's that drew a line from the corner of her eyes to the corners of her mouth. Marmalade on the left, and gray on the right. The surprising purity of the whiteness of her fur, like snow that was always just fallen, and the flame up the middle of her forehead. The site of her in a vacant flower pot. Pressed up against our chests, driving us nuts.

Bye, Chloé. We've missed you already these last few days, and so we know how much we will. You and Nuts.

Good-bye.
....

Huge

huge [hyooj or, often, yooj]
–adjective, hug⋅er, hug⋅est.

1. extraordinarily large in bulk, quantity, or extent: a huge ship; a huge portion of ice cream.
2. of unbounded extent, scope, or character; limitless: the huge genius of Mozart.

Origin:
1225–75; ME huge, hoge

Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.

That's the word I am contemplating today. Huge.

As in huge numbers of people, paying huge amounts of money, descending on Washington, DC to cost that suffering city and its citizens huge demands on its limited resources, or as someone who has been working with us on our idea for a grassroots ball said,

"I think all the fuss is a huge waste of money that could be put to much better use than agents and hotels taking their huge cuts off the festivities, (just like [I] felt the huge sums of campaign cash could have gone to people, programs that needed it instead of the networks and media)

I wish obama would make this part of the change..........NO parties, no BALLS, just say I do and be in the office on the 20th and sign some of those really important executive orders.

It's totally out of hand and even obscene."

I am as guilty as anyone for thinking, "Obama is going to be inaugurated! Let's have a ball to recognize the effort of so many volunteers who helped get him into office, and have a chance to actually, finally meet one another. Let's make this a different sort of ball, By the Volunteers, For the Volunteers!"

But the farther you go with it, the more it looks like more of the same. At least if you are planning it in Washington, DC.

As I wrote in our fundraising solitication letter, the day after the election, Frank Greve of McClatchy newspapers wrote:

"Washington- A powerful new lobbying force is coming to town: Barack Obama's triumphant army of 3.1 million Internet-linked donors and volunteers."

And, I continued, "Our first 'official' appearance in Washington will be at our very own inaugural ball." It still sounds good, but the picture evolves and with it, our point of view.

We started out wanting to send a message to Washington, and we end up doing it the way Washington does it, becoming part of the problem descending on that city that is not just a name, "Washington", for our federal government, but a real city -- like New York, Flint, Cleveland, and Houston -- that happens to be the host to that government, a city like all those others, with its own problems and burdens to bear.

And here we come, all 3.6 million and more of us to see Barack Obama inaugurated 44th President of the United States of America!

Why? Why can we not watch this from our television sets at home? Is it because he was elected by a wave of social and political organization that mobilized unprecendented numbers to work actively for his campaign as volunteers on the "grassroots" level? Or, is it because he is America's first black president?

Perhaps it is for both reasons.

I have mixed feelings as I think about that. It's complicated if you look at it from the cultural frame of anywhere outside the United States, where it is said that race shouldn't matter and that to see Barack Obama as a black man takes away from the man he is.

It's also complicated because in the 1896 Supreme Court ruling Plessy v. Ferguson, the court upheld a Jim Crow interpretation of segregation law that said that if you were even 1/8 black, like Homer Plessy, you were black and not allowed to sit in the "whites only" section of the train. This decision rightly upset whites and blacks concerned with social justice and equality until the last Jim Crow laws fell with the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

When Barack and I were in college, there was question about which blacks were "black enough" not to be called "Oreos" for "passing". The bi-racial students didn't have it easy. They weren't black, and they weren't white. Inter-racial couples had it tough, too. A lot of black women didn't take kindly to the black men who made it to college dating white women. It was understandable.

I believed that Barack was able to make the speech on race in Philadelphia he did because of the work he had to do to understand and integrate his own identity, but I was concerned every time I heard him called the man who just might be "our first black president," and, now, "America's first African-American president".

What if his mother were still living? Would he have been called bi-racial, or black? What about his grandparents in Hawaii? Did they see him that way, or as a reflection of his black father and his white mother -- their daughter -- and, finally, because they loved the boy he was, grown to be the man he is, simply as the person who is Barack?

Which takes us back to the point of view that says "race shouldn't matter." It doesn't when you know and love an individual. But, individuals are not groups, nor are they society with its human history.

Maybe all that stuff back in college was just noise. The noise of frustration and anger and continuing social injustice, but it made life hard for those subject to it.

Maybe today it will be gone, along with the pain of identity and how a person is seen and understood by society, and the groups that make up that society.

America sits on a crest, having climbed high, while at one of her lowest moments, and we have chosen to trust her steerage to President-elect Barack Obama for his judgement, his intelligence, his clarity of vision and his ability (yes, it is true) to speak in full and coherent sentences. At this moment, our economy has been declared in recession, and the Presidential Suite at the Ritz-Carlton in Washington, DC went for $20,000 a night for a 5-night minimum during the inauguration. The other rooms? A far more affordable $2,000 a night for a 5-night minimum, and every last one is taken. Every restaurant table is booked. Money will be spent as though there is no financial crisis, while more and more Americans will be without work and income to support their families and small businesses will close, and our leaders and economists debate how best to guide us out of economic trouble and toward solutions that will make the foundation of life sounder for all Americans.

If at moments past, during difficult times, presidents have removed themselves to the silence of their offices and the solitude of their own conscience, away from the distractions and the demands upon them, to arrive at a decision that required courage, the form that the occasion of this president's inauguration should take might just be such a moment -- and an opportunity -- for Barack Obama to make a significant gesture.

Perhaps the very best way to underscore the change that has come to Washington and to our nation in a difficult hour is to break with tradition and change the way this president assumes his office and his duties.

As an American living in France, I was struck last year by the austerity of the moment when one president, Jacques Chirac, left office, and the next, Nicholas Sarkozy, assumed it. President Chirac awaited President Sarkozy at the top of the steps at the entry to the Elysée palace, as Sarkozy entered the gate and crossed the courtyard on the length of red carpet leading to the door. The two presidents met, shook hands, and President Chirac walked down the steps, while President Sarkozy walked to his office, ready to begin to do his nation's business.

Perhaps this is the time to save everyone the indecent cost of inaugural celebrations -- and the task of raising the money to pay for them --, the nightmare of protecting the president, and the stress of a city and its inhabitants, many of whom count among those whose needs are greatest.

Our new president could do that and mark this great moment of Hope in the fierceness of simplicity.
....