OurGirl: Class of 2008 Commencement Address

Sunshine go away today, I don't feel much like dancin'
Some man's gone, he's tried to run my life
Don't know what he's askin'

He tells me I'd better get in line Can't hear what he's sayin'
When I grow up, I'm gonna make it mine These ain't dues I been payin'

How much does it cost? I'll buy it. The time is all we've lost. I'll try it.
He can't even run his own life, I'll be damned if he'll run mine
Sunshine

Sunshine. lyrics by Jonathan Edwards

this past weekend, i attended a high school graduation. i remember my graduation being long and boring, but this attendance was quick and meaningful—this is most likely as i am older now and have less life to live. rimshot! but i have to say, its cool to be on this side of the fence and just be an observer of the day. very freeing not to be the grad, thinking about the future and decisions needing to be made. very freeing not to be the parent of the grad, thinking about their future and all their decisions needing to be made. the grad ceremony i attended featured a motivational speaker and he lived up to his title. pretty motivating. as i listened, i thought—excellent blog topic—let's give a commencement address. i've been running into troubles being inspired to post on the blog. stories about how i don't own a microwave or how my kids watch youtube instead of tv seem pretty lackluster. so i set up a rough draft of the blog and then googled some commencement speeches, just to check out the competition. after hitting some awesome speeches, i realized i had nothing particularly brilliant to discuss.

lackluster, even.

there is no way my life would be considered inspirational or even a cautionary tale. its not that i don't love my life—i do—its more along the lines of looking at someone who is at the start of their adult lives and thinking: "Yeh. I got nothing for you."

i have, however, plenty of advice for my son who is too young to graduate:

• GET SERIOUS ABOUT KEYBOARDING. ITS A GPA BUILDER, SON!
• DONT TALK BACK TO ME
• TAKE A LOOK AROUND YOU, FOR PETE'S SAKE!
• JUST BECAUSE THEY DO, DOESNT MEAN YOU CAN OR THAT I WILL LET YOU
• THE CRANE MACHINE GAME IS FOR SUCKERS. PROMISE ME YOU WON'T GO TO VEGAS WHEN YOU GROW UP.

and on and on. but by the time kids reach the end of their high school careers, all that sort of talk falls on a closed mind. i can tell you from experience it falls on 11 year old closed minds as well.

so even tho most aren't listening, here are a few things i think would be most relevant to share:

• don't be afraid to not commit to anything. i think whenever i look back, the areas of my life i'm not the most enthusiastic about are when i rushed into committing to a decision and then sticking to it. because i made a commitment.
• don't be afraid to say: this is over my head or this isnt what i want to do. be brave to extricate yourself from any commitment you were foolish enough to take on.
• don't be afraid to follow your passion. it will make you most happy, even when you aren't happy.
• don't be afraid of expressing enthusiasm. its stupid, but people will look at you and think dork. but every once in a while, you'll find someone who shares that particular enthusiasm and then they are totally grateful you are sharing with them. and that feels good.
• don't be afraid. i'm only added that in because i seem to be on an unintentional tear about being afraid. whatever.
  

here are a links to speeches better than my post:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/samantha-power/message-to-graduates-be-a_b_103886.html
http://www.commencement.harvard.edu/2003/ferrell.html
http://www.wm.edu/news/?id=3650
http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/01/hindsights.html

A tale of two Princess brides

My wife Colette has lead an interesting life and as she tells intriguing tales of her adventures, I listen...because I'm her husband. Recently she began telling another, as we sat in the kitchen she told me the story of two princesses and how she was close friends with one of them.

In the mid 80's my wife befriended a mixed African-Vietnamese woman about twelve years her senior and the two quickly became as close as sisters. Her name was Martine Bokassa. Martine and Colette met in Nancy, France worked and traveled together, even shared an apartment for a time. Martine was especially helpful during the birth of Colette's daughter Christine. One day Colette heard a very interesting rumor that her friend was actually the Princess of the Central African Republic.

Colette asked her friend "Are you the Princess?"

Looking shocked, Martine replied, "don't believe everything you hear."

She was very reluctant to discuss it further, but slowly her story emerged.

Her father, Jean-Bedel Bokassa joined the Free French Army in 1939 and took part in both World War II and the Vietnam War in the 1950s, and was decorated several times for his courage, with the Croix de Guerre. In February 195o her father, a sergeant in the French army in Indochina, said goodbye to his two-month-old daughter Martine and her Vietnamese mother, Nguyen Thi Hue and left Vietnam for good.
In 1961, Bokassa resigned from the French army and returned home to what is now Central African Republic. Within five years, Bokassa had taken power in a military coup and soon declared himself president for life.
In November 1970, after years of searching, Bokassa—now President of the remote little Central African Republic and the father of eleven children by his present wife—received word that the South Vietnamese government had found his first family. Martine, a shapely Saigon shopgirl, flew 11,000 miles to Bangui, her father's capital. Though she arrived at 4:30 a.m., a visibly moved Bokassa and thousands of his cheering countrymen were on hand to greet her.

But the daughter was an imposter.

In 1970 the Saigon newspaper Trang Den reported on this story very closely, The real Martine was intrigued with this fairy tale story and read everything she could. Studying newspaper photos she became convinced that the photos of President Bokassa was really her father. She tentatively went to a newspaper man with the story. In early 1971, the Vietnamese newspaper, Saigon Trang Den, revealed the sensational news that "Martine" was not Bokassa's daughter, but a fraud and that the real Martine was still in Vietnam living with her mother.

A few more weeks later, the real Martine arrived in Bangui; this time to no public reception and no media waiting at the airport. Bokassa was angry and accused France of planting a "spy" in his family. He threatened to deport the false Martine, but changed his mind after the French embassy in Bangui intervened, and instead adopted her as his own daughter on his 50th birthday in 1971. The real Martine was now called Martine Kota. She was a bit taller than her adopted sister. And, during something akin to a public auction, Bokassa offered both of them in marriage. Hundreds of young Central African men bid for the two girls. The eventual winners were a doctor and an army officer.

At a big, sumptuous wedding in Palacio de la Renaissance in 1973, which was attended by several heads of state, Martine Kota was married to the doctor, Jean-Bruno Deveavode, and the false Martine ended up with the army officer, Fidel Obrou.

Martine Kota had three children in this marriage; the first born was JB, while the false Martine had one child with her husband.

Three years later, in 1976, Fidel Obrou was executed for an attempted coup against Bokassa. As fate would have it, the false Martine was at the same time in a Bangui hospital giving birth to a son.

Two weeks after the birth, JB's father, the doctor Jean-Bruno Deveavode, killed the newborn with a lethal injection, apparently on the direct orders of the then President for Life, Jean Bedel Bokassa himself.

Then, on the first anniversary of Fidel Obrou's execution, the false Martine disappeared forever during a car ride to the Bangui airport, officially on her way back home to Vietnam. Two of Bokassa's bodyguards were alleged to have strangled her and hid her body somewhere along the road.

After the coup in 1979 that overthrew Bokassa, Martine Kota, JB and his younger brother and sister managed to escape to France. Martine's husband, Jean-Bruno Deveavode, was arrested and executed in 1981 after admitting that he killed the false Martine's child. While in France, Martine Kota and her children were forced into a new and completely different life. Together with her mother, Nguyen Thi Hue, Martine today runs two Vietnamese restaurants in France, one of them on the island of Corsica. And, rather wisely, she refuses to talk about her father. "For my mother, he was a husband; and for me he was a father," is all Martine will volunteer.

Colette lost contact with Martine in the late 80's. I started doing a little research and found Martine's son, Jean-Barthelemy Bokassa has recently published a book "Diamonds of Treason" about his mother's life story and we sent him a note asking to be put in contact with his mother.


Publish Post

OurGirl: Dear God, What is THAT

that's a line from the Princess Bride:

Westley: I wasn't finished. The next thing you will lose will be your left eye followed by your right.
Prince Humperdinck: And then my ears, I understand let's get on with it.
Westley: WRONG. Your ears you keep and I'll tell you why. So that every shriek of every child at seeing your hideousness will be yours to cherish. Every babe that weeps at your approach, every woman who cries out, "Dear God! What is that thing," will echo in your perfect ears. That is what to the pain means. It means I leave you in anguish, wallowing in freakish misery forever.
Prince Humperdinck: I think your bluffing.

i ain't bluffing, either. i've swallowed my pride and i've done it. i've created an etsy store called chesapeake street. and it sells shell art that i create. see right column.

very funny. shut up.

ok, first, shell art kept me sane during a career transition. anyone familiar with me knows my not so secret hobby that i would rather not talk about but feel compelled to, anyway. if you don't know, here's the bare bones.

me loves sailor valentines and 18th century victorian shell art. i own books about it. i even started making my own posies out of shells. and selling it on ebay. it helped keeping me sane and when i landed where i landed and made a ton of new friends and then the vineyard kicked in and i started grad studies so i lost time and the hobby went into hiatus.

but i still have the detritus and the desire to do more craft. no. i only own one cat. why do you ask?

so my brother pointed out etsy, but that was back in the day, so i went uh-huh, really trying to put that behind me, you know? and didn't act on it. don't want to be that crafty-girl. then my girl graciously accepted a little shadow box i put together for her birthday. and she hung it in her bathroom. and i dug that.

i started thinking. i've got to unload some of the pieces i've done. it would clear out space in my office/second living space no one uses. it would make my husband happy. we had agreed i would not cover the house in my creations. he did say that if i did go mad that he would donate my output to the american visionary art museum. i liked the idea it might sit in the same room as the throne made out of tin foil.

you know, its just one of those john-hughes-esque movie lines where the hard core chickie-boo that competes hard, talks big and works her heart out turns out to have a very soft nougat-ey centers that enjoys making tiny, tiny effete flowers out of seashells and adhesives. i'll learn to live with it and your comments. walsh, morgan and andy are not allowed to purchase anything from the store w/o prior permission as i think that will crush me to have those two separate worlds collide like that.

the rest of the world need not seek my permission for buying my stuff or for anything else they may need. just saying. heh.

Morgan: Rhino Trek

What does a Rhino, an Iphone, a Canon Powershot SD400 and Macromedia Fireworks have in common?

Why the debut of the much anticipated, light hearted and whimsical travel blog Rhino Trek!

Before my trip to Greece, Byrne suggested that I take along my spirit guide and photograph him in exotic locales. Byrne always has good ideas...but the whole expedition almost never happened.
Weeks before the trip, I looked all over the Morgan household for my little friend. I fear that he met with an untimely demise. I was appalled, how could I have misplaced my battle standard before the big soirée? The weekend before the flight I went searching for a replacement Rhino. I went to Toy's R Us...but that was a dead end. "Do you have a rhino?" the blank look on the haggard employees face gave me the answer. Nooooo! I finally found Rhino V2.0 at Target. Yes! they have a whole aisle dedicated to Rhino fans and their assorted paraphernalia...who knew?

I put the little Rhino in my backpack and we flew to Greece. I forgot all about him. I was preoccupied with everything around me the sights, smells and food. The history, monuments and temples. Rhino almost never made it out of the backpack. Then one evening my wife was digging through the pack, probably repacking in her never ceasing workaholic frenzy. When she pulled out the Rhino and said, "What's this?"
"uhhh thats my Rhino", as I tried explaining the ambitious concept to her. She looked at me with raised eyebrows.

The next day I carried the Rhino in my pocket, looking for the perfect photo opportunity. When the moment came I was surprised to find I was a little embarrassed. Here I was a grown man on a tour of historical Greece and I was pulling a Rhino out of my pants to photograph. The majority of our fellow tourist looked at me with raised eyebrows. I shrugged my shoulders. How could I explain this?

For the next couple of days I would discreetly photograph my Rhino when no one was around. On the final day before departure, we traveled up to the Acropolis. It was a beautiful day, sunny yet not to hot and very crowded. I took all the obligatory normal photos, dreading the moment when I knew I would have to release the Rhino for his portrait.
"C'mon lets go! I've had enough of rubble, lets go shopping!" My wife declared.
"uhhhh wait a minute I need to take one more shot."
Swallowing my pride I stoically remove the Rhino from my pocket and marched down past throngs of tourists from all over the world. And with my back to them I couched down next to a block of marble, carefully positioned the Rhino just so. Bent down even further, I think my ass was higher than my head and took the perfect photo. When I turned around hundreds of tourists were staring at me, with raised eyebrows.

OurGirl: Notes From a Far Away Place

no, i don't have anything to compare to rhino's quest for the primordial bellybutton of humanity and existence. i'm just kickin' back and enjoying that ride.

i have been having some larger than thou experiences, so i get what he's been talking about. mine are just of a smaller, more olfactory nature. smells are a powerful thing. each one of my boys had their own unique baby odor. im certain i could have picked my baby out of a crowd blind-folded.

my recent smell-experience made me weep.
[men, feel free to leave NOW]

the moment the top note odor hit my passages, i was transported back to being a child, in my paternal grandma's kitchen. yeh, proust covered involuntary memory, first. i know. but i was on my laptop, the smell hit me and suddenly i was profoundly grateful that my husband sent me back to my primordial bellybutton, my grandparents, both now gone.

and it may have been the flu i've been battling that makes me a little weepy, but even the flu struck an involuntary memory chord. what adult, in the grips of the dreaded flu, does not long for their mother's cool hand brushing back their hair? or the kisses that desire for nothing but for you to be well again? did your mother wipe your face with a cool cloth? those things were paramount in my adult mind, tuesday, as i shivered under my think goose-down comforter, waiting out the bug. being an adult can be miserable. my new toast: may you always have a comforting hand at your most ill. ok. i need to work on that. but you get my point.

for those still with me, here's the recipe to making your kitchen smell like my grandma's:

saute onion and garlic in a little oil
add something, anything, meaty.

then, peel and slice a cucumber.
for added authenticity, sprinkle vinegar over the cucumber.


want to play proust yourself? take this survey i found here.