Books this week:
Primo Levi -- The Drowned and the Saved Heavy stuff. He survived Auschwitz.
Introduction to the Lotus Sutra
Anne Rice -- Blood and Gold For some reason I'm finding this slow to get into.
Howard Cutler and The Dalai Lama -- The Art of Happiness at Work I'm reading this bit by bit at bedtime, it's lovely.
Alice Munro -- Open Secrets
Michael Caine -- What's It All About This is a biography, and I don't know how good it will be later on, but his childhood in London and as a child evacuee is very funny.
William Fleeman -- Anger Management Workbook
This one's interesting, with some good stuff on anger as an addiction in itself.
Daniel Sonkin and Michael Durphy -- Learning to Live without Violence.
Stephan Pastis -- Sergeant Piggy's Lonely Hearts Club Comic Pearls Before Swine, Rachel's favourite.
Saturday, November 26, 2005
Yesterday my co-worker was sick. He had been making fun of the rest of us who got sick, saying, "I never get sick, I'm too healthy." Cursed himself, I guess. But anyway, I arrived in the morning to find a note telling me what to do for the day, as he couldn't get out of bed. So I was in charge. I had a few moments of nervousness in the morning, these are mostly older men with really long rap sheets, and some of them are very resistant to the things we're trying to tell them. In the morning I went through some cognitive anger stuff -- along the lines of 'no-one can make you mad unless you allow them' but a couple of them weren't buying it. They truly believe that they are subject to external forces and the manipulations of women (who they cast as pretty cold-blooded) and they argued with me. It was fun.
I also debriefed with them a movie we watched on Thursday, the story of Tina Turner, her relationship with Ike was particularly stormy. I've felt, since we've been doing these workshops and showing the movie, that we should debrief it because it's pretty intense. Got my feeling validated, as the men shared a lot of emotion surrounding the video, in fact we talked about it for over an hour. Although I admire my co-worker's style in some ways, I personally like to let the participants get their own realizations, rather than trying to feed them 'program'. A couple of the guys were crying, when one man said he recognized himself in Ike Turner's abusive behaviour, and that's something we would have missed if we hadn't debriefed...
Needless to say, I was high as a kite by the end of the day, and when I went back to the centre to talk to the family violence coordinator about schedules for the shelter, one of the supervisors said to me "How are you" and I said, "I'm fantastic" and she laughed and asked me what I'd been smoking. Then she said to me, "You always seem so happy, do you like your work?". I told her I love it... then she proceeded to offer me more. Doing women's empowerment and self-esteem workshops on a continuing basis, for those who've taken the two week programs and need follow up. Which is funny, because it's something I've been thinking about, that we give them two intense weeks and then there's no more contact.
Anyway. Enough about work. I'm lazy this weekend. I was on call all week, had meetings after work almost every day, and so today I did very little. Well, other than clean house and watch The Witches of Eastwick. (Miguel's comment when he came home and found me on the couch was "Not that again..." It seems to get shown on tv about once a month, and I generally watch at least some of it. I've seen it so many times now I can come in at any point. It's not even so much the plot, it's just such a beautiful movie, lush. The tv guide channel teased me by saying The Last Remake of Beau Geste was on, too, but it wasn't. When I changed the channel it was a cooking show.
It is going to be completely dark here very soon. I seem to be wandering around in the dark, dusk, or twilight an awful lot. At certain times in the day, the sky and the land are exactly the same shade of dusty grey. At other times, there are long blue and pink shadows, and the smoke from the chimneys picks up a salmon colour from the low sun. I'm disoriented, when it's getting dark when I'm going back to work after lunch I feel as if I should be heading back to make supper instead...
I also debriefed with them a movie we watched on Thursday, the story of Tina Turner, her relationship with Ike was particularly stormy. I've felt, since we've been doing these workshops and showing the movie, that we should debrief it because it's pretty intense. Got my feeling validated, as the men shared a lot of emotion surrounding the video, in fact we talked about it for over an hour. Although I admire my co-worker's style in some ways, I personally like to let the participants get their own realizations, rather than trying to feed them 'program'. A couple of the guys were crying, when one man said he recognized himself in Ike Turner's abusive behaviour, and that's something we would have missed if we hadn't debriefed...
Needless to say, I was high as a kite by the end of the day, and when I went back to the centre to talk to the family violence coordinator about schedules for the shelter, one of the supervisors said to me "How are you" and I said, "I'm fantastic" and she laughed and asked me what I'd been smoking. Then she said to me, "You always seem so happy, do you like your work?". I told her I love it... then she proceeded to offer me more. Doing women's empowerment and self-esteem workshops on a continuing basis, for those who've taken the two week programs and need follow up. Which is funny, because it's something I've been thinking about, that we give them two intense weeks and then there's no more contact.
Anyway. Enough about work. I'm lazy this weekend. I was on call all week, had meetings after work almost every day, and so today I did very little. Well, other than clean house and watch The Witches of Eastwick. (Miguel's comment when he came home and found me on the couch was "Not that again..." It seems to get shown on tv about once a month, and I generally watch at least some of it. I've seen it so many times now I can come in at any point. It's not even so much the plot, it's just such a beautiful movie, lush. The tv guide channel teased me by saying The Last Remake of Beau Geste was on, too, but it wasn't. When I changed the channel it was a cooking show.
It is going to be completely dark here very soon. I seem to be wandering around in the dark, dusk, or twilight an awful lot. At certain times in the day, the sky and the land are exactly the same shade of dusty grey. At other times, there are long blue and pink shadows, and the smoke from the chimneys picks up a salmon colour from the low sun. I'm disoriented, when it's getting dark when I'm going back to work after lunch I feel as if I should be heading back to make supper instead...
Tuesday, November 22, 2005
This men's workshop is very intense... I'm coming home and needing to play my music really loudly, afterwards. At the moment I'm craving Santana, especially. Nice warm music. And the sun is disappearing, it rises about ten thirty and is setting again when I'm heading back to work after lunch at one. This afternoon as I was going down our street, the sun was dripping down the horizon like a giant russet teardrop. Something to do with the curvature of the earth.
Sunday, November 20, 2005
Things move along... I'm on call again this week for the shelter. The phone rang, quite late, after I went to sleep last night, and I got up to answer it thinking, "gotta go out in the cold, where did I put the shelter keys", steeling myself for the emotions on the other end of the phone, but it was Kirsten's boyfriend, calling to apologize to her for something. She said, "I'm sorry he woke you up, Mum" but I was so happy that it wasn't a crisis situation that I just said, "Oh, no problem, at least I don't have to go anywhere" and I went back to my warm bed.
This morning we got a call from a little friend of Rachel's. She spoke to him briefly and then said, matter-of-factly, "He's coming over because his parents haven't come home and he's hungry." So he came, he and Rachel played video games for a while, we made KD, he wolfed it down and went back home to wait for his folks. Poor little sweetie.
The bake sale yesterday was fun. We had a table in the gym at the school, along with everyone else who had crafts or MLM or baking to sell. I made turtle cookies and date squares, like I used to make when I had the coffee shop, and we sold everything we had. I made tons, I've never gotten the hang of small batch baking again after the coffee shop, if I make cookies I make ten dozen, but it was good because only one other lady baked. I saw lots of people who've taken workshops over the last couple of months, and they introduced me to their spouses and babies.
This bookcrossing site looks like a lot of fun... (you were right, delia, it is my kind of thing) I used to live in an apartment building where people would leave books on a table downstairs, for others to pick up and read, and I would always look when I came home from work to see if there was anything interesting.
On the radio yesterday, there was a man talking about how he feels that writing in books is a good idea, marginal comments in pencil. Then what he does is give the book to someone else to read, and encourage them to write marginal notes and pass it on. So by the time he gets the book back, he has the thoughts of five or six other readers in the margins... I thought that sounded like a neat idea too, except that I'd want to have control over who got the books... no philistines...
This morning we got a call from a little friend of Rachel's. She spoke to him briefly and then said, matter-of-factly, "He's coming over because his parents haven't come home and he's hungry." So he came, he and Rachel played video games for a while, we made KD, he wolfed it down and went back home to wait for his folks. Poor little sweetie.
The bake sale yesterday was fun. We had a table in the gym at the school, along with everyone else who had crafts or MLM or baking to sell. I made turtle cookies and date squares, like I used to make when I had the coffee shop, and we sold everything we had. I made tons, I've never gotten the hang of small batch baking again after the coffee shop, if I make cookies I make ten dozen, but it was good because only one other lady baked. I saw lots of people who've taken workshops over the last couple of months, and they introduced me to their spouses and babies.
This bookcrossing site looks like a lot of fun... (you were right, delia, it is my kind of thing) I used to live in an apartment building where people would leave books on a table downstairs, for others to pick up and read, and I would always look when I came home from work to see if there was anything interesting.
On the radio yesterday, there was a man talking about how he feels that writing in books is a good idea, marginal comments in pencil. Then what he does is give the book to someone else to read, and encourage them to write marginal notes and pass it on. So by the time he gets the book back, he has the thoughts of five or six other readers in the margins... I thought that sounded like a neat idea too, except that I'd want to have control over who got the books... no philistines...