I plan to stop being a public, personal, storyteller.

Let me explain:  I went to TED last month, which is a conference in Long Beach, and was asked to perform a 3 minute story in between speakers.  I got up and told this story about Mulan learning about sex for the first time.  I call it the Mulan-frog story (it begins with frogs…)   It got big laughs and even a partial standing ovation at the end.  People really loved it and I was so high and happy afterwards. 

I'm proud that I have the skill to tell a good story and make people laugh. I have a million happy memories of being onstage and making people laugh.  There is always a dark side however.  I am usually telling some story that could embarrass another person or I’m talking about something that irritates me about someone specific.  

When I got home from the conference I realized that if Mulan saw my story (or a fellow student did) she could be very embarrassed.  I was mortified and could not believe that I hadn’t considered this before.  Mulan looks good in the story – a curious, smart nine year old.  But the whole topic is embarrassing to a girl her age. 

I was really struck deeply about what I do onstage and the fact that I have a child.  I hated telling stories about my mother because I knew that it could be hurtful but I did it anyway because I loved getting the laugh, I loved getting to vent, and I felt I had the right somehow to talk about her onstage.  I guess I thought there was some sort of unwritten code that made parents fair game.  I actually feel that’s true and if Mulan grows up and tells stories about me, no matter how unflattering, I will gladly accept that as her right.  (I’ll be in the front row, no – wait!  More lovingly, I will not be anywhere near the place!)

But the other way around, me telling stories about her… That’s different.

After much agonizing, little niggling things that I have hated for a long time about performing stories about my own life fulminated to the surface.  I no longer wish to be so naked and bare.  I am surprised I ever did want to do it.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad I did.  I am proud that I learned to craft my experiences into a story and I am proud that I learned the craft of being on-stage.  But now, I need to stop doing it.  I am happily married, for one thing, and it’s boring and inappropriate to talk about.  My daughter is ten and she reads my blog, (OMG!) she goes to my shows.   In fact we have spoken at length about the stories I tell about her.   Not that, at ten, she is really capable of understanding the ramifications.  Still, she says it’s okay to tell the Mulan-frog story.  But ugh.   I don’t think she really understands.  I feel the need to protect her from myself!

In some ways, this is just another example of our Internet age.  When I started telling stories about my life, it was in a basement club in L.A. called Luna Park, in 1994, where the maximum capacity was 50 people.  We were recording the shows, but it wasn’t for mass consumption.  What I mean is that I could speak as if it were “off the record.”  This lulled me into a sense of secrecy and intimacy and allowed me to say anything no matter how raw.  I was uncensored.

But, there is no more “off-the-record” anymore.  Anything can be posted online.  Immediately.  I think this is, on balance, good – it makes people accountable in a new and direct way.  But for me – well let’s just say I would probably never have begun telling stories about my personal life if I’d thought they could be available to any interested person, instantly.  But once I started, I got used to the open-nature of talking about my life.  I learned to live with the downsides, the embarrassment, possibly even when it hurt or embarrassed other people.   Then, when blogging came along, it seemed like such a natural thing to do. 

Jill Sobule and I have been working for a few years now doing a show together.  I tell about ten to fourteen stories in our show.  (She sings songs, I tell stories)  We have worked hard to make the show work dramatically and musically. I think we’ve succeeded.  In fact, I think our show is at least as good as any other show I’ve done, maybe better.    I’m glad I tell all those stories in our show. 

But I don’t want to tell any more.   The stories that are out there, well, they’re out there.  But then… after this… well, I want to retire from it.   At least for a while.  Maybe forever, I dunno.

We have about 12 scheduled shows for this year (2010).  Mostly in the summertime and mostly in the Northeast and the Northwest.   After talking this over with Jill, we have agreed to do those shows.  We may actually add a show or two.  We may also find a way to film our show in the autumn.  But by the end of this year, I plan to stop doing this show.  And then face 2011 not performing.

I haven’t written in my blog because I am always so suspicious of any type of big revelation or big announcement.  I almost felt that if I announced that I was going to stop performing, there would inevitably be some reason not to stop it.  I have mulled this over for the last month or so.  And it feels good.  It feels right.

Sometimes I feel that my creativity, (and not just mine, but everyone’s creativity) is like the snow on a mountaintop melting a little at a time.  All my various outlets – performing and writing in all its manifestations -- create little rivers through which the snow can melt.  I always liked having so many things going at once.  I always felt that in show business, you had to have five pots on the stove just to get one of them to boil.  I benefited from being so multi-able.  I could do voice over and then perform at a club, I could write a monologue and then write a pilot for a TV show. 

But lately it feels that I have fragmented my focus with this policy.  I want the snow to melt into a couple of larger rivers, not into several smaller streams. 

And so, after the TED experience, I found myself wondering what I’m doing with myself.  How am I directing my energies?  I began to look at the darker side of telling stories about my personal life.  The guilt, the anguish, the desire to emphasize this over that, the slant, the small or large exaggeration, the worry that someone I’m talking about will see or hear me.   Then I suppose you could say the tipping point was Mulan.

Also, many things have changed.  I am now more able to be isolated (having moved to the Midwest from Los Angeles) and conversely, I am now in more regular and intimate interdependence with people.  I guess what I mean is that I have a husband and a child.   There is already a lot of interaction in my life, and I have begun to crave more and more alone time.  I desire privacy.  I don’t want my personality to be so known anymore.  (My personality has been so slutty!  Time to join a convent!)

So, in the last few weeks I have beta-tested my new views.  And it’s already had such forceful and creative results.  I am focusing on a couple of screenplays; with my writing partner Jim Emerson.   I may or may not finish writing the memoir of my letting go of God time, “My Beautiful Loss-of-Faith Story.”  Of course, I’ll do the Jill & Julia shows with Jill Sobule during this year. 

Then I plan to hang up my mouth. 

I can see Jill and I doing another show, someday, but not until way into the future.  (If she wants to!) (In ten years!)  I do honestly have that fantasy.  Or I can imagine that I will change in a few yea rs time and want to get back up on stage.  Or maybe I will develop the skills to talk about things that aren’t so personal and private, like many other comics do.  That could happen. 

But I doubt it.  And at the very least, I doubt it for the foreseeable future.

Anyway, here I am making a big pronouncement, just what I didn’t want to do.  I’m trying to write this in a way that appears that I’m mindful of the unpredictable events that could occur.  But insofar as I can plan ahead, and insofar as I can predict my attitude, and insofar as I have the ability to point myself towards one thing over another, I feel the plan to stop talking about myself publicly is right.

So, this means that I won’t be blogging about my family.  Or really blogging at all.

I am so thankful for all the people who have read my blog and commented.  Please, if you can, come to see one of the Jill & Julia Shows this year.  For me, this show is so meaningful; it’s an end of an era.   For 16 years I have been getting on stage and spilling my guts while simultaneously attempting to make people laugh.  That’s a long time.  This decision feels like a death.  It’s hard to envision myself as myself without the outlet and the drive to get onstage and talk about it.   On the other hand, it doesn’t seem right to continue either.  This decision feels inevitable and yet surprising and mostly very, very right.  I’m so excited about this, to be honest.   Imagine me, a private person!  (I recently joked with Jim Emerson about how I feel I was a butterfly but I’m morphing into a caterpillar!)

I’ll be posting all the places where Jill and I have booked shows very soon.  Thanks for reading.

Botanic Gardens, Kauai Hawaii

I took this pic a few years ago when Mulan and I spent Christmas with friends in Kauai.

I've been thinking about Voltaire a bit.   In our last writing session, Jim reminded me of the poem that Voltaire wrote after the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 when all the priests were railing against the people themselves for being the culprit.  The disaster occurred because of their sinfulness.  And now, 255 years later and we still have the like of Pat Robertson and his voodoo/pact-with-the-devil/Christian belief that Haiti brought all this on itself.

Here is Voltaire's poem: Poem on the Lisbon Disaster - Wikisource

And here is a good excerpt:

What crime, what sin, had those young hearts conceived
That lie, bleeding and torn, on mother's breast?
Did fallen Lisbon deeper drink of vice
Than London, Paris, or sunlit Madrid?
In these men dance; at Lisbon yawns the abyss.
Tranquil spectators of your brothers' wreck,
Unmoved by this repellent dance of death,
Who calmly seek the reason of such storms,
Let them but lash your own security;
Your tears will mingle freely with the flood.

Pat Robertson is an anomaly now.  The public is ridiculing him.  This makes me optimistic.  In Voltaire's time it the Catholic Church was everywhere and this was the general attitude. I really think things are changing.  SLOWLY. 

What shocks me is that while the mainstream may mock Robertson, they don't seem to take it a step further.  If God didn't cause the earthquake then does God cause anything? Is he a sad bystander?  Is he able to do anything about it?  Of course not.  Then why believe in any God at all?  But no one takes it that far.  It's PC to extoll the belief that God IS there to rely on, you can cry on his shoulder, you can ask for strength.   Why is that so acceptable?  

And why did the font on my blog just change?  OH!  I cannot stop and noodle with it, I have dinner to prepare.

Val, my cat, on my desk

Here is an experimental blog post - a straight-up diary of my day.

So...

This was my day...

Got up, nudged Mulan along as she groggily got dressed for school.   Got her breakfast and made some coffee.  Helped her look through her homework to make sure everything was done.  Nudged her to finish a math page and a bonus challenge homework page.  Gave her a pre-test for her spelling quiz.  Nudged her to get her teeth brushed and especially to floss.

After she left I took the dog, Arden on a walk to Lake Michigan.  I listened on my iphone to an audio biography about Paul Durac, a British Theoretical Physicist.  I am convinced he had asperger syndrome only the biographer doesn't mention that.  I get jelous of Dirac's life where everything is arranged so he can work constantly, I wish I had a Mancy (his wife's name) who made sure I was undisturbed, had food, and could take long walks.  Today as I walk it's very deceptively icy. The sidewalks look clear but they have the thinnest layer of ice. I almost fall down a hundred times.  I don't like the cold today.   The lake is sad looking, a lot of dirty looking piled up snow on the edge of the lake. I look closer and see that what I thought was dirt is really sand.  I marvel at Lake Michigan and all it's sand.

Get home and Michael is completely absorbed in some lighting project at the house.  He is a man obsessed with lighting.  He wants to program every single light in our house so that we can stand at the door and push one button and every light we don't want on will go off. This requires a lot of work, hooking up this outlet but not that one, etc.  He is frustrated with the software for the program and it's the third incarnation of this software he has worked with. He has been up for two nights until at least one or two a.m. working on the lighting project.  I kid with him and say, when he gets it done I expect him to say with glee, "Now all you have to do to turn down the lights in the family room is log onto this website on your computer, enter a certain number, and the light will automatically dim!"  He does not like my joke because you see, it's not really a joke.

I leave and go get a mammogram. I have not had one for a few years. I, having had cervical cancer, should be more vigilant, but I have let things go.  I get to the Evanston Medical Center and read the book I am completely absorbed in. "Lacuna" by Barbara Kingsolver.  It's such a great book, a fictionalized account of a young Mexican American in the thirties who befriends Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera and Trotsky.   I am pulled out of my reverie by a stern woman asking me to put on a gown.  The gown is awkwardly configured so even after you tie it in the places it wants to be tied, you have to hold it closed otherwise your whole front shows as you walk down the hallway to the mammogram machine.  The woman inside is friendly and I'm thankful for her warm hands as she manipulates my breasts this way and that.  I think about what a weird job she has.  I wonder if she says to people, "I just sort of fell into it."  There is no hidden meaning in that configuration of words, I just wonder if that's the phrase she'd use.

As I leave we discuss the gowns.  She agrees, they suck.

I leave and take a moment to consider that I could get a bad response on my mammogram and have cancer. I fantasize what I would do if I learned I had only one year to live.  I decide that I would just go places to look at animals and nature and the sky at night.  I would go to the Galapagos, or Hawaii and just sit and watch. I don't need to see any more people, I've seen big cities, but I've done it.  I get it.  Big vibrant city.  I crave quiet and nature without people.  I decide that I would have to pull Mulan out of school to go with me to Hawaii or the Galapagos.  Of course Michael would have to come, he'd have to shut down his business and come.  Jill Sobule would have to come too, as well as Jim Emerson.  I guess there'd be some people.   Then I think, it would be bad for Mulan to be pulled out of school right now because  she is really doing well and loves her school.  Then I remember this is all a fantasy.  I blink back tears and come back to life.

I go to my favorite bread store in Evanston.  It's Friday and I get challah.   I don't ask for challah bread.  I used to do that.  Then Michael told me that was like asking for Guinness beer.  You just say Guinness, not Guinness beer, just as you just say challah.  We like to buy challah for french toast on Sundays.   I don't have Mulan with me but I remember while I'm at this store that this was where Mulan made her first decent pun.  She said they should put a sign out on Fridays saying, "Celebrate, it's Challah-Day!"   While I'm at the bread store I also get a turkey sandwich on their popeye bread.  It's so good, it's worth all the points.

I come home and eat my sandwich while I watch some TV footage about Haiti. I get really upset.  I start to cry.  It all seems so hopeless.  What if you were stuck and had so much time before you died to know it was going to happen?  Or worse, you didn't know if your loved ones were okay or not.  Or even what just really happened out there.  This is happening to someone right now.  This makes my heart heave.

I answer a few phone calls.  I speak with a woman at Minnesota Public Radio about doing a show at the Fitzgerald theater in St. Paul in March.  It seems like it's going to happen.  Then I do some business paperwork, for example, I send $1000 to Sony for the rights to sing "Is That All There Is" in "Letting Go of God" for one year.

Then I try to write.  I decide my book of essays is not as important as "My Beautiful Loss Of Faith Story" the book i've been working on for years. I wonder if I can reach my goal of finishing it this year. I wonder how many years I've had this goal. I feel depressed.  I remember we have no food in the house and Mulan is bringing a friend home after school.   I go to the grocery store.  I buy chicken noodle soup and oyster crackers for Mu and her friend to have after school.  This is Mu's big TV day.  She cannot watch any TV during the week, but on Friday after school it's a TV free-for-all.  I also buy vegetables and after I come home, I quickly make a pasta sauce in the slow cooker.

I run to meet Mu after school, but I am a few minutes late and she is nearly home and I end up meeting her half way. She has her friend with her. Mu got 100% on her spelling quiz and I am elated.  I heat up the chicken soup for them.  Nadia comes over to watch the girls because I have a hair appt.  Michael has gone to work.  I get my hair cut really short. I really look like a nun now. And I like it.  I feel I am in "A Nun's Story" as I leave the hair salon.  I tell myself that if my hair is going to be this short I really have to remember to wear lipstick.  I love my hair dresser.  She gets my hair.

I come home from the salon and Michael is already home and working on his lighting project again. Mulan is upstairs in our room watching TV.  I make everyone eat the pasta and sauce.  It's only okay, not great.    I beg everyone to watch the Netflix movie I have, "Winged Migration."  I already saw it when it came out (in 2000) but it was so great - all about various birds' migrations across the earth.  Michael wants to work on the lighting project, Mulan wants to watch iCarly, they don't want to watch it.  I'm too tired to do anything useful.  I briefly decide to go read my book in the basement, but then rally and force everyone to stop what they're doing and watch "Winged Migration."  I really have to push.  I momentarily hate everyone and wonder why I'm doing this.   I think that if I'm going to die in a year I really must finish the screenplay that Jim Emerson and I are working on. We are having so much fun.  Working with Jim has been one of my life's great joys.  Just as I'm giving up on Mu and Michael they agree, yes, let's watch the movie together.  I suddenly feel a huge surge of love for them.

Before we watch the movie, we make popcorn in the microwave.  Michael has experimented and experimented and if you take 1/4 cup of popcorn and a dab of oil and put it in a kid's paper lunch bag and staple the top, zap it for exactly 2 minutes, it turns out great.

We watch.  Michael loves the film but is skeptical about how much they doctored itto get certain types of shots.  Mulan is rapt with the film, and so is Arden - it's the first time my dog watched most of a movie.  But when it's over Mulan announces she's thrilled she's now let out of this horrible prison I've put her in, forcing her to watch this movie.  Also, she announces that she will never eat a bird.

Ohmygod, I love my family so much.

Mulan goes to her room, Michael goes back to the lighting project, and I come in here and write about my day.

Snow, snow, everywhere...

And I love it.

Wow.  All those posts to the last blog entry have my head in constant conversation.   I think the post that I've thought about the most was the one which indicated I was breaking the question down in a poor way.  (Well, there were many posts pointing that out...)  This one broke down the debate in a different way - between religion with supernatural claims and religion without supernatural claims.   That is true.  I guess I don't normally think of or remember that there are religions without supernatural claims. Buddhism is the only one I can think of. (Not all sects of Buddhism.)   Or the Unitarian Church.

To me, religion works best as a ritual keeper and community builder.  These things are very important.  In my observations - which are mostly about my upbringing in Spokane in the Catholic church and then watching my friends who have stayed in the church - the best thing they get from their religion is the shared rituals and community.   These are the things that I really craved, in retrospect.  I had mouthed the words and didn't think all that much about the readings, I liked Bach and the candles and the idea that I had stood in this same church year in and year out on one particular day that earmarked the dead of winter or the beginning of spring - saying the same things, hearing the same songs, watching kids grow up, flirting with boys, seeing who was getting married, mourning those who had died.  All those things can be a part of a life without the supernatural.

On the other hand, the supernatural specifics of what we were all supposed to believe were, in my opinion,  a great hindrance to the development of a skeptical outlook and even general critical thinking skills.  So, the ideas we were so benignly taught had an insidious price.  We paid with our critical minds.  SOME of my friends from Spokane, for example, have - in my humble opinion - undeveloped political opinions.  Worse, they back off from any debate.  They make ad homonym attacks.  Tragically, some of them have no understanding of the tenants of other faiths, and even of their own faith.  Sometimes it seems that they are even proud of their lack of information.  Is the Church to blame?  Hmmm... I kinda think so.  I hate to say, I do.

But the rituals and community continue to give.  And I can see that it is a great value.

I think the Unitarian Church can offer this, but not at the cost of your critical mind.

But for me, I do not feel in need of the community anymore!  I like the idea of it, but not the practicality of it.  It involves a great deal of socializing and I feel that I am filled up with that. What I crave now, (and I am fifty, so maybe this is a natural thing to happen,) but I want less socializing and social obligation in my life.  I crave quiet and contemplation.  I want to learn.  I feel I am hungry to learn and read and think,  well, it's almost as if I had scurvy and were in need of an orange!  And true learning and thinking take a lot of time and quiet.  With a husband and a child, as well as a few very close friends,  I feel I am up to my ears in interaction with people.  Adding a church would put me over the edge.  Even if Mulan may benefit from it, she would have an even more frazzled mother and I don't think that is good. (I could just see myself getting caught up in it at first, volunteering for five committees, nodding "yes!" to the bake sale, and then being in the worst possible mood about it all for the next six months...  Wait! This is what being at a public school is like already!  I've so far been able to back away from most things...  But yes, I feel guilty about it.  Guilty or Angry? That's always my dilemma...)

I think me and my friends would have been better served by a Church that did not subscribe to supernatural beliefs.  We would have gotten the ritual and community but not the inanity.

But sometimes I wonder, would we stick to it if it didn't have a whiff of a real God on High?   I might not have.  It would require inculcating me about the need of community and social obligation and not about someone looking over my shoulder who could see everything.

...I wrote the above jumbled blog entry this morning and was intending all day to get back to it, reread all those wonderful posts from the last entry and rewrite it. But now it's late, and I have to fly to New York in the morning.  So I'm just going to throw this out there. It's woefully inadequate in it's musings upon this topic.

Jill Sobule and I are doing a show on Sunday night at Joe's Pub in New York and it's sold out. That is really exciting!!!!

Bahai Temple, Wilmette, IL  early Christmas morning 2009

I took this picture early this morning on my dog walk.

Mulan, Michael and I opened presents, had breakfast, and then flew to L.A.  Now I am here, and I realize how much I miss it!  Yippity yah, five days in L.A.

Not much to report, but I wrote this (below) last week and I guess I'll paste it here now...

Amongst the non-believers of this world, there appears to be a split in thinking between:

1.) Those that think religion is good - regardless of truth - for some people.  Religion is useful for those who are trying to get sober, for those who have no where to turn, for those that might not follow society's rules, for those who might not otherwise respect others, for those in complete despair, and for those that need the idea, the concept - as a new drug - to get off another one.

2.) Those who think religion and the idea of God is never good for anyone.

I have always put myself in the #1 category.   It suits me because I don't want to proclaim that seeing stark reality, which is very dark and full of potential catastrophe, is good, or possible for everyone.

But this thinking is very condescending.  It's Plato saying religion is good for the masses.  It's Will Durant saying how religion helps to bind people together, and so for society it's good.  It's AA using the idea of a higher power to get people to let go of another, actual drug.

But #2 is so arrogant too.

I mean this is all just for the rumination - religion and the idea of God is not going away and most likely never will - so this is all just blathering about the number of angels who can dance on the head of a pin.

 I have always stayed away from the #2 thinking because it puts me in a position of dismissing so much in others. I am not comfortable with it.  It's very judgey.  Of course, that is no way to decide what you think.  Being judgey is the point of this whole debate!

But in my private thoughts, what do I really think?  It's like a little debate between Plato and Voltaire.  Plato did think religion was good for the masses.  Voltaire believed religion enslaved people.

Truthfully, now I'm beginning to lean towards Voltaire.

I asked my husband yesterday if he thought religion did any person any good at all.   "Think about Anne Lamott, a nice, liberal, happy Christian, " I said,  "Or people who get off drugs and alcohol because they find Jesus.  I mean, aren't we all better off because of that transfer of the more dangerous drug to the more benign one?"

And he said, "Maybe. But now those people are primed to follow.  Jesus might be the idea for now, but it really could be anyone. They have made themselves programmable and basically they are sheep and now anyone could lead them - it could be to the top of a mountain or it could be off a cliff."

Again, I am paraphrasing and adding imagery for emphasis.  And may I remind you that I do not hang on this guy's every word, far from it!

But I thought about that all day.  I mean, I have always thought #1 was the benevolent point of view, the humble point of view, the less-judgemental and superior point of view, but actually that is wrong!!

The #1 thinking is really so cynical and superior and #2 has all this faith  in everyone to use rationality and critical thinking to get through.   #2 is actually the humble - or no, the optimistic point of view!  (Not that being humble or optimistic is some sort of proof for an argument!)  But you know, neither of these words is right, it's more like empowering - it's the empowering point of view.

I have not really come to any conclusions about this.  But I'm just realizing how there is this split in thinking and I'm not sure - I vacillate between those views.

Arden, in the backseat of the just-bought mini-van, as we drove from Los Angeles to Chicago, embarking a year ago today, Dec. 17, 2008.

A year ago Mulan and I, after watching a moving company depart with all of our possessions, joined Michael as we drove together from California to Illinois.  There was a huge storm which prevented us from taking the route we wished to take - through Santa Fe and instead we drove south, through Arizona and then Texas.  It took four days.  We had a dog in the car who wanted to kill, really truly kill and eat, the cat in the car.  We stopped at Motel 6s, we saw billboards in Texas that proclaimed that Obama was not born in the U.S., we watched Arden pee in ice for the first time.  It was an adventure.

We arrived here just before Christmas, slept in our new house all together on sleeping bags in the master bedroom, and wandered our neighborhood thinking, "What the hell did we just do?"

And what have I done this year?   Adjust, be a mom who's around a lot, do a few shows, write a pilot, and empty a bunch of boxes.  The house is still not totally organized - the basement is on it's way...  But I am much happier here and thrilled to be in this new family.  It really does feel like a family.  Mulan can barely remember life before Michael.  Last night we talked about the drive.  For Mulan, this was our biggest adventure of all.  She often refers to the drive and wants to do it again - with the cat and the dog. (That part was not so much fun for me.)

Anyway, as I have not taken a picture the last couple of days, I thought I'd throw up that one of Arden, a year ago, on his way to his own new adventure here.

What am I thinking about?  Well, I am very sad about the healthcare "overhaul."  I am very sad about Obama and I am wondering if he is really who I thought he was.  I read Robert Reich's and Glenn Greenwald's articles on Salon and I am just really so sad, and so disappointed, and I wish they would not vote for this deal and I like Howard Dean even more than I ever have and I hate Joe Leiberman, even though this demise is not all his doing.

(Last night I overheard Mulan telling Michael, "Mom was in the car driving and yelling, 'That Joe Leiberman!' and her fists were clenched.")

Anyway, let's change the subject.  What other things am I thinking about?

I am thinking about all the letters I have gotten from people and how much they mean to me. I want to write back everyone, and I hope to send at least a thank you.  I am trying to just be present and take it all in.

I am thinking about some of the questions that people have asked.  Some people worry about having meaning in a world without god in it.  I don't have the best answer for that yet (I am mulling on that one) but I remember once being at a convention with Daniel Dennett (such a hero of mine) and he said (Dennet is a philosopher and scientist at Tufts and has written several books, some of which really impacted me) and anyway, he was talking to someone else and he said, "People say to me, 'You're a philosopher, what is the meaning of life?' and I say, 'I don't know but I do know the secret to happiness.  Find some subject that you love and spend the rest of your life studying it from every angle you can.  That is the secret to happiness."

I've thought about that a lot.  I would add to it. I would say, find a subject or a skill and spend your life getting better at it, or understanding it better.  I think skills are really important and something that has been totally left out of the education system the way it's organized now.  I actually think that before kids read books like Catcher In The Rye, or Animal Farm, they should know how to do something tangible, a skill society needs, a skill that requires skill, a skill that can be used to earn money - and then after that they should tackle the bigger stuff.

I'm just musing.  I'm just thinking about it.

Also, I am afraid of religious people.  I mentioned this to my husband yesterday and he looked at me like, "Duh."   But really - before I did my show, the religious people I was exposed to were so benign - the twinkly eyed priest, the social activist nun, the devoted church group that does things for people in Chiapas at my aunt's church.  When I thought of religious people, I thought of people like Jimmy Carter or the Dali Lhama.  I thought of the kind persons likely to be out sweeping in front of the churches I would pass by with my dog while on a walk.

But now I get these letters from people, and...  I dunno.  I just want to GET AWAY.  I really am not predisposed to enjoy conflict. I wish I were.  I look at people like Rachel Maddow, for example.  She is so great - she loves the debate, she relishes the argument, she enjoys the banter and she is doing really good things in my opinion.  For example, the last months shows have focused a lot on this Evangelical Christian organization called "The Family" in D.C. and how they have enormous political power and how, through their influence and encouragement, the government of Uganda had a bill for a law before their government that would allow the killing of gay people.  Anyway, Rachel has lately been using her show to shed light on this atrocity and she has actually seemed to have done something to get this kind of law either stopped or disavowed.  Anyway, I wish I could be like that.  I wish I was glad to get these letters and I wish I wanted to spend a lot of time writing to people and arguing with them about their beliefs.

But....

But...

I just... oh god, those people... I just want to get away from them.  I want to pretend they do not exist.  That is my first impulse.  My next thought is, This person scares me.

When I talked this over with Michael, of course he said that even the examples of the kind-priest - he has never had any warm feelings about those people and  he has no interest in being around religious people of any type.  He thinks a religious person is someone who - well, it's as if they have a sign around their necks that says, "I have unreliable and faulty reasoning.  I lie to myself and I'm likely to lie to you too."  (This is my analogy, not his.)

Anyway, I used to be more benevolent, I guess. But now, all these letters I'm getting...  I dunno.  I think I am off the whole thing too.   And I'm actually not getting so many hate letters.  No - it's at least ten to one, affirmative to negative.

Of course, that doesn't mean I don't want to attend a nice candle-lit Christmas service this year.  HA. I am serious, I really do want to.

Also, I like getting suggestions from people in the letters and even criticism.  For example, I had one letter criticizing me for my quick dismissal of Buddhism in my show. I think they are right.  I think it's so much more complicated than I made it.  It's just that - even though I think Buddhism has some great insight into human psychology and human nature, and a good prescription for living with the inherent difficulties in life - it's not really a religion to me, I guess. I thought it was, once it wasn't, I moved on.

I would be Buddhist but I have found other strategies for living that are working really well for me.  I don't need it, I guess.  Or I'm incorporating the parts of it that are useful to me - mindfulness meditation, yoga - that sort of thing.

In any case, because of this letter, I purposefully took the image of Buddha off the DVD cover.  I also took every image off, but still - it was prompted by that letter.

Now I have also read a comment on the Amazon DVD page about how the show is not enough about how to live as a non-believer. It's 3/4 arguing back and forth about whether there is a god or not and then barely anything about how to live with this worldview.  I agree with that too! In fact, that letter is really firing me up to write a book about just that.

The point of all this is, I don't mind the critical letters. I just mind the religious crazies.  And that definition to me is getting broader and broader.  I wish I had more oomph for fighting them, but I just... don't.

Amazon warehouse

I got underway on my little adventure at about 10:30 a.m.  The Amazon warehouse didn't come up on the Google map specifically, but I figured that Whitestown was so small that it would be obvious where it was.  I had 15 boxes of DVDs and CDs in the back of my mini-van.  I was headed to the town of Whitestown, which is right next to Zionsville, Indiana.

Creepy.

The day was gray and rainy.  The snow is mostly melted.  The view was sad, a smoggy, foggy, dull slate-colored air and water and sky.

Even still,  it's a-day-at-the-spa for me to be able to drive and listen to the radio uninterrupted.  That part was great.

What was depressing was how ugly everything was.  All the industrial areas south of the city, the old buildings with the windows blown out, the steam or smoke coming from the buildings. I thought about the dark underbelly of our consumer lives, and what a beautiful town I live in and how many other places are so sad and depressing looking.  Gary, Indiana was sad, sad, sad.  I've driven past this city a few times and never driven in - that is wrong, I will do that someday.  But still, the drive was sad.  Really, up until I reached Purdue University area, about an hour from my destination, everything was so ugly and blighted with huge billboards for, seemingly, only three things: Christian Churches, Lawyers for industrial accidents, and Casinos.  I fell into a funk.

Oh, yeah, then the Indiana license plates.  Each one says, "In God We Trust."  Wow.  I kept thinking, "Yeah, trust in God.  Certainly your government isn't doing much for you."

I really seethe when I see how much religion is relied on in poorer, more industrial areas.  It's so obvious that religion flourishes in the petrie dish of exploitive business practices, hands-off government policies, and the under-educated and under-opportunized.

And then, on the nigglingly annoying side, there's a lot of toll roads.  I had to pay three times.  I guess I don't really understand the toll roads well enough to condemn them.  But I'm irritated by them.   Out west there are not so many toll roads.  You can definitely drive from Los Angeles to Spokane and not run into a single toll road.

I was pissy and sad about the whole endeavor.  When I got to Whitestown I found that it was a metropolis of mostly warehouses.  Warehouses and warehouses and the vast majority of them unmarked.  Why unmarked?  Military equipment?  Poison?  Hmmm...   As I drove, I noticed many huge, oversized trucks - more trucks than cars.   Is Indiana where all the large trucks come from?  It's like I ran into a race of large trucks.  And no obvious Amazon warehouse.

I couldn't find it.  I finally stopped at a Starbucks...

(I was embarrassed to be SO happy to find a Starbucks - god, I'm a... well - in the old says I would say yuppie - what am I now? An urbanite?  And yes, I admit it, I was glad to find a well-known chain-store for coffee!  In fact, I was hoping to find a little local gem to eat lunch in, but the restaurants I saw were so decrepit, so without customers, so without a new coat of paint in the last fifty years - and not in a good way - that I felt glad to eat a burger from Burger King as I drove.  I forgot how great a Whopper tastes. Oh god, I hate myself for writing this paragraph.)

Anyway, I stopped at a Starbucks.  I asked if anyone knew where the Amazon warehouse was.  I was pointed to another Starbucks employee on a break who was so kind and gentle and sweet.  He took ten minutes and found the address and even sent me the instructions on my iphone.

That's when I reached the nadir of my trip.  I could not find the place, even with the instructions.  It's a veritable NYC of warehouses there.  Only many of the roads don't have names.  There's a new housing development nearby too: "Anson, Indiana" it's called.  There are just a few townhouses, lots of empty planned lots for houses, a school in the middle and three large mega-church sized houses of worship along the outside.  One is called Eagle Church, and it too looks like a warehouse.  A church that looks like a warehouse!  For the people who work in warehouses!  So they can spend their days off at another warehouse!

For about ten or fifteen minutes seriously considering that I would not find it and I would have to drive all the way home with all of my stuff.

I saw one warehouse that I figured just had to be it.  But there were no signs for Amazon anywhere.  However, there was a line of very, very large trucks - mostly Fed-Ex and UPS among many others in line at a booth outside a gated parking and loading area, also filled with trucks.   I got my car in line.  Me in my mini-van, about to be trampled between two big, gigantic trucks.  At the booth, the gate-man was confused by me.  I suddenly felt weird and "kooky" and silly.  I said I had some boxes to deliver.  After much calling back and forth between the booth and someone in the warehouse I was directed to enter and go to loading dock 11.  It was hilarious.  The loading dock was made for a very large truck.  I felt like I had landed on another planet.  Everything was oversized, I mean - even  in my mini-van, I felt like an ant.

That's when everything changed.  I was greeted by this really nice-but-officious woman who was in charge of receivables.  First she told me I was completely wrong to just drive in with my stuff.  They don't do that. You have to register with them to deliver, and then get assigned a number and then you have to make an appointment.  There were dozens of trucks unloading and everything was on a time schedule.  You have to print something out before you arrive.  That's what the guy at the booth needs.  On top of all of that, this is their busiest and mostly scheduled time of year and this day was practically their busiest of the busiest.  I felt a like a boob.

Then the woman took my stuff, pointed to another door and asked that I repark my car and meet her there. I was a little afraid I was going to be reprimanded more severely.  But that's when I saw the inside!  I had to stay behind this fenced-in area but I could see everything, (that's the picture I took with my phone above) and I'm telling you, it was just like I imagined it - no, wait. it was much better.  It almost did look like Santa's workshop.  There were people emptying boxes and inputing the contents into a computer system and then putting the cardboard on a conveyer belt that takes it off to be recycled.  There were people on two higher exposed floors, walking around with little carts - you know, like at the library, filling it up with books and CDs and other smaller stuff to fill orders.  There were people zipping around on segway-like contraptions and beeping before entering aisles.

I told this woman how seeing the inside of this place was really a thrill for me and she lit up and smiled. She explained how this part of the warehouse was for smaller items.  She pointed to another end where there were people wrapping packages.   She told me they work for free and then Amazon donates the money paid by customers to have their packages wrapped to the charity of the person-who's-wrapping's choice.  Does that convoluted sentence makes sense?  (I wondered how many donations were for churches, but still, what a great policy!)  She told me how Amazon's always had this policy.  She told me the whole warehouse was "green" -  had special lighting that turned off if there were no people in the area, how all the desks and all the aisles with goods were constructed from recycled materials.  Then she blushed and said, "I love this place.  I love this company.  And I've worked for some bad ones, but Amazon is great."

I was blindsided.  I did not expect this at all.  The people there DID seem really happy.  People were smiling, music was playing - oh yes!  They had music playing loud, really loud - and it was good.  In fact, they were playing that new Sting song...  God I can't remember the name but it's from the new album - "If On A Winter's Night."  Anyway, the point is, there was music, it wasn't schmatzy Christmas music, it appeared to be a happy work environment.

When I left the man at the booth laughed and we talked for a moment.  He is Kenyan, and came to the U.S. only four years ago.  He said he loved working for Amazon too.  America! What a country!

I had to pinch myself as I was driving off.  It seemed almost orchestrated for my benefit.  WEIRD.

I drove home feeling so happy.  It really was an adventure.  I felt a lot better about Amazon.  The warehouses didn't depress me as I drove home, I felt optimistic.  Even as I got towards Gary again, it was dark and the lights and steam coming from the factories were romantic looking instead of dark and sooty.  I know I was enchanted by my Amazon experience, and that it colored everything, but wow. What a day.

And best of all, now it's listed on Amazon as: available now!  Yeah!  Yippity yah!  It took 8 hours and $40 in gas and $10 in tolls and an extra 2000 calories I probably wouldn't have eaten, but still... I would say it was a day well spent.

Here is the new cover of the DVD

Letting Go of God has been a completely home made operation.  It's not just a one-woman show, it was a one woman everything.  That's not completely true, actually.  I had a producer for the movie and the stage show, who did a huge amount of work.  And of course all the people who worked on the stage and film productions. But in the deepest sense, this is really a one-man-band.

I was so glad that I started working on this show just when new technology made it possible to do everything myself.  I hated that "It's Pat" had so much studio input (that didn't necessarily make it better or worse, it's just that I didn't get to make my own mistakes because of so much interference.)

"God Said, Ha!" which I was able to direct and have total creative control over is now owned totally by Miramax (Disney now, I guess.)   When "God Said Ha!" plays on cable, I have no knowledge of that.  It's theirs and they can do with it what they want.

So, when it came to "Letting Go of God" it was really important to me to handle everything myself and own it myself.  I had a chance to take the show to a large, well-known off-Broadway theater in New York, but I had to give up most of my ownership in the show and also give away rights to the film and so I said "No." (There were other factors too, like relocating to New York with Mulan and mostly figuring out how to be a mother while doing 8 shows a week - I just didn't think I could hack it.  Also, I was single at the time so I had no one other than hired help to pitch in with parenting - the whole thing was overwhelming.  I was sad it didn't play in a bigger theater in New York, but I felt I would probably lose my mind if I did do that.  I set my sights on figuring out how to film the show instead of take it to a prestigious theater.)

I began to sell CDs of my second monologue "In The Family Way" (which I also own) and to "Letting Go of God" on Amazon and I was surprised that I really liked being a small-time entrepreneur of my own work.  I liked packing the CDs and then the DVDs off in boxes as I got orders for them, and standing in line at the Post Office, and sending them to Amazon to sell.  It's all kind of silly because I could earn (well... theoretically) so much more money working on a show as a writer (I quit my last TV writers job a few years ago) and instead I had (in my mind) opened this teeny store front, like a chewing gum stand, it's so small, and I was making really nothing - pretty much breaking even - but it was mine.  Of course I still work on other things - things that actually make money -- voice overs, writing TV pilots, doing speaking engagements, so this DVD business could be my wee hobby.

I was talking to a good friend of mine, Cindy Chupak, who used to be a writer on Sex & the City (where I spent some time as a consultant) and I told her that I liked sending the CDs off in the mail so much that I almost wanted to be my own fulfillment house for individual orders. I wanted to write a personal thank you with each CD that I sold.  Cindy looked at me with a worried expression and said, "I think it would be really sad for me to think of you doing that.  If I got a CD I ordered of your show, and then got it mailed directly from you to me in the mail, well... that would make me sad for you... y'know?"

That made me love Cindy so much and laugh really hard at myself too.  Why did I want to do that?  Wasn't it enough that I was dragging boxes of CDs to the post office and sending them to Amazon?  Is it my small-world-need-to-connect or is it my obsession with minutia to the point where I don't see the forest for the trees?

I can't explain it.  I thought I would be a bigger time mover and shaker in show biz or something maybe. But, I just like the small things. I like the connection. I like that I make my product and then send it out in the world to people.  Artists couldn't do this before now - not with CDs and DVDs anyway.  I love it that I can do that. Also, I love that I still totally own things - even if it adds up to chump change, it still makes me feel I really earned that money.

Then there was this last year, getting the movie ready to show on cable...  There are all these things that have to be done, like getting closed captioning, and insurance against people like Deepak suing me for defamation (it's so ridiculous, public figures are explicitly open to being parodied or made the butt of jokes - I mean I worked on SNL so I know this, it was discussed constantly - but still I had to get insurance just for a nuisance law suit!)

In any case, over this last year it got to be sad to me. I was doing too much, more than I wanted to do myself.  I decided this was the last project I was ever going to do this way.  If I wrote a play or a book or anything again, I was going to find people who specialized in these things and get them to deal with all the details.  I wanted a publisher. I wanted a distributor.  I wanted to just be the artist again.  Enough with all this!

I moved last year and got to know the folks at my post office. I did absolutely no advertising and no publicity for Letting Go of God over this last year.  None.  And I would sell somewhere between 100 and 200 DVDs a month through Amazon.  I still like taking the boxes to the post office, I still like packing the boxes. I still like touching each DVD with my own hands before it goes off into the world.

I always wondered about the Amazon warehouses.  What were they like?  Did the people there notice and care about what people had ordered? I imagined myself working there.  I would be saying, "Oh! What a great book!  And then they got this other great book!  Wow."  Of course thinking this is a little creepy too - who wants to think people are musing over what different combinations of books and CDs and DVDs people are buying?  But I just can't imagine that it isn't happening!  I liked the image I came up with of the people packing boxes at Amazon.  I wanted to even write something about it.

I was coming to the end of the DVDs I had made for this last year, and so I had my CD graphic designer design a new DVD cover (see the picture above) that fits in more with the design of the CD.  I like this one better.  I am glad my mug is not on the cover.  I ordered the new DVD cases to be "eco" (ha! everything eco!) and it's made from recycled paper (15% more in cost!) and it's not an "avery case" anymore - that means it doesn't have the plastic inside, it's all paper.  I ordered 3000 and figured that would last for all of 2010.  And maybe even 2011 and 2012.

The movie began to show on Showtime. I have done no publicity. Showtime does not even have the artwork on their website, and no one called me about any interviews.  They have showed the movie about ten times so far.  They have the right to show it until the end of October next year. I have no idea how many times they will show it or if they'd buy the right to show it after that time.

Last week I got a big order from them for 350 DVDs!  It was so much fun taking the DVDs to the post office. Everyone I know there was so happy for me, sending off so many DVDs to Amazon.  I was once again glad I was doing it all myself. It felt like Christmas.  Hell, it was Christmas!

But then, last night, I looked and Amazon had ordered 1100 DVDs! And over 300 CDs!  The biggest order ever!!!  The status on getting the DVDs is now 2 to 4 weeks, which sucks because that means people would miss Christmas if that is what they are thinking about!  Plus it takes a while for boxes to get to the Amazon warehouse and get recorded in their system and all that.  I really want the DVDs to be there and the status to be back to "available now!"

So the point of all this boring, boring story is that I started putting together the boxes.  I will run out of the old style DVD (I have only 300 left) and begin to use the new ones.  I have about 15 boxes to send.

I realized that the Amazon warehouse that I'm sending these all to is in Indiana - it's about 3 hours away from where I am now.

So.... I'm going to drive them there myself!

I'm going to get Mulan off to school and start driving to the Amazon warehouse.  I cannot wait to go there!  I cannot wait to do this.  This is going to be awesome.  I'm going to listen to NPR or my audio books all the way.  I tried to convince Michael to take a day off work to go with me, but he can't.  He actually snorted when I asked him if he wanted to go. To me this is an adventure!

I'm still not sure if this all just makes me sadder and more pathetic, or in control of my own creative life.   I think it's probably a combination of both.  But anyway, I'm doing it.  I wonder if I'll get a sneak peak inside the fulfillment center?  Can I sweet talk my way in?  Can I see people filling those Amazon boxes?  Or will it be sad and anonymous?  Will I be gladder to do this all myself or even more embarrassed that my life has gone this route?

We will see.

It's friggin' cold.

I can't believe I did the whole hour-long walk with Arden today.  It was really cold, I think it was 8 degrees.  When I woke up, the radio - tuned to NPR - announced the temperature was 0.  ZERO! And with the wind chill factor, minus 20!  Arden was so cold, I think his paws started to freeze.  He would stop occasionally and shake a paw and stare at it.  He looked like he was surprised and that his paw was numb.  I was only going to go as far as I needed to for Arden to rid himself of waste - but we just kept going.  I had no intention of crossing Green Bay Road to the lake, but then did.  And I was so glad.  The waves were rolling and the steam from the lake created this mist wafting above, it was really otherworldly - primordial.  My mouth fell open at the scene but then my teeth began to chatter again.

I keep getting letters from people.  It really is thrilling to read people's response to the show.  One letter I got was from an oncologist who said that he found that people who were religious seemed comforted by their faith at first, but then many had a hard time towards the end, if it looked like they were going to lose their life in their battle with cancer.  And that people who were not religious and had a naturalistic world view, and didn't think their life was going to go on in the hereafter - they had a harder time at first but then an easier time accepting death.  This is just one man's observations, and of course I am inclined to believe it's probably true about people.  I often wonder how much religion and God and the idea of an afterlife helps.  It seems that it would be very helpful in extremely uncertain situations.  I know first hand how the idea of God being "with me" in a crisis was helpful.  But I wonder, was it really?

For example, long long ago I was involved in a...  a... well, I was abducted.  Wow - I was going to say kidnapped but that sounds too dramatic.  In any case, that's what the court called it.  It's a long story for another time, but the bottom line is that I offered a person help and they ended up pulling a gun on me and I was with this man for several hours.  This man told me he was going to kill me.

And, I was totally calm.  I thought it was my destiny - whatever happened. I befriended - or pretended to befriend him so he would have compassion.  I tried to make myself a person to him.  I talked about jazz and the kinds of music I liked - that sort of thing.  The whole time I thought I had God on my side.  I thought this situation was being witnessed by someone who was going to judge me on how brave and smart I was being.  My faith seemed to help me be calm, to help me get through it.

But now that I look back on this, I think it was my blind faith that was partly to blame for me even being in a situation like I was in!  There were many clues that this person was not trustworthy and I ignored them, partly because I felt that God put people in my life for a reason.  I was not cautious and I was not critical.  When I think of Mulan at age 23 (the age I was then) I hope she is more savvy and much less trusting than I was.  Part of this is more about age than philosophy of course.  I don't automatically trust people but that is what happens to everyone I know as they get older.  Maybe religion didn't have all that much to do with it.  I'm not sure, but it's something I like to mull.

I just finished the book about Samuel Champlain today.  His Catholic faith seemed to make him more loving and more open to the humanity of the native americans.  Of course there are so many examples of religion working the opposite way - to make people not acknowledge other's humanity - to be judgmental in the worst ways and superior in all the wrong ways.  Champlain wanted to integrate with the native Americans and wanted them to intermarry with the french.  He respected them - maybe not in all ways, but so much more than his counterparts did.  Was it his nature or his faith that made him this way?

It's something I will probably muse upon for decades - whether religion helps people.  I am inclined to think that religion, when used sparingly - like an aspirin, seems to be okay.  It's just when it's used too much....  No, WAIT,  I cannot say that. I think in the end - on balance, it's not helpful.  In any case, it's too likely to be a lie and can a lie ever be helpful?  (Well, yes.  It can.  When you're hiding innocents in your attic - that sort of thing.  What would you tell a child facing certain death?  The blunt truth?  Oh!  I don't know - I guess I would.  I think I would.  Would I really???)

I also got a letter from a young woman with throat cancer and she faces a stiff battle for her life. She is no longer a believer in God but her family, who is religious,  wants her to believe.  She doesn't know how to respond.  I don't either but I cannot stop thinking about it.  Family members want you to feel better and they believe that believing makes you feel better.  It's like Daniel Dennet writes about so eloquently.  People don't really believe - but they believe in believing.

My parents, just engaged, Christmas 1958, Spokane Washington

I didn't take a picture yesterday or this morning, so I am posting this one.  I love my mom's lipstick and my dad's sweater.  I meant to post this picture with a poem I found a long time ago about parents and wanting to go back in time and prevent them from meeting each other to avoid all the heartache and pain they will cause (no - not all of it was pain, but there was a fairly large amount of pain) and then realizing that if they don't meet and get married, then, well you wouldn't be here - so you have to cheer them on.  Anyway, it was a great poem and where the hell is it?  I cannot find it.  I swear I will find it.

It's really snowy here and we are bracing for a storm and very cold temperatures tomorrow.

I am getting a lot of really great response to my show on Showtime.  It's so sweet too because I honestly became so mired in the logistics of getting the film to Showtime, and it's been over a year since I even performed the show, that I forgot that I'm proud of the actual show itself!  It had become this bottomless pit of duties and details and now I'm getting these wonderful letters and I'm surprised - oh yeah, the show itself - yeah... that.  Hey, I'm proud of that!

Jim Emerson and I are working on a screenplay and making progress.  I'm working on two book ideas - I am the absolute slowest writer... But still, I'm plugging away at it.  And just now I have to go help Michael weatherize the outside of the house and get ready for this cold front.

Arden on our walk this morning.

Oh how I love snow.  My husband does not.  He wishes we lived in Los Angeles.   People think I moved here for his sake.  That I was torn out of sunny Los Angeles by obligation.  Little to they know that I won our little war over where to live together.  He has work here - but then I have work in L.A. too.

But I wanted this weather!  I wanted that feeling of warmth that you can only get walking in the snow, when your cheeks are rosy red and you can see your breath.  Being indoors has a special magical feeling when it's really cold outside.  The fifty degree difference is big between outside and inside.  I remember that we are an animal that has figured out how to be warm in the cold.  It gives me the excuse not to go anywhere.  Really my big dream is to just never go anywhere.  I am typing right this minute looking at snow fall.  I do not think it gets any better than this.  I have reached peak happiness.

Not much to report today.  I am listening to an audio book while I walk the dog.  It's "Champlain's Dream" by David Hackett Fischer.  I got it because I had listened to his book, "Washington's Crossing" and was so engrossed, impressed, and informed.   So I got this.  I didn't really even know who Champlain was (founder of Quebec - early French explorer and New World Builder.)  I have never been to Quebec or Montreal.  Now I am hankering to go.  Let me just say this about the Native Americans Indian Tribes - wow, they were into torture.  Yes, the Europeans were too, especially the Spanish.  But lord, what the Mohawks did to the Iroquois, and really they all did to each other.  I hate listening to the descriptions of torture, but I cannot stop listening, it's like turning your back on the tortured, like somehow I can be a witness to their pain or something. Yes, it all smacks of magical thinking, but I cannot stop listening. It's not all about torture of course, and Champlain was a big negotiator with the Indians to reduce it (even though he was joining them in war against each other) but the part I'm listening to now is very torture-heavy.  Wow, human psychology - the whole vengeance imperative.  I have to say it all makes me amazed that Jesus, with his turn-the-other-cheek attitude (I know, amongst others, and not just him... he's just the historical, and yes probably mythical, religious figure I happen to know the most about) gets more radical the more I understand history.

So... Champlain.  I am running to the computer from time to time to look up the geography of Canada.  I'm really hooked.

Last night some friends came over and we watched "Coraline."  I slept through a lot of it, but I thought it was really inventive and beautiful (the parts I was able to see.)  Mulan got really scared, though, and I had to go to her room and sleep with her from 1:30 to 3:00 a.m. last night. She had nightmares about the "Bad mother with the button eyes."  It was hard not to tease her - my comedy improv training must take a back seat when my kid is truly scared.  Ha.

Oh, and here is Lake Michigan this morning. I just figured out how to have two pictures... Lordy.

My two nieces, Kaitlyn and Megan, who are 9 year old twins, came to stay (with their parents) over Thanksgiving.  We all went to the Shedd Aquarium and Mulan and her cousins all got a penguin in the museum store.  They came home with the penguins and dressed them in bathing suits and from then on, the stuffed playtoys were a major part of our lives.  Here they be in all their splendor.

It's snowing!  It's not sticking, but still.  I'm so happy about it.  I say, bring it on.

Spent the day redoing the blog look and playing with the new features and getting ready for "Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me" for which I'm soon going to be on the Metra and moving towards downtown Chicago.

I continue to get letters about the movie playing on Showtime.  I read each one, it's really a wonderful thing that this technology allows me to do that.