WYFP is our community's Saturday evening gathering to talk about our problems, empathize with one another, and share advice, pootie pictures, favorite adult beverages, and anything else that we think might help. Everyone and all sorts of troubles are welcome. May we find peace and healing here. Won't you please share the joy of WYFP by recommending?
Palm Sunday is tomorrow, and that starts what those in the liturgical profession are wont to refer to as "Holy Hell Week" because, at least in high-church circles, this is the week when you pull out all the stops--and that means a lot more work than usual. It doesn't help any that, at least in the Catholic tradition, there are three full all-out services on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday--and then the usual Sunday stuff to attend to afterward.
That's one of my FPs this week. Follow me below the fold for more.
I really don't feel ready for Holy Week this year. Lent has not been good to me--or, rather, Lent has largely gotten pushed aside for other concerns in my world this year. That's another FP, because I really like Lent. It's good to take some time out for self-analysis and reflection every year, and that's what Lent is supposed to be all about.
But an early Lent this year, plus the worst winter we've had in recent memory, conspired to throw several monkey wrenches into the works before we even really got started. I didn't make Ash Wednesday services this year, because we were having one of a string of heavy snow events (blizzards in all but name) that day.
Then, a month ago yesterday, our happy, quiet, secure (or so we thought), all-but-rural community got a very rude awakening when we became the latest members of the club nobody wants to join. The killing of five NIU students and the wounding of some 20 others by an NIU graduate who subsequently took his own life has brought all of us in the NIU community (and the communities that surround NIU) into a very different new world. That has been both a huge FP and, in many ways, an equally huge blessing.
It has truly been humbling to see the outpouring of support, care, and concern that has come to us this past month. Cards, letters, care packages, and offers of help have streamed in from all across the country and around the world. The community has pulled together in ways that would have been unthinkable six months ago at this university with a very long tradition of being a "suitcase institution" where most of the students went home Thursday or Friday afternoon and didn't return to campus until late on Sunday. Our university president has been a rock in the midst of the storm--many of us knew we were lucky to have him before, but now the whole world knows it.
We are adjusting, slowly, to what we've taken to calling the "new normal." We're trying to be patient with one another while each of us sorts out what these events might mean for him- or herself--and all the fumbling and other stuff that goes along with that process.
For me, one of the side effects, if you will, has been a much lower threshold for bullshit: something I was never very good at tolerating to begin with. Which makes hanging around Daily Kos a difficult proposition in these trying times, because the level of bullshit around here has never, in my experience, been higher--and I'm a crusty old veteran of this place who was here for the 2004 election cycle, or most of it. I thought I'd seen it all, yet each day I come here and I'm depressed to find that someone has managed to plumb unexpected depths of suckitude, inanity, illogic, hyperbole, and just plain rottenness. A lot of the good people whose work I used to enjoy reading, and whose company I enjoyed on social threads like this one, have either gone into lurk mode until the primary season is over, or written their GBCWs and gone off in search of greener pastures.
I get that the 2008 presidential election is a tremendously important watershed moment in American history. And I get the desire of progressives to put the best candidate possible at the top of our ticket so we can avert the potential tragedy of another four years of Republican misrule. I just wish I could see any kind of reasonable or logical connection between that desirable outcome and 99.99999% of what goes on here on any given day lately.
I was hoping to get away for a quiet retreat with the Trappists in Iowa next month, but it looks like I may have to put that off until very late in April or into early May, given that the only times they have a room in the guest house available for the length of stay I'm looking for conflict with deadlines at work. Still, I feel better knowing that's at least on the horizon. It would be great if I could go away for a week, shut myself off from newspapers, radio, television, the intertubes, anything to do with politics and the usual daily grind, and come back out refreshed and re-energized, into a world that had taken at least a few steps back in the direction of something like sanity.
I'm not holding my breath on that point.
Anyhoo, here's how we play our little game. WYFP? is hosted by a different Kossack each week. Repeat posting is not only allowed, it's encouraged, though we do try to spread things out so that nobody has to carry too much of the load. The current schedule as of today looks like this:
March 15 musing85
March 22 sobermom
March 29 CJB
April 5 deepfish
April 12 blue jersey mom
April 19 Lahdee
April 26 newfie53523
May 3 paxpdx
May 17 mommyof3
May 24 ScottyUrb
Step right up and volunteer and you can host your very own edition of WYFP? Just drop a comment here and let me know your preferred date, or drop an e-mail with the same information to the address in my profile, and I'll put you on the schedule. In case two or more people request the same date, the first one to make the request will get it, and I'll try to accommodate alternate dates for the other(s).
Should you find you need or want to switch dates with someone else on the schedule, that's fine. Go ahead and work it out between yourselves, and then let me know when it's finalized so I can revise the schedule. If for any reason you can't make your regularly scheduled slot, drop me a line and I'll either fill in myself or see if I can't find someone to take it. There's no set time for WYFP?, but most regulars start to get a little twitchy if it hasn't shown up on the recent diaries list by about 7:30 p.m. Central on Saturday night.