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When you were in composition class in school do you remember how much everyone was so hooked on transitions. You need to transition from this thought to this one. No non sequitors allowed! Then I did a little comp teaching and that’s all I wrote, transition. And in fiction writing workshops – transitions.

I’m paying attention to transitions because I’m not good at them – I’m a bull in a china closet steamrolling through life and I’m trying to stop and make time for transitions.

T said that the principal at the Montessori school opened a drawer and showed her a stack of hankies. She said that American mothers are always rushing around like nutballs and that she wants the kids to transition to a calm environment so the first thing they do when they arrive is a get a hankie, fold it over just so, and they dust. They all dust and they calm down. They transition.

Similarly, I have my meditation now when I arrive at my desk. My transition from downstairs to upstairs, from personal to professional, I stand at my writing table, light incense (nag champa), put on Purnamadah, close my eyes and breathe deep into my stomach, then chest, then clavicle and then breathe out the same way. When I’m done, I ring the bell my colleague brought me from India. Ready to turn on my jet engines.

House Republicans were able to zero out all funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), the nonprofit responsible for funding public media including NPR, PBS, Pacifica and more.

Say what?

Do you think that Egypt was toppled by happenstance, no, it was by the power of social media and the internet – sign this petition and tell Congress to forgeaboutit. If there is one thing that Republicans want and that is to get elected, tell them they won’t if cut funding.

The past two mornings we have gotten up to fog here in New Orleans, which is unusual despite the fact that water is a key element in our lives. The misty morning bayou soon fades to blue bayou, but at the beginning there is this sense that we are locked in with no view out.

Yesterday, we went to NOMA to decorate Zulu coconuts and then to hear African jazz band and they were good, except Tin hadn’t napped and he wasn’t. He watched them for a while but in toddler fashion he soon saw that there were upteen marble stairs that he could climb and attempt to jump off of, so it was exit stage left for him.

The moon was full again as my neighbor said, as if we were lucky enough to have hit pause between wax and wane. Tin went down early so we watched the missing episode of Downton Abby online (all four episodes are available on PBS Masterpiece only until November 22 – so watch them now). Good characters, good drama, the series makes it seems as if writing and acting are so effortless.

Which brings me back to Barney’s Version – that story exposed my insides raw and has left them that way. It sort of snuck up on me too because there was a lot of things going on and it was told in flashbacks and it really grabbed you at the end and brought you under the quagmire where you realize yet again that we fall in love, we get married and then we make a mess out of our lives.

Sigh.

Once again a plan to see Biutiful ended in a substitution. Barney’s Version – don’t know what I was expecting but after the fact I feel as if I have been wrung out to dry.

Last night on one of the most gorgeous days of the year, a full moon rose like a paper lantern in the sky. Two people with the right idea canoed by the LaLa under the soft light. I got in my truck and went to DBA to catch Jon Cleary playing New Orleans style piano. It was fairly empty when I arrived and it felt good to be alone and uncrowded, but that ended after about three songs when tourists seemed to come in from everywhere taking photographs with their iPhones so I left and went to see Ms. Sophie Lee at the Spotted Cat.

The weather is good again so hopefully that means everyone who has been depressed can now get over it. Right?

I was speaking to a colleague in India about interviewing folks there and she wrote back regarding use of a last name — you will agree it is even more priceless when you hear this — in many regions, there is no ‘last’ name. Where last names do exist, they may denote the caste of the person, or the village /town where they come from, or it is the father’s name that is used as the last name. So some people  drop it, especially when it denotes caste. In cases where they are forced to use the father’s name as the last name, they end up being called by their father’s name!

I was speaking to a friend who said he and his wife almost two decades ago came up with a list of things they wanted to do before they died. He wanted a fishing camp – I love fishing camps, but I’m not handy so I can only rent or visit fishing camps, I can’t own one. I didn’t have time to think about my list because I had to finish up morning business and get to work and so that is certainly something to ponder. Ten things you want to do before you die.

What does your list look like?

I ran into the mayor of the neighborhood in the park and we stopped to speak to the plein air artists for a moment telling them we love to see them painting there and glad they and the good weather have returned. Along the paths though another artist had been busy at work, the dog shit artist, this time with new signs carefully placed in dog piles that read:

The owner was an unwanted child.

The owner is as dumb as this.

Lazy owner.

Have a crapppy day.

I was walking Loca and Heidi this fine morning through City Park on a day that is so magnificent it is almost a call in well day! I was going over the events of yesterday in my mind along with a series of dreams that I had plunged into last night that kept me running in place all into the morning. There was a certain part of me that was nagging on what wasn’t working and what didn’t happen and then suddenly the windows blew out of my head and light came in.

Yesterday was a significant day for me across so many areas that I needed to wear Tin’s drum and form my own marching band so I could beat the sound of victory not once but twice – two initiatives I am spearheading moved closer to reality, I took Tin to the Montessori school and met with the principal and then T went later to speak to the principal and she pulled his file and said if he is potty trained by September, more than likely he is in!

Yippee – here’s my Victory laps – vroooooooooom, ba ba ba boom!

I read this in the NYT this morning:

From northern Africa to the Persian Gulf, governments appeared to flounder over just how to outrun mostly peaceful movements, spreading erratically like lava erupting from a volcano, with no predictable end…

But there was also a pervasive sense that a shared system of poor governance by one party, one family or one clique of military officers backed by brutal secret police was collapsing. A new generation has served notice that the social contract in play in the decades since independence around World War II was no longer valid.

Much of the generation in their 40s and 50s tried to effect change, but first accepted the empty promises of the rulers that change was coming. When it did not, many grew politically apathetic.

The protests are a fire alarm that the promises are not going to work anymore, said Sawsan al-Shaer, a Bahraini columnist. But governments that have stuck around for 20 to 40 years are slow to realize that, she said.

“Now the sons are coming, the new generation, and they are saying, ‘I don’t care that my father agreed with you — I am asking for more, and I am asking for something else,’ ” Ms. Shaer said…

Wow, we are living through some interesting times but nothing more amazing that this youth revolution that is spreading like wildfire given the tools of social networking. Let’s everyone take a moment to thank those who are risking their lives to live free.