Ten Things To Know About Burns Strider

The #MeToo movement was used today as a tool to feed into the media's never-ending and ever-failing quest to prove Hillary Clinton an enabler and protector of abusers. And so today there are hundreds of stories floating titled things such as - - "Who is Burns Strider?" and "Five Things You Need To Know About Burns Strider." Well, I know Burns Strider have ten things for you to know about him. To know Burns is to know a true friend.

Canoe in the Rapids, by Winslow Homer

1.) Loyal and available to his friends, Burns Strider is a guy who will stay on the phone with a childhood friend until 4:00 am when she is suffering from a life crisis and needs support.

2.) Burns is the friend who will invite you for coffee at his office and tell you stories about growing up in Grenada, Mississippi. You’ll enjoy the stories. They are colorful and vibrant and you'll walk away not exactly sure what any of those stories had to do with anything. You will go to sleep. You will wake up in the morning with your eyes as big as the planets and understand that the point was to live authentically. To tell the truth. To tell your own truth. To live your own truth. To be proud of your truth, warts and all. And you will carry this message with you wherever you go. And you will think of the words “lemony yellow aura,” forever, with great meaning.

3.) He is the guy who will meet you for dinner on a Tuesday night between dropping his kids off at sports practice and picking them up because you had a panic attack at work and are afraid of the future and are forgetting to breathe.  

4.) Burns does not let his friends off the hook. He tells us he loves us and worries about us and that he better get a call back and when he knows everything is not ok we are not allowed to say that everything is ok.

5.) Burns is a guy who might not tell you that a piece of kale is stuck in your teeth during a lunch because he knows there is a wall of mirrors that the two of you will pass as you exit and you will see it and try to remove it with a fingernail. When you do this, he might encourage you to just leave it. After all, it is important to be authentic.

6.) When confused, a friend can text Burns at 10:30 pm on a Saturday night and ask, “Why is my boyfriend hiding copious amounts of Kings Hawaiian bread rolls up high in the cupboards of our kitchen?” Promptly, he will respond: “Because they make the best sandwiches. They really do.”

7.) Burns loves his children (even more than he loves Mississippi State Bulldogs sports). His sons are his life. He is devoted to documenting nearly everything they do around town in DC, on road trips, and on charmed adventures. He invites the rest of us to witness the love and the celebrations of their life together.

8.) The relationship Burns has with the Clintons is a sacred one. He will tell funny stories about diet cheating on the campaign trail with former President Bill Clinton, or when Secretary Hillary Clinton scolded him about procrastinating on a health concern. He will let you know how and what they are doing, but that’s it. He is like that with all of his friends. He protects us all from whatever we need protection.

9.) He wears a Make Mercy Great Again hat. #MMGA

10.) His southern accent allows you to enjoy it when he is making fun of you. I was once complaining about paying for my storage unit back in Ohio - and within the context of my very nomadic life - Burns suggested that I make one of those interactive maps with blinking lights to show all the cities where my possessions reside and he said, "And over here, in Ohio, this is where I keep my books and grandparents’ furniture, but if you want to hear about the emotional things I have stored here, you will have to pay extra.”

Lastly, Mary Oliver, a poet both Burns and Secretary Clinton enjoy wrote, “I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing— that the light is everything—that it is more than the sum of each flawed blossom rising and falling. And I do.” 

And I do too.

new years day

While reading a book about the Historical Jesus and the Cult of Mary, something quietly appeared to me, something that I had never realized or probed before. According to Luke chapter 2, each man owed Augustus taxes and in response, Joseph fled and left Nazareth for Bethlehem. My defiant grandfather apparently didn’t pay taxes for years. When he died, my father received a bill from the IRS, (gulp). In a day and age where a woman making $60,000 a year is taxed at 25% by a country selling arms to Israel and invading sovereign nations, Joseph’s plan sounds good to me! Where shall we go? Bethlehem? Port-au-Prince? Philly? Shall we take the Acela train there? Anyway, when I die, I certainly hope someone will read the barbarically highlighted portions of my books for it will remain as only one of my two legacies.

While reading this marvelous account of the myth of Mary, I listened to Nina Simone in the background as she sang about the tragedy of love, and the devastation and responsibility of being born black. On Saturday, the Obamas move into the Hay-Adams (on my street!) for two weeks proceeding the inauguration. The beautiful Hay-Adams (where I have had tea in the parlor and drinks on the roof). Who would’ve thought the off-spring of willing and also forced African diaspora could reside at the Hay-Adams, the Blair House, or even, the White House.

My blog was originally intended to be a place to tell some of my “crazy stories” that my friends insist I write a book of (ehhmmm, Jeremy). The blog, however, has morphed, unfortunately and most recently, into a true blog: an online journal. The tragic sensibilities of my Irish heritage and the story of the year have taken this blog hostage, but in 2009, I am determined to reverting it into a place for social commentary and the sharing of old stories.

a narrative i can't seem to tell. right now.

In the past several weeks, I have made so many notes of things I desire to write on:

- Senator Kennedy’s words at the DNC convention, “And this is the cause of my life -- new hope that we will break the old gridlock and guarantee that every American -- north, south, east, west, young, old -- will have decent, quality health care as a fundamental right and not a privilege. We can meet these challenges with Barack Obama. Yes, we can, and finally, yes, we will. Barack Obama will close the book on the old politics of race and gender and group against group and straight against gay.”
- The journey, comforts, and dismay of my summer.
- The displacement of a million people in Haiti because of storms and flooding.

But I am weak and uninspired, and incapable of writing. I would rather be numb. I watch TV now. Passionate note-taking no longer leads to actual writing. Stress does not translated into motivated creations. The constant cerebral stimulation and scholarly shallowness have been replaced with a shallow Capote-style cocktail party conversation with the same people, and a holding pattern 18 hours a day inside an apartment on 16^th Street.

The most live things in my sphere of physical life are the presence of the white house at the end of this street, and playing tennis, nearly a week ago. My first in a year. Neither of which have a sustainable or survivable presence in this storm of limbo.

I want nothing more than to write, and think, and cite, and feel, and love, and encounter the textures of this life, most intimately. However, those textures became all-too close in Haiti, and after, I had to retreat, and recover. I am going home to California for a couple of weeks.

“What are you writing?” I made a mistake and asked.
“I am writing the best I can. Just as you do. But it’s so terribly difficult.”
“You shouldn’t write if you can’t write. What do you have to cry about it for? Go Home. Get a job. Hang yourself. Only don’t talk about it. You could never write.”
-Ernest Hemmingway, A Movable Feast

but gravity always wins

∙ her green plastic watering can ∙ for her fake chinese rubber plant ∙ in the fake plastic earth ∙ that she bought from a rubber man ∙ in a town full of rubber plants ∙ to get rid of itself ∙ it wears her out, it wears her out ∙ she lives with a broken man ∙ a cracked polystyrene man ∙ who just crumbles and burns ∙ he used to do surgery ∙ for girls in the eighties ∙ but gravity always wins ∙ and it wears him out, it wears him out ∙ it wears him out, it wears him out ∙ she looks like the real thing ∙ she tastes like the real thing ∙ my fake plastic love ∙ but i can't help the feeling ∙ i could blow through the ceiling ∙ if i just turn and run ∙ and it wears me out, it wears me out ∙ it wears me out, it wears me out ∙ and if i could be who you wanted ∙ if i could be who you wanted ∙ all the time, all the time ∙

it was grand

"You are a Schola Prophetarum, a School of the Prophets." - the pronouncement in 1875 to the faculty and students of the Biblical Department of Vanderbilt University by Holland Nimmons McTyeire (1824-1889) Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church South; first president of the Vanderbilt University Board of Trust

This weekend, I graduated from the school of the prophets. (No pressure or anything.)
Friends, please see all of my photos from a glorious weekend by clicking below. I particularly enjoy the dinner and party photos toward the end. If you double-click on a photo, you will be able to scroll through them as larger images with captions.

click here: Kate's Vanderbilt Photos

twas better to die 'neath an irish sky

Like any good Irish lass, I have been known to have a Guinness (or five), and hop on small stages at places like Nanny O’Briens to sing along to joyful ballads about famine, theft, and well, . . . drinking five or more Guinnesses. Like any good Irish lass, I have read the poetry of my ancestors who mastered a language that was forced upon them. I have a stomach made for bland starches, and the skin for staying inside. I will probably have bagpipes at my wedding, exclusively for the purpose of making people with red faces and white hair weep. My DNA-given skill of implementing the silent treatment is both a blessing and a curse. Sure, I look good in green, and I find miniature, magical men with beards to be cute. But for me, being Irish has really always been about something more.

At an early age, my parents taught me that with being Irish comes the responsibility of living a life that honors the story of my ancestors. They taught me that what is most exciting and obligatory about my being Irish is my blood-given right to stand in solidarity with those who have been killed and oppressed by systematic political and military powers. My parents taught me, at a very young age, that being Irish was about the Foggy Dew. St. Patrick's Day is a good reminder for me, about what it means to be Irish.

“The Foggy Dew,” An old Irish Ballad about the Easter uprising of 1916:

As down the glen one Easter morn to a city fair rode I

There Armed lines of marching men in squadrons passed me by
No pipe did hum nor battle drum did sound its loud tattoo
But the Angelus Bell o'er the Liffey's swell rang out through the foggy dew

Right proudly high over Dublin Town they hung out the flag of war
'Twas better to die 'neath an Irish sky than at Suvla or Sud-El-Bar
And from the plains of Royal Meath strong men came hurrying through
While Britannia's Huns, with their long range guns sailed in through the foggy dew

'Twas England bade our wild geese go, that "small nations might be free";
Their lonely graves are by Suvla's waves or the fringe of the great North Sea.
Oh, had they died by Pearse's side or fought with Cathal Brugha*
Their graves we'd keep where the Fenians sleep, 'neath the shroud of the foggy dew.

Oh the night fell black, and the rifles' crack made perfidious Albion reel
In the leaden rain, seven tongues of flame did shine o'er the lines of steel
By each shining blade a prayer was said, that to Ireland her sons be true
But when morning broke, still the war flag shook out its folds in the foggy dew

Oh the bravest fell, and the Requiem bell rang mournfully and clear
For those who died that Eastertide in the spring time of the year
And the world did gaze, in deep amaze, at those fearless men, but few,
Who bore the fight that freedom's light might shine through the foggy dew

As back through the glen I rode again and my heart with grief was sore
For I parted then with valiant men whom I never shall see more
But to and fro in my dreams I go and I kneel and pray for you,
For slavery fled, O glorious dead, when you fell in the foggy dew.

there is no time i feel more alive than when my heart is breaking

happy valentine's day week. for you, a gem from the ever so eternal post secrets:

vivaldi in the afternoon

In the summer of 2006, my friend Andy and I were teaching English to a group of male Haitian adults in downtown Les Cayes. My impression was that they knew English well enough to produce something such as a thank you note but not well enough to have a successful job interview. The men who came to this class traveled across town, after working for 12 hours that day. Some of the men were agriculturists, others were artists, and some were masons. I am unaware of their ages, but I would guess a range from about twenty-five to forty-five years old.

Having access to reliable electricity, we decided to engage the students in a writing exercise involving music. We played a couple of movements from the Vivaldi baroque masterpiece “Winter,” from Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons.” We asked my students to listen and let their thoughts go where they may while writing in a sort of free-style manner about whatever it is they were feeling or remembering during the listening experience.

I engaged in the exercise too. I sat with my eyes closed. I dreamed about a rabbit running through the hills of upstate New York, chasing a smaller animal. I saw bright greens and blues. The sun was shining. Then the rabbit took a nap under a tree. The gentle breeze blew the weeds in the grass. My thoughts were very peaceful and serene.

The final part of this exercise was to share our writing with the group. Coming out of my day dreams about bunnies and fields, I was not prepared for what my students had dreamed of. Gregory the artist, spoke first. With tears in his eyes he began describing a woman with a child in her womb. He went on to describe her brutal murder by the machete of a ton ton macoute. Still covered in dust and concrete from the day's work, one of the masons said that the song reminded him of being a small child in Camp Perrin, running away from the ton ton macoute, as he tried to hide his little brother in the bushes. A third student shared a similar tale, while detailing the haunting dark glasses and Baron Samedi like outfit of Papa Doc.

I was unequipped to offer my condolences for what happened at the hands of an American supported (understatement) Cold War dictatorship from 1953 to 1986. I didn’t even want to think about what my home country was responsible for since 1986,(or the hundreds of years of sins before 1953, for that matter). I also didn’t know how to express my sadness for having stirred their hearts by playing Vivaldi. It was as if these painful and terrorizing memories remained right under their surface. Perhaps they wanted to educate me about the modern day collective memory of the Haitian people. The role music had in this made me long to ask them questions about the drumming in vodoun ceremonies, but in an attempt toward humility, I refrained.

This story depicts the individual embodiment of unjust social forces such as poverty and violence. The lived experience for Haitians under the dictatorship of the Duvaliers has manifested a terror settled in the depth of their being which is also easily accessible under the surface of a silenced people. In his book Pathologies of Power, Paul Farmer details how in this silence lies the pent-up anger born of innumerable small indignities and of great irremediable ones. Whether heard or not, there exists millions of experiences of sorrow within the greater structural sins of the story of Haiti.

Derrida said, “there is no life beyond the text.” But history can be done better when knowledge is used with personal narrative. The narratives of my students can not be found in the worldly accessible history of Haiti, (with the exception of some pro-Aristide literature which is actively and unfairly silenced and discredited by Haiti's close neighbor, the United States). This is part of the collective memory of a people. As a first step toward reconciliation and justice, their story deserves to be heard.

oikonomos

As a graduate school student in “middle Tennessee” - - we could call it "central," but don’t get me started on that tangent - - and as a woman likely to be dressed in black, speaking with a sharp accent, I am often asked, “Kate, where is home?” My answer varies depending on my mood. The response I am most comfortable with is some variation of, “Well, my parents live in California, but I grew up in New York state, and I lived in DC for nine years, off and on, usually on.” The question, “where is home?” resonates initially as a geographic concern, but there are other aspects to take into account.

Robert Frost said that Home is where they have to take you in. Others have said that Home is where everybody knows your name. And your name is just a symbol for your story, so Home is a place where everybody knows your story. Home is a place where you can count on being confronted, loved, and hoped for. Home is where there is a place at the family table for you, for sharing and conversation. Home is where the storytelling happens. Family meals are where people gather to tell their stories.

God was the first homemaker by creating this world for God’s people and God’s work, therefore, Home could be described as a place where there is access to the conditions of life.

I spent this Thanksgiving at Home with my dear friend Angela, and her family Emily, Wayne, Eric, and Anna. It was good to be Home.

clanging metal

Shortly before Archbishop Oscar Romero's assassination he was asked by a journalist, "where do you find inspiration for your work and preaching?" He responded, "Your question is very timely, for just now I have come from my retreat. If it were not for this prayer and reflection with which I try to stay united with God, I would be no more than what St. Paul says: clanging metal."

The journey of my own life has been one of constant tension between lived meaning and clanging metal. Many friends & family have honored me by suggesting that I write a book. Finally, (and it might be too little too late), this blog is an endeavor to tell my own story: the journeys of the past, the experience of the present, and my hopes for the future. I hope it will be as humorous and insightful as the concrete experiences have proven to be. Story telling is a gifting process, and I want to give my life away.