Miami Connection (1987)

a moment of your time:

Miami Connection (1987)

 

Ralph and a few of our friends are putting on an event this Friday at Hoquiam’s historic 7th Street Theatre. “It’s kind of a big deal”. To us.

I’m not sure if all my readers know how much effort we Hogabooms put into some projects, so I thought I’d say a few words.

We have worked very hard for this event. We’ve been designing graphic art, promoting, writing press releases, having tickets and posters printed, and finding sponsors to donate funds, food, and products. We’ve built a slideshow that honors sponsors and showcases Harbor Rescue’s success stories. To secure the theatre and the film rights (which were not cheap) Ralph and I personally scraped up funds from what is (supposedly) savings for a house payment or car repair and put those funds on the line.

Ralph and I are currently working on redesigning the Rescue’s website – so that can be up and running shortly before the film airs. We are also putting together foster and adoption forms to have at the event, raffles, and door prizes.

And of course, we’re trying to find volunteers to man positions on event night.

What we’re really hoping for at this point – frankly – is to have some asses in seats on Friday. Because every ticket purchased, every sponsorship acquired, every scrap of cash sent our way through Paypal, benefits real, living and breathing, suffering animals here in Grays Harbor and surrounding area. If you live here and are reading this, I hope you can attend. This Friday we will be competing with a local football game (yikes!) and, to a lesser extent, the cultural habits of Loggers Playday (yes, that’s a real thing!) – so, we’re hoping for the best.

If you don’t live by – please consider donating directly to the event. You can do this by donating through my Paypal (send to kelly AT hogaboom DOT org) and making sure to put “Harbor Rescue” in the memo field. You can send checks, cash, or even dog food to my address – 611 6th Street, Hoquiam, WA 98550.

You can make a difference in the lives of local critters.

Thank you readers for your steadfast support. I wish you success in all your endeavors. Me – well, in between hustling like I’ve never hustled before – I’m putting on my jeans with a touch of lycra and practicing roundhouse kicks.

Miami Connection (1987) original poster

stuff that happened

Opening Night!

Tonight is opening night for RHPS by the Driftwood Players, and I am so excited to go to the first official performance. I can tell you, if you are a local, you should check it out! (Or even if you’re not that local!) As for the bouquet, I am faithful to a local florist and I adore her. She continues to impress me both in quality of work, and in generosity. This little bouquet is fitted with lots of glitter, fishnet, exotic purples and reds, and shiny black boa-feathers. I love it!

Dinner Date

Last night, out late, very tired – but cheered immensely by the company of my family.

Meemerd

An inside joke between my Friday-date children and I. Little E. drew a “Meemerd”, and I adore it.

***

Last night we had a total of six “extra” kids in and out our home. I made a slow-cooked chili, honey cornbread, a fudge-frosted zebra-stripe cake, and served iced wild cherry Pepsi. At the end of a long night five of the six did not want to leave, and a few of them outright begged to stay.

Ralph and I are doing something right.

The trouble is, I can’t remember if it’s the thirteenth or the fourteenth

The couple sitting across the restaurant is drunk. Very drunk. Having, according to them, a “wonderful time”. Due to the history of my alcoholic family of origin and my as-yet-in progress healing, I am not relaxed around drunk and rowdy people. I’m only waiting until someone asks them to please move on, or please do not grab my ass, or whatever boundary is communicated, before a sudden sodden viciousness is levied against those who’d oppose their asshattery or dangerous hijinks.

But in this case we, the public, get off easy enough. The man of the couple manhandles the waitress, which she suffers as best as she’s able, but mostly they seem in the “friendly” category of drinkers (which is as far as I’m concerned often only a temporary phase; many who drink habitually to excess, I believe, are often self-medicating deep suffering and a hair trigger away from destructive behavior). Later I find out these two were on a blind date and finished two bottles of champagne before paying up and moving on to find a bar proper. They certainly have one thing in common at least. I wish them the best.

We had stopped for a pizza after attending the Washington State Ghost Society’s audit of the 7th Street Theatre, a closed event. We had bundled up in blankets and listened while Nels, disinterested, whispered in my ear loudly about his latest computer programming aims. Phoenix evaluated the replayed EVPs and read the Society’s report, cocking an ear, then levelly auditing their presentation efficacy while drawing monster after monster in my moleskine.

**

Today news reached us of the Tucson shooting which killed at least six people and injured twelve or thirteen (at the time I type this) in an anti-government mass murder. The youngest victim was a nine year old girl named Christina-Taylor Green, born on September 11, 2001 (yes, really) and recently voted onto her school’s council. Christina-Taylor was, in words of one family friend, “brought by her family to meet the congresswoman [Giffords, likely a target,] to see how government works”.

I don’t have words for how this has affected me; deeply. I feel so incredibly sad, a deep devastating sadness that permeates my every action today. This isn’t a left or right political issue (please watch the brief video of today’s statement made by Arizona Sheriff Clarence Dupnik). This should be a call for peace and for democratic, responsible and measured responses in our language and activism. Tonight I take a break from my Twitterstream where so many activists I typically respect (and as are my proclivities, are left-leaning) have today and in the past levied so much vitriol and violent language against those they oppose. Anger is a natural emotion and one that lets us know something is wrong; however, rehearsing that anger and revelling it and acting from that place has brought so much sorrow and suffering and devastation upon so very many (and is precisely irresponsible to those unbalanced or vulnerable). Today Christina-Taylor and the many others killed, wounded, and traumatized (as well as their families and communities) paid a terrible price.

Beacon
(Small Stone #8*)

Bridge lights and the illuminated structure
In the blue-black inert night
Rendered distant and cold
Close enough to touch

Small stone project

Won’t spent my time / Waiting to die / Enjoy the life I’m living

When things in my life start to unravel from the relative ease I know, I typically feel shame, fear, anxiety, and low-grade depression. The hardest feeling to disentangle Myself from is the shame, the feeling I am At Fault for scenarios that are embarrassing and public (whether I admit them or not) and proof of my failures and – this is the worst part – Could Have Been Avoided were I smarter, more efficient, had I worked a little harder. The car problems, the cats who have colds (Seriously. How can I blame myself for this? But I do.), the refrigerator cluttered, the table not set artfully for company, the sewing work that remains undone, the emails and messages from readers (and a few others) I have fallen behind on (perhaps not to recover), my unimaginative presence and my lack of beauty and worth, a wretch really. There is almost no point to talk about Failure as it is a fact I have failed on many accounts; and to do so, to be honest about my failure, risks the experience of those who’d rush in with Rescue or Advice. Even more scary at times is the knowledge of those who will step in with bona-fide Help. It is one thing to have someone do something nice for you when things are going well (“Thank you!”); it can feel miserable to have prostrated myself, even though done without goals of personal gain, to have someone hand you up and you know there is no repayment, it was merely a gift, simple and devastating. When I consider this I often just wish I could talk and have no one take action except to listen; but I also know I must allow people to follow their hearts and minds.

Releasing Control in my parenting and family life has brought a happier, healthier home and is nurturing children stronger and more joy-filled and humorous then I would have previously imagined. In the times I am weak I see how strong they are and nothing can take away the joy that re-ignites, wells up, inside of me. And after all, I am weak now but it was not always so and won’t always be so. My hard work, although spilled out and squandered and Done Wrong, has nevertheless reaped spiritual benefits both tender and tough. Within me I feel a deep love, an amusing and abiding love, and an interest in other human beings stronger than I’ve felt before. The table may have not looked lovely, but it was loaded with delicious and simple food I made with my hands. I may have been tired but I was still there. The house may only boast the meager (but beautiful) paper decorations of my children, colored with Walmart markers, and the house have little other ornamentation or beauty, but it is the dwelling of myself and those I deeply love.

Today I had the wonderful and simple experience of taking a walk in the sunshine down to the art gallery where my mother was getting off her gallery shift. I like walking in good weather more than ever; the watery light of the sun and deep draughts of our fall air is so familiar and soul-sustaining to me it seems amazing some day I will no longer experience it. At the gallery, the new pieces displayed and the Halloween accoutrement crafted by one of the artists were soothing and inspiring at once. My mother and I took her dog home and then shared lunch at the Italian restaurant – one of those meals so simple and satisfying. We talked and drank tea and enjoyed one another’s company and I felt an expansiveness, having at least done my work of house-stewardship and a breakfast repast for my (very happy-to-receive) children – homemade cinnamon rolls, bananas, and hardboiled eggs from Hoquiam hens. The mug of hot tea in my hand was a modest delight to my exhausted body.

Later I spent forty-five minutes volunteering at the Theatre (as we’ve been doing for a few years now). The conversations were normal and mundane and perfect; older fellows came through the door and flirted and I didn’t feel offended nor afraid.  I took tickets from two of my girlhood friends’ mothers; I was more happy to see them than they probably knew. I have a great caring dwelling inside me and it probably means very little and is worth hardly anything and maybe even it doesn’t show much because I’m afraid of showing it sometimes due to pride and fear. At times like this it is hard to be so public as I am here where I write. I want at times to be my tiny ugly little self and not be noticed by anyone but my family. They are in the final estimation the only beings I feel wholly safe with, as limited as this makes me.