There Is No Sex In Scouting

I've been thinking this one through for days, weeks, even, so my writing it on the day after the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act is purely coincidental.  Happily coincidental, but purely so.

A few weeks or whatever ago, I was walking the dogs back up the hill while perusing the headlines of the local paper (our house is at the top of a hill; our mailbox at the bottom).  A little blurb in the upper right hand corner of the front page read something like, "Scouts Allow Gays."  Well, hooray, I thought.  Finally a bit of common sense.  Then, when I got inside, I opened the paper and read the article, which said not that the Boy Scouts of America were allowing gay troop leaders, but that they were allowing gay scouts.  And I was all, huh?

It never occurred to me that the BSA would have concerned themselves for so much as a single moment about the sexual orientation of their scouts.  I thought it was bad enough they were worried about the orientation of their scout leaders: it seemed to buy into the crazy belief that gay equaled pedophile, which for the life of me I've never understood.  But this--picture a little kindergartner in Cub Scouts, making a car for the Pinewood Derby.  Going camping in a tent.  Having a blast with his friends.  Now picture the same child at age 8-10-12--whatever--suddenly understanding that he doesn't feel about girls the same way his friends do.  At this point the kid has two choices: 1) hide the fact that he's gay, and feel ashamed; 2) tell people, and get kicked out of scouting.  Hello? 

I was a Girl Scout for nine years and we never had this sort of insanity.  I've checked, and the Girl Scouts have never had a rule about any scout or leader's sexuality, because there's no sex in scouting.  We were too young for it, and also, too busy.  We were camping and learning how to start fires and riding horses (oh, how I loved Girl Scouts!) and doing crafts and singing Christmas carols for creepy old people in nursing homes.  I had a very active scout troop in middle school.  It's quite possible some of my fellow scouts or some of the leaders were lesbians.  I'd never know.  (I can't remember the names or faces of any of our assistant leaders, sorry.  Our main leader was Mrs. Schneider.  I didn't love her--she wasn't very approachable--but I really liked how often she took us camping.)  Scouting was about scouting.

Right now I'm troop leader of a pony club--pony club, like scouts, is an international youth organization with lots and lots of rules.  None of them concern sexuality.  Why not?  Because there's no sex in pony club.  We don't have time for that.  I just got back from a rally in which my team finished first in horse management, no small feat.  They worked hard all day, every day, from the barns opening at 6 am til closing at 6 or 7 pm, at which time we'd eat, shower, and fall exhausted into sleep.  In fact, the only time I've ever had the tiniest bit of trouble regarding sex and pony club was on a drive to a rally when one of our college-age heterosexual members decided to discuss her boyfriend.  No one wanted to hear about it, so she shut up.

So, c'mon, Boy Scouts, give it a rest.  Quit looking like fear-mongering bigots.  Teach some kids how to start a fire.  Make them hike uphill a couple miles, pitch their own tents, cook their own meals.  Nobody has to worry about sex.  They'll all be too tired for that.

Farewell, Madiba. Godspeed.

I climb into the front seat of a minivan in Port Elizabeth, South Africa.  The young black man--Xhosa, he tells us--who will be our guide for the day introduces himself with a flourish.  "I," he says, "am Nelson.  Not the great man.  But it is true I am named for the great man--" and now his voice rises to a shout, and he pounds the roof of the minivan with one fist--"Nelson Rolihlahla Madiba Mandela!  Viva, tata, viva!"  Thoroughout the day, while he takes us on a tour of Port Elizabeth, its outlying townships, and the shantytowns that have sprung up in the spaces in between the townships, he evokes Mandela's name frequently.  Always the same:  the shout, the pounding.  "Nelson Rolihlahla Madiba Mandela!  Viva, tata, viva!"  He takes us to the school where Mandela voted for the first time, for himself as President, in 1994.  It's January, 2009: a table set up in the parking lot is registering voters for the new upcoming elections. 

I am standing in what was the prison cafeteria on Robben Island.  A large dignified black man, a former inmate turned tour guide, shows us the words written on two decaying wooden boards: the daily food allotments for "Bantus" versus "Other Colored."  Though Robben Island only held non-white political prisoners, even there aparthied divided them.  The guide points out that "Bantus" were giving mealie pap, a sort of grits, instead of bread.  "Your Christian prayer says give us this day our daily bread," he says, "But for seventeen years, the man who became president of our country was not given bread."  My husband leans forward.  "He doesn't want our pity," he says, referring to the guide. "No," I agree, "he wants our witness."

The cell at Robben Island is memorable for what it doesn't contain:   a bed. (Three woven mats, two coarse blankets).  Window glass.  (Only bars; the wind, icy in winter, sweeps through.)  A toilet.  (Small lidded bucket in the corner).  A pillow.  (Nothing.)  It's tiny.  Black inmates wore short pants, no underwear; colored inmates wore long pants and underwear.   They could get one heavily censored letter every six months.  No visitors for years.  Cape Town shimmering on the Northern horizon, shielded by Table Mountain.  So close.  Twenty-seven years away.

In the gift shop at our safari camp, a white South African woman in her mid-50s comes in to sell a line of products to the young black store manager.  I am looking at the store's selection of books, and I pick out one on Mandela.  (I'm already partially through his biography, Long Walk to Freedom, which I bought in Knysna.)  Bringing it to the cash register, I see the two dissimilar women talking together, and I ask, "So, what do most South Africans think of Nelson Mandela?"  They turn to me with identical expressions that clearly indicate they didn't know even white Americans came this stupid.  "He's, he's, a hero," stammers the black woman, while the white woman silently nods.

I'm in a cave near Oosthuizen.  Our guide has taken us into the farthest room, where lights illuminate the stalactites and stalagmites so that they look like an African landscape.  Without preamble, she begins to sing in a clear, beautiful voice.  The words are Xhosa.  "That," she says, when she is finished, "is our National Anthem."  She's not quite right: it's the first verse of the anthem, which features five of South Africa's twelve official languages, and combines aspects of both the apartheid-era Afrikkaner anthem and a popular apartheid protest song.

The Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg is as bleak as one would expect.  Until you turn the final corner.  The last room is nothing but video screens mounted on the walls, and each screen showing, over and over, the sprawling winding enormously long lines of black South Africans voting for the first time.  Over and over--thousands, hundreds of thousands of people.  A miracle.  The knot in the pit of my stomach unclenches; before I am aware, tears start down my cheeks.

He came out of hell free from anger or despair.  Godspeed, Tata.  Go in Peace.

Happy (nappy) Birthday!

Yesterday was my actual birthday.  I say it that way because my husband persisted in calling it my "fake" birthday, which it was not.  (He's in England golfing and doesn't want to feel guilty.  He phoned me twice and sent flowers, he's got nothing to be guilty about.)  Like the Queen, I am celebrating my Official Birthday on a day unrelated to the anniversary of the actual event.  My Official Birthday is Friday.  My actual birthday was yesterday.

For the record, I am now 46.  I hope this means I'm middle-aged, because I'd like to see the far side of 90 if for no other reason than to admire the view.

One of the things I really LOVE about Facebook is that it tells you whenever one of your friends has a birthday.  Today is my husband's cousin's wife's birthday; I'd never know that without Facebook.  (Happy Birthday, Sarah!)  Tomorrow is my friend Terry's birthday.  She's older than me!  Happy Birthday, Terry!
And, in the true spirit of Facebook love, I got over 70 birthday wishes on my page.  Which makes a girl feel loved.

One of my friends wrote, "Happy wine--I mean, birthday!"  Another wrote, "Nappy Birthday!"  I had to think about that one for a moment to realize it was a typo and not a reflection on my attitude or my hair, but, as a matter of fact, I had a very nappy birthday indeed.

See, my daughter and I got back Sunday night from a long week in Lexington, Kentucky.  After the Monday I already blogged about, in which I did an astonishing amount of work, I woke up Tuesday and did even more.  Early morning chores, a board meeting for Faith in Action, and then hitting the road with two young women, three horses, and, because of the steadily falling rain, no hay.  We preordered hay from the Kentucky Horse Park, where we were headed, by phone.  By late afternoon we'd reached my trainer Betty's place, had some lessons, cleaned off the horses, loaded back up--7 pm now, we got to the horse park to find 1) no shavings and 2) no hay.   We scrambled around and borrowed hay from some nice folks from Memphis, and then we flat-out stole shavings from the company who'd been supposed to leave them in our stalls.  (In the morning, I confessed to the crime.  They didn't blame me.  The KHP stall floors are asphalt.  You can't leave horses unbedded on that.)  Then we went to dinner--crusty with dried sweat, reeking of horse, maniacally hungry but nearly too tired to eat.

Wash, repeat.  The next two days we took lessons at Betty's place and made ourselves useful around the park.  I hitched a flatbed trailer full of bins of artificial flowers to my truck and we drove around decorating the cross-country jumps for five different courses.  The girls were surprisingly artistic.  We got sunburned and fell asleep quickly.  On Thursday night the other two members of their event team arrived, and on Friday morning the pony club rally began, which meant that the girls and their horses and gear were now sequestered away from me.  I took my mare out for a gallop on the farthest-away Rolex cross country field, and she mellowed into the happiest horse in the world, licking her lips and resting her forehead gently on my chest.  I love you, Mom. 

Saturday and Sunday we all competed all day.  My mare was fabulous except that her dressage canter still sucks--nothing but time and work will fix that.  My daughter's little horse was fantastic; she qualified for the East Coast Pony Club Championships, which had been a big goal.  One of her teammates also qualified for championships; another had her horse come up lame, which sucked.  We drove hard the five hours home and unloaded just as twilight was darkening into night.  We were very, very tired.

But.  I'd been reading the most fantastic novel.  (I'm reviewing it, so I can't tell you the name--it's not officially published until September.)  I'd been reading it in bits each night before I fell asleep, and I'd been really frustrated that I hadn't finished it yet.  So I showered, poured some wine, got comfy on the couch with the book in my hand.

I woke at 3 am, lights still on, book unfinished.  Damn.  Turned out the lights. At 5am decided to stumble upstairs to my own bed.  At 6 am, my nose started running like a spring-fed stream.  I got up to blow it, took a roll of toilet paper back to bed with me, and then got up and took an antihistamine.  Fell back asleep.

At 7 am, the alarm clock went off.  It must have been going off every morning while we were gone.  I slammed my hand onto the switch and muttered bad words.

At 8 am, my husband called to wish me Happy Fake Birthday.  We had a lovely chat.  I also talked to my son.  Then I stared at the clock for a few minutes and realized I needed to pick the dogs up before 9 am anyway, to avoid getting stuck with another day's board.  So I did that.  I had some breakfast and looked online at all my birthday wishes, and I was so, so tired.

So I laid back down on the couch, finished my book (STUPENDOUS), took a nap.  Ate some lunch, took a nap.  Received flowers from my husband.  Took care of all animals, took a nap.  Had a very good friend over for a glass of wine--felt embarrassed that I had no cheese to serve her, but she brought a log of chevre with her as a birthday gift--it was awesome.  Ate some on crackers with the wine and then later folded some into the creamy rich garlic sauce I made to go over ravoli from the fridge.  Cuddled with my daughter on the couch.  We ate the last of the Girl Scout cookies while I worked my way through a week's worth of magazines and catalogs and she watched endless reruns of the Big Bang Theory. 

Very happy.  Very nappy.  Happy birthday to me.


PS.  Update on Marian Randall:  She continues to slowly improve; she now can track people with her eyes and has added nods and facial expressions to her repertoire of responses.  Her spinal fracture looks as though it can heal without surgery.  She will probably have a plate put it beneath her left rib cage to support the shattered bones: when they tried to take her off the ventilator last week, the pain from these breaks was too much for her.  She can breathe on her own, but right now it's agonizing.  She will remain in critical care for some time.  Please continue to pray.

all is (reasonably) well

Someone asked me to post an update on Marian Randall.  I'm happy to, but I'm away from my computer and therefore typing on my phone so I'll be brief.  She has had two surgeries, one to stabilize her left femur, right knee and right foot, and one to work on her left elbow.  They hope to take her off the vent tomorrow.  She'll be in critical condition for several weeks no matter what, and the big danger is infection. She is responding to her family. No visitors and no flowers for now, just prayers.

Just another typical day...

Today was one of those days when I was really afraid I'd end up with prune boobs.

You know how, when you've been in the bath too long, your fingers turn into prunes?  Today I was  constantly and thoroughly awash with sweat; my bra absorbed liquid until the girls were sitting in their own private little bath.  Fortunately I managed to escape prune boobs, but I have a feeling it won't be for long.

After the fantabulous end to the fabulous pony club camp, in which several of our members distinguished themselves by passing difficult riding and horse care examinations with flying colors, and the rest of the group distinguished themselves by their willingness to do everything possible to help those being examined, I was beat.  My daughter was beat.  We escaped with my darling husband to our house in the North Carolina husbands, where we did as little as possible for 2 and a half days.  We played cards, read, slept, and ate.  I thought about taking a yoga class but had a massage instead.

It was a very deliberate sort of nothingness, because we knew that today, and all the days for the next week, are going to be crammed full of all sorts of things.  Today we emptied the horse trailer tack room, reorganized it, carted a vanload of stuff to the house, washed all that, washed about six other loads of laundry, folded it, packed for a horse trial/rally and a few days with our trainer Betty, printed out a thousand forms needed for the rally, went to a business meeting. went to Wal-Mart, went to the grocery, paid bills, balanced the checkbook, remembered to order more hay, met the darling husband for lunch, rode the horse, cleaned the tack, re-packed the trailer tack room including finding a way to get my new scooter inside, portioned out all the feed for 2 horses for 6 days the labor-intensive Pony Club Way, and got all the rally kits from the camp barn into the trailer.  Then I hung out with my son for the 90 minutes between when he came home from one vacation and left with my husband for another [during that time he did a load of laundry and repacked his bags, I admired videos of his golf swing, and he went online to chose his college classes for freshman year].  Took son and daughter out for a quick burrito, meeting husband, kissing him goodbye, transferring son's gear to his car.  Took out some trash.  Did dishes.  Walked the dogs.  Picked raspberries.  Took a shower (no prune boobs!).  And now, believe it or not, I'm making raspberry jam.  (I'm cheating a little and putting it up in Tupperware.)

And drinking a glass of wine.  A big one.

Quick Update on Marian Randall

Dear friends,

Thank you.  Yesterday was the highest single-day number of views of my blog, ever.  I appreciate your concern over Marian Randall, and figured I owed you an update.

For the severity of her injuries, she's doing very well.  We've learned that she actually suffered a heart attack while driving on the interstate; her car crossed the grass median and hit a semi truck straight on.  Fortunately, the semi driver, though unable to avoid the collision, got his rig stopped, thus greatly lessening the force of the crash.  He was minorly injured.

Marian's bone fractures are even more extensive than initially thought, and it's clear she will need multiple surgeries as soon as she can stand them.  For now, her blood pressure and heart rate have stabilized, her kidneys are still functioning (massive protein leaks from injured muscle tissue can derail the kidneys), and, best of all, while she was briefly under less sedation than usual she was able to wiggle her toes on command.  (I sat next to a neurologist at a dinner last night; she assured me that that was really a good sign.)

It's funny, I can only think of her as "Marian" now, when I've never once called her that in all the years--decades--I've known her.  I suppose praying for her so continually creates that kind of intimacy.  Her name runs through my head all hours of the day.  Marian.  Marian.  Marian.  Meanwhile Sarah is home from Haiti and at her mother's side.  All is as well as it can be.

Dear Friends, Please Read This

I've been amazed that anyone reads this blog at all, but apparently quite a few of you do.  Today I have an unusual request.  The mother of one of my best friends was injured in a head-on collision with a semi on I-69 near Fort Wayne last night.  She's in Parkview North hospital with a skull fracture, a C-7 spinal fracture, a fractured femur, and multiple fractures to her left arm and chest.  She's in critical condition but survived the night, and they hope to have her stable enough to take her into surgery today.

I'm asking that you pray for her.  If you don't pray, send kind secular thoughts, or good karma, or whatever you've got.  I'm not picky.  She's 76 years old and this is the sort of situation that could go either way.  I've seen prayer work wonders before.  It's also about the only thing I can do to help right now.

If you grew up in Fort Wayne with me, you might know her.  Marian Randall.  She taught at Canterbury School for years.  Her husband Cory is an Episcopalian priest; he pastored a church in Fort Wayne.  Sarah and Liz graduated from Bishop Dwenger.  (The youngest daughter, Bekah, went to high school in California while the Randalls briefly lived there.)  Sarah's flying back from Haiti tonight and the rest of the family is already in Fort Wayne.

Please pass this along however you can.

Marian Randall.
Marian Randall.
Marian Randall.

Hang in there.