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This is a big day. It is a Teddy day. It is "walk on my own" day, outside the house. It is book club day, and it is the eve of getting my hair cut after three months. And while I am at it, I am going to the Bobbi Brown counter
The picture shows Michael holding Teddy for the first time.
Today I again have been reading Shelby Steele's White Guilt. He writes in his book and elsewhere that he was a product of a mixed marriage, his father, black, of poverty, did not go past third grade. His Mother, white, came from a family of some wealth and had a graduate degree. He said his father was the more intellectual of the two, at least he read more books. In any case, it was his advantage to really not have any deep racial feelings. He always judged people as people.
In college he got his identity and he became a black militant, and was liberal for many years. But he says it was very schizophrenic. and eventually he could not live in that world. He could not be liberal and have a deep moral conviction at the same time. He has now become a conservative and it is easier. In this book he suggests that starting in the sixties, with the baby boomers,the civil rights movement was the crack in the wall of white moral authority. When that civil rights movement worked out so well, we started rebelling against lots: church, sex, government. That was how one got an identity. We let this happen because we somehow felt guilty for slavery and our guilt continued right on because we did not want something so awful as slavery to happen again. Another example would be our guilt over how we treated the Indians, and now we can not give them enough.
I happened to hear him again on the radio, but it was at the end of the discussion. But I think what I heard him say, is that one needs to speak up. Don't ignore what is wrong and important. For example, speak up that blacks have to take responsibility for themselves. Steele opposes letting a woman or a black gain a position with less than achievement. Achievement is the old way and the way our culture excelled.
I personally dislike confrontation. For the most part I let comments, which I think are incorrect, slide. I am too afraid. But not always. Sometimes I just blurt things out, and then I feel either guilty that I have hurt the other person's feelings, or stupid when someone wishes to actually engage me in the opposite position. Then I can not make my tongue speak rationally. This is all very hard. But I am feeling that it is very important that people do speak up, not necessarily because what I say is so persuasive, but because it does make a mark between two ideas. So much has changed since the Civil Rights movement, and I do not think it is working out all that well. So speak up, at the very least, it can't hurt to have more than one view point. And give me strength that I will do the same.
This is a scene driving north along the road to Mt. Vernon from our house in Island County. It is what is known as the Skagit Valley, and it near the tulips farms. If you enlarge this picture, you will see large boxes, in a cucumber field. What you can not see very well here, are hundreds of migrant workers who have been here, bending over, in 80 degree weather, on Sunday. The contents of the wooden boxes are dumped into very large trucks, which take the cukes to the local processing plant.
This winter, when you are eating a hamburger in a restaurant, and there is a spear of pickle on the plate, remember that some worker bent over and picked that cucumber for you, and give thanks.
This is a picture of Mary-Katherine on her wedding day, 15 years ago. The gentlemen are her uncle and her grandfather. As I write, she is in Rio,avec husband, on her own anniversary party. Down at the Copa Cabana. Cha-Cha-Cha.
And a grand wedding it was. 
Our family measures weddings by our weddings. (It is okay if you measure weddings by your weddings.) But ours were " tens".
Before I comment further, I chose this lower photo over others because the aura is over my head. I did not want this to go unnoticed.
What is a ten? For me, there is the importance of a pretense at some sort of religion if not the real deal. Dewey eyes and beautiful gowns alone don't make it. A pretty dress is nice, but that is not the essence. My preference is for a little formal ceremony to deviate from the daily, making it very special. I like when the community wants to uphold the marriage with the couple. We had that.
The place alone does not make it either. But it helps. You are looking at the picture and thinking, "this reception was taking place in a cow pasture." You would be right. But we liked it that way.
Something awful has to happen to balance the day. In this case my father asked a woman why she was so fat. That was bad.
Someone has to make a fool of himself by feeling up some one else's wife. Bad, bad, bad, but to be expected. But I hate it when some man pees in the trees.
The weather should be good, or strikingly bad. It was the best day of the summer. The food should be simple,but good. The caterers grilled legs of lamb, and the rest must have been okay as I don't remember it one way or another. However, the cake melted. But it made for an endearing imperfection.
Multi-generational guests keep the wedding being a continuum and a feast of life, and not just a party. The old people can stand around saying, I remember her at three. When the bride, years later, has forgotten some of her friends, she can remember Mr. So and So attended. This is important.
I like the look on the bride's face. And Mary-Katherine was deliriously happy. Ditto her sisters at their weddings.
After, I like crawling in bed with my husband, unbelievably. . . times square. . . exhausted, but knowing a job well done. That's what makes a ten for me.
You notice that there is no mention of the grooms here, We love, love, love the grooms. Thank you for making this all possible. However, if you have girls, you know the wedding is about the bride.
This is a picture of Margaret which got left off my album, but I like a lot. It is about 15 minutes after birth of Teddy. The picture should have gone with birthing then and now, but I could not work the attachment feature.
In this picture you see a camera cell phone, and wall paper border trim on the walls. These did not exist in 1964. Walls, then, were the famous hospital green which went with institutional tan. These days it is so easy to crop picture and to make the picture, a better picture. However, I have recently discovered, while going through old photos, that properly cropped, would leave a lot of history out of the picture. Going through my old family photos, which were never cropped, there is a lot of information about my family home and furnishings, which I find fascinating. Things like what my Mother planted in the garden. How things grew over the years. Yes, I kind of remember that chair. And all those totally forgettable car pictures. . . they are sort of cool. So save some of those ratty pictures, that you wonder why you took. You will know that you had a scrolled border in your room at your baby's birth. Grown up, the baby will know that his aunt was there.
Today is off to see baby Teddy. Be back Saturday
Aside from the divorce, (just kidding!) there is a high cost to broken ankles.
I purposely do not look into my lower back yard. Last year this yard that was filled with rugosa roses, lavender and grasses, with splashes of rudbekia, and sedum, has been claimed by bindweed. Cost of returning it to its former self: $500-$2000.
When using a wheel chair, it takes time to be good at angles. I have to say that while I became nimble, I did not always have the angles right, and I ran against, and either scraped, or marked the walls. The hallway walls sport scrape marks about nine inches off the floor. This is to say nothing of the dinged door frames. To have it professionally repaired probably costs $4000, as I want to upgrade the paint.
While we are at it, we might as well repair the hardwood floors; last year I left the water running in the kitchen sink, with the plug in, while I made some telephone calls. Maybe $2000.
One roll-about, which I did not use much, as it hurt my back. That was $125. And add on the high rise toilet seat.
One pair of walkie talkies which we never used. We thought we needed them for me to reach Michael downstairs and then remembered we had telephones. That was $50.00
Here was a real savings. I did not get my $70.00 haircut, which somehow always costs more.
Five hundred dollars for the Ford hatch repair, because Michael had to cart my rummage to the church, and he crammed everything in which sprung the door. Maybe this is a separate issue.
Eighteen dollars a pound for wild salmon because Michael, who was doing the meat shopping, did not know that was too high a price.
Oh, it is all my fault. While I am at it, I will take responsibility for the Mariners trading Jamie Moyer.
Birthing musings. 
The first thing you notice, there are no white caps on the nurses. Caps that showed the world from where the nurse graduated. Caps folded different ways, Different stripes. University of California Medical School had mortar boards. Those must have been a ----- to launder. Stanford had a big red "S"with a tree through the S. Now, there is no white anywhere in the labor area except the sheets.
Second, there are no screaming women. Today, there is a thing called a spinal. Put that needle in, and there you have it! When I had my first baby, I think they gave me phenobarbital, and hoped I would forget what was happening to me. Then you prayed that you would get the gas mask. Whatever they gave me, they assured me that I would not remember a thing. But it, in no way shape, or form, eliminated the pain.
The doctor who did the delivery of Teddy said that nearly 50 percent of babies were being delivered by C section. In many cases the doctors do not want to take the risk of something going wrong with the vaginal delivery. No baby getting stuck in the canal, and then a Cesarean. Time is money. God knows, we should do anything to keep the few obstetricians that exist, happy. If you could have seen the joyous environment of the room,including Meredith, (see photos in album),before and after,why would anyone have a baby vaginally?
When I was having babies, you would go to the labor room, and the nurses, after they shaved you, and gave you an enema, didn't really hang around. I am in the bed, by myself, in the room, and I was very frightened that the nurse would never come back. None of this coddling of one nurse to each patient. No, one nurse could, and usually did, have many patients. Suffering was de rigor. What did they think this Eve and the snake stuff, was all about? That was actually brought up to me, as I labored. There were always the woman screamers. I prayed that I would not scream. If I did , it was not loud, but I swore with words that I did not know existed.
You could still smoke in those days, and I set the bed on fire, because I fell asleep smoking. My sleeping husband had to put the fire out.
Meredith was in and out in the delivery room in less than 45 minutes. She came back nearly as composed as when she went in. I could not figure out how it was so fast. Silly me, they now staple you together. Less than 64 hours latter, they take the staples out, and put on butterfly bandages. In another decade, they will likely glue you together and that will only take 3 minutes.
My first two deliveries, I did not have many guests. The first delivery I did not have any friends, as I had just moved to a new town. The second delivery visitors were not allowed. Not only did fathers not go in the delivery room, but afterward only the father and the maternal grandmother were allowed in the room. My husband left town with Mary Katherine. Neither of us had a mother around. Fortunately for me, I was smart enough to lie about a surrogate mother. But it was lonely.
What a festive occasion after Teddy's birth! After the delivery, there were 10 members of the family. Meredith looked like she, perhaps, had run three miles,fit. It reminded me of a birth in Mexico City without the booze and the salami. Mexicans partied down until at least eleven.