I watched this film today and am amazed at the resilience of some in this world. These children live in the red light district of Calcutta with mothers who are prostitutes. In one family, the mother, the grandmother and the great-grandmother had all been prostitutes. These children become exposed to another world through the actions of a photographer who lived amongst them and chronicled their life.

She eventually teaches the children how to take their own photographs. The images and talent are amazing. One of the children travels to Amsterdam to take part in a world wide show of childrens' photographs. The film is amazing and has it's own bittersweet tale to tell.

The film reminds me of the movie Salaam Bombay that was Mira Nair's first fictional film. It tells the story of street children in Bombay and was also filmed in some of the actual brothels of the city and also used some of the street children in the cast.

Both of these movies bring home how differently poverty and child welfare are viewed internationally. It is heartbreaking and overwhelming when I look around and see how much there is and how few can access it. These are not the only children in need. These are the children that we see. How many don't we see?

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This my good friends is what awakened me in the middle of the night. To you, this may appear as simply a messy pile of books on the floor, but let me reassure you that they did not start out that way. No, dear reader, for you see I am one of the best "book stacker" in the world. And stacked they stay. I compensate for overall size and height and end up with a rather tidy stack of books that will fit nowhere else in the house and only take up two square feet of the remaining eight square feet of my bedroom floor.

All was well with these books. They had been in this particular stack for well over two weeks. Until, and I say this with a hint of warning, until last night. Apparently sometime during my sleeping hours the cat, Jack, decided that he wanted to climb and sit on or sleep on this particular well groomed stack of books. You are viewing the aftermath. I am sure I can deal with this sometime this evening. Or, if I leave it until tomorrow morning, it may prompt me into boxing some of them up. Yeah, right.

Dear Friends: This is the first post that I have posted on both of my sites. You heard right. We're moving on up, to the East Side...to that deeee-luxe site designed by Rachel of Web Divas. Soon, my darlings, we will be basking in our new found beauty.

DON'T ASK IF I ENJOYED THIS MOVIE... I don't really remember seeing it. I went with Caden and Tina to see it at an Omnimax Theatre. Is this supposed to be the new thing in movies? It was overwhelming. The primary thing I remember is looking into mouths full of horrible teeth. I'm sure that on the normal viewing screen this would have been an amazing touch of realism. Helena Bonham Carter is one of the most absolutely beautiful women in the world. In super-gigantic-gargantuan-humongous movie she's not so attractive any more...plus, she had bad teeth, too.

And, Johnny Depp? What the hell was that all about? Was he being campy, psychotic, a little too Michael Jackson, or what. I saw far too many close ups of his overly made up face with a glimpse of gigantic pores where coverage was impossible. BTW, he was the only one with "white" teeth. It didn't help.I am usually a fan of everything that Tim Burton does. What I could comprehend of the sets in this movie appeared to be...who knows? I couldn't tell. Giant blobs of color that I couldn't tie in with anything else because of this giant rounded screen in front of me. I will wait until I can see it on DVD before I pass any real judgment on it.

DEAR SELF:

The next time Bunns and Noodles wants to know if you are interested in getting in on the Harry Potter fun and madness, the answer is, "NO!" After seven hours on my feet, smiling, handing out books and buying my own, I realize I will never stay awake long enough to delve into my own copy.

What's wrong with this picture? (Okay, the kids were darn cute!)

WHAT A GREAT MUSIC RUN

This has been a great run of music...I love work and the 4 gigabytes of music I have hidden on my computer...

1. Why: Ricky Fante
2. Hallelujah: k. d. lang
3. In the Morning: Nina Simone
4. In My Life: The Beatles
5. Creatures of Love: The Talking Heads
6. Blue Moon: Elvis Presley (Sun Recordings)
7. Angel Eyes: John Hiatt
8. Simple Twist of Fate: Bob Dylan
9. Too Far Gone: Emmy Lou Harris
10. Unchain My Heart: Joe Cocker

I tell you, life doesn't get much better than this!

REASON 348 WHY CHILDREN AND ADULTS SHOULD NOT CHEW GUM AND THEN
GO TO BED.

FRIDAY AND IT'S CADEN AND CAT PICTURES...

Caden sprang me from work early today and we had quite an adventure. First we went to the bank so Granny could get some cash for the afternoon. Yeah, you don't head out the door with this kid with no moolah. We first went to A and Dubs, our closest thing to an A and W, and had lunch. With large root beers, which led to even larger burps. You really don't expect a boy of nine to drink root beer without burping, do you?

Then it was to the mall...BN, of course. For books, of course. Only the book that Caden wanted wasn't there, or hadn't been written, or was just plain out of season. It was a book that had "all of the basketball players" in it. Of course, there was no other book that he wanted...what he wanted was a Slipknot poster. For those of you not in the know, Slipknot is a band that plays really raucous music and you (I) can't understand a word of the lyrics. Now, I have gotten into trouble in the past purchasing CDs that the kid convinced me his mother would think were okay and later turned out to be NOT so okay. (Surprise, surprise.) As I recalled, Slipknot wasn't one of her favorites. So I asked him. "Oh, no, their new CD is different, she likes it...and the neighbor, Allison, likes them and went to fourof their concerts..."

"Are you sure?" (Yeah, that was a pretty stupid question, but I asked it anyway.) "Oh, yeah." And, there we are heading off to the local Hot Topic to see if they have any posters. Does it look like he is wearing a poster? No, well, that's because they didn't haven't poster, but they did have t-shirts. Now, I ask you, isn't that an attractive group...Yeah, I knew my goose was just sitting in the pan and waiting to go into the oven.

Ah, hell. Live on the edge. As soon as he gets it and we get back to Barnes and Noble, he has to run into the bathroom to change his shirt. As he came out, he proudly announced, "I'm not normal." I snorted when I laughed...NOT NORMAL? Little did he know that every child on the face of the earth likes stuff his parents don't and that, in and of itself, made him the most normal kid I knew.

So, not willing to leave without spending some more money, I bought a magazine and two CDs. I had to have them! After all, Some day, if I have nothing to do, I can sit down and start listening to all of my music and continue to do so for the next ten or fifteen years. With any luck, that is.

Now it's time to fill up with $2.29 a gallon gasoline, hit the grocery store, and head on home. Caden learned how to wash the windows on the car and did so for me. After my choking as I paid we headed to the grocery store. Grub for the weekend and I let him talk me into buying S'mores Ice Cream. (Weird tasting stuff, I'll stick with your basic chocolate, vanilla, caramel, nut combos from now on.) We start talking about Slipknot and Caden tells me that one of them is a policeman. "Oh, that's cool," I say...I mean, maybe they did have day jobs before. "And one is a fireman..." "Really?" "And one is an emergency room doctor..." Okay, games up. I say the obvious..."Bullshit." And, he admits it immediately. I am now completely worried that he has discovered my gullibility and it's downhill for granny from now on.

Before we head home, it's time for a stop at, you got it, Dairy Queen. Large chocolate covered cone for him and a root beer float for me. See why we stopped at the bank.

Home again, home again, jiggety jig. Caden goes out plays with the dog, comes in, plays with the cat. Throws some balls for the dog, gets bitten by mosquitoes, comes back in and
watches some Family Guy with the cat...As you can see from both of the pictures, he has now developed the capacity to smile and close his eyes at the same time. He snuggled with the cat for a while and then came in and we watched Team America. Great choice Granny. Let's see, the next time you decide to get a movie from Netflix and let Caden put it in the DVD player, why don't you check and make sure you didn't get the "Uncensored, Unrated" version that you really, really don't want to watch with your grandson. So, the finger was on the fast forward and I'm sure that it was going so fast he couldn't really see what those damned puppets were doing.

Okay, now he wants to write something. Here he is, the one, the only Caden:

This is about the band called Slipknot, they call their fans maggots.

And, with that note, I'll close.

ALL WE ARE SAYING,

IS GIVE PEACE A CHANCE

IMAGINE MY SURPRISE

Dedicated to Yesterday's Post

I spend a lot of time reading blogs, surfing the web, and compulsively following whatever issue is chaining me to my social conscience at the moment. Now there are a lot of things that demand my attention since I view society with quite a critical and personal eye.

Most of my life I have been somewhat obsessed with injustice. Where it came from, I don't know. My mother was a racist. This turned out to be a quite a surprise to me when I found out that she was a Native. As I grew older I came to understand some of the roots of her self hatred and why being "white" was so important to her. I was about seven years old when I saw "Negroes" being corralled by white authority and I knew that this was wrong. I lived in a foster home where the father was a Deputy Sheriff. This was in Florida. On Saturday mornings he would strap on his gun, take his Boxer dog and head out into the palmetto groves to hunt "n*****s." I knew this was wrong. My sense of racial prejudice was formed and my position strong.

It was in junior high when I found out that not everyone was like me. I made the socially fatal error of asking a girl to a junior high school dance. I had crushes, sure, I just had them on everyone. That was when I first heard the word "queer." I didn't necessarily know what it meant, but I knew that it was something that I shouldn't be. What I didn't know was the word bisexual. How strange that was to figure out. As I grew up and understood more of who I was, I became comfortable with who I was and add that to my already well developed "attitude" and my personage became one that presented such a front that even if one wanted to call me a name, they would think twice about it.

Poverty was also part of my life. I didn't quite have the concept of money down when I learned to steal food. It was something my mother had me do. Some people had things that I didn't. Unfortunately, I didn't know why that was but I decided early on that it had to have been my fault. It took a long time for me to understand fully what really was happening. Through that I learned that poverty was a disease and not to be tolerated. I learned by experiencing that classism was not to be tolerated.

When I graduated from grammar school, I was at the head of the class. This meant that I got to give a speech. The things that I spoke about were my dreams. The main dream that I had was that I would grow up and be the first woman to attend CalTech. They weren't allowed to go there in those days. I didn't understand the full realm of feminism at that time, but there was a great start that went on to become a core part of who I am.

I really knew nothing of war. Well, I knew about the Civil War, primarily from the movie Gone With the Wind. What I carried with me from that movie was the scene in the rail yard where the wounded and bodies of the dead were. That scene stayed with me and was the seed of my understanding of peace. The Viet Nam war finished off my education of war. I became a peace-nik. That was one of the nicer names I was called at the time, I kind of miss some of them...they were rather amusing.

These are all ideals and ideas that I developed prior to true maturity. They are as hard and fast now as they were then. I have pride in who I am politically: Native, Queer, Peace Activist, Feminist and Socialist. I will admit that there were times when I wished to a little bit more like Anna Nicole Smith, but it ain't gonna happen folks. I will continue to address any social issue I choose at any time I choose. It doesn't make me less of an American, it doesn't mean I hate this country, it doesn't mean that I think that everything this country does is wrong. It means that I will speak when, where and how I wish...as is my right.

However, I reserve my right to be as shallow as I want to be, whenever I want to be. I love to be underestimated and work at setting that up every chance I get. I want to be silly, inappropriate at times, and the one who says the things that no one else will say. If I were to be a bimbo, I wouldn't mind being Anna Nicole...she came up from poverty, is also underestimated quite a bit, and has managed to make it to where she is even with her mistakes. Haven't we all?

IT IS DIFFICULT FOR ME TO CELEBRATE A HOLIDAY FOR THE BIRTH OF ONE NATION THAT REQUIRED THE VIOLATION OF SO MANY OTHER NATIONS

Blackfeet Nation, Cabazon Band of Mission Indians, Cherokee Nation, Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, Choctaw Nation, Citizen Potawatomi Nation, Coeur d'Alene Tribe, Confederated Tribes of Siletz, Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation - Colville Tribe, Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, Coquille Indian Tribe, Costanoan-Ohlone Indian Canyon Resource, Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana, Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe, Delaware Tribe, Tongva Nation, Gila River Indian Community,
Hopi Tribe, Mamit Innuat, Jatibonicu Taino Tribal Nation, Keweenaw Bay Indian Community, Klamath Tribes, Lumbee Tribe, Makah Nation, Mohegan Tribe, Muckleshoot Tribe, Muscogee (Creek) Nation, Nation of Hawai`i, Navajo Nation, Oneida Indian Nation of NY, Osage Nation, Passamaquoddy Tribe at Pleasant Point, Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma, Penobscot Indian Nation, Powhatan Renape Nation, Prairie Band of Potawatomi Nation, Sac and Fox Nation, Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community, Secwepemc Nation, Seminole Nation of Oklahoma, Sitka Tribe, Southern Ute Tribe, Spokane Tribe of Indians, Suquamish Tribe, Te-Moak Tribe of Western Shoshone Indians, Tulalip Tribes, United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians, United South and Eastern Tribes, United Tribe of Shawnee Indians, Washoe Tribe of Nevada and California, White Mountain Apache Tribe, and Wichita and Affiliated. Tribes. And for Freedom Girl, the Winnemem Wintu Tribe.

As the label says...so many forgetting and so few remembering.

(I must say this is the most controversial post I have ever posted. It's a strange feeling I have that my exercising freedom of speech can, on some level, be equated with being unpatriotic.)

(I apologize for missing any tribal nations...if you recognize that one is missing, please let me know and I will add it.)