Decency Desperately Needed: Life as it ought to be Lived.

A number of years ago, I had the opportunity to meet Paul Rusesabagina very briefly. If you don't know of him, it is worth noting that Mr. Rusesabagina is a delightful man with an easy smile, and the author of an incredible memoir called An Ordinary Man. A movie was made about him in 2004. It was called Hotel Rwanda. It was nominated for several Oscars. Maybe you've heard of it.

Mr. Rusesabagina was a hotel manager at the time of a genocide that lasted for approximately 100 days in Rwanda in 2004, killing between 500,000 and a million Rwandan people, depending on whose estimate you use. While the Hutu majority slaughtered fellow Rwandan citizens who were (or were suspected to be) of Tutsi ethnicity, Paul Rusesabagina, a Hutu, sheltered over a thousand Tutsi men, women, and children in his hotel. It was a decision made at great personal peril, but with little question. To Mr. Rusesabagina, it was the only decent thing to do.

It's easy to think of atrocities like genocides as things that happen to "other people." Mr. Rusesabagina describes pastors murdering their congregants, teachers murdering students, doctors murdering patients. Neighbors killing neighbors. It seems mad, savage. Something that could only happen somewhere else.

The beauty of the memoir, An Ordinary Man, is that it very eloquently describes a sort of "frog in the pot" syndrome that can so easily happen to anyone, anywhere. If you toss a frog in a pot of boiling water, the adage goes, it will immediately leap out for fear of being killed. But if you take that same frog, and you put him in a pot of cool water, he will stay. And if you slowly turn up the heat, he will hardly notice.

Eventually, there will be no more frog.

In Rwanda, millions of reasonable, thinking, intelligent people fell victim to absolute madness. It began with ethnic tension, enhanced by economic imbalances.  Slowly, it played out on talk radio, where menacing pundits referred to the Tutsi minority as "cockroaches" and defined Hutus who protected or sympathized with Tutsis as "traitors." As time went by, the radio beckoned Hutus to "exterminate the cockroaches." With the help of a militia leader who smuggled more than half a million machetes into the country, it cultivated in unimaginable atrocities, with Hutus attempting nothing short of an extermination of an ethnicity.

Frogs in pots.

Rwandans, by African standards, enjoyed a good quality of life. Rwandans place a high degree of value on education. It is culturally important to know the history of one's country there. These are a people who understood the perils of war in the past, and the ethnicity which perpetrated the 1994 genocide was a majority with quite a bit to lose. And yet.

Reports vary on exact numbers, but militias recruited massive numbers of average joe citizens to commit their dirty work. Perhaps hundreds of thousands of human beings died at the hands of machetes, wielded by people they knew. Reasonable people. Thinking people. Frogs in pots.

So what went wrong?

I had the chance to ask Mr. Rusesagabina a question, and I'll never, ever forget his answer.

"What is the difference between the people who will murder their neighbors, and people who won't?" I think my motivation was selfish--I am haunted by this question every time I read an account of the Holocaust, or of "ethnic cleansing" in Bosnia, or of the genocide in Darfur. Somewhere, in the back of my mind, I know that much of the Nazi rank and file started off as little boys who picked flowers for their mamas; who grew up to be regular guys that made love to their wives and went to church and paid bills and were just people until some horrible ideology became so precious to them that they would give up every last shred of their humanity to prove some insane, awful, unforgivable point. What happened there?

I think I asked that question because I wanted Mr. Rusesabagina to assure me that I would never be evil. I'd never be "weak" like that. Maybe I wanted him to tell me the key was to be enlightened, or smart, or educated. I wanted him to tell me there was some intrinsic part of my being that was immune to becoming a monster.

But that's not what he said.

"The difference," he said, "is that some people realized that soon enough, this would all be over, and they would have to answer for who they were when things were not sane."

It is important to remember that the decisions you make, the behaviors in which you engage, can have consequences that you cannot see. Hate wins temporarily. But ultimately, civility returns, however briefly, and those who have descended into hatred in the meantime are left to answer for their words and actions. It is only a matter of time.

Paul Rusesabagina said the same thing in his book, too: "This is why I say that the individual's most potent weapon is a stubborn belief in the triumph of common decency."

It's true. For every person I can think of who will lie, or cheat, or steal, I can think of a dozen who have made my life better. For everything that you see or hear about how corrupt and awful a world we live in, I bet you see more examples of basic human decency, whether you realize it or not. Food shelves are everywhere, run by volunteers and stocked by quietly thoughtful people. Driveways are anonymously shovelled for neighbors with limited time or mobility, leaves are anonymously raked, lawns are anonymously mowed. People fall in love and hold hands and feed babies and tithe and deliver meals and throw surprise parties and get married and give to charity and pay their taxes (even if they grumble) and send sympathy cards. We are kind, most of us. We care for one another.

And yet, there are frogs in pots.

"We are all born with a powerful herd instinct and it can force otherwise rational people to act in inexplicable ways," writes Mr. Rusesabagina.

And that is what scares me.

You see, today Fox Nation, a FoxNews affiliate, ran the following headline:

"Obama's Hip-Hop BBQ Didn't Create Jobs"

I would link to the page, but they don't deserve any more hits. You can find it yourself, if you require proof. The New York Times and The Washington Post both covered it.

Beneath the slug, photographs of three celebrity party guests, all black, surrounded the president's own photograph. There were no photographs of any white party guests, nor any allusion to any ethnically-white stereotypes.

Fox executive vice president of programming, Bill Shine, defended his network's decision to air the headline, citing Politico's reference to kids who "stole the show doing hip-hop dance routines" as grounds for choosing such a headline.

My heart is broken.

I am sad that my country has reached a point in its history where common decency at the highest levels seems to be lost, and where the citizenry of my country is willing to accept that loss of common decency as a routine part of the political/social/economic/human game. What has happened to our standards, when we accept racial/socioeconomic/religious bigotry as normal? Because it doesn't matter which side of the political fence you sit on. Racism is wrong.

I am heartbroken that we are willing to give airtime to candidates who will say, as Michele Bachmann did, that "Gay marriage is probably the biggest issue that impacts our state and our nation in the last, at least, thirty years. I am not understating that." As millions of unemployed men and women struggle to feed their families, while the most essential lifelines for our working poor are being slashed from government budgets in order to keep tax loopholes for corporations wide open--why then are we pointing fingers at the behavior of "other people"? The private behavior of "other people" is really our biggest issue? What has happened to our backbone, when we are willing to ignore our needy in favor of federalizing the rules for interpersonal relationships? Because it doesn't matter which side of the political fence you sit on. Hypocrisy is frightening.

I'm devastated when I read the transcript of Glenn Beck comparing the attendees of a youth camp in Norway to the Hitler Youth in the very earliest days after a right-wing terrorist shot and killed more than 90 children at that camp, which, in fact, was not Fascist by its very definition. I am apalled by the cruelty we will allow in our media, and hurt that my fellow Americans will pay money to support a man who would so willingly dance on the graves of the innocent. They were youth. They were a future that is no more. Why aren't Americans of every political stripe boycotting every product and network that has any affiliation whatsoever with this man? Why aren't we demanding at least a very, very basic level of decency? Because it doesn't matter which side of the political fence you sit on. Cruelty is evil.

I am crushed by the fact that we cannot collectively seem to treat those with differing opinions, lifestyles, socioeconomic conditions, or ethnicity as equally valid human beings. I am afraid of the implications.

I'm no Chicken Little. I don't think the sky is falling. This is not a call to action against an imminent American genocide, and I am not insinuating that you are the sort of person who does not realize that "soon enough, this will all be over, and you will have to answer for who you were when things were not sane," as Mr. Rusesabagina said.

But I'm wondering if we don't realize that we, too, are frogs in a pot of one sort or another. I'm wondering if there is some wisdom in the idea that we should pause in this challenging time and consider the consequences of the finger-pointing and the hatred and the blame that we're allowing to thrive in our culture.

Somehow, we have forgotten that underneath all the ideology and rhetoric, underneath every empty theory (they're all theories, remember--different than fact), underneath all of the heat and the vitriol and the anger, there are very real, very human beings.

Actions matter. So do words.

But other things are important, too. Our quiet cultural acceptance of a complete lack of human decency is perhaps more terrifying than those who so vocally spew their contempt. What matters isn't whose theory is right or wrong, or to which system of over-hyped rhetoric you most closely relate. Those things are temporary, and they change. How much you lost in the stock market doesn't matter, nor does the number of dollars you pay in taxes. What matters is who you are, when everything seems insane.

One more quote by Paul Rusesabagina:

"Kindness is not an illusion and violence is not a rule. The true resting state of human affairs is not represented by a man hacking his neighbor into pieces with a machete. That is a sick aberration. No, the true state of human affairs is life as it ought to be lived." 

I'm ranting, I know. And I'm not particularly qualified to preach. But it's important to me that we all consider that when this vulnerable time in our nation's history has passed, when we've returned to the "resting state of human affairs," there will be some of us who have wielded all sorts of unnecessary arms. Hostility and agression and extremism are weapons of a very dangerous sort. The problem is, we rarely see the damage that such weapons can cause until it is far too late.

And so we must ask ourselves:

Who are we, right now? What are we willing to accept from our politicians, our media? From our beer buddies? From our families?

For all its imperfections and missteps, our country was founded on some pretty basic principles of human dignity, and for more than two centuries that country has strived and worked and grown to overcome that which stood between its flaws and its future. When did we stop striving and working, and start pointing fingers and shouting?

I really, truly believe that decency and civility win, in the end. In the meantime, I think we owe ourselves something better than this animosity we're feeding, all in the name of politics and the television stations that make money because of politics.

I am a liar.

I didn't pull the last post down after a day. See, all the friends I thought would mock me didn't actually mock me. They thought it was badass.

So, the Snark Song will stay.

(You guys are strange.)

For One Day Only

I'm pulling this down tomorrow, but someone told me they'd pay good money to see this. 

Don't worry about it, dude. This one's gratis.

Scenes from the Hana Highway, Part 1

I heart Maui.

Of course, I am obligated to love Maui. If one does not love Maui, it is proof that one has a soul made of glurpy, bubbling tar. But that's not why I love Maui.

I love Maui because its inhabitants are slightly nuts, and its roads are terrible. Someday soon, I'll (hopefully) amuse and delight you with dramatic retellings of Cafe Romantica and the Van In Which It Is Housed, The Really Pretty Scary Lithuanian Farmer and the Really Big Knife She Wields,  The Thai Restaurant Owner Who Screams At You From the Toilet, and perhaps some other fun stories from the Hana Highway. 

Right now, fresh off the heels of my nuptials, I'm still feeling kinda sappy. So tonight, I'm a-gonna tell you all a sweet little bedtime story from the curviest road on Earth. 

Once Upon a Time, on a far-off island, a girl consumed a ripe young coconut full of juice immediately before embarking upon the return trip from Hana, Maui, to her hotel in lovely Wailea. A handsome prince drove the bright red Jeep-shaped chariot in which they travelled. 

Within about a half an hour, the lovely maiden realized that she really had to pee. Like, really.

"OH MAH GAHHHHHHH!!!!! PULL OVER!" the maiden cried in desperation, and her handsome prince obliged. Darting off into the woods, the fair lady sheepishly took care of bidness. Don't worry. It was worth the indignity. She felt much better after that.

Mere moments after the couple returned to the road, the handsome prince abruptly pulled over again. 

"What are you doing?" asked the maiden, noting that if Prince Charming needed to take his turn in the woods, he should have thought of that a quarter of a mile ago. Geez. But the maiden was wrong. 

"I am letting this police officer pass me," said the wise prince. "Being followed by a police officer on the Hana Highway might be less than ideal. It's bad enough having to drive this road without having to watch my rear view mirror and check my speed constantly."

The couple pretended to be busy looking for something in the car so that the officer wouldn't realize that they had pulled over for fear of being pulled over if they didn't pull over. They waited a few minutes longer than necessary, and then resumed their drive. 

For about ten minutes. 

You see, as the prince and the maiden rounded a(nother) very sharp curve, they noticed that the police officer had parked on the side of the road. 

"[Drat]!"said Waffle Guy--I mean, the prince. "He's going to be behind me again!"

The lovely maiden was about to complain, when she and waffle guy noticed it in unison. There he was, a handsome, young Maui police officer, standing at the edge of a giant, lush, green gorge, coffee cup in hand, simply taking in the view. 

Following his gaze, the couple noticed the view that had commanded the officer's attention. 

"OH MAH GAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!! PULL OVER!" the maiden cried again, as though it was the only thing she knew how to say. 

There, over the gorge, was a rainbow. A flippin' double rainbow. On the Hana Highway. In gosh-darn Maui.

On perhaps the most dangerous corner of perhaps the most dangerous road they could find, the charming-but-dim couple got out of their Jeep-shaped chariot to photograph the prettiest thing they'd ever seen.

If you look very closely, you'll see Waffle Guy--ahem, the Prince--shooting photos of the
 double-flippin'-rainbow on the side of the road in this photo. Darwin Award to follow. 

And, yet, they lived happily ever after. 

Thanks, Maui Policeman, for showing us the way.

The Wedding: A Summary

We had a tiny wedding in a far-off place, attended only by immediate family and a handful of lifelong friends. I highly recommend this strategy, by the way. It was relatively stress-free and positively delightful, I didn't have to introduce myself to any coworkers' husbands' sisters' dates at the reception, and the smaller crowd kept my tendency toward social anxiety at bay on one of the most important days of my life. It was great.

However, since we've been home, lots of you have had lots of questions for Mr. Waffle and me as to exactly how it all went down. I've been trying to tell you all, but words don't really do it justice. All I can tell you is that everything about it was perfect.

I thought I might show you a bit. These photos were taken by one of my oldest friends, the brilliantly talented Natalie Champa Jennings. When you're done here, do yourself a favor and check out her site.

A Wedding Story 
(cue cutesy violin canon here)


We got married at a place like this:

Natalie Champa Jennings. nataliechampajennings.com

It's this really cool old place called Edgefield, just outside of Portland, Oregon. A hundred years ago, it opened as the Multnomah County Poor Farm, a massive old manor house where people who had lost it all would go to rebuild their lives. When the poor farm closed, it became a nursing home that was condemned in the '90s, purchased by a company that restores quirky old properties, and turned into what is now essentially a giant playground for grown-ups and the children who love them. It has several restaurants, extensive gardens and orchards, a vineyard, a winery, a distillery, a brewery, several music venues, a billiards hall, a pub, an art house, a golf course and a spa. It probably has other cool things, too, but I haven't discovered them yet.

If you believe in ghosties, the place is totally haunted. I'm not convinced that we share our space with spooks, but I am entirely certain that we all leave a bit of ourselves wherever we go. To me, the symbolism and the spirit of the place was moving. I loved the idea of beginning anew in a place that was founded on the principle of a fresh start. I was grateful to the people who'd been there before us.

We were married on Independence Day. It's not because we're particularly patriotic. It's because we're nerds, actually. Mr. Waffle notices really bizarre number and letter patterns, like palindromic license plates. So when we decided to wed, we plopped open a calendar and looked for interesting dates. There weren't a lot of them this summer. 7/4/11 was about as good as we could come up with, as 7 + 4 = 11. That it was a holiday was only icing on the cake, and that it occurred on a Monday and made everything less expensive only spoke to our annoyingly practical side. Plus, it made it really easy to come up with a cheeky color scheme. And let's just admit it--all wedding colors are cheeky. We went for a subdued navy and scarlet attempt at a Martha-Stewart-does-Fourth-of-July sort of theme. 

Here's are the highlights:

The Waffle children, his and mine, served as our bridesmaids, groomswomen, and flower girl. The ladies and I all started our day in the spa, getting dolled up. The Littlest Waffler particularly enjoyed this, as she had both a tiara and someone to secure it for her.  

Natalie Champa Jennings. nataliechampajennings.com

Natalie Champa Jennings. nataliechampajennings.com

After getting our hair and makeup done, I went back to the kids' room to have a snack and put on my dress. Somewhere, there are photos of a very coiffed and made-up version of me, wearing nothing but restrictive undergarments as I shovelled a pop tart in my face. Sexy. 

But the girls! Ohmygah--the girls! They were so beautiful.

Natalie Champa Jennings. nataliechampajennings.com

My eldest Waffle Child helped me into my dress, and we were off.

Natalie Champa Jennings. nataliechampajennings.com

The officiant was one of Waffle Guy's childhood friends.  Mox's words were precious. I feel like he did a great job of capturing the essence of our relationship, and sharing that with the people who mean the most to us. I was so grateful that he agreed to be a part of that day. 

Natalie Champa Jennings. nataliechampajennings.com

There were rock stars. Our talented and dear friend Ryan Paul of Sleep Study teamed up with Kevin Steinman, another Minneapolis-based musician and friend, to provide what was unquestionably the coolest soundtrack for any wedding, ever. Go ahead. Listen to the song, and just try to tell me with a straight face that you didn't tear up just a little bit.

Natalie Champa Jennings. nataliechampajennings.com

Once, when I had a bad day, my best friend Molly brought me a plant, and a red balloon, and a card that had Winnie-the-Pooh on it. The card read, "No One Can Be Uncheered by a Red Balloon."

It was true then, as it is now, and it was with this is mind that I decided to forego a bouquet in favor of a giant red balloon. It made me giggle.

Natalie Champa Jennings. nataliechampajennings.com

And, you guys, Waffle Guy looked so handsome! I got all teary-like when I saw him.

Natalie Champa Jennings. nataliechampajennings.com

My favorite rock star of all played a song that we wrote together.

Natalie Champa Jennings. nataliechampajennings.com

Before we made vows to one another, we made some promises to some very important people--I to his kids, and he to mine. The words were simple.

"Today we become a family. I promise to love you, and to care for you in any way that I can, for the rest of my life."

 We kissed those pretty foreheads, and gave them matching necklaces to symbolize that we're all in this together.

Natalie Champa Jennings. nataliechampajennings.com

There were our vows. I'll post those later, in a separate post, if you're interested. And then, all of a sudden, I was Mrs. Bailey! I still get all giddy when I write it, by the way.

There was a kiss.

Natalie Champa Jennings. nataliechampajennings.com

There were smiles.

Natalie Champa Jennings. nataliechampajennings.com

There were a few tears. 

Natalie Champa Jennings. nataliechampajennings.com

There were some more kisses.

Natalie Champa Jennings. nataliechampajennings.com

There was an awesome reception involving (in no particular order) McMenamin's Monkey Puzzle Whiskey, some really good food, more great music, a comfy white cotton dress, a saltwater soaking pool, and great company.

Natalie Champa Jennings. nataliechampajennings.com

There were fireworks in the distance, and fireworks in my heart, as he carried me off to live happily ever after. 

Natalie Champa Jennings. nataliechampajennings.com

Natalie Champa Jennings. nataliechampajennings.com

As my little girl celebrated by writing on my hand with a sharpie, it occurred to me that my wedding, like my life, had been better than I would have ever dared to dream it could be.

I'm a lucky girl, and I'm grateful every day for the love with which I'm surrounded. Simply put, my family is my greatest joy.

Natalie Champa Jennings. nataliechampajennings.com

Escalator Family

Months ago, they decided that escalators were way cooler than steps. And so it came to pass that I don't have step-children. I have Escalator Daughters. And my daughters have an Escalator Dad.

Lessons from a Tourist's Photos: What Happens When You Reach That Bridge

Waffle Guy and I lagged behind the pack on our hike to the top of Multnomah Falls, Oregon, absorbed in the photographic possibilities that a few great lenses and phenomenal scenery had to offer, but the Littlest Waffler was waiting for us when we reached the bridge over the lower falls.

She trembled. Her weeping was silent, the tears leaving disorderly little trails on her cheeks.

"I wanted to cross it, Mama," she said. Her gaze was fixed on her dusty shoes. "I am so scared of heights. I couldn't."

"You don't have to cross that bridge," I told her. "But take a minute before you decide to go back down. Do you think you'll be really proud of yourself if you make it across?"

I picked her up and buried my face in her neck, the same spot I'd nuzzled when she was a newborn. Her arms reached easily around my shoulders now. She shook, but she held tight.

"I can feel your heart beating," I whispered. "Can you feel mine?"

"Mmmm-hmmm," she whimpered.

"That's the feeling of my heart taking all of the fear from your heart. Pay attention to that feeling."

We stood silently at the side of the trail for a long, long time. And then, "I'm ready, Mama."

I carried the Littlest Waffler out onto the bridge. She leaned in close to my ear and whispered, "I have to walk across myself." Her hand held mine tightly, but each step was her own.

Later, at the top of the Upper Falls, she would perch on a rock at the river's edge and beam with pride.

A time will come when she realizes that her mother is just a regular old person. But on that day, I was relieved to discover that I still have super powers. I scooped all of her fear out of my heart, held it in my hand, and blew it into the rapids below.