Goodtime Jesus

Seeing as we are nearing the holidays,
I thought I'd post my favorite James Tate poem:

Goodtime Jesus
Jesus got up one day a little later than usual. He had been dream-
ing so deep there was nothing left in his head. What was it?
A nightmare, dead bodies walking all around him, eyes rolled
back, skin falling off. But he wasn't afraid of that. It was a beau-
tiful day.  How 'bout some coffee? Don't mind if I do. Take a little
ride on my donkey, I love that donkey. Hell, I love everybody.

Hebrew Homework

Every week I take hebrew lessons. Last week my homework was to make a picture out of only natral materials. I drew my picture on a piece of bark using a mixture of ash, coal and water. It was hard because every time you made a mistake you would have to wipe it off with water wich would weaken the bark and it would be really hard to draw on the part with water, wich takes a long time to dry.

good presence

It is kind of a joke in the family that I give the worst presents. All three of the youngest seours in the family have their birthdays very near each other and every year I have a hell of a time getting good presents together on time, let alone the fact that Hanukkah and Christmas (of which we celebrate both, but that is another post, don't you think, Kate?) follow those dates very soon after and then my mother's birthday is just after the new year and well....it may sound like I'm making excuses. Which I am.

Anyhow, this year my friend showed me this amazing item, pictured here. Squirt gun? No, banana guard. Wow. The website promises to protect your banana from transport trauma and deliver a fresh and unbruised banana to wherever you want to go. So, I thought that I would just buy one for everyone before I left to go home to Maine for the first Christmas in a very long time. What a perfect gift! They even have glow-in-the-freakin'-dark! Who cares why you would ever need a glow-in-the-dark banana guard... So I counted up that I would need eight to sufficiently guard each of my family member's lunchtime banana, as our family has recenlty grown now that I am engaged to be married. And when I entered in the number 8 for my order it told me it would cost over $50 for such a purchase. I thought there are a lot of better ways I can spend $50 (which, honestly is why I am such a crappy present person, because I always battle with the expense of useless stuff that I'm not sure people really want...not that a banana guard is useless), so I wondered if I should just get a few banana guards. And I wondered who in our family should get one. Bruce, probably. He likes this kind of pragmatic technology. Hannah would probably laugh really hard, which is usually what I think about when I buy her things because she has the most pretty laugh in the world. Julianna would at first give an exasperated look to me, like I was wasting her time. But then she, too would laugh really hard and she has a laugh that makes everyone laugh harder. Kate would immediately love it, because we usually really like the same kind of things, it seems. Anyway...I went through my mind imaginging each of the family members and realized I couldn't just get one. And, thus got none and am not spoiling any surprise by posting a photo of this awesome invention.

But that is how holiday giving goes for me. I don't get excited sending presents, because I love anticipating how people will react to gifts, particularly when they are handmade, which most of mine end of being and I always want to be there to see their reaction. I am so happy that I will be with all of my family this year and even though I haven't had much time to make or buy any presents, I am really excited to have this anticipation in my mind through these cold, dark days in Oregon. Kate, Julianna and their mother, Ellen will recite beautiful Jewish prayers. Dad will be really hyper and only settle down long enough to read "The Night Before Christmas." Hannah and Bruce will make inappropriate, hilarious jokes. My mom will give us perfect gifts, because she always knows what we like. Tarp will be with me, which is rare now that he lives in California to attend graduate school. And he doesn't know this, but Kate and I are going to teach him to ice skate. It is going to be great!

I really like to play soccer. Here are some pictures from the 2004 soccer season. My favorite position is defence, but goalie is up there to. I play on the Colts travel team. We play other teams from Maine. Some really hard teams to beat are Merry Meeting and Costal. Soccer is most definitely my favorite sport. I also like tennis, swimming and I like to watch football with my dad. I play hocky against my dad and sister too.
~Katherine :-) (that's a smiley)

My Birthday Party

On Saturday I'm going to have a birthday party. It's at a hotel. We will swim, have dinner at the pool, then go to our hotel room a we might watch a movie. After a ton of fun we will go to sleep. It will be so much fun!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Katherine

Wy'East

I wanted to share this special place. Mt. Hood, originally named Wy'East by native folks, is very nearby to where I live. She is surrounded by the most beautiful forests. I spend a lot of time trying to keep these forests from being cut and when I see a photograph like this one I am reminded how important these efforts are to me.
-amy

Galen and the Dalai Lama

This morning I looked on the website where my friend Galen posts stories about his travels through India and Nepal with students. I check this site pretty frequently as Galen has stopped writing me like he used to now that he has to post his stories so often for the parents of his students to be able to read. And this morning, when I went to this site, I saw this picture of Galen with his students visiting the leader of the the Buddhist faith, the Dalai Lama. In the post, Galen says that the Dalai Lama rested his hand on Galen's head. Even though, I know this is a great honor, I was so happy all day at just thinking about how much this must have meant to Galen. He has been traveling and learning about Tibetan Buddhism for so many years now, often putting himself in life-threatening situations to get closer to understanding. He is always very humble and gracious and I am sure that he will take the inspiration from this experience and do wonderful things.
-amy

Waynflete Tours

Today I gave tours to people thinking of sending their kid to my school, Waynflete. Any 5th graders that wanted to, could give the tours. Sadie (my best friend) and I were parteners(we were lucky!). Some people were holding up the tours, and kept hanging back. Sadie and I had to keep urging them along. We would give them a quick tour of the campus then we would go in to the Early Childhood-5th grade (Lower School) building. We would show them all the classrooms, ending up in the classroom where their child would be. Then we would run through the backstage of the aditorium as fast as we could and get the next tour group. It was really fun!
-Katherine

My Birthday

My 11th birthday was on November 30th 2005. I got a Sandisk MP3 player, (basicly an Ipod) Sims 2 Holiday Edition, Yikes A smart Girls Guide To suviving Icky, Sticky Situations, Snooze-a-Palooza over 100 sleepover ideas and The Count of Monte Cristo from my parents. I got slippers from Hannah (my sister). I got this blog website from my other sister, Amy. I don't know what my brother, Bruce is going to get me. All I know is it a DVD. At my school we have half days on Wednesday, so my mom and I went out to lunch. They didn't give me the childrens menu! That was the first time that has happened!
-Katherine

Puppet Camp

Tonight is the second night of Puppet Camp.

Every year I perform a huge puppet show with a collective of people on the night of the Winter Solstice, which is Decemeber 21st. We put it on in an old church, in the middle of the longest night of the year and hundreds of people come without much more than word of mouth to remind people about it. It takes several weeks of very intense work to get ready and tonight we are meeting at my house to talk about the Hurricane Katrina piece. We try to represent each season with four different stories in the show. Usually, at least one of them is something taken from the past year and usually has something to do with politics. We often talk for long amounts of time on this segment because we always want to portray an honest, but hopeful image. The middle of December is a dark and dreary time, so we like to think of this as an offering to our community of hope and happiness. Last year the amazing live band ended the show with "We Are the Champions" and everyone was on their feet singing as loud as they could. There's nothing to kick winter blues like an old church filled with people singing rock n' roll songs in the middle of the night!

I need to tend to the basement before everyone comes over. It is still in disarray from my Halloween projects. I made my twin, three-year old friends a rat and a bat costume. I tried to get them to be garden nomes, but they looked pretty cute, nontheless.