AfricanKelli

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There are many reasons I am among the throngs who admire Dooce. One of the reasons I read her site regularly is I love her fashion posts. I don’t often agree with her tastes, but I like the way she shares what she likes, what she’s wearing, etc.  You know who else does a great job of this? Kara. Plus I won a fabulous dress on her blog this week. Why yes, that is the most fabulous prize I’ve ever won!

And let’s be honest — y’all loved the shoes. So, what do you think about these earrings?

Fun + shiny.

I like the idea of doing a daily photo for Flickr to encourage myself to shake up what I wear. (I think this would also encourage less shopping.) While I’ve purchased a tiny tripod for this new blog experiment, I have yet to conquer autofocus with the timer.

Gah!

Perhaps better luck tomorrow.

~K

I have been photographing pieces of furniture I’m giving away. Most of my furniture is stuff that friends have passed along, items I’ve found at garage sales, etc. It’s value is certainly not worth moving 770 miles. (Especially after signing the moving estimate yesterday. Yet another Colorado “YAY! Ouch.” moment.)

I asked my friends to send the photos to anyone they may know who wanted these items yet again. There is no point in selling them if someone we know can use them. A colleague of one of my childhood friends sent me an email this morning. She and her boyfriend are building a new home together. They are young and would love my kitchen table and chairs.

This little kitchen table and chairs that was given to me 7 years ago by a friend came with a couple cigarette burns and one shaky leg. The chairs have since been tightened and repaired a handful of times.  When I read the email and thought about this table entering a new home, I got a little teary. (The new norm.)  My table! The table where I held countless community dinners, sewed Christmas gifts and birthday purses and onesies for seven years, where I worked on my first novel.

If good karma carries forward in objects, I know this furniture is blessed. I cannot count the number of happy post-meal sighs, laughs and toasts I’ve shared. I can only hope the next owners are as fortunate to have so many great memories. (The new Colorado table will be farm style, ideally with a couple benches too. Still great for community dinners, sewing and the such. And still always ready for friends to come over to break bread.)

~K

Do you have Netflix streaming? If so, can I bother you to watch this movie soon? I watched it this weekend after Matt hassled me for weeks. It is heartbreaking. For a thousand reasons, it makes me so very angry and disgusted with world politics, racism, power and the state of African leadership. It is a must see film for those who think about international issues and want the world to be a more peaceful place.

I don’t believe in injustice. In any form. Anywhere. And I’m unwilling to live in a world where it is so blindly accepted.

Please keep in mind, I am not unbiased. I live with a man whose family was evicted from their land in Zimbabwe, much like the family in the film. Matt’s family are just one of thousands who overnight lost all of their possessions simply because of the color of their skin. Zimbabwe has long been led by a genocidal maniac named Robert Mugabe who will stop at nothing to eradicate European blood from “his land.”

At first glance, this seems like a simple black vs. white issue. It isn’t. It is about justice. It is about the betterment of Zimbabwe. It’s about the millions who are starving in the breadbasket of Africa because the white farmers are living on the periphery (like Malawi), working other land where they are temporarily welcome. The farms they once ran, which fed Zim and many countries in the region, remain in tattered, burned pyres. Imagine the American midwest being a vast wasteland and all the farmers who had generations of experience coaxing the land to feed our giant nation living in Canada. Because they were green. And we no longer welcomed Green people.

I’m oversimplifying to make a point, but it isn’t far off.

Robert Mugabe prides himself in being the next Hitler. He is killing his own, ruining the country and we are doing nothing. In fact, we’ve done nothing for more than two decades.

Please watch the film. There are so many thoughtful, creative, dedicated folk who read this site. Surely we can come up with some way to bring more attention to the generation of misfits (Matt’s term) — those children of Zimbabweans who have no citizenship anywhere in the world, like the man living in my guest room.

In the meantime, I’m going to beg Matt to let me publish an essay I wrote about his family’s experience fleeing Zimbabwe. It is important to share. As the typical American, I had no idea what hardship and heartbreak this group of people have survived.

“If good men do nothing, evil will prevail.” — from the opening scene

~K

Do these look like the heels of a woman who:

1. Preaches simplicity and has given away half of her belongings in the last six months?

2. Should not be acquiring new things, if for no other reason she is just about 7 feet tall in these things?

3. Had shock waves rammed into her foot Friday morning, fully embarrassing herself by crying and acting like a child in pain?

3a. Should be wearing tennis shoes with the ever-so-sexy orthotics?

4. Who rode her bike 10-plus miles* to the mall to buy them, after seeing them the day before — having regretted putting them back?

Or do these simply look like the heels of a woman who is complicated, contradictory and loves a great pair of shoes?

Amen.

~K

* Dear Drivers of the Greater Phoenix Area: FOR THE LOVE OF GOD — WATCH FOR CYCLISTS. The very little I cycling I do still terrifies me to no end by the complete and total disregard for cyclists on the roads. In three hours of riding, I was nearly hit 4 times. And by “nearly hit” I mean either I or the driver had to slam on brakes to prevent contact.

In the middle of the day.

When I was in the right.

PAY ATTENTION TO THE PEOPLE ON BICYCLES PEOPLE.

{rant over.}

Cody came to town this weekend, which meant a visit to Tucson to see our grandparents.

(Obviously, he spent a lot of time on his hair prior to this road trip and dinner. Also obvious, my grandparents couldn’t have cared less.)

Whenever we are in Tucson, we have to swing through his favorite pizza spot — No Anchovies. He was sad he no longer had the “buy 1, get 1″ coupon books from his UofA days, but he still happily wolfed down several slices.

Any time I can get with my brother, I’ll take. I adore him. And I also often want to shake him. So goes the sibling relationship.

~K