Melinda Says You May

I Never Ever Come Here Anymore

noreply@blogger.com (Melinda Hasting) — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 07:02:00 +0000

I just use facebook.com/redwriteraustin as a blog.

I just signed in accidentally after having to leave some proof of existence in order to comment on somebody else's blog.

Peace.

This GIves Me The Gut Laughs

noreply@blogger.com (Melinda Hasting) — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 04:56:00 +0000

I happened over to Pamie's today and found this:

That would've been me if David Cook had lost.
xo

Just Lost...

noreply@blogger.com (Melinda Hasting) — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 00:43:00 +0000

...Every single photo, movie, or song on my Mac. Trying to upgrade the software for my photos, movies, and songs on my Mac. By deleting to create space for the new software, thinking I was deleting dups.

Crud.

I'm bummed.

Halloween Pics Back Soon

noreply@blogger.com (Melinda Hasting) — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 00:02:00 +0000

Will place the photos back onsite later; problems with the streaming.

Lake Tahoe

noreply@blogger.com (Melinda Hasting) — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 21:11:00 +0000

I just returned from an incredible trip to Lake Tahoe.

For work.

No joke.

The Environmental Corps (E-Corps) works to build parks and trails throughout Texas, and they gather with other organizations throughout the country periodically to share successes, techniques, etc. This year, Lake Tahoe. It was fabulous- I'm so glad I got to attend.

I learned a lot about conservation. I also had some terrific spiritual centering; the grandeur of the area commanded me to get still. Listen.

Mmmm. What a great world.

Call + Response

noreply@blogger.com (Melinda Hasting) — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 02:06:00 +0000

Modern Slavery? Yep.

There are more slaves in the world today then ever in history; the sex trade is thriving.

The victims keep getting younger. You won't believe how young.

Call + Response is a rockumentary that exposes the atrocity. It's playing in Austin.

Musician and Director Justin Dillon is joined by Dr. Cornell West, The Cold War Kids, Matisyahu, Imogen Heap, Ashley Judd, Moby, Madeline Albright, Julia Ormond, Natasha Bedingfield and many others in this widely praised film.

I can't think of an easier way to get involved- Justin's giving 100% of the proceeds of the film to the cause.

CALL + RESPONSE

noreply@blogger.com (Melinda Hasting) — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 04:26:00 +0000

New Song

noreply@blogger.com (Melinda Hasting) — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 20:28:00 +0000

More ACL

noreply@blogger.com (Melinda Hasting) — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 04:38:00 +0000

ACL 2008: The Kills

noreply@blogger.com (Melinda Hasting) — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 01:10:00 +0000

Watching The Kills-- look to the right.

Check it

noreply@blogger.com (Melinda Hasting) — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 04:55:00 +0000

If you look to the lower right of the screen, waaaay back behind Patty Griffin's accordian player, right about 2:06...there I am.

(Hog Heaven. That's where I was yesterday)

What I'll Be Doing Next Weekend

noreply@blogger.com (Melinda Hasting) — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 04:10:00 +0000

Meeting Augusten

noreply@blogger.com (Melinda Hasting) — Wed, 07 May 2008 03:38:00 +0000

(Amanda snapped a pic of AB & Me, but the Me part of it was hideous, so I've doctored it a little, just so you know.)

Augusten (pronounced ah GUS ten, btw) Burroughs is WAY sassy, y'all. He was hilarious tonight. I asked him three important questions:

1) How is Bentley, his French bulldog who had been ill? (He's doing well.)

2) Does Augusten still chew Nicorette? (Yes.)

3) Has Augusten tried Cinnamon Burst flavor yet? (No. He likes the original, unflavored kind.)

I also thanked him for Dry, his memoir on sobriety that was very moving for me when I sobered up in '04.

Standing in the miles-long line, a Borders employee handed out small cards and pens, asking us to please write what Augusten was to put on the inside of our books. Believing she meant what she said, I wrote (tee-hee):

"To Melinda, the gorgeous redhead who I helped get sober. Keep writing! Send me your manuscript soon! Love, Augusten."

As I got closer to the front, I realized they simply meant to write the correct spelling of our names. Undaunted, I gave him my original suggestion. He instead wrote:

And that was even better.

Check Out A Story or Two

noreply@blogger.com (Melinda Hasting) — Tue, 06 May 2008 14:49:00 +0000

One of my fiction pieces, Repose, is published here.

Thanks to Feel The Word for that-- it's a good site. Check out its links, too.

Also, Augusten Burroughs is in Austin this evening to read from his new book, A Wolf At The Table: A Memoir Of My Father. This book may end up as my favorite of Augusten's. Each chapter can stand alone as a short story.

Augusten writes fearlessly, a difficult task in the memoir genre.

Tuesday, May 6th, 7:00 PM
Borders
4477 S. Lamar
Austin, TX
512-891-8974

Re: Jesus Loves You

noreply@blogger.com (Melinda Hasting) — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 17:38:00 +0000

This made me laugh hard:

Thanks, Rick.

Don't you miss when your kids were this age?

noreply@blogger.com (Melinda Hasting) — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 16:16:00 +0000

Peace

noreply@blogger.com (Melinda Hasting) — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 15:20:00 +0000

What a delay between postings! Forgive, forgive...

I am:

1. Working;
2. Looking for work; and
3. Managing my teenagers (sometimes it gets a little heavy)

These are the times when I must surrender or fry. Fear grips me tightly if I let it, especially over finances and my kids.

But letting go, though it takes a while to pry it from my grip, is profound and powerful every single time I do it. It is such a quiet place.

xo

Balzac

noreply@blogger.com (Melinda Hasting) — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 03:14:00 +0000

[You want me to be] "... a clerk, a machine, a riding-school hack, eating and drinking and sleeping at fixed hours. I should be like everyone else. And that's what they call living, that life at the grindstone, doing the same thing over and over again…. I am hungry and nothing is offered to appease my appetite."

Honore de Balzac, the 19th century French novelist and poet, announcing his despair over the practice of law, 1819.

He then became a writer.

When was the last time I sacrificed myself for you?

noreply@blogger.com (Melinda Hasting) — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 21:47:00 +0000

Poet Marie Howe at BookPeople Tonight

noreply@blogger.com (Melinda Hasting) — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 15:49:00 +0000

Marie Howe will read from her newest collection of poetry, The Kingdom of Ordinary Time: Poems, this evening at 7 p.m. at BookPeople. From the Austin Chronicle's review:

Howe's genius lies in her ability to describe mundane errands, such as a quick trip to the store, through the pained eyes of someone who's having an off year. As such, "The Star Market" offers a striking study in discomfort among the vulnerable: "The feeble, the lame, I could hardly look at them:/shuffling through the aisles, they smelled of decay, as if The Star Market/had declared a day off for the able-bodied, and I had wandered in/with the rest of them: sour milk, bad meat:/looking for cereal and spring water."

Bavu Blakes: Fat Tony: Dionysium Debate

noreply@blogger.com (Melinda Hasting) — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 00:06:00 +0000

Come watch Bavu Blakes debate Tuesday night (April 1) at Alamo Drafthouse Ritz at 7 p.m.

It's part of the Dionysium Signature Series:

The Dionysium offers a unique, innovative program of debate, lecture, declamation, theatrical presentation and music in a salon-like atmosphere on the first Tuesday of every month at the Alamo South Lamar. Audiences enjoy offerings not to be found elsewhere in Austin, including the recitation of famous speeches, participatory discussion in a formal, moderated context, and the opportunity to participate in the recreation of Ancient rituals. A typical Dionysium show will feature a lecture, a declamation, a drinking song, a film or live musical performance, an appeal to Dionysus, a fiction-writing contest, and plenty of strong drink. But the heart of every Dionysium is the debate, pitting two experts against each other in toe-to-toe parliamentary combat. Dionysium debate resolutions have covered everything from Social Security reform to the future threat of genocidal robots.

FAT TONY will perform afterwards. This is one of the brilliant whiz kids that I met during SXSW. His stuff is lovely- I was charmed.

Check it out.

One of the Sweetest Things at SXSW 2008

noreply@blogger.com (Melinda Hasting) — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 07:49:00 +0000

I held my breath on this one...

My Downs Syndrome Friend

noreply@blogger.com (Melinda Hasting) — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 03:34:00 +0000

I had a friend named Kim when I was eleven. She lived on the same street as my Daddy and stepmother, Ann. Kim had Downs Syndrome. There weren’t any other girls on our street, so it was Kim and me against the boys. I’m happy to report that I don’t have a story detailing how I was mean to a retarded person. On the contrary, she was a real friend.

Kim cracked me up. She was sixteen and big in stature, but she was mentally younger than my eleven years. She had a curly perm that was cropped close to her head, and she nearly always had a smile on her wide face. She was in love with my Daddy and always wanted to hug on him when she came over. Her favorite phrase was, “Hey-hey-hey…It’s Faaaat Albert,” from the Bill Cosby cartoon. She’d yell that whenever she saw Daddy, and it tickled him; he'd say, "C'mere, Kim, and gimme a hug."

Kim’s daddy had died suddenly of a heart attack sometime during that year, and she fixated on my father as a replacement for hers. Her mother, Jo, was a sweet lady who had her hands full dealing with Kim’s needs and the grief of losing her husband. Kim spent a great deal of time at our house playing football with my brothers, their friends, and me in the front yard.

She could tackle the boys like there was no tomorrow. My brother would see her charging toward him with that bulky frame and run like the dickens screaming, “Kim! Kim! It’s just a game, Kim!” I loved that. It made me fall on the grass and roll around laughing at the wussies. I barely had to lift a finger for us to win.

She had this toy poodle that was spastic and annoying, but Kim loved her. It was little and white, a real yapper. When we’d sit on the floor listening to 45s on my record player, the dog would frantically hump our arms. I would shriek and throw her off me, but Kim just laughed and thought it was the cutest thing. She didn’t realize that was gross, so I just let it slide.

Kim kept getting bigger and harder for her mother to handle. As the years wore on I saw her less and less. Eventually she had to be institutionalized, and then her mother moved out of the neighborhood.

I ran across a picture when I was home last Christmas. Kim is dancing with my Daddy at my 12th birthday party. She’s dressed up and has pink rouge on her cheeks. All us girls had put on lots of makeup and curled our hair with Ann’s skinny orange curling iron before the party. We were playing 33 LPs on the big stereo, a real privilege, dancing to Michael Jackson’s Off the Wall. Kim loved to dance and knew how to do the hand jive.

But in this picture, their arms are around each other and her head is flung back. Kim's smiling at the camera like a socialite with her man at the Grand Ball.

I wonder if my father was her only boyfriend.

xo, sweet Kim.

With Child

noreply@blogger.com (Melinda Hasting) — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 06:08:00 +0000

Tonight I heard Troy, my seventeen year-old son, on the phone in the kitchen. I wasn’t trying to eavesdrop, quite the opposite. I was thrilled he was cleaning the dinner dishes instead of me, so I was trying to write something productive. But a mother’s ear tunes in to certain keywords.

“She’s pregnant?” he asked. “Oh, man. That is so not cool… does she know what she’s gonna do?“ Then his voice stops for a while. He’s listening and still clanging plates into the dishwasher, running water. I’m all perked up and wishing he’d turn that water off so I could hear him better.

By the time I can hear him again, they’ve moved on to another topic. When he’s done he stops by the guest room where I’m writing and says, “’Night, Mom.”

“Who’s pregnant?” I ask.

He laughs, “Not my girlfriend, don’t worry.”

“I’m not, but who?”

“You don’t know her, but it’s sad.”

“Who is it?”

“Mom, I’m still on the phone. I’ll tell you later.”

I notice the mobile phone hanging to his side.

“’Night, Troy.”

It’s not as though I need reminding that he’s the last of the three. If he makes it through this year without getting married and being a parent, he will join the others in having transcended their mom in that regard. Though I’m not ashamed of my life, I do hope all three of them can develop as adults before becoming parents.

I was seventeen when I had my first son, Isaac. I was a senior in high school. The kids’ father and I were the only two graduates in a small Christian school that year, and we were already husband and wife. The pregnancy wasn’t easy. In fact, when we first learned I was knocked up, we didn’t know each other very well. But we married, mostly because I insisted.

I vomited through the first and second trimesters, and then ate to make up for lost time during the third trimester. I went from 110 lbs to 165 lbs by the time it was all over. The pregnancy was fraught with hospital visits for dehydration at first, then preeclampsia (high blood pressure that was threatening to the fetus).

My husband left for Army Basic Training on October 22, 1985. I had Isaac on November 8. The morning my water broke, on the 7th, I was so excited! I ran to get my mother, a nurse and my guardian angel throughout the pregnancy, explaining that I had either wet my pants or was in labor. She checked me and said, “Get your bag. We’re havin’ a baby.”

I called my best friend, Barb, to tell her the news and we were on our way. I had taken Lamaze and felt ready for the event, way more than I should have felt, it would turn out.

Twenty-four hours later, I was deliriously laboring with no medication (my blood pressure was too high). I remember the pain, the sweat and pressure of blood beating in my cheeks. I was begging my mother, “Please… please, Mommy…I can’t do this…I can’t do this…” She had a concerned look on her face by this point, and was starting to use technical terms with the doctors that I didn’t understand. It scared me to see my mom scared.

Everyone started to move quickly when we lost Isaac’s heartbeat. The cord was wrapped around his neck (I’d learn later, several times) and when I would contract, his oxygen was restricted. They wheeled me out of the labor room and into a delivery room. This red haired guy, who was funny-faced earlier and had told me jokes, was now white as a sheet, not talking anymore.

I pushed and pushed. I felt no progress. It was nothing like going to the bathroom. I screamed and grunted. It seemed like my face would burst open. My teeth hurt; my bones were moving. Then I didn’t have a voice, I couldn’t even take a deep breath. They’d tell me to push and I wouldn’t. I just couldn’t. I laid there and listened to them yell. I was done. I don’t remember how he ever came out.

But twenty-seven hours from when I’d eagerly left home with my little suitcase, I gave birth to my baby. 11:53 a.m. He was 7 lbs., 6 oz. I was ripped and stitched and exhausted. A week later, I was addicted to the wonderful feelings the painkillers gave me and not eager to go home with him without them. They assured me I had had enough painkilling and that I was ready.

My mother remembers the details better than I, and until my own children were older, I didn’t fully appreciate her love for me in that situation. (I'm still not sure I do.) How she managed to turn her hopes for me from bright student with an academic future, to “how can I help her be a good mother” is still beyond me. (I’m more of an "I-told-you-so" kind of mom.)

I learned to breastfeed (it hurts like hell at first). I learned to diaper. I learned to get up every few hours. I cried a lot. The body fat didn’t melt away. My friends dropped off (not Barb). I moved to Europe with the baby when he was ten months old, without the benefit of my parents near.

There is a story that follows. It’s more ugly than pretty.

But tonight I was thinking about whomever that girl is, and I'm glad she’s not asking me for advice. I don’t know what I’d say, because I wouldn’t wish a teenage pregnancy on my worst enemy. And yet, if I had the chance for a do-over, I’d do Isaac again and again, hoping each time I could be better than I was the first.

Toward a More Hip-Hop City

noreply@blogger.com (Melinda Hasting) — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 18:59:00 +0000

Amanda and I checked out Nick D & Jumbo's The 512 Party at Ruta Maya on Saturday night. Featuring six rap acts mostly from Austin, the show was well attended; at least 200 people came.

My exposure to local hip-hop artists came recently. Having a heart that's fundamentally drawn to folksy and funky, I have always taken to mainstream hip-hop offerings, but I never had experienced the immersion I did during SXSW this year. I was enRAPtured. I stood for hours over the course of several days in nightclubs listening to black and Hispanic men* delivering raw poetry--the kind that's virile, angry, hopeful, accusatory, idealistic and sexy.

When the showcase above hit my radar screen, I asked Amanda to come experience what I consider to be a profound cultural expression. While I knew she had seen popular (read: signed with a label) hip-hop artists, I wanted her to see what these particular words sound like when they aren't constrained by money's prohibitory rules. It's really two different scenes.

Ruta Maya was a tight enough venue for the 512 Party, but large enough for the crowd to move. It was a real Austin event, multi-age groups and many bottled water drinkers mingled with the beer swiggers and 420 smokers.

We watched a few acts whose principals were young enough to be my sons. They jumped around like puppies, so frisky and eager. But the precision of delivery worked its way through their hands like they were conductors, these Yung Prodigeez; they hit their points and flashed signs in a language I don't fully understand**.

When one young man cried, "Fuck the police," he backed it with a story of his friend who was killed during a traffic stop. As an aside, I have a growing respect for the police. A new friend who I admire has helped me to recognize their heroism, and a few recent experiences with cops have been downright pleasant. But just as I allow my spirit to experience angst over other "institutions," like during the times I sit with friends over coffee to cry, "Fuck men", I don't leave there running men down with my car. It's an expression of anger at what we feel is unjust (the fact that they seem to have power and we seem to not have power), as my heroine, folk singer Ani DiFranco, so powerfully appreciates and sometimes practices.

Can you hear the dissonance?

A New Urbanist vision strives for racial and cultural diversity, but not just in the population as a whole. We crave regular interaction with people who are different from us: Different age groups shopping together, multicultural options for food and shopping, racial diversity in public schools, waving to a neighbor we don't yet know from a sidewalk or porch, or shaking our booties to something that sounds different once in awhile.

This vision allows real access to a variety of cultures at any given block in the well-designed city. Then there's no need for a gay section or a black section or an artsy section. The need for me to find a place where everyone's like me because I can't find anyone who's like me goes away. It's replaced with access to all sorts of different things that end up feeling familiar and gratifying.

How' bout a hip-hop club in Westlake? Is that too much to ask?

Don't be a playa hater... I'm just kidding.

xo

*I didn't hear women, but they were there.

**(This is important. Don't flash signs you don't understand. I learned this during SXSW when I was making the "s" sign and later learned it did not mean "Up with a new genre of Southern hip-hop, yay team!")