Music Monday: Uninvited, on Repeat

 All right, Lark, let's get your story written, okay? 😉 (Lyrics below)

Like anyone would beI am flattered by your fascination with meLike any hot-blooded womanI have simply wanted an object to crave
But you, you're not allowedYou're uninvitedAn unfortunate slight
Must be strangely excitingTo watch the stoic squirmMust be somewhat hearteningTo watch shepherd meet shepherd
But you, you're not allowedYou're uninvitedAn unfortunate slight
Like any uncharted territoryI must seem greatly intriguingYou speak of my love likeYou have experienced love like mine before
But this is not allowedYou're uninvitedAn unfortunate slight
I don't think you unworthyBut I need a moment to deliberate

Music Monday: Solid Flashback

 Y'all...I overheard this coming from my husband's phone the other day and I had to stop where I was and have a dance break. This song came out while my family was in the UK for 6 weeks back in 1995 and this band was all over the place. You couldn't go anywhere without seeing that big hat with horns, and while none of those songs remain in the Old Lady Memory Bank, one song released the next year did. I dare you to listen and not have your own dance break. It seemed like what I needed after Friday's solemn remembrance...hope can be found in terrible dance moves in one's kitchen. 

Even though I was back from my first expat experience by the time this song was released, something about it still makes me desperately homesick for my other home. Enjoy.

25 Years, Gone in a blink...

Polly Anna Herself, on location in NYC, 1997.

25 years ago, I was working for the SC Department of Mental Health. On that particular day in September, I was on my drive down to a day in the psych hospital. We had a juvenile inpatient who needed an interpreter.

I was supposed to be there at 9am so I was close by in the car, listening to NPR, when the first plane hit. I sat in the car in the parking lot until the absolute last minute that I had to go in, and then went straight to the unit to do the morning programing with the patient.

I recount this story every year because I wish I could have had the lack of awareness of what was going on that my patient had. The first thing I was asked upon arriving on the unit was why the staff was playing the same part of a movie over and over on the telly. I remember that same sense of optimism, in my case because I am the eternal Polly Anna (or used to be, pre-Eugene), and remember thinking that it had to be an accident. A terrible, large scale accident, but an accident just the same.

The staff sat the patient down and told them what was going on, in excruciating detail, because they were chronologically a teenager with the processing level of a smaller child. The staff were very kind and careful during that interaction, which ended with some typical questions: Is my mom all right? Are they going to fly planes into my mom's house? Heartbreaking but important.

When people talk about the lack of innocence that followed 9/11, that's what I think of. So many of us were caught off guard in the worst way possible that day. I think that is an important lesson to remember now, while we are caught in the grips of leadership that want to take us back to the pre 9/11 USA, when we believed that we were safe because our leaders told us so...when we believed the hype about being the greatest country in the world. Remember the shock that you felt, even if you didn't have anyone directly in harm's way that morning*. Remember it and use the clear vision we all had afterward to critically listen to all the noise coming from politicians and heads of state.

Do not ever let yourself be so complacent that you accept something without questioning again...or we will be right back where we were, 25 years ago. Don't misunderstand...the togetherness and the increased community that we saw in the immediate days afterward was a good thing, and if we could all reach out to each other that way again, regardless of the contrived ideas that we think divide us, our country would be stronger and, I think, safer.

Hug those you love today, y'all. If there was any lesson to be learned from 9/11/2001, it is that we aren't promised tomorrow and we need to act accordingly, to all, but especially to the least of these.

*I may have known someone that was there that day. When I worked at UGA I met a Scottish guy in the welcome to your new job orientation nonsense named Marcus. I cannot remember his last name to save my life, but he was once working as a bartender in London and told me all the patrons called him Angus because of his accent. I know that he was living in New York in 2001 and I THINK he was working in the Wall Street area. I think of him every year, showing up to one of the orientation events in a kilt that looked suspiciously like a Campbell tartan to me, and talking about the fact that my family are McDonalds. 

 

Music Monday: SUN of a Son...

Here's something I think you should either already know about me, or you can totally see this as the truth: I'm a gamer. (Hello, World of Arcstone anyone?) Up until a few years ago, my time was focused on either MMORPGs or those little games that become a time sink in one's smartphone. Recently, though, I got to live out a bucket list item that I've had since elementary school: I got to play D&D.

I remember clearly finding some guys playing D&D and asking to play in early middle school. They rolled me a character and then said she fell down into a hole, then asked what I was going to do. I frantically looked at the sheets of paper on the table (I don't even remember what class or race she was) and as I was trying to figure out what to say one of them told me that another rock had closed over the hole and my poor little character was dead.

Boys. I tell ya. 

Anyway, I started playing in my grown up group with a wood elf druid called Lyrei, Rei for short. She is moody and dark, her dad stepped out on her mom, and she has a magical wolfhound that follows her around that's called Aoife. I'd always played the magical casting types that stay out of the melee and hurl lightning bolts and fire from a distance, you see. I love Rei, don't get me wrong...I even added a ranger subclass for her so that she can wield a bow and do cool...ranger stuff. Our DM calls her the group's little Rei of Sunshine but I think that's about 85% sarcasm.

For a one shot that came next, I tried a wood elf rogue named Róisín, but low level rogues aren't much fun really AND people at the table kept calling her Raisin. No more Irish names for my characters, that's for sure. So when we decided to do a one shot with pirates, I went in a completely new direction and tried an artificer gnome who was once in the navy and likes to blow things to bits. Her name is Regretta Y'metme and she is SO MUCH FUN. No one makes fun of her name and everyone begs her to keep her mouth shut in public because she likes to talk about NOTHING just as much as I do...which means she could reveal secrets and not realise it for several paragraphs in her diatribe. She also loves her ship...like more than most people, loves the sea air hitting her face from the crow's nest, and has a clockwork raven called Sprocket that can carry messages and swears occasionally a lot.

What's not to love?

So the music for today is a long time favorite that I usually ignore when it comes on the playlist (along with a few other by Jimmy Buffett because it reminds me of some very awful times and people from a specific time in my past...I'm looking at a Pirate that is Looking at 40, specifically, but one of my sorority jerseys had SOASOAS on the back). But this time, I heard it on the way back from our last session, and found that I'm learning new things about my little artificer that will make her even more fun to play AND potentially write about. 

I told you, she's got a lot to say.

Enjoy the video...it has lyrics on the screen and the background images are also pretty important to my little Sun of a Son of a Sailor and her crew on the Narwhal. 🏴‍☠️