Sonia Connolly

I went to a friend's band concert last night. The band members are deeply connected as well as amazing musicians, and it's always fun to watch them interacting as they time things just right and appreciate each other's solos. This time, my friend's 25 year old son sat in with them playing guitar. As they got into the first song, she looked over at him, radiating love and pride.

She kept smiling over her accordion as the song continued, joy spilling out of her. I thought a kid being someone's "pride and joy" just meant they were important, that they like them. I've never understood the full-body intensity of it.

For sure my parents never looked at me that way. Maybe sometimes I was a credit to the family, which means I made them look good. Mostly I was an inconvenience or a disappointment or a thing to be used or ignored.

I'm happy for the son. The whole family turned out, and I'm sure his brother and dad were beaming at him too. I wonder what it's like to grow up surrounded in love like that, like a fish in water. I wonder what it's like for my friend, co-creating and inhabiting such a loving family. As a friend, I receive and treasure some of that warmth.

The whole band is like that. The drummer gave the son a warm smile and an enthusiastic thumbs up after his guitar solo. Oh, so that's how people learn to like performing, when they're received like that.

Relatedly, mrissa posted her stories published this year, and On the Water Its Crystal Teeth was new to me, and just the right thing to read after last night's concert.

The Balkan choir I'm in goes for 7 or 8 week sessions, and then at the end we do a "song sharing" where we invite family and friends, sing the songs we've been learning, and then have a little potluck party. Here are some of the songs we're learning this time.

( Songs! )

Kissing the dogs at the rescue center to see their reactions! TikTok video, linked via Mastodon. A woman sitting cross-legged in the grass, warmly kissing several different dogs, and then pausing to see how they react.

Spoiler: The dogs just melt. Makes me cry.

Thanks for the fun questions, jesse_the_k! If anyone else wants questions, let me know. And of course you're welcome to answer any of these, too.

How did you learn to ride a bike? Where did you go?
I learned to ride a bike late. The details have blurred with time, but I think I learned at my cousins' house during a rare holiday visit when I was 10 or so, borrowing one of their smaller bikes. I remember for sure that I fell and hit my knee on concrete, and the bruise hurt for *months*.

I didn't get my own bike until I was 12 years old, because we didn't move to a place where my parents deemed it safe to ride until I was 10, and then it wasn't a priority for them. I really WANTED a bike, though. I could only ride around our subdivision, because the only ways out were on narrow, dangerous roads. This is why I don't live in the suburbs!

Why the West Coast?
Short answer: because I fell in love with it. Longer answer: I applied to UC Berkeley for grad school, visited a college friend out here and got a big YES, WANT feeling. Opening the UC Berkeley acceptance letter was one of the most uncomplicatedly happy moments of my life. Didn't hurt that it's 3,000 miles away from my parents.

What was the first dance you remember learning?
The first dance I danced in the circle rather than behind the line was a Romanian dance Alunelul, "the hazelnut," when I was 8 years old. Which was an odd choice because we did it in shoulder hold. The adults kindly reached down to my small shoulders. Here I am doing it at the 2024 Hoolyeh dance party, second in line. A smaller group is doing it in shoulder hold in the middle of the circle. And here's the "right" version of the music, the recording I grew up with by the Oranim Zabar Troupe from Israel.

If the food fairy decided to visit right now, what would they leave in your refrigerator?
Gosh. I just went to the farmers' market this morning and Berkeley Bowl yesterday, so I'm pretty well supplied. Let's say some kind of delicious fruit juice that has healing properties.

If you could have a truly scent- and virus-free office, would you prefer to work in person or from home?
Home, definitely. Open offices are hard for me to tolerate, much less concentrate in, and if I'm going to be in an office by myself, I'd rather be home with my cat and a very short commute up the stairs.

Thanks for the thought-provoking question, castiron! I'd be interested in your answer, too.

What are your favorite local animals and plants? Are there any particular species that you miss from other places you've lived?
I've been really enjoying the song of the little house finches here in Oakland. They like to perch on the telephone wires and chat with each other around sunset. I haven't been hearing them lately - maybe they migrate for the winter. I didn't know which bird it was until someone told me recently, but I realized the sound was familiar from when I lived here before, and I had missed it.

I love the smell of eucalyptus in the warm sun when I'm biking up in the hills. There's less of that than there used to be, because those volatile oils make them go up like torches in a fire, so they've cut a lot of them down.

I used to whistle back to a bobwhite growing up in Virginia. Haven't heard those anywhere else I've lived. Just learned that it's all one word and a kind of quail when I looked up whether it's capitalized.

Thanks for the great questions, julian! If anyone would like some questions, let me know in comments. You can also give me a question or topic for a December post.

1) What's the most useful utensil or dish you have?
Behold the silicone spurtle! A friend gave me two of these at different times, and they're great for mixing up batter and then getting every last bit out of the bowl. Or getting the tail end of nut butter out of the jar. Or stirring coconut milk being heated on the stove. Plus, isn't that a delightful word? ("Most useful" that's more interesting than, say, the knife I always use to chop vegetables, or the frying pan I always make stir-fry in.)

2) When you were a kid, did you do Best Friends? If so, who was one of them?
When I was five or six, I had a best friend who lived nearby named Mary Devine. She didn't go to my school, and I don't remember how we met or much about her as a person. We ran around outside together. I remember that her mom Joyce was an artist and Mary lived with her dad Mike because her parents were divorced. I slept over at her house once, and woke up terrified because I couldn't move my legs. Turned out her cat was sleeping on them.

3) What's a good way to learn to listen to yourself?
I bet you have some thoughts! For a short answer, I will say, a good way to learn to listen to yourself is to sit with a kind, warm person who listens to you generously, and also models listening to themselves.

There's also that epiphany that listening to yourself is valid and important. I remember a long phone conversation with a friend some 25 years ago where I was complaining that various people weren't listening to me, and she said I might need to listen to myself. It was an "Oh!" moment.

4) Someone gives you $10M to start a foundation which you're going to run for at least the first year. (The original question I stole this from was $1 million, but I like to think $10 million would make it self-perpetuating.) What does the foundation do?
I've been saying that Universal Basic Income would go a long way to solve society's problems, so something with that. Unfortunately it takes a government taxing the rich and distributing the money to really make it go, so I'm not sure what $10M could do. Maybe help immigrants who just got here with very little get started. Also I don't know squat about running foundations (well, I know enough to know it's hard), so some of that money would go toward paying someone who does have those skills.

Wait, I would give the money to the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust, which is an urban Indigenous women-led land trust based in the San Francisco Bay Area that facilitates the return of Indigenous land to Indigenous people. They're already organized to do good things with the money.

5) Do you wear jewelry? What kinds of things do you wear, if you do? What's a favorite? If you don't, do you do anything else to adorn yourself, when you want to feel adorned?
I do wear jewelry, intermittently, mostly silver with semi-precious stones like turquoise or eilat stone. I have a necklace I love by Scott Macdonald, a small smooth gray Columbia Gorge river stone backed with silver, topped with a silver twig and a little bird standing on it. Kind of like these earrings.
( A quick photo )

I got it at Art in the Pearl in 2018. I went at the end of the festival and did a quick walk-through, not expecting to find anything to buy. I paused at Scott's booth, drawn to this necklace, but the chain was too long, and it's built in to the piece. He very kindly shortened the necklace chain several times until it was just right. Not only do I have a necklace which is the perfect length for me, but it carries the sense of his capable hands retwisting the wires at the clasp with presence and patience.

I sent out a newsletter yesterday. As always, I got a handful of unsubscribes afterwards, most without giving a reason.

One person said, "Because you referenced politics in this email. This is not the forum to voice your political opinion." My internal response was, "Uh, it's my forum." And, "Of course trauma is political!" I understand that they meant they don't want to hear about politics at this stage of their healing, and of course I'm not going to say anything back to them.

It reminded me of something I read a long time ago (and can't find a reference for now) about the stages of healing from trauma.

1. Crisis - focus on the inner world.
   
2. Coping - focus on the immediate situation of job, relationships, etc.
   
3. Activism - focus on community and the wider world.

I can see how someone in the first two stages would find talk of politics intrusive.

Another one said, "Trauma is resolved." My first response was, "Go you!" I'm so pleased for that person, and at the same time, my body can't really imagine something so complete and definite around my complex trauma. There have been times in my life where it was quiescent, maybe because I had firmly shut the door on it, but it has always arisen again. Each time a little less sharp, more rounded, worn down like an old mountain range but still there, still part of my inner landscape.

While I was digging for the stages of healing quote, I ran across this great therapist site, Liberation Healing in Seattle. Looks like he's on break until January, but he does online sessions for people living in Washington and California, in case anyone is looking.

I'm planning to (try to) post every day in December. If there are any questions or topics you'd like me to address, please leave them in comments!

I'll be addressing Julian's 5 questions as part of it.

It is Time For Our Cockroach Era by Geraldine DeRuiter, November 9, 2024.

It is time to be in cockroach mode. To keep going, by whatever means possible. When someone tries to stamp you out, avoid them with a swiftness and a scurry that will haunt their dreams. [...] For some of us, survival may be easier. If you fall into that privileged group, consider using your energy to remind others that they are precious, and beautiful, and so, so loved. That if they left the earth, grief would drown those of us left scurrying across the wreckage without them.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren: Here's the Plan to Fight Back by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, November 7, 2024.

To everyone who feels like their heart has been ripped out of their chest, I feel the same. To everyone who is afraid of what happens next, I share your fears. But what we do next is important, and I need you in this fight with me.

Democracy2025

We are the united legal frontline in the fight for people and our democracy. We will fight for people, freedom, and our democracy against any odds. We know the playbook, and we’re ready to fight back.

We Shine for Each Other by T. Thorn Coyle, November 9, 2024.

The world can feel scary, but no matter what happens, I’m glad you are in it. And if it helps, I wrote a long essay about Mutual Aid and how we can show up for each other—especially the most vulnerable among us—right now and always.

On Organizing by Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg, November 11, 2024.

We must deepen our relationships of trust and care across lines of difference, across coalitions, across communities. That's the foundation upon which everything else resides.

Don’t Just Do Nothing: 20 Things You Can Do To Counter Fascism by Anonymous, November 21, 2024.

As diasporic rebels, our Jewishness teaches us to rely on solidarity beyond all borders. Our teachings compel us to lean on the community of others to live lives worth living, whether we are mourning or celebrating, or grappling time and again with what liberation should and could look like. [...] 2. Make people soup and do not stop inviting them over for soup! Be a reason for living.

Feeding the Revolution: Crip love, mutual aid, and pots of immune-boosting soup on the stoop by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, November 15, 2023.

“Oh, you want to know how you can support disability justice? MAKE SOMEONE A POT OF SOUP!” my friend William Maria Rain, a true disability justice OG, yelled at the audience at a disability justice panel at the D Center at the University of Washington, circa 2014 or so. Someone had probably been wringing their hands during the Q&A and timidly asking, “Um, what’s a good way to help the disabled community?” William made the answer very plain: You help disabled people by making sure we’re not dying of starvation in our apartments.

And a different set of encouraging links from muccamukk.

I mentioned a while back that I've been playing piano again. I'm still at it, practicing for 10-15 minutes every day or every other day.

The book I'm learning from is Mastering Music Level 1A, Versatile Piano Studies for Older Beginners by Janet Vogt. It's well put together to gradually teach concepts with musically interesting pieces. I'm working on the last few pieces in that one, and I have 1B waiting for when I'm ready. I'm moving through it slowly, trying to learn the physical skills to hit the right keys, make the volume gradually get louder or softer, slur notes together, and play chords. Not to mention reading the music.

I had "What Every Pianist Needs to Know About the Body" by Thomas Mark et. al. for years, but never read it. Partly because the similar book for singers was so dense and technical. I sold it to Powells when I moved. But I got a copy recently via interlibrary loan, and it turns out to be very readable and useful. I might re-buy a copy to have it for reference. I reviewed it at more length.

What Every Pianist Needs to Know About the Body video also by Thomas Mark. This two hour video is a great companion to the book. I also had a copy of this and never watched it, so I was delighted to find the whole thing on the Internet Archive. Highly recommended if you're interested in good body mechanics.