Thursday morning's broken

thursday's first smile greets me

through a streaky window

her sunny embrace keeps me company 

on my morning ride

her light is a canary post-it

that inaudibly whispers,

"it's a new day."

Save Child Care, Save Our Children

Save Our Children. Salvemos Nuestro Niños.

Rally number two today. Parents and their children from all over the New York City rallied near City Hall this afternoon in a unified effort to voice their outrage to the Mayor about his proposal to cut child care subsidies for low income, working families. Sadly security limited the number of people allowed on the City Hall steps, and the press never showed. The en masse overflow of crowd surrounded the periphery and center of City Hall Park.  Jewish, Black, Latino, and Asian American families chanted together, "Stop the cuts, stop the cuts!"

Eliminating day care does not lend itself to economic recovery.  One toddler wore his backpack with a sign tacked on that read, "Don't balance the budget on my back."

It's truly frightening how decisions are made in the name of balancing the budget.  For low-income, working families, most of whom are headed by single mothers, the child care cuts will mean having to depend on unregulated and unsafe child care whether with unfamiliar neighbors or extended family members. Or worse -- leave their jobs, go on public assistance, and enter homeless shelters.  The Commissioner on Homelessness has said that with the economic hardships about to hit the most vulnerable New Yorkers, he proposes to build 70 new homeless shelters, not figure out how to help families put together a plan for work and permanent housing.  With such financial stresses, children are more likely to experience neglect and abuse and enter the city's failed foster care system.  All much more costly to the city than child care subsidies which help to keep families working, children safe and on a path toward educational and economic success.  

Why is it that when budget needs to be balanced, the first to be hurt are poor children?  

For 4-year-old Marchella
sweet 
innocent one 
may she rest 
in peace and bask 
in joyful reunion 
with her twin soul

The men in my life

We've decided to participate in our second annual 2011 Run for Dad this year.  It's a challenge to push for donations to find a cure to prostate cancer when Japan's tsunami has devastated the entire Pacific as well as the Japanese American community in the NYC area . . . along with the budget cuts that advocates fight against locally, statewide and federally.  My cousin, K., and her family will be in from Georgia at that time and will be running as part of Team Ka Dad (together with our friends, for our dads).  If you'd like to run, walk, StandUp! to prostate cancer with us on Father's Day - June 19, please join our team.  This upcoming June 4th, Dad would've turned 72.  Sometimes I can't believe it will be three years this August that Dad died.  Then other days, I still grieve as if it were yesterday.  Now, Dad is my guardian angel who keeps me company in my effortful meditations to center myself.   


The man in my life.  My husband, A., is much too wonderful.  After a stressful work day and commute, he has a home cooked meal waiting for me and at least twice a week, a couple of my favorites.  A. patiently listens to my work angst, shows compassion for my family woes and woos me with his unconditional loving actions.  While he amusingly describes me as an outgoing activist with lesbianic tendencies (mostly for my fierce womanly independence and camaraderie), I am truly aware of how blessed I am to have him as my life partner.  Having been together almost eight years, we have survived milestone experiences -- rebirth with an open heart and renewal at death's cancer door.  Both sacred journeys in their own rights.   

A sacred moment
to be centered

rooted in Spirit

enlivened 
like Spring's first bloom