I had an argument with my mom the other day. It wasn’t a big deal, and I don’t want to bore you with the details, except that it was about going to the movies.

I have terrible luck at movie theaters.

You can ask my sister or my friend Glynda or my husband. Weird, annoying things happen to me in theaters - rude patrons (or even employees!) who talk during the movie, broken film reels, malfunctioning sound, out-of-focus projection. I just have a long history of bad experiences at the cinema. But I do love movies, so I watch a lot of videos, Netflix, AMC and TCM.

The argument with my mom was really about something else entirely, but in defending my position, I was forced to explain a philosophy by which I have always lived, but never articulated before:

Life is a struggle against limited resources.

We have a limited amount of time, energy and money. 24 hours in a day; 3 weeks of vacation; 4 weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas; 14 hours of anticipated, productive energy in a day; a certain number of dollars’ worth of salary a month.

The limits on my resources are the reasons I make to-do lists, calendars, schedules, budgets and routines.  They are the reasons I say “no” to some things but “yes” to others. They guide pretty much every decision I make because I have priorities.

Personally, my priorities are fairly complicated, extensive and somewhat dynamic. My family, however, always comes first. Sometimes my job comes second, especially if there is an important deadline coming up. But if things are calm at work, my friends supersede my career. Health is more important than education. Entertainment is more important than material stuff, and so on.

I could probably go on for days spelling out all my various priorities and the ways in which I allocate my resources to satisfy them. In the past few days, though, I realized something more universal.

Priorities are how we label each other.

How we use our limited resources is how we put ourselves into groups, communities or even political parties. People who decide to use their resources on education become academics. People who use their resources on video games and computer equipment become geeks or gamers. People who decide to use their resources on GTL (Gym, Tan, Laundry) become “The Situation.” You get it.

Priorities and the use of limited resources are why we get so annoyed with lawmakers. To me, it is a waste of time and energy for Indiana lawmakers to be debating an amendment to the state Constitution to make gay marriage illegal. Our state is facing far more dire issues than whether or not two people, who are likely upstanding, contributing members of our society, can be married.  We have rampant unemployment, governmental and corporate corruption, gang violence and industry demise. I consider lawmakers’ using their time and MY tax money to discriminate against a small group of people who are not harming anyone else to be a WASTE of limited resources. It ticks me off. Obviously, other people have different priorities.

I see it as a waste of time and money and energy for the House of Representatives to be debating a bill to redefine rape so the federal government can protect citizens from paying for federally-funded abortions. Because only 191 abortions due to rape were paid for by federal funds last year, and that number won’t change under the new Health Care Law. So they are sitting in Washington, debating something that might cost taxpayers 2/10 of a cent next year. When we have so many other, bigger issues they should be dealing with.

Priorities are different for everyone, though. Some people buy designer clothes and pay $50 for a weekly manicure while they live in an apartment that should be condemned. Other people think that spending billions on a war with another nation is okay; spending a lesser amount to help maintain the health of our own citizens is a travesty. That’s why we argue. That’s why debate. That’s how we label one another.

In the end, my mom decided I had the right not to spend my time and money on going to the movie theater. My priorities are different from hers. Long story short - I’ll wait to see “The King’s Speech” on DVD.

For me, the holiday season started this morning. Until 1am of December 21^st, I was buried under statistical reports, department meetings, esssays to be graded and a textbook manuscript to be edited. I finished the last of it in the wee hours of this morning, so I can finally turn my attention, undivided, to the Big Day.

Not that I haven’t been thinking about Christmas or doing things here and there. My parents treated my family to the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra’s Yuletide Celebration a couple weeks ago, which was lovely. I went to Metamora, a little town in eastern Indiana that does a “Christmas Walk” along its historic canal every year. I attended my old neighborhood’s annual Progressive Dinner and a couple of children’s parties. I have done snatches of shopping, wrapping and baking when I could fit them in.

My friends and family often reminded me that time was running short. And I even got some reminders from unlikely sources. Such as one friend, a Muslim PhD candidate from Indonesia, who comforted me when I learned we were expecting ANOTHER snowstorm: “But Jennifer, now you will get to play your Christmas sports,” he said with a sincere smile. I guess I looked confused because he explained, “You know, your skiing, your sledding, your snowball fighting.” So cute.

And during Hannukah, I tutored an exchange student from Israel. I was reading his paper, when I suddenly heard him humming “Jingle Bells.” Puzzled, I looked at him and asked, “Boaz, aren’t you Jewish?” He grinned and nodded. “Yeah, but your Christmas music is everywhere! It gets stuck in my head.” HA! (So much for the “war on Christmas” Fox News is always screaming about to all the retired W.A.S.P.s who actually believe it. If Jewish exchange students are singing Christmas music, I think the holiday’s safe, Bill O..)

Anyway, now I can finally concentrate on getting into some Christmas spirit. So the following lists are really just me brainstorming for my own benefit unless you, too, are trying to cram all your favorite Christmas traditions into three or four days!

Below are some of my favorite things about the season that I’m trying to get in before it’s over.

Songs:

(Remember, I’m a child of the 80’s.)

• ·         White Christmas – Bing Crosby
• ·         Little Drummer Boy – Bing Crosby and David Bowie
• ·         Do They Know It’s Christmas – Duran Duran and some other people
• ·         The Christmas Song – Nat King Cole
• ·         Joy to the World – Julie Andrews
• ·         Santa Claus Is Comin to Town – Bruce Springsteen
• ·         I Saw Momma Kissing Santa Claus – John Mellencamp
• ·         Rudolph – Gene Autry
• ·         Mary’s Boy Child – Boney M
• ·         Jingle Bell Rock – Bobby Helms
• ·         I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas
• ·         Happy Christmas – John Lennon
• ·         Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer – Elmo and Patsy
• ·         Christmas Wrapping – The Waitresses
• ·         All I Want for Christmas is You – Mariah Carey

Movies:

• ·         It’s a Wonderful Life
• ·         The Grinch
• ·         Rudolph
• ·         White Christmas
• ·         A Christmas Story
• ·         Mickey’s Christmas Carol
• ·         Scrooged
• ·         National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation
• ·         Holiday Inn
• ·         Die Hard
• ·         Love Actually

Books/Stories:

• A Christmas Carol - Dickens
• A Visit from St. Nicholas - Moore
• Gospel of Luke

Cookies:

• ·         Sugar cookie cutouts
• ·         Oatmeal craisin
• ·         Snickerdoodles
• ·         Jam thumbprints
• ·         Chocolate chip
• ·         Gingerbread

Other Holiday Food/Drinks:

• ·         Egg nog
• ·         Mulled wine
• ·         Cranberry “grog”
• ·         Spinach dip with Hawaiian bread
• ·         Honey ham
• ·         Green bean casserole
• ·         Jesus’ birthday cake

If I spend the next five days doing nothing but cooking, eating, reading, listening to music and watching movies, I think I can get it all in. The race is on! Merry Christmas!

So I haven’t written a blog post in a while. And I could say it’s because I have been busy, but that would only be partly true. It’s also because I just haven’t felt inspired to write anything.

I mentioned my malaise to a friend of mine, and she was shocked. “But we lost the elections! How can you not be angry? Doesn’t that make you want to write something?”

And the simple answer is “No, not really.”

See, I don’t consider myself a Democrat as much as I consider myself a liberal. In fact, I have never in my voting life voted a straight party ticket. Back when I considered myself a Republican, I always had at least one Democrat on my ballot (usually Evan Bayh). And now that I don’t really have a hard party affiliation, I usually split my ticket about 2/3 Dem and 1/3 Rep. So I don’t feel like I lost too badly. About half my ballot actually won.

Still, I see my liberal friend’s point. And certainly, many of my friends on the left were pretty depressed by the election results. “We gave the kickball back to the playground bully,” one of my friends said, referencing a blog entry I wrote a couple years ago.

True. Just when President Obama’s administration was starting to resuscitate this economy that had most of the life sucked out of it by W. and his cronies, here comes the G.O.P. again, ready to kick it to death again. Indeed, many crucial economic indicators have been steadily rising in the past few months. (Not that indicators mean much. Economics is too complex to measure with most of these pat little numbers.)

Still, many of my liberal friends are quite depressed. Some of them didn’t even vote because they’re disillusioned with what they see as President Obama’s lack of action on social issues like gay marriage and DADT. I am too, but not voting certainly didn’t help their causes! Did they think the G.O.P. candidates would be more gay-friendly than the Dems?!

Anyway, I guess there are three main reasons that I’m not all that upset about the election results.

First, I don’t want a permanent Democratic majority. I’m not a fan of any political party having power for a long period of time. That’s why I was so vocal about getting Bush and co. out of office. They’d been in there way too long, getting their way and doing a real number on our country. True, the Democrats are much closer to my personal ideology than Republicans in general, but that doesn’t mean I want all Democrats all the time. Balance is better. No parties at all would be ideal, of course. I agree with George Washington: “(Political parties)are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.” Since it’s highly unlikely we’ll ever be able to eliminate the party system we’re currently putting up with, though, I prefer to see it go back and forth a bit.

Second, it’s a lot easier to be on the defensive. I guess I’d never realized that until this election cycle. It’s so much easier to be in the backseat, complaining at the driver. It’ll be a nice respite after two years of listening to Republicans scream and stomp and throw rocks through windows.

Finally, though, I don’t despair about the right wing snatching back a little power because it’s just a little skirmish in the great war. If you ever want to really tick off a conservative, just remind them that in the big picture, the course of all human history, people have moving slowly but surely to the left. Yes, we’ve had ugly, violent jags back to the right (Roman Empire, Spanish Inquisition, Nazi Germany), but they’ve been local and temporary. The mankind that once valued only a handful of white, aristocratic landowners now (generally) values people of all creeds, colors, genders and religions. At the very least, most of us no longer own slaves. In civilized nations, children are no longer exploited, and women are no longer considered mere property. The nations where these backward (traditional and conservative) behaviors persist are considered abominations. In countries where we’ve abandoned slavery, child labor, gender and racial discrimination, we shake our heads at individuals who would return to those traditions. Even the G.O.P. no longer wants to be associated with the white supremacists they once courted openly.

So history is cyclical. I’m old enough now too see that and not to expect to win every battle. Tim Wise’s angry “Open Letter to the White Right” said it very powerfully: “We just need to be patient.” Because as a race, human beings are progressive. That progress may be frustratingly slow and often painful, but it’s pretty certain.

So to my Democratic friends, please don’t be depressed. Liberals can’t (and shouldn’t want) to win them all. And to my Republican friends, enjoy the victory for a few weeks. It’s always fun to win. But come January, the voters are going to expect some results. And this time it’ll be someone else’s turn to complain about your driving. Temporarily, anyway.

Do you remember 1988?

I do. I was a junior in high school and, well, kind of the belle of the ball. I was cute. I was skinny (was I ever really a size 4?!). I was the teachers’ pet, and I was popular. It was one of the best years of my life, so it’s imprinted on my memory very clearly.

Ronald Reagan was on his way out as the presidential campaign between George HW Bush and Michael Dukakis was in full swing. (I was rooting for Bush!?) The Soviet Union was still a constant threat.  My beloved Duran Duran, now down to three members, released their “Big Thing” album. Bruce Willis starred in the first “Die Hard” film that year.

We wore pegged jeans, Coca-Cola brand clothes, and high-top Converse. Our hair was BIG! Our eyeshadow was blue. And all the way up to our eyebrows.

My mom was an English teacher at my high school, but I was lucky: she was way cool. My mom might’ve been more popular than I was! But I had a driver’s license, a car, and a reputation for being a non-judgemental goody-two-shoes, so I was everyone’s favorite designated driver. It was in that role that I experienced one of the “game-changing” moments of my life.

It was December (I think. I know that it was VERY cold.), and I was leaving a basketball game at my school. I was in the pep band (at my school, band was actually cool!), so I had had to stay for the entire game, then go back to the band room, put away my clarinet, and socialize for a bit with my fellow band geeks before actually leaving.

As I was walking out, one of my friends asked if he could have a ride. This friend, Ryan, would become my senior year boyfriend, but as juniors, we were just friends. I said sure, and we headed out into the cold, dark parking lot together, gossiping about this and that.

We were almost to my car when Ryan stopped short and grabbed my arm. “What was that?”

I’d heard it too. A terrible sound. I can hear it now. Whimpering. But almost-adult whimpering. A desperate, defeated sound that sent an instant zing up our spines and stopped us in our tracks.

We followed the noise to the edge of the lot. Between the darkened parking lot and the even darker football stadium was a figure in the brittle grass. A human form, lying on the frozen ground.

Ryan and I were 16 years old. We were frightened, fascinated and concerned at once. I remember the bizarrely inappropriate thrill of realizing that he was holding my hand as we approached this dark, moaning shape in the grass.

And then we saw, in the dim light of a distant street light, that this was a fellow band geek. He was lying, face-down, on the icy ground, moaning pitifully. We knew him well. He was a fellow clarinet player, and I had been to Europe with him on a school-sponsored trip.

I approached him cautiously and said his name. He moved a little. He recognized my voice and responded. “Price?”

Ryan and I helped him to a sitting position. Ryan put his jacket around him. We learned that he had been “jumped,” attacked by a bunch (maybe 3 or 4 or 5?) of guys in the parking lot. They had called him a “f-ing faggot” and beat him brutally.

Our friend was a mess, but he refused to go to an emergency room. He didn’t want anyone to know, especially his parents.

I was confused. At a very sheltered 16, I had a limited understanding of “gay.” I didn’t even yet realize that my dear friend Ryan was gay. I didn’t see why our bruised and battered friend was so anxious about people finding out he’d been beaten up. In fact, I chalked it up to a male-pride thing: he didn’t want anyone to know he’d lost a fight.

Ryan understood better. He ran back inside the school to use the pay phone. He told us later that he’d called his mom and our friend’s parents to ask if he could spend the night. While he was inside, he also scoped out the band hallway and determined almost everyone was gone. He came back to us, huffing and puffing. “We can use the restroom. Everybody’s gone.”  Ryan and I helped our friend back into the school where they went into the boys’ restroom. I waited in the hallway.

While I was waiting, our band teacher saw me as he was leaving. “Jenni, what are you still doing here?”

“Oh, I’m taking Ryan home, and he needed to use the restroom. I’m just waiting on him,” I replied.

The band director trusted me.”Okay,” he said, “well, I’ve gotta get going, so I’m just gonna lock these doors. You can get out, but make sure you have everything because you won’t be able to get back in, alright?”

“Yes, sir!” I nodded, absolutely panicked that Ryan might exit the boys’ room with our friend any moment.

“See you Monday!” the band director said, and he disappeared into the darkness.

Ryan and our friend appeared several minutes later. Our friend was no longer bloody, but he had a very swollen lip and a black eye. From the way he was limping gingerly out to my car, I’m sure he had bruises elsewhere too.

The boys didn’t talk much as I drove them to Ryan’s home. Of course, I filled the silence with useless prattle, making assumptions to justify my perspective. I don’t remember exactly what I said, but it was something along the lines of: “Stupid teenage boys - always looking for a reason to fight. Just because Center Grove High School lost the game, they have to beat up on one of our guys.”

I never learned if it was kids from the rival school or kids from our own school who beat up our friend. He never said. But even then, I understood just enough to know it didn’t really have anything to do with a basketball game.

Our friend was beaten because he was gay.

I didn’t become a liberal right then. No, it took about 15 more years for that lesson to sink in completely. I voted Republican in the first two elections in which I participated. Then I began to split my ticket. Gradually it became more and more liberal as I recognized that the rhetoric of the G.O.P. helped inflame and justify the hate crime I had witnessed first-hand.

Both Ryan and our friend are gone now. One died of AIDS years ago; one died of stomach cancer in 2008. Otherwise, I would not be blogging about that night. You see, I promised them both that I wouldn’t tell anyone. It was too complicated, too painful, too fraught with consequences for parents, friends and loved ones.

But the suicides of Tyler Clementi, Raymond Chase, Billy Lucas and others have made me re-think my promise.

The perpetrators of hate crimes WANT to keep their acts in the dark. They want their victims to remain silent.

It certainly was easy for me to stay quiet. I finished my junior year in the top 10 of my class. I became a drum major in the marching band. I was a homecoming princess. Life was good. I didn’t want to complicate things by telling the story of having witnessed a crime on school grounds. My promise made my life easier. So I could happily justify my silence; I was just being a good friend.

Now I’m not so sure.

Those guys, whoever they were, got away with assault and battery on a kid they wanted to beat on because he was different. And I helped them get away with it by being quiet, passive, sweet, and loyal. What if they raise their kids to do the same thing?

My mom loves to say that “the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing.” That night, I did nothing. And I’m sorry for that.

If you know an LGBT person, especially a kid, do NOT do what I did. Do something. Even if it is just to say, “Hey, I’m your friend, and if you need me, I’ll listen.”

Change starts just one person at a time.

Last month, my husband, my father, my sister and I hiked the Grand Canyon rim-to-rim.Starting from the North Rim, we took the North Kaibab Trail down and across the canyon floor, 14 miles to Phantom Ranch. We camped at the ranch, then took Bright Angel up the South Rim.

Over the past 15 years, my husband and I have hiked all over North America. We’ve hiked in Lake Louise, Canada; Yosemite, California; Yellowstone, Wyoming; Zion, Utah; Badlands, South Dakota; Smoky Mountains, Tennessee; and Nueva Vallarta, Mexico. We’ve hiked a lot, but we knew the Grand Canyon hike was going to be a big deal. I’m not sure we realized, however, how much we would learn from the experience.

Here are some of the lessons I took away from the trails:

Weather - We were all concerned about the weather. Hiking in August can be deadly with temperatures at the bottom sometimes reaching 115 degrees. We lucked out. On the way down, we had good cloud cover. The hottest we saw was 98, and that was brief. On the way up, we ran into Arizona’s monsoon season. It rained about 2/3 of our trip up Bright Angel, and the temperatures stayed in the 70’s. The weather saved us because I’m pretty sure my sister would not have made it out of the canyon if it had been in the 90’s. Which brings me to the next lesson I learned…

Training is everything - I started training in January. Minimum of 20 minutes daily on our elliptical machine. By July, I doing 30-35 minutes on an incline. I was frustrated because I didn’t lose much weight, but when we started coming out of that canyon, I realized what a difference that training had made. I had little problem coming up Bright Angel. My knees got wobbly toward the end, and I was very sore for about 24 hours, but everyone is. My poor sister somehow underestimated the Grand Canyon, however, and she did not train adequately. My husband, my dad and I spent the hike up berating, cajoling, comforting and bribing her up the trail. Thank God for the cool weather or we would have left her down there.

Trail conditions - My husband and I have been on dozens of trails. Some have been rough, some steep, some long, some treacherous. The Grand Canyon trails are all of the above and then some. We had never seen trails that were alternately wet mud, slippery rock, deep sand, high drop-offs, awkward steps the whole way. Twenty-two miles of every conceivable trail condition. Oh, and did I mention the mule poop?

Mules are the poopiest creatures in the animal kingdom - We saw them a couple of times. I was actually surprised at first sight because they look like horses, not burros or donkeys like you see on TV or in movie depictions of the Grand Canyon. They’re lovely to look at, but they poop all over the trails. And it was raining. Need I say more?

Shoes - I will never hike again in anything but Salomon hiking shoes. One of the tutors in the University Writing Center has hiked the Appalachian Trail, and when she learned I was hiking the canyon, she brought in her Salomons for me to try. I worked out in them for a few days and liked them. After hiking the canyon with them, I love them. Light, strong and waterproof, the shoes ensured my feet never gave me a problem. My poor husband wore trail-runners, and the soles were not thick enough to protect the bottoms of his feet from the rocky parts of the trail. My dad wore hiking boots; the wide ankle openings caught rain and sand the whole way up. My sister wore Reeboks which did not give her enough cushion for her knees. Salomons, forever!

Shorts - I may have gotten the shoes right, but I screwed up royally with the shorts. I wore my silky Reebox athletic shorts that I always work out in. I didn’t consider that I would be sweating, rained-on, and walking for hours and hours. My poor thighs were raw by the time we got out. Next time - long cargo shorts like my husband wore!

Wilderness still exists - There are still a few places on this planet where you can’t get a cell phone signal or an internet service provider; the Grand Canyon is one of them. In fact, snail mail is delivered by mule. We sent our kids a postcard from Phantom Ranch. Pretty cool.

Pacing is crucial - Forgetting to eat when you’re hiking in 90-degree heat is a very bad thing. We ate lunch and then didn’t eat until we reached Phantom Ranch. We kept thinking it was right around the corner, and we had dinner reservations, so it seemed stupid to eat. But by the time we got there, my blood sugar had bottomed out. I felt drunk. Not the happy drunk, but the room-is-spinning-I’m-gonna-throw-up drunk. Snacks are good.

The Canyon skews people’s sense of distance - When you’re going up at a 20-degree grade, and the trail is rough and doing long switchbacks, it is very hard to get a sense of distance. Throw in the fact that there are very few mile markers in the Grand Canyon, especially on North Kaibab, and it becomes problematic. Pacing yourself is difficult when you’re not sure if you have 2 miles or 4 miles to go. My sister and my dad ran out of water on the way down because of this. My husband and I neglected to eat. My sister became half-delirious on the way up. Some mile markers would be nice down there. I know the National Park Service has had their budget slashed, but how much would a couple signs cost?

Remarkable individuals - Speaking of the National Park Service, at the Pumping Station on North Kaibab, we met a young ranger named Silas Aiken. He was a remarkable person for several reasons. First, he was raised at the Pumping Station house. His father was an artist and had a contract with NPS. Silas grew up in the canyon; his parents would carry him up and down until he was three years old. Then he had to hike it himself. Second, he had actually met my father 13 years ago, the second time Dad hiked the canyon. My dad remembered his father, who is a well-known painter; Dad also remembered Silas because he had been handing out Gatorade to hikers back then. Now a ranger, Silas has a Facebook page even though he doesn’t have internet access most of the time.

Light pollution sucks - We see so few stars in the city. We camped at Phantom Ranch at the bottom of the canyon. The night was clear, so we didn’t put our rain fly up. We fell asleep looking up at the entire Milky Way.

Phantom Ranch has great food - Of course, any food tastes fantastic when you’ve just finished hiking 14 miles in a desert canyon, but the salad was fresh and had every vegetable you can imagine. The beef stew was hearty and perfectly seasoned, and the chocolate cake was sinful. And for the first time since I was a little girl, I did not feel guilty about eating every bite of that dessert!

It’s a small world after all - At Phantom Ranch, we met a man from the east side of Indianapolis. His daughter still lives in Fishers, a suburb to the north of Indy. We also met a very nice couple from Chicago, and we talked with them about the Bears/Colts rivalry. We also told them about the White Sox/Yankees game we would be attending later that month. They were happy to hear we were Yankees fans rather than Sox fans. (They loved the Cubbies.)

Colorado River - The little green line you see at the bottom of the canyon when you’re standing on the rim? Yeah, that’s one big, bad river. It is wide, and it is wild.

My dad is my hero - My father is one of the most amazing people I’ve ever met. This was my father’s fourth time hiking the Grand Canyon rim-to-rim. You would never know it unless you asked him or one of his very proud daughters or wife told you. He has done some remarkable things. Quietly. He’ll be happy to tell you about it if you ask, but you could say, “Hey, we’re going to the Grand Canyon next week,” and my father would not take the opportunity to bring up his accomplishment. This was very likely his last time to do it, and he got even quieter than usual on the way up. I asked up if he was okay, and he admitted to being a little sad. “Probably the last time I’ll get to see this,” he said. He turned 70 about a week after he got home from Arizona, and he’d promised my mother he wouldn’t try it again because she worries too much. But the canyon is in his heart, and I couldn’t be prouder to be his daughter.

Still, I don’t know if I will hike the canyon rim-to-rim again. Doing it once is something I’ll never forget, but it was hard. And yet, it seems a shame to waste all these good lessons…