Tucson Bloggers' CPR Meet Up

Let me start by reminding you that the entire concept of social media is beyond me these days. I've never tweeted nor read a tweet and I only know about them because they make the news. Something I was doing was a good idea for a flash mob and that began to creep me out .... my behavior is mob-like? I'm not the mayor of any of my favorite haunts and I only joined Facebook so that I could see the pictures of the kids' vacations. The fact that I attended a Meet Up thrills me no end

Then, of course, there's Becca,

mother of 2, owner of a brand new fancy camera, and guiding light behind these Tucson events. The last one was painting Ben's Bells and I carried the glow with me for weeks. This one was another way to improve our community and ourselves and Amster and Elizabeth and a few other friends and I were in, $10 for the certification card included.

Our instructors were connected to Save a Life and they were perfect.

This retired fire fighter is showing us how to brace an infant and then use two fingers to gently move the lungs. They are so little, my mouth fit over the doll's mouth and nose at once.
If I were ever inclined to turn my back on a child near a pool, that thought is now banished from my mind.

 CPR has some fun parts.  First you give orders

which is right up my alley.
You send someone to call 911 and someone to find the AED.
Those boxes are on the walls of malls and museums and the instructions are written so that a 6 year old can follow them... and they have done so successfully.  Don't be afraid to help with one.

Next come the chest compressions.  Considering how I feel about skinny white boys in hoodies since January 8th, I'm fairly proud of myself for getting up close and personal to the training dummy.

It's 50 compressions in just the right place on the chest (you have to take the course... this post will not teach you!) with elbows locked out and a fast and steady rhythm.  Then you take a breath and begin again.  After 4 sets of compressing and breathing you've done about as much as you can do with the air that was in the body before the patient stopped inhaling. That's the goal of the Carver Method - to utilize the oxygen already present to maintain a healthy brain.  The compressions move the aerated blood through the body, simulating the beating of the heart.  It feels very cool.

At this point you put your ear to the patient's mouth and listen, hoping to hear him breathing on his own.

Despite what we wish for, that rarely happens.
So, you place the face mask

or pull up the patient's t-shirt and cover the mouth.
You don't do this to protect yourself from disease.
You do this so that if the patient vomits you don't inhale gunk.
(Sorry if you are eating breakfast right now.....)

And then you breathe - sending your life force into another person's lungs.  .

You exhale until his lungs expand and then you do it again and then you become his heart again as you start all over.

I didn't expect it to be a spiritual experience,
especially after I shook the baby and its head exploded
oh, please, don't ask......
but it was.

Generation Y

The blogosphere was here when I needed a friend.  It's time for me to repay the favor.  This is a new issue for me, and there may be pieces I'm not considering, but from what I've seen so far, it's pretty much a no-brainer.


Except for the piece about the Y's.... but I'll get to that later.


BlogHer is having a conference in San Diego next month.  There will be presentations and parties and performances and speeches and socializing and some bestowing of awards.  It's one of these awards which is prompting this post.


Seems that a recipient of the BlogHer International Activist Scholarship won't be able to attend.  Yoani Sanchez lives and writes in Cuba.  She's not that thrilled with the way things are going in the Caribbean Communist paradise, and she's not shy about sharing her thoughts.  Listen: 

The reality makes a mockery of the slogans.

Her subject matter in that post would be familiar to any American parent of a college-bound student: private tutoring for entrance exams.  


Somehow, I never thought of that as an issue in Cuba. Apparently,  I was missing the obvious.  Parents are parents the world over and each and every one of them will look for any edge possible to give that precious being, that child of their loins, that kid who didn't pay attention in class just a little bit of an advantage, a little help, a leg up in the application process.  


Here in the USofA, hiring a tutor is hardly antithetical to our national ethos.  If you have it there is no shame in spending it.  But in Cuba, where everyone is supposed to have what everyone else has, 

The reality makes a mockery of the slogans.

Yoani is a lyrical writer rather than a strident polemicist.  Leaving the visiting room at Combinado del Este prison, a scene of heartbreaking chaos, 

 I discover in this moment that something sad has established itself in me, like the weight of the bars which, since then, I carry everywhere.

She brings me along with her, she opens her soul to me, and she takes a personal risk with each keystroke.


The Cuban government is refusing to let Yoani Sanchez take a puddle-jumper-plane to San Diego in August to receive her Award in person.  There's not much that one small person can do about this, at least not while sitting at a computer trying to heal.  


But, BlogHer suggests that we blog her out of Cuba, and I'm all over it.  This is my first mention of her situation.  Why don't you click on over here to her site, and read her beautifully translated work.  I'm sure you could find it in the original Spanish if you are as talented as Niece, the Younger and would like to read it in its unadulterated form. 


The site is called Generation Y, which brings me back to the question I posed at the start of this post: what's with those Y's?  Yoani explains it in her blog's header, and once again I am stunned by how little I know of the realities of the countries closest to my own.  While we were busy with Jennifer's and Jessica's and Michael's and Christopher's, loyal Cubans seemed obsessed with Y's.  Listen:

Generation Y is a Blog inspired by people like me, with names that start with or contain a "Y". Born in Cuba in the '70s and '80s, marked by schools in the countryside, Russian cartoons, illegal emigration and frustration. So I invite, especially, Yanisleidi, Yoandri, Yusimí, Yuniesky and others who carry their "Y's" to read me and to write to me.

I would really like to meet her, to shake her hand, to ask more about those Y's. Too bad Raul Castro is standing in my way.

 

Good Morning, Readers

I'm up before the sun comes over the Pusch Ridge, startled by the sudden brightness as the first light hits the window in the library.

I'm thinking of you, denizens, and wondering how your day has started, wondering what I can tell you about mine.

Billy Collins says it better than I ever could so please, enjoy the words of my favorite poet describing exactly how I feel about you all right now:

A Portrait of the Reader with a Bowl of Cereal

Every morning I sit across from you
at the same small table,
the sun all over the breakfast things—
curve of a blue-and-white pitcher,
a dish of berries—
me in a sweatshirt or robe,
you invisible.

Most days, we are suspended
over a deep pool of silence.
I stare straight through you
or look out the window at the garden,
the powerful sky,
a cloud passing behind a tree.

There is no need to pass the toast,
the pot of jam,
or pour you a cup of tea,
and I can hide behind the paper,
rotate in its drum of calamitous news.

But some days I may notice
a little door swinging open
in the morning air,
and maybe the tea leaves
of some dream will be stuck
to the china slope of the hour—

then I will lean forward,
elbows on the table,
with something to tell you,
and you will look up, as always,
your spoon dripping milk, ready to listen.

-Billy Collins (Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001-2003)

Tucson Bloggers Meet Up

Bloggers are a solitary bunch.  We sit at computers and type to friends we've never seen nor can ever hope to see.  We read one another's work and admire and comment and wonder - what is she really like in person?

Yesterday, Chicago Gal and I found out.

 

Becca invited me to a Mom It Forward meet-up.  That sentence can be parsed into an entire post of its own : she left the initial invitation in a long comment available to the eyes of anyone who took the time to read it; she's a young mom with a great camera and she lives here in Tucson but our lives don't intersect anyplace except in the blogosphere; Ashleigh Burroughs captivated her but she invited Suzi to the event; Mom It Forward is a great name but what is it?; a meet up???

How cool have I become?  First Alice Cooper, now a 21st century be-in .... younger readers can click over to Wikipedia for insight into the 60's version ... I am on the cutting edge here, denizens.

After milk shakes and fries at Johnny Rockets, Chicago Gal held the traffic at bay as I walker-hopped across University Avenue to the courtyard where Ben's Bells is headquartered.  

Thirty or forty bloggers and their children were gathered around tables under the trees.  It was a perfect Tucson spring day - light breeze, bright sunshine, moderate temperatures and friendly folks.  

I do so love my town.

We sat under trees, and their usual inhabitants greeted us with songs and excrement - in our hair (see left) and on our t-shirts and on our arms.  We were a happy group, we just laughed.

Our task was simple - three coats of the same color glaze on the big flowers and pretty decorations on the little ones

 Here's what it looked like :

We had long pointed sticks which fit neatly into styrofoam blocks to enable our creations to dry more quickly.

There were swag bags

and extremely wonderful t-shirts

and lots and lots of food and drink

But mostly there was laughter and joy and story telling and sorrow sharing.  There was surprise when a face was attached to a commenter (Hi, Leah!) and there was sympathy and understanding - whether the subject was increasing readership or a personal tragedy.  

Ben's Bells has a way of doing that to people.

Neatness didn't count... at least as far as my fingers were concerned.... and that was a good thing.  

Chicago Gal washed her hands carefully after we were finished.  

I took my paint home as a special memento.

Mom It Forward is coming to Tucson - bloggers doing a good deed once a month, sharing love and laughter, gifts and hugs, and getting out from behind the computer to see who the rest of us are.

Thanks, Becca, for including me.

Some Gifts for You

This is the season of sharing.  It is also the season of overwhelmed givers of gifts.  I plead guilt to being one of them right now.  It's after dinner and I've been running all day and I have not had a thought in my head.  Not just a thought worth sharing.  Literally, there have been no thoughts.

So, I have decided to introduce you to some of my favorites here in the blogosphere.  I've mentioned some of them before, but today I am giving you links to some of my favorite posts on some of my favorite sites. I hope you enjoy them as much as I have.
*****
John Simpson's blog is writerly.  Although there is the occasional lagniappe, most of his posts are nice, long, settle-back-in-the-couch-and-get-comfortable reads.  He has a few recurring themes, but the musical posts are my favorites.  Everyone knows the melody

to Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, but JES knows the story.  Click on over and you will, too.

*****
Joann Mannix is a famous blogger, and yet she finds the time to stop by The Burrow to visit.  Her posts are long and funny and honest and transcend generational boundaries.  Read sentences like these, written to her 16 year old daughter on the occasion of her first date

I know you won't believe any of what I'm telling you because you think I entered the world as a mom driving an SUV littered with smashed up goldfish crackers and half empty bottles of Gatorade.

But the thing is, I too, once cared more about my hair than the state of the world.

 and you'll see why both Little Cuter and I love her.  Plus, she has the best blog name ever: Laundry Hurts My Feelings .
*****
100 Proof Stories are small, intoxicating stories of 100 words or less.  My favorite category is Kind of True, where you find gems like Words as Volatile as Dynamite.  But don't overlook Overheard  and Not So True either.  When I need a break from my own verbosity The Inadvertent Gardener is my go-to-girl. 
*****
And then, of course there are my stalwarts, my touchstones, my first two clicks of the morning.

Time Goes By's Ronni Bennett is who I want to be when I grow up.  She's personal and political and crotchety and I love her.  Every day is different, if you're not turned on today, go back tomorrow and see what's there then. 

Nance Meeker's Mature Landscaping is a slice of life with a hippie and a fighter pilot living in Myrtle Beach and, for a while, in San Diego.  There are families and photographs and philosophy and research ... lots and lots of research... Nance's finger in the dike as the world goes to hell in a handbasket.  And we're not really enjoying the ride, are we?  It seems that we were separated at birth; our lives have twisted and turned in remarkably similar paths.  She's my BFF - Blog Friend Forever.  If you like The Burrow, you'll love the landscape over at Nance's place.
*****
Have a wonderful weekend, denizens.  Thiu-who-owns-my-fingers painted a Christmas Tree With Lights on each of my ring fingers this afternoon.  I tried to take a picture for you, but it's so sparkly that my Nikon was defeated.  You'll just have to use your imaginations. This is so not me...but then, again, it's so me.