TennCare Enrollees & Friends on Day 10 of Sit In: How YOU Can Help.

ENROLLEES AND FRIENDS REACH DAY 10 OF SIT IN

CONTENTS:
1. TennCare Sit-In: What you can do
2. TennCare Sit-in: Successes so far

1. TennCare: What you can do…
By July 6th:
§ Over 150,000 Tennesseans will receive TERMINATION Letters.
§ About 700,000 will receive BENEFIT LIMIT notification letters.

A. Call, Email and/or Fax Governor Bredesen’s Office:
Phone: 615.741.2001, Fax: 615.532.9711, Email: phil.bredesen@state.tn.us
Share your comments with Governor Bredesen’s Staff and ask them to write it down.
That you want the CUTS to be halted immediately, and,
That you support the courageous enrollees who continue the Sit-In

B. Call, Email and/or Fax Representative Hensley:
Thank him for his public support of the Sit-In and his continued leadership in stopping and reversing the TennCare Cuts.
Phone (615) 741-7476 or rep.joey.hensley@legislature.state.tn.us
Other Legislators to Thank for their presence at the Sit-In:
Representative Michael Kernell (901) 454-1113, rep.mike.kernell@legislature.state.tn.us
Senator Black (615) 230-8586 sen.diane.black@legislature.state.tn.us

C. Organize a night to stay at the Capitol with your friends, family, church, collective, etc
Arrive by 3:30pm, bring your own dinner and snacks.
Call TennCare Enrollee and coordinator: Lisa Abel at 485-1571.
Capitol Rotunda (Just outside of Governor’s Office)
First Floor of the Capitol. Enter through 6th & Union Legislative Plaza Entrance
*Bring Valid ID and no pocket knives, etc.


2. TennCare SIT-IN: Successes so far
A. NEGOTATIONS BEGIN BETWEEN SIT-IN MEMBERS AND GOVERNOR’S STAFF
First formal meeting occurred, yesterday between 4 members of the Sit-In and the Deputy Governor, David Coolley, and Governor Bredesen’s Chief Administrative Officer. The group communicated that they are there to stay until the Governor halts the cuts but also began discussions around the format of a public meeting.

B. PRIVATE DUTY NURSING TO BE REINSTATED FOR OVER 100 TENNESSEANS ON VENTILATORS
Last week the group was able to get Governor Bredesen to agree to reinstate Private Duty Nursing to the 100 plus Tennesseans like Glen Barnhill so that they can continue to receive essential services AND remain at home. This agreement was affirmed in the meeting with Deputy Governor Coolley. They acknowledged they will need to develop a new letter to sent to those TennCare enrollees that will need to be sent out in the very near future. The links below are articles include quotes from Governor Bredesen agreeing to reinstate Private Duty Nursing:
TENNESSEAN ON JUNE 22ND
http://tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050622/NEWS0204/506220409/1085/ARCHIVES
NASHVILLE CITYPAPER ON JUNE 22ND
http://www.nashvillecitypaper.com/index.cfm?section=9&screen=news&news_id=42345

C. LOCAL AND NATIONAL MEDIA
Many of you have seen the local press coverage. Most of which has been positive. We have also now been covered by twice by National Public Radio, Pacifica Radio and Democracy Now. The New York Times and Washington Post are considering covering our story. Please email matt@nashvillepeacejustice.org if you have any contact with any national media or magazines such as Mother Jones, Nation, etc.

D. TENNCARE ENROLLEES LEADING THE WAY
It is always a goal of the NPJC to support the activism of those most directly effected. TennCare enrollees and uninsured Tennesseans have been the foundation and mobilizing base of the Sit-In and help us all understand the face of this immense public policy issue.

E. NEW SUPPORT & YOU
There have been a great many organization that have formally and informally supported the Sit-In it has been tremendous. Your encouragement, presence at the capitol and continued calls are making a huge difference. It is clear that you are calling in because we are hearing the phone ring from within the Governor’s Office and hearing the Staff’s response. THANK YOU.

More Details
http://www.tnimc.org/
http://www.mcil.org/
http://www.tenncare.org/

Was Blind, But Now I See....

Saturday officially ushered in the third trimester of my pregnancy. The Beloved Mister called me Waddles the other day, as my emerging shape has given me that distinctly ducky walk.

Ziggy's eyes, heretofore fused closed, will open this week. What does he see?

My reading tells me that our son looks like he'll look when he'll arrive, only smaller and thinner, and somewhere between 2 and 3 pounds. I'm banking on him being a big boy, as the Beloved Mister and I are big peasant-built people and our two ultrasounds have showed Zig to be at the toppermost of length and weight development and my weight gain has been very normal -- 10 pounds as of my last appointment with the midwife, and all centered in my belly and bosom, at last shaking the Booty balance I've come to know my entire adult life....

Swan, Swan, Hummingbird....

I am wholly in Nesting Mode:
http://www.tinyurl.com/8m3vk

listening to a plethora of good sounds put on the stereo by the Beloved Mister: everything from Charlie Pool to Dwight Yaokam to Talking Heads.

I've torn my entire kitchen apart prior to preparing several cold salads for the weekend....

Witness the insane ToDoList I've been working from the last several days (though, actually, my father works these kinds of lists daily, outlined on a blue index card-- in this case, the apple fell far from the tree save for manic outbursts of productivity or this, the biological imperative of a pregnant woman gone happy-mad):

Porch:
Re-pot tomato plants
Weed garden area
Sweep
Get rid of debris
BBQ / Smoker on site
Pot up flowers, etc.
Yellow table to porch

Living Room:
Sort through paper / mags
Recycle
File paper
Pay bills
Sweep floor
Mop floor
Dust
Organize current reading materials
Clean sofas
De-clutter
Eric hook up VCR

Dining Room:
Crate to basement
Big table to basement
Canning / Freezing supplies to basement
Round table upstairs
Sort through papers
File papers
Dust
Sweep Floor
Mop floor
Arrange bookshelves
De-clutter
Water plants / re-pot where needed

Bathroom / Foyer:
Organize linens
Launder clothing / linens
Clean commode
Clean tub
Clean shower curtains
Sweep floor
Mop floor
De-clutter
Dust shelving
Organize shelving
Run broom on ceiling / walls to dust
Sort clothing hanging on rack—put away

Kitchen:
Prepare foods:
Texas Caviar
Quiche
Pasta Salad
Pimiento Cheese
Hummus
Fruit

Wash dishes
Scour out sinks
Remove cabinet / fridge pics, art, magnets
Scrub outside of cabinets
Replace pics, art, magnets
Clean off shelving
Organize shelving
Water plants
Clean off window sills
Dust all – clean top of fridge & table
Recycle or use paper bags
Remove recycling to basement or recycle center
De-clutter
Organize fridge
Sweep floor
Mop floor

Office:
Recycle paper goods
Sort paper
File paper
Pay bills
Send correspondence
Balance checkbook
De-clutter
Organize shelving
Dust
Clean surfaces
Sweep floor
Mop floor

Bedroom:
Sort through clothing
Out of season clothing put in bins
Post – maternity clothing put in bins
Cull clothing to give away
Launder clothing if needed
Sort clothing on rack—put away as needed
Utilize under bed boxes for E’s t-shirts
Organize baby clothing / toys / diapers in bins by size
Organize bookshelf
Take all unused / unneeded / out of season clothing to basement
De-clutter
Dust
Sweep Floor
Mop Floor

Other:
Vacuum & declutter van, replace seats

I am completely whack. This list is actually typed out and posted on the bulletin board in the kitchen, but I can't seem to help myself, and actually: I'm enjoying myself. Goddess bless the Mister, who is humoring me.


Back to it!!

The Science Fiction Show: now playing!!

So I'm scurrying round cooking and cleaning, making ready for the Mister's folks to visit this weekend; I'm feeling great: good energy, pleasant spirits, physically comfortable. Plus which, this morning I figured out how to add some links to things I dig here on Ms. Booty Explains It All To You....

I feel a rumbling belly and I know I'm not hungry; I did eat breakfast, maybe I need a snack? I'm not due to eat lunch with my also pregnant pal, Em, until 12:30. But something is happening.

Standing in the middle of my messily industrious kitchen, I pull up my shirt to see my belly entirely shifted to the right, an unmistakable babe Booty pressing forward and out, making a lopsided peak of my roundness. And just as quickly-- looking not unlike watching from above the earth, an animal burrowing an underground tunnel-- my son's precious Boot scoots radically left, settles, shifts, settles, shifts.

I'd been warned by the girls I used to work with that this would occur, but as a first time and deliriously happy mama to be at the ripe and juicy age of 38, NOTHING they'd said could have prepared me for this amazing, spooky, funny, and delightful sight. The female body, in all it's maleable, receptive, remarkable beauty is a fascinating and wonderful thing to be!

Of course, I called the Beloved Mister immediately to describe these sensations and sights. Driving his truck and talking on the mobile, he laughed and laughed, telling me he'll be home this evening to watch the science fiction show with me.

Which is dumber, a monkey or an ape?

This morning we woke much earlier than necessary. The little cat, Buddy Wiggins, woke the Beloved Mister with her mewing (Maine Coons, such as the mother & daughter rescues with whom we share our home-- along with Bert, our humble and companionable shepherd mix rescue-- are highly vocal creatures), and Ms. Booty Homemaker found herself startled awake by the Mister's choice words for the trash bag torn up by a visiting racoon on the back porch. Ms. Booty H's fault her own self. It was she (me) who left the bag on the porch yesterday, intending to walk it down the rickety steps (one should really be a mountain goat to regularly mount our back steps) at a later point. Bad Ms. Booty! This is the second time in a week she has let the critters from the forest and the Springs from back of the house tear up the garbage, strewing chicken bones, coffee grounds, egg shells and other choice bits about the porch and onto the asphalt driveway apron below. Ms. Booty should be composting, for one thing. And for another, she should learn from her mistakes. But here's the thing of things....

Hormones.

No. I'm not joking, nor am I attempting to offer up an excuse. Something about pregnancy and the rush of chemical reactions throughout the body / mind can have a profound effect on one's very brilliance. Fortunate for me, the Beloved Mister is most often amused by this and in response to one particularly egregious error on the part of the dumbed-down Ms. Booty Homemaker, he chucklingly said, It's funny. It's funny that pregnancy makes you stupid. Think what happens to really stupid people!! I laughed too, and neglected to remind him of the rather moronic things I've said and done when NOT under the influence of a rush of baby building hormones.... the most famous example of which, and one that still tickles us to this day, is my (at the time) utterly serious query, Which is dumber, a monkey or an ape?

In previous times of severe stress, such as during the death of a loved one and / or a prolonged and painfully ugly and legally brutal breakup, I've fallen prey to the kind of rattled and wonky behavior that accompanies such events: daily passing my exit on the Interstate, leaving my driver's license with the drive-thru bank teller three times in the same month, repeatedly locking myself out of car or home....

It's odd to me that such unhappy times and such a happy time as now bring on a similar though not same kind of stupidity.

I am drunk with child, as I have been drunk with love, with life, with loss.

Jesus Has a Booty.

Well, I failed to get up an entry yesterday, and I'm smack in the middle of thirty six things even now.... I completed roughly a third of my admittedly over-ambitious list yesterday in preparation of George & Emmie coming this weekend to visit their son, my Beloved Mister (and me, too), but I did exercise, eat well, take an ever so brief nap and attend my first La Leche League meeting, so all's well that ends well. Aside from which, upon returning home LATE (too late to ring up my sister-in-law Stephanie to sing Happy Birthday to her), my Beloved Mister prepared me a late night supper of bacon and eggs. With toast. Mmm. AND serendaded me during the cooking with psychedelic tunes; he sang along to his long coveted and only recently purchased (sidewalk sale!) Nuggets box set. He used the cooking spray as his mic, and threw in a shake of the Mr. Booty, too. I dig him mightily, and love that booty shake. That, of course, makes me think of littlest niece, Haley, who several months ago after being reprimanded at preschool for talking about hind ends, announced to us all that Jesus has a booty. She likes to shake hers. As we all are wont to do and quite frankly, should do more often. Free the mind and the ass will follow! Lean or ample, a shake does a booty good. This Booty, too. I'd like to believe that a radical like Jesus had his mind and booty right in line, one with the other, a synchronized set....

In the meantime, my little fella, curled up like a butterbean, is giving Mama Booty Homemaker quite the shake from within. He likes, it seems, to dance. Should you care to play, dive into the baby pool and take your guess: http://www.expectnet.com/index.php -- Game name: OurZiggy. I'll come up with some super groovy prize for the winner. That's a promise. I swear upon my bodacious Booty self.

To Sir, With Love.

We've been celebrating Father's Day all weekend long, the Beloved Mister and I. He works six days a week: Monday through Thursday driving a truck for a food rescue agency called Nashville's Table, shortly to be operational under the greater umbrella of national agency Second Harvest. Saturdays and Sundays from noon to six pm, my Beloved is an announcer on WPLN, Nashville Public Radio; you can hear him online here: http://www.wpln.org. His voice is a sound I have, over a clutch of years, come to love as life itself; it tethers me and sounds the way home, my bridegroom's aural breadcrumbs in the thick of the forest. Elsewise, my Mister works on other projects such as putting out records on his roots indie label, Catamount, or writing for publication, such as our co-writes on Clarksdale, MS and Nashville's very own specialty, Hot Chicken, both for No Depression Magazine.

Since I have, in the last month, passed the torch from being the primary breadwinner to concentrate more fully on our soon to be expanding family and my writing, Fridays are now the day my Beloved Mister and I have to spend together, something we haven't had with any regularity in almost two years!! Fridays are now dubbed Adventure Day and may find us, as this weekend has, engaged in a favorite pastime: traveling our dearly loved blue highways in Maggie, our trusty old van, seeing what there is to see. Back when we were a long distance couple, we'd get together every few weeks and spend some portion of our time doing just this, visiting with one another and drinking in everything about the experience. My man would proclaim: This is the life: driving around with you, eating sandwiches, doing what we do.

And for awhile, we lost the ability to do that. Our coming together in the same city and working and laundering panties and purchasing postage stamps and running around fitting everything else in helped get our priorities mixed up and we forgot, somehow, to live in gratitude. The distractions and anxieties of ordinary life scattered us, and yet now, we've come through some of the early navigations and negotiations of partnership, and in this, our fourth year together, we're reaping the rich rewards of staying, even when it got really hard. Of being challenged to be our best selves from our greatest teachers: each other, and now, this boy baby of ours who we expect in late September. This baby in inside we call Ziggy and love already with a ferocity heretofore unknown.

Early Friday morning found us crumped up in our big kingsize bed reading to one another from our accumulated library of children's books. My Beloved Mister placed his head on my growing abdomen, sharing the words with our little man to be. Daily now, the babe hears his daddy read and / or talk to him. Moby Dick. Dr. Seuss. The day recounted. On this morning, my Beloved was rewarded for his attentions with a swift kick to the temple by his son. This boy of ours is active and while this gorgeous early mother mystery time seems to be going all too fast, I look so forward to meeting him out here in the world.

The presence of this babe, and all that led to his conception-- intellectually, spiritually, physically --make things seem more as they did during the time my Beloved Mister and my years long friendship became something more deeply intimate, took our collective breath away, as all at once the air was cleaner and thinking gave way to what most naturally unfolded as with a higher purpose plan. We free fell, trusting the process. For some time now, as this babe grows within me and we grow together with more mindful ministrations, Faith has again taken root; we are learning, as our friend Bill wished for us on our wedding day, in the words of writer / farmer / philosopher / conservationist Wendell Berry in his Manifesto: Mad Farmer Liberation Front to practice resurrection. To plant sequoias.

And the darkness shall bear its fruit.

Fridays, riding around with one another on backroads, eating sandwiches and loving one another so wholly and humanly is being on the most right path. As Rainer Marie Rilke told it,

Moving Forward
The deep parts of my life pour onward,

as if the river shores were opening out.

It seems that things are more like me now,

that I can see farther into paintings.

I feel closer to what language can't reach.

With my senses, as with birds,

I climb into the windy heaven, out

of the oak, and in the ponds broken off from the sky

my feeling sinks, as if standing on fishes.

These are days of much import, of fruition. Of seeing the extraordinary in the ordinary.

Like this morning, after opening gifts to celebrate the holiday and his impending fatherhood, my Beloved Mister spent all the time he had up until leaving for the station working on a car isue for me.... Hot, sweaty, dirt and grime on his hands and knees, my man turned to me: It's what fathers do, he said.

He learned that from his father, a good man. I suppose, in the earliest of times, I learned to expect it from my father, also a good man. I'm tired of thinking that to be a good feminist I must do everything myself. I am grateful that I have learned -- am learning -- the value of interdependence and I relish being a woman, a woman who feels ravishing and succulent in this time of growing into motherhood. I refuse to make little of it, or to deny its beauty out of fear. It is a blessing, a gift, this life I have co-created.

I am glad we're having a boy. The world needs more good men.

I live in gratitude. And for the pink light at day's end. I live for practicing resurrection, for tending the young saplings, for free falling in Faith and for celebrating these earth-bound moments like being smack dab in the middle as my man becomes a father. I live a love letter, breathing, moving, riding around eating sandwiches. To Sir, with love.

##

The beginning.

Ms. Booty Homemaker & her Beloved Mister

This was the wedding day of Ms. Booty Homemaker and her Beloved Mister: October 26, 2002. We wed in our living room with thirty or so of our most intimate friends and family members as witness / participants. Yes. That is a pumpkin the Beloved Mister is carrying; it is filled with notes and poems and seeds and dirt provided by ceremony participants to bless our union and sanctify the pumpkin which shortly after this photo was snapped, was tossed to the Universe as a pumpkin prayer by way of Lockeland Springs.