The Eyes of the Buddha Holiday Shopping Guide – UPDATED

Buddha’s eyes are shown to remind us to have compassion towards all living creatures. Hither and Yon

Look around, these are hard times.  People who never in a million years thought they would be out of a job, are looking for work. Those lucky enough to have a job are still reeling after a year of gas prices that can best be described as obscene.  Now winter is upon us making it even harder for families to make ends meet.  To top it off, it is the holidays.

How can we celebrate this season, however we celebrate it, in the midst of all this suffering?

The answer is – we celebrate mindfully – with open eyes and an open heart.

First we look, without turning away, at what our neighbors and communities are experiencing – then we do something within our celebrations, however small, to make a difference.

How to share your celebration

Shop mindfully – support those merchants and artists who give back to the local and global community.

Give your shopping dollar twice the impact – buy from merchants who share the wealth and resources this holiday season. Closest to my heart is Cleveland Heights merchant City Buddha (the first presents my youngest son gave me were from City Buddha’s Ohio City Store – one particularly lean year he gave me a Buddha Sticker with an offer of a free meal on the reverse side – I never redeemed it) who is sponsoring a month long food drive. Bring a nonperishable food item and not only will you get a 5% discount on your purchase, City Buddha will deliver the food and match that 5% with a cash donation to the Cleveland Foodbank.  Get the details here – City Buddha’s Buddha’s Bowl Food Drive

Think outside the gift box with certificate for services. You may not realize how big an impact you can make with a certificate for a hair cut, beauty services or massage and healing to someone in need.   More importantly, you probably don’t realize how much the service providers give, sometimes anonymously, to the community. You know they are top on your list when you need a donation for your silent auctions and raffles.  You can thank them, and make sure they will be there the next time you need them, by buying gift certificates.   It’s time to give back.

My recommendations:

Lorna Richman, craniosacral therapist, licensed massage therapist and Reiki master.  Lorna is a gifted healer, craniosacral therapist and teacher. You can make an appointment with Lorna by calling 216 371 2321. Be sure to check out her free classes this January at the Coventry library.

Neal Szpatura, Tarot Reader, Shamanic Practitioner and  writer.  Neal is more than a psychic, he is an intuitive life coach, a law of attraction teacher and all round mensch. You can contact Neal at 216 371 3433 or by email to nealdragon @ aol.com. Check out his website – Shamanspath (Internet Explorer only) and his Shamanspath’s blog (be sure to sign up for his daily inspirational email). For a special holiday treat listen to Neal’s original radio play “Alexandra, the Christmas Imp” on WKSU.

Sarva Natural Soaps are exquisite works of practical art created by local artisan Michelle Gilbert.  Made in small quantities with the highest quality ingredients  everyone on your holiday list will feel blessed by these treasures – I know I do.

Cut Hair Studio – a friendly and hip neighborhood shop offering quality service with kindness.  An hour spent at Cut will make you look good and feel good.

For the readers on your list, choose local writer and activist Christopher Barzak’s new novel – The Love We Share Without Knowing. Double your local impact by buying it (and his first novel – One For Sorrow) at Jospeh Beth Booksellers.

Thanks to Web 2.0 sometimes the community that sustains us is global. I have been blessed with kindness from Ophelia Chong over this past very difficult year. She is an artist whose visual and written work is stunning and a reflection of her magnificent heart.  You can see more of Ophelia’s work on Flickr.

Additional suggestions:

Bazaar Bizarre – Indie crafts from local artisans

Buy DIY for the holidays and support local artists! Bazaar Bizarre, Cleveland’s fabulous original indie craft show takes place Saturday December 13th from noon to 9:00 p.m., and Sunday December 14th from noon to 6:00 p.m. You may remember the building complex (former home of 1300 Gallery) from the first Cleveland BazBiz shows, but the entrance is in a different location this year: 78th Street Studios: 1300 W. 78th St to 1305 W. 80th St., North parking lot, North entrance — accessible from W. 78th OR W 80th St.

Cool Cleveland publishes a northeast Ohio holiday shopping guide  – check it out here before you head to the big box stores.

Thank you to Jill Finlayson from Social Edge, a program of  the Skoll Foundation, for dropping by and sharing another unique gift guide – the Holiday Gift Guide for Social Entrepreneurs 2008.  From the gift of Transparency to the gift of Social Return on Investment, Jill offers the perfect wish list for all social entrepreurs. Whether you are in the nonprofit arena or engaged in change through advocacy in the for profit world, Social Edge should be in your RSS feed.

First Annual Cleveland to Youngstown “How the Drag Queen Stole Christmas” Road Trip

Oh you know you know you want to go!

SPECIAL MIDNIGHT SHOW ADDED SATURDAY DECEMBER 13th

From Brooke Slanina:

the Oakland has added a midnight show to this Saturday, Decem,ber 13, due to extreme demand for tickets. We sold out all three shows last Thursday, which is unprecendented in recent Oakland history. Due to such high demand, we’ve extended our run for one more very special midnight show.

Call for reservations for the new show – and if you are lucky enough to get them arrive on time. Here is the low down on the up and up.

Start you holiday season off with a well appointed bang at the Youngstown’s Oakland Center for the Arts.

How the Drag Queen Stole Christmas

Youngstown, OH – The Oakland Center for the Arts, 220 W. Boardman Street, will host their 3rd Annual Holiday Fundraiser, How the Drag Queen Stole Christmas, on December 5, 6, and 13. All performances begin at 8 pm with a wine and cheese reception preceding each show at 7 pm.

A twisted retelling of a mixture of many beloved holiday stories, How The Drag Queen Stole Christmas follows Starrlet O’Hara as she discovers the true meaning of Christmas. Robert Dennick Joki writes, directs, and stars in the production. Cast includes Christopher Barzak, Kage Coven, Heidi Davis, Maxine Factor, Beth Farrow, Joyce Jones, Nikita Jones, Jennifer Kuczek, Rick Morrow, Ric Panning, Kerri Rickard, Murad G. Shorrab, Suzanne Shorrab, Brooke Slanina and BJ Wilkes.

The traditional Fabulous Chinese Auction will return with tickets available for purchase every night up to December 13, when the final drawing will be held after the show. Persons interested in making a donation to the Chinese Auction should contact Brooke Slanina at 330.718.5515

Patrons may also drop off gently used coats, which will be cleaned courtesy of LaFrance Cleaners and distributed to families in need throughout the Valley courtesy of Help Hotline’s Button Up Program. This is the second year How the Drag Queen Stole Christmas and the Oakland will be participating in the event.

Patrick Hyland will be the featured Star Gallery artist. A Youngstown-based photographer, Hyland is renowned for his Giclee prints of local nature scenes, which will be available for purchase.

Tickets are $15.00 with all proceeds benefiting the Oakland Center for the Arts. No discounts or complimentary tickets will be honored for this event as it is a fundraiser. Reservations are strongly encouraged and may be placed by leaving a message at the Oakland Reservation line, 330.746.0404. Any reserved tickets not claimed by 8:00 showtime will be released to the public. For more information, go to www.oaklandcenter.com or myspace.com/oaklandcenter.

Mommywantsvodka Birthday Lollapalooza!!!

Today is Aunt Becky’s Birthday and we are all putting on our Sunday best to throw her a fabulous celebration!

Join the party!

Happy Birthday!

Son No. 2 sends his birthday shout out to Aunt Becky!

Father’s Day

Tim Russert’s sudden death so near to Father’s Day got me thinking about the role fathers play in our lives. For Tim Russert and his son, the bonds of fatherhood were nurturing and strong. For others, myself included, the bond may have been important, but it was anything but nurturing.

My father died when I was 15 years old. I have many memories of him, a few are happy, most are complicated. Through my future daughter-in-law’s genealogy research I have learned a great deal about my father’s family and what appears to be a long history of broken family relationships. My father’s mother died when she was 29 years old; his father remarried a woman who despised my dad. Her dislike drove my father to run away to the circus when he was just 7 years old. He returned to his family briefly at age 14 just as the depression was starting.

His military records show that he only completed eight grade. My mother tells me this is true – that he took something like the GED test so that he could go to mortuary school. She says he was very anxious about passing the test. She had just met him – she was a book keeper at a funeral home where he was an apprentice. Their first dates involved picking up bodies.

By the time they married he was a funeral director. She worked at the funeral home until my oldest brother was born. After a few years, at her urging, he left the funeral industry – she always hated it and didn’t want us to grow up in a funeral home. He became a pharmaceutical sales rep, selling used medical equipment on the side. Our attic was filled with odd looking devices and there was a “drug room” in the basement where he kept his samples.

My dad was smoked unfiltered Pall Malls and he wore Old Spice. He was fastidious in dress and exceedingly well organized. My mother ironed my father’s business shirts, dipping the collars and cuffs into liquid starch, until they were stiff as cardboard. His collars and cuffs were always perfect white and pristine. She ironed his boxers too. Meals were on the table when he got home from work.

From time to time he suffered from debilitating depression and when he was depressed nothing pleased him. He would call my mother “woman” and complain about the soup being too hot or that she spent too much money or whatever was irking him at the time. When he was depressed he wouldn’t sleep, keeping my mom up into the wee hours of the morning talking about everything. I could hear them as I tried to fall asleep; if he was really upset or angry it would scare me and I would call out for my mom. During the worst of his illness he was paranoid he was being investigated. During those times he got pretty mean. Never physical, just mean.

My oldest brother was golden – he could do no wrong. My other older brother was also a favorite; my dad would often let him skip school so that he could ride along as my dad looped around northeast Ohio making calls on physicians.

I was often my father’s target. I could never do anything right. I always had my nose in a book which was not particularly valued in my home. I was awkward and fearful, given to “crying jags.” I remember my dad taunting me about my weight – saying “Judy needs clothes – let’s take her to Omar the tent maker.” He would continue until I ran from the table in tears. I don’t ever remember him apologizing.

I envy my friends whose fathers were their cheerleaders and champions. I think fathers teach their daughters what to expect in life from their partners. A father who believes in your worth is a gift beyond price.

Father’s Day

Memory in a grainy photograph
my troubled face
turned from your embrace
Daddy. I was four.

Daddy, washing the car,
a summer day caught there on film.
What do I remember anyway of that embrace
Or any other gesture in the years I grew from childhood to imperfection
and rebellion.
Fragments, only fragments, broken and chipped
Words and looks that define me still decades later as I look in the mirror
Only to see what is not perfect.

Daughter.
The word itself a too tight coat over a body loathed
No clothing kind enough to ease the pain of being me.
The seams still cut, the sleeves constrict, the buttons threaten to give way.
I am here still in some forgotten photograph looking to you
For mercy.

Daddy, tailor of my self esteem.
Please forgive me.

Copyright JAC June 10, 1997

Aging Gracefully or Why Dick Clark Should Retire

Or maybe not.

Last night I was astonished to find that “New Year’s Rockin’ Eve” had been edited to down to allow regular programming, including the normal Monday evening newscast. New Year’s Eve used to be sacred in terms of programming, as was Saturday morning, but now it seems we must be updated every minute of every day with news. I believe in being well informed but there are times, and places, that I want to be news free. These include the bank, restaurants (except sports bars) and Whole Foods. You read that right – even my local Whole Foods installed a flat screen TV.

It doesn’t help that the Fox News is the program of choice. But I digress – back to New Year’s Eve. Dick Clark celebrated in the background the entire evening of every New Year’s Eve party I ever attended. His music and banter carved out a safe place to celebrate the final moments of a year that (more often that not) had its share of sadness. When he started the countdown everyone stopped and the problems of the world were suspended for 10 shiny seconds when everything was possibility.

Now the world crowds every minute leaving precious little time to absorb and reflect what we see. The moments when we should be celebrating we are waiting – waiting for the next headline, for the second shoe to drop or just plain waiting because we have forgotten how to be in the moment.

It pained me to stay in the moment as Dick Clark (his speech still impaired after his 2004 stroke) struggled through his lines. I did though and shared, with all the world, an altogether human moment. He finished his countdown, did a few scripted lines and then struggled to say more. He couldn’t find any words. He raised his arms and his eyebrows, as if to give up, when his wife rushed to his side, hugged him close and kissed him happy new years.

I checked IMDb (wikipeidia and IMDb keep me up to date on popular culture) – they have been married for 30 years. From the look of it she cares deeply for him. I respect that and wonder, factoring age, available spouses and interest, whether Five Husbands will be so fortunate in her later years.

I hope so.

New Year’s Eve

And I am home alone. It isn’t that I mind being alone – I rather like it and I surely don’t miss Husband 5. It is just that I realized I am home alone, well, alone except for 2 cats which somehow makes it worse, drinking tea and watching Lifetime.

I think I will have to put my eyes out with skewers.

Boxing Day

Although we do not celebrate Boxing day in the United States I am a great fan of the concept. Wikipedia says “It originated as a day for giving gifts to employees and poor people” but for me it has always presented the opportunity for a Christmas do-over. The huge stress of getting everything done in time for Christmas is over. The presents opened, the celebration mess cleaned up, the kids occupied with their new toys and the fights over holiday slights and sibling struggles over.

It is a day of peace. For me I sat with my darling little mother and had a most lovely chat. Honest emotion, no mean spiritedness, all hard feelings gone. Peace.

I am so grateful for this time with her.

Holiday Gold

And if there were a Platinum Medal event in the Dysfunctional Family Olympics – I would be holding it tonight on the platform while they played my family’s anthem.

Nothing says “Happy Holidays” like smoked meat

It is a given that most families are dysfunctional and that the holidays are the Dysfunction Olympics. My family has taken gold 3 years running and I am quite sure we are good as gold this year, notwithstanding Jamie Spears’ teen baby not so shocker. We are, after all, competing in the Senior Division (all sibs and their spouses over the age of 50).

Events in the senior division include: 1. tightest ass at a family event (not including a funeral); 2. coldest shoulder at a family event (again not including a funeral); 3. “mom has always like me best” ; 4. “my children are better than your children”; 5. name the biggest disappointment (team competition); 6. “I know what’s best for mom”; and 7. Funeral free for all or “let me tell you what I really think of you.”

The Holiday Dysfunction Olympics does not require that we build a “village.” In fact the further you have moved from home and isolated your castle and fiefdom the higher the judges score. Thanksgiving kicks off the opening ceremonies. If you received a phone call from mom – score 5.1; if mom is staying with you – score 10; if mom isn’t staying with you and you receive phone calls from mom and all the sibs – and you don’t have to place any of those calls – 8.9; if neither mom or the sibs call – 0.0 – you’ve been bounced from the games for “alleged misconduct.”

Thanksgiving Shadows

Thanksgiving will be over within the next fifteen minutes. All in all it was a good day. I awoke early to get the cooking started which was quite a feat since I didn’t get to sleep until 3AM. I even got to watch some (most) of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. First off I baked the pies, moved onto the stuffing and then the bird. I realized I cooked it at too high a heat but I think that I came by that mistake honestly. I seem to remember my mother saying – year after year – “the bird cooked so quickly.” I wonder if she, as I did this morning, cooked the bird at 350 instead of 325 degrees.

It was all right in the end.

So the turkey temp was the first memory/shadow. The second was a diaphanous gray curtain just outside my field of vision all day. Wait, perhaps it was the first. Yes, it was first. I dreamed of ice and snow again just before waking. I think I was trying to get to love. Getting to love over an icy pond. Getting to family over an icy pond.

All that trying made me tired.

This was the first huge dinner I had cooked in sometime. The turkey was organic (YES it does make a difference), delicious and plenty for everyone and left overs. The boys, Mel and the kids had a good time. We barely missed the fact that Nanny didn’t call to wish us well. We didn’t miss the call from the sibs MIA in the family wars; their silence is second nature to us now.

Mel has done substantial research on the family tree and the screwed up family dynamics are not unique to this generation. It goes way way back. On my mother’s side: her mother, my beloved “Baba” was illigitimate and given away at 8 (yes you read that correctly) to clean and work for a distant relative. On my father’s side we know more (they had been in this country longer – long enough for the dysfunction to actually be documented in federal census records): my father’s father – my grandfather was raised by his grandfather (are you following) his father, initials WW, for some reason abdicated responsibility. So it should come as no surprise that when my father’s biological mother died, his father remarried a woman who apparently had issues. Her dislike of my father led to his running away to join the circus at the tender age of 8. Yes you read that correctly -8.

So my mother was mothered by a woman who had no childhood; my father was fathered by a father whose own father had left him at his grandparents doorstep. Is it any wonder that neither of my parents knew how to parent or how to build a strong and supportive family unit?

When I was growing up holidays were always dicey. It was either family issues, money issues or, in later years, my father’s increasing depression. The ultimate holiday joy death knell was my father’s death in 1968 the day before Thanksgiving. That pretty much insured that my mother would never enjoy another holiday. And she didn’t.

After 1968 when the light began to change from fall’s golden color to winter’s silver my mother would begin sighing. “I hate this time of year.” “I don’t want anything; holidays don’t matter.” When the grandchildren came she brightened just abit, but by that time the sibling drama had begun to play out on the holiday stage. So really, she might have been more engaged in the process, but her emotions, never overly warm, were kept more deeply in check.