a rescue capsule named phoenix

Unexpectedly, shortly after 5 this morning, as I'm doing my daily reading of news, emails and such, I find myself with tears pouring down my face as I come across the story of the first 7 of 33 Chilean miners who were rescued after 69 days of being trapped when 700,000 tons of rock collapsed on August 5, trapping them in the lower reaches of the mine.  That is simply incredible - that's over 2 months that they have been trapped down there!  I can't even begin to imagine what those men have been going through.  What on earth have they been doing with themselves, day in and day out, with no outward indication of course of the passing of days, and just waiting, waiting, waiting?!  Unfathomable.

AP photo: Chile's President Sebastian Pinera embraces Florencio Antonio Avalos Silva, the first miner to be rescued.

 How much food and liquids were they able to get down to these men after discovering on August 22 that they indeed were still alive?  Did they have room to move around down there?  Were their head lamps working still or were they in pitch blackness?

[As a follow-up, post-post, here's a link to an article that addresses these questions...]

I think part of the reason this struck me so hard is because mining is in my blood - my grandfather was the youngest of a family of Irish coal miners, the first to be freed from that hell, and the first to attend school beyond the age of 12.  His father and brothers all worked in the mines, 12 hours a day, 6 days a week, coming home completely black, covered in coal dust - the only thing you could see was their eyes and their teeth - only to return again bright and early the next morning and do it all over again.  I wonder how many miners were buried alive back in the day.  They certainly did not have the technology then that afforded these guys a safe return.  Of course, part of the culprit in the increased frequency of mining accidents is that many mountains, like this one, have been overexploited.  In this case, part of what made the rescue operation difficult and risky is finding sufficient virgin rock through which to drill the escape shaft.

I know these guys were mining copper and gold, not coal, and that work conditions have probably improved a little, but I'm sure it's still extremely hard work, and before this happened, these guys were "nobodys", just busting their tails to support their families.  Now, after enduring hell for over 3 months, they emerge to find themselves thrust into the world spotlight, being welcomed to the surface by their country's President and Vice President!  That's another potential tangent that I won't veer onto, but what a surreal experience it must be.  I also won't veer onto the conundrum that is our industrial/consumerist society, of which I, admittedly, am a part, that drives such mining operations. 

The other thing, silly enough, that sent another wave of tears down my face, is that the 13-foot rescue capsule, used to travel the 2,041 feet down the carefully crafted escape shaft and bring each of these 33 men to safety, one by one, is named Phoenix.  Just perfect.  And I was 33 when I brought this beautiful boy named Phoenix into the world.  (And 13 when I met his papa.  Yes, I have a bit of a thing with numbers...)

Miner Osman Araya arrives as the sixth miner to be hoisted to the surface in Copiapo October 13, 2010. Chile's 33 trapped miners are set to travel nearly half a mile through solid rock in a shaft just wider than a man's shoulders on Tuesday night, as their two month ordeal after a cave-in draws to an end.

REUTERS/Ivan Alvarado (CHILE - Tags: DISASTER BUSINESS)

It's nice to see a story of hope and solidarity, and miracle even, amongst the barrage of hateful happenings of late.  I hope that through last night the rescue operations have proceeded smoothly, and I send love and healing to the men who survived this amazing ordeal.  I'm sure their lives will never be the same.

Here's a link to the full article that I read this morning on Yahoo news.

geocaching, a bed of nails, the sun, and land art

Last week was another fun one - the title about sums up the variety...
I'm not going to recap the whole week in detail, just some highlights.

This post will be more pictorial - excuse all the scrolling but ... enjoy. :)

As some of you may or may not know, we've started a small collective where we gather with a few other families every Tuesday & Thursday, and often other days as well.  We mulled over what to call it, and I suppose we'll be calling it the Boundless Kids Tribe.  I also have affectionately referred to it in passing as the Free to Be Me Collective, but I think the vote is for the former.  And I guess it makes sense to go with the whole Boundless thing...

Some highlights from last week:
Last Tuesday, the older kids started the new session of the Homeschool Drama Club.  Melanie, Kazha, Phoenix and I picked up some goodies from the fabulous Lebanese Taverna & had a picnic outside on the grass where the older kids joined us when class was over.  Then we all went over to Hayes Park & the kids played for a couple hours.  My little daredevil Phoenix climbed up a chain link fence til his feet were almost as high as my head.  One of the older boys was spotting him.  Then he climbed back down.  All by himself.  Pretty impressive for a 2-year-old.

On Wednesday we went to the Maryland Science Center at Baltimore's Inner Harbor.  If you're in this area and haven't taken your kids there, go!  Super awesome!  We met our friends Kristen, Lucca, Marcella, & Kozhin there to check out their exhibit on geocaching & had fun checking out other stuff as well.

 As you can see, there are no strings on this harp - it has light beams!  And you could change the sounds that it made.  Fun.

Phoenix & Marcella were having a little face-off.  :)  They love each other, but as they are both used to being the youngest alot of the time, neither of them likes the other to tell them what to do.

If you don't know what geocaching is, go to geocaching.com for info - but in short, you use your handheld GPS device to discover hidden treasures near or far, whatever you wish!  Sounds really fun for family adventure.  The exhibit - eh.  That's how Kristen & I both felt about it.  It was very informative, but a bit dry for kids, too much reading, not enough hands-on.  I guess the idea is that you check out the exhibit about what it is & how you do it, then you could go on a geocaching adventure in the harbor area, but we didn't know that & didn't plan for it, so.... The kids had fun anyway.

 This is when we still had their attention, at the beginning, before they all went running off thru the maze to break the codes and find caches and figure this all out.

Phoenix got mad at me at one point & ran off.  He was laying on the floor pouting, until Marcella found him and broke that hard shell.

I'm looking at them through a fabric mesh, that's why these two images look strange.  Don't expect professional photo work here from me people.  The lighting conditions in this place were difficult to work with.

From there, on to some other parts of the Center:

Okay, this was definitely one of our favorite parts of the whole place!  There was a sheet of plexi that you first laid down on, with all the holes drilled in it for the nails to pass through.  Then, once you've laid down, the woman pressed a button and the plexi receded, leaving you on the bed of nails.  I tried it out too.  Totally comfortable!  Here is Lucca.

And Adobe...

 Kozhin...

Little Phoe...

  The next thing was pretty cool too.  Did you know that to your brain, cold + warm = hot?  There were metal bars, cold from one side, warm from the other.  When you put your hand in the middle, where you could feel both simultaneously, it felt hot!  Ooooh, trippy!

Optical illusion.... hypnotized!  One down...

And another one bites the dust...

Here are our cuties!

And next - ah yes, payphones!  Remember those?  Also known as Dial-a-Germ.

Phoenix's cave man side shows itself a little...

And this thing simulated your digestive tract.  If you could move that ball through the mesh tube, it made the gurgling sounds that your guts make!  Yeah!  (Sorry for the excessive use of exclamation points throughout the post; I'm just a bit excited...)

Next, of course Phoenix had to get on the Dial-a-Germ.  I had daddy in mind here; I knew he would 'love' this as he's pretty grossed out by germs in public places.

Not sure what he was listening to here, but he looks so darn cute!

Oh lordy, okay, I know it's alot of pictures, but wait, there's more!  I just wish blogger would let me format this differently so I could do a gallery with captions or something.  Wordpress can do that, but alas, I didn't like the interface!  So.... in the future, I'll try to whip up quick slideshows instead.

That's it for Wednesday's adventures.  We left, and the kids came with me to Oxon Hill where I teach tap on Wednesday nights.  Long day.

On Thursday, our little tribe met up at Alcova Heights Park.  The kids played, meandered in the creek, snacked; the moms talked, about all manner of things.

Alcova Heights, aka 'the Creek playground' is one of my favorite spots.  I've been taking Adobe there since before she could walk.

I suggested that today might be a good day to discuss Daylight Saving Time and the Spring Equinox, since one just happened, and one was about to happen.  (Yay Spring!)  What is Daylight Saving?  Why does it happen?  Who 'invented' it?  What exactly is the Spring Equinox?  What are some cultures whose New Year corresponds? etc... We discussed all this over a picnic lunch, and then we made some 'land art' together, inspired by the fabulous Andy Goldsworthy, who Melanie & I both love.  We collected sticks, branches, and leaves to make a sun, in honor of the longer daylight hours bestowed upon us by the Equinox, & Daylight Saving (sort of - well at least it's light later in the day...)

Yes, that's Phoenix sitting in the middle of the sun - Adobe put his hair in piggy tails, and everyone was calling him a 'she' all day.

Skyler is approving the work.

 Beautiful momma Melanie...

Sweet Amman at this point then asks if he can sing a song, which turns out to be, "You Are My Sunshine..." Awesome!  And everyone joins in as they continue working. 

Kazha says 'hmmmm, what else does it need?'....

Placing the final touches... momma Stephanie, and the girls.

At this point, I video'd everyone holding hands and singing the song again - so cute!  Don't have a way to share that here, and haven't uploaded it anywhere...

Here is Melanie in fetal position inside our sun.

That was fun!

Friday, we handled some business at home and then met the tribe and other folks at the park.  Phoenix was so beat that he fell asleep around 6:30ish and slept straight through til the next morning.  Saturday, first day of spring! - it was nice & warm.  We busted out the kiddie pool, the kids played, we did yard work, picked up mulch, I trimmed the rose bushes, and stuff like that.  Sunday, more work outside, making the front and side of the house look all nice.  I rescued our violet tree (or whatever it is) that was being suffocated by ivy - pulled it all off, which was quite a job, and Atom took out two thorny bushes on the side of the house (huge job), and we did a bunch more stuff.  Hard labor.  Fun.  No, seriously, I like it.  I know it's not as fun for Atom since he does hard labor at work all week.  But it's different when it's your home.  Therapeutic.  More pictures to come.

And if you've stuck around til the end, guess I'm not doing too bad, cuz I know this was a long one.  Thanks! 

there is no religion higher than truth

Aah, the New Year.  The first couple of months are always an interesting time of year for me as I move from the struggle to sort out what's meaningful from the holiday chaos/charades/consumerist whirlwind that everyone seems to find themselves sucked into, in one way or another, from the end of October into January.  If I'm in a cynical mood, 'the holidays' could be seen as one excuse after another to buy a bunch of crap that you or someone else doesn't really need, get drunk, eat too much, overindulge, and get caught up in a whirlwind of empty sentimentality & token phrases that don't actually mean anything.  But I can also enjoy certain aspects to a degree - I have to say, I do actually like some of the Christmas music, the decorations, pretty lights, the spirit of celebration; people tend to be a little more friendly to each other, and exchanging gifts can be fun, if you don't go overboard with it.  When I'm in right mind, I know that this time of year, winter time, is simply a time of rest & renewal, a time to appreciate the beauty & wonder of Mother Nature, to pull close the ones we love & tell them "Thank you.  Thank you for being a part of my life.  Thank you for being the beautiful person that you are.  Thank you for helping me to learn & grow in this adventure as a human being.  Thank you for loving me & receiving my love."
   Thus, my relationship with 'the holidays' is kind of like my relationship with organized religion.  It's just not in my make-up, my fabric as a human being.  I knew from kindergarten and first grade in a Catholic school in rural Indiana that it was not for me.  I felt a lack of questioning around me, incongruities, and I was suspicious of the Story of Creation (On the first day, God created.... On the second day...  and On the seventh day he rested....) that was being taught as a literal occurrence.  And, there was Real Life at that point in life - the reason we moved to Indiana.  My grandfather killed himself because my grandmother was becoming mysteriously ill; just when they were ready to settle into retirement in Florida where they had just bought a house, life took a drastic turn in another direction, and he just couldn't bear it.  Shortly afterward, they discovered that my grandmother had 16 brain tumors, from cancer that had started in her lungs and spread.  Within one year, she deteriorated to the state of infancy before my very eyes, and early one morning, she passed away, as I lay close by sleeping.  The relationships were all complicated emotionally - I could write a whole chapter on that alone - and honestly, only now, 30 years later, do I consider how those particular events must have shaped me.  It was the end of a husband & wife, the end of a father & son, the end of a son & his mother.  And I was just at the beginning.
   So, I found myself feeling total rejection of organized religion and Christianity in particular, for many years.  However, I was decidedly not atheist.  This led me to ask alot of questions, read different things, have lengthy conversations with my dad, my mom, and others, and to arrive at some interesting hypotheses.  At some point, perhaps when I was 18, 19, 20, I began to realize that perhaps I was missing something by my general dismissal of organized religion.  I began to read, alot - esoteric teachings especially, and embrace the good things many of the main religions have to offer.  I read up on certain religions, read some of the Bible and the Qu'ran, teachings of the Buddha, and delved deeper into what was at the heart of each of these teachings.  And a pattern emerged.  I began to feel that in many ways, they were each saying the same things - just in different languages.  Some of the details were different, and all, it seemed to me, were diluted or distorted in various ways from the original teachings, for a variety of reasons - probably first & foremost, no separation of church & state, of religion from law, for centuries upon centuries.  That's a topic for a whole 'nother post. 
   The point is, I realized that it's all about what speaks to you, what helps you find meaning in life, what helps you move forward when the burdens of life seem too much to bear.  So, if Jesus is your homeboy, that's great; if it's Allah that you praise, that's great; if it's the Buddha, Krishna, or whatever other name you choose for the Higher Power, or even if you are an existentialist, atheist, whatever, that's great, if it rings true for you.  We are all seeking balance in our lives, reacting to & interacting with our upbringings, our cultures, our surroundings, our peoples' stories, our own personal stories.... Where religion translates to war is when one people try to force their way on another people, when people try to control one another, try to say that their path is the only Path... We are a people of many languages and many ways, but we are family.
   "There is no religion higher than truth."  And there is no Truth higher than Love.  It is written on my soul.