Falalalala

Happy holiday season, shoppers!

thankful

... that my boyfriend and my husband and my kid love me even though I'm bitchy. In fact, I suspect probably because I'm bitchy.

... that Mr. B. is willing to do all the cooking and cleanup for Thanksgiving because he thinks the holiday is important, which pleases PK and lets me off the hook.

... that we've found a cute *Spanish*-style house (I didn't dare hope we'd get one) at a price well below what we thought we'd find.

... that Mr. B. and I are doing really well on the "working on the marriage" stuff (which I haven't blogged about and am unlikely to mention again).

... that Obama won the election. Wow.

... that meds for mental health are so much better than they were ten years ago.

... for Pseudonymous Kid's teachers.

... that Mr. B. and PK and I are, for all intents and purposes, among the richest people in history.

... that the people around me are so forgiving of my tendency to drop the ball on things.

... that Mr. B. and I are able to make choices about how and where we live, and that I am able to be half-assed about my own employment without suffering materially for doing so.

... that I live in a beautiful place near the Pacific ocean and can go to the beach whenever I want to.

... that I have basically won the quality-of-life lottery.

... for all my friends, including the ones I've never met.

Stuffing as Sports Car; and Snot

I love ding's story below. Parts of it are very familiar to me, both from my own growing-up and in my own life, where I do the vast majority of cooking (but not cleaning). This year I am hosting a dinner and have already been making things for a couple of days. I am very consciously setting the cultural work done by my laboring over the meal against the emotional work done for me personally.

Remember back when I was writing about how much I dread dinner? I still do, in a kind of bland way that has to do with both planning and the experience of eating with a 3 yr old, but I've really come into my cooking this season. If the academic job market is giving me something that is structured like a mid-life crisis, cooking is my sports car. Which makes Thanksgiving basically the equivalent of a weekend in Vegas. Or some such.

And yet! I have a cold! It's disgusting! I'll be lucky if I can taste my food at all tomorrow. And the poor people who are coming over. Nothing like having your food prepared by a walking virus. I am not thankful that my daughter sneezed in all my facial orifices at once last week. I am not thankful for brussels sprouts, but will make them anyway and thankful I can't taste them. I am not thankful for the job market wiki.

But I am thankful for Baby V, even if she is basically Typhoid Mary. And for Mr Vane, who won 4 tickets to a hockey game this weekend, tickets that put you in the fancy suite, but who gave them away to a coworker with 2 kids because my parents and grandma would be in town. And for all the awesome pumpkin things I have made in the last 24 hours (pumpkin butterscotch cookies, pumpkin cranberry bread, pumpkin pies). And for my students who dressed up in funny thematic costumes today for extra credit. I am less thankful for my student who, in a response paper, wished to "galvanize the power of heaven and hell" to express his disgust for a novel I assigned. But I am thankful he didn't come to class today.

I'm thankful for the bitches, both the eponymous ones and the commenting/reading ones. I hope no one is sneezing in any of y'all's stuffing.

laugh at the stupid californian

Yesterday was a gray day. Did I think to bring in the laundry? No, I did not.

Now it's hanging there dripping. And will continue to do so until it stops raining long enough for it to dry. Which could be who knows when. Oh well.

Also, today I was on my way to campus--running late, of course--and stepped out of the house to see the driveway! empty! Oh right, Mr. B. took the car today. So I run back inside, hit the garage door button, grab my bike but not my helmet--I'm in a hurry!--and okay, you can guess what comes next. As I'm rushing across campus, in the rain mind you, a damn maintenance truck pulls out from between two buildings right in front of me. I hit the brakes, the rear tire comes up off the ground, I think for a second "no helmet, dummy" as I scramble not to fly over the handlebars. Which I manage not to do, instead scraping my left palm (I always store my gloves inside my helmet) and somehow, despite the fact that my bike is totally a girl's bike, managing to give my lady parts a good whack on the center bar. Ouch.

On the other hand, we're almost certainly going to be living in this house by Christmas. Though we probably won't have painted it or taken down the fence yet. But even so, you can see that it's freaking adorable.

And thus a feminist was born of Thanksgiving

When I was growing up, I lived with my family in a smallish apartment on Santa Rosalia in Los Angeles. Bouganvilla climbed the white stucco walls of the apartment building, there were hardwood floors in most rooms and linoleum in the tiny white kitchen, and when the windows were open we could either hear the constant zhoosh of Los Angeles traffic or the drunk single mother across the courtyard yelling at her sons.

Mrs. C-, a tiny, shrunken apple of a woman, lived across the hall from us. She was proudly southern, kept an apartment that was full of old lady smells and hard candy and looked harder at the tiny Oriental woman living with the Negro man across the hall from her. Family lore has it that one day she knocked on our apartment door and told my mother that my father was leaving the house every morning looking too thin and if she wanted to keep her black husband happy, she'd better learn how to cook soul food.

So Mrs. C- would put on her apron, come on over and watch soap operas with my mother while teaching her how to cook greens, black eyed peas, corn bread, southern fried chicken, and whatever else you'd find on a Baptist church dinner buffet. (The only thing my mother refused to cook was chit'lins. She knew we could barely stand her balut. There was no way in hell we'd eat chit'lins.) Mrs. C- (and her extended family) became a fast friend of our family and when she passed my mother cried the hardest, mourning her like a daughter.

All of this is to say that most of my holiday memories are of my 4'11" mother waking up at the ass crack of dawn to soak greens and prepare for a dinner Mrs. C- would have been proud of. Like her mother and stepmother before her, and maybe like all the Filipina village-raised mothers ever, she'd quietly begin the labor intensive process of feeding her family and their friends. (At the ass crack of dawn.) And like other Filipina mothers, she'd wake her oldest daughter to help her. (At the ass crack of dawn!)

I hated it. I hated the Sisyphean task of cleaning greens. I hated pulling the bag of giblets out of a thawed, cold white turkey corpse. I hated having to stand on a chair to lift a turkey that was half my size to put it into the sink and clean it. I hated deciphering pie recipes (my mother assigned me baking) and measuring and flouring and rolling out dough and I especially hated that my little sister was still in bed and I was getting turkey junk all over my pajamas and I smelled like raw turkey innards.

But as I grew older and realized that my mother was the only one cooking in the house during these holidays, I swallowed my anti-domestic hatred and helped her. (I still hated the fact that she'd wake me first and let my sister sleep an extra 2 hours.) Eventually, I grew to enjoy this part of the holidays - spending time with my mother in the dark morning hours, listening to her chide me over my inattention to the size of my chopping, how I forgot to put the fatback in the greens or left some grit on a leaf or 'forgot' to boil and cube the giblets. (I really think giblets are disgusting though they made all the difference in my mother's dressing.) She'd tell me stories of how good I had it; if I lived in the Philippines, I'd have to cook like this every day. I'd have to raise and kill my own chickens and pigs - and I'd have had to learn this at the age of seven.

I'd say to her, "And that's why I live in an American city, mom. So I will never have to learn that." And she'd slap my arm and we'd keep cooking.

But then her mood would change, especially as the morning stretched into afternoon and we were still in the kitchen (all three of us by now, my sister having joined us) smelling like butter or whatever we were cooking at the time - pies, rolls, green beans with bacon, black eyed peas (which takes frakking forever), corn casserole, ham, yams and sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, or the base for the punch later on.

And her mood would worsen as the sounds of dad and his friends watching football would increase.

By the time dinner was ready and the dining table was set with the good china and crystal, my mother was a tiny red ball of Asian fury and her target was often the men in the house who did nothing very labor intensive at all that day. My sister and I would instantly go into 'buffer' mode: running interference between mom and dad and hoping that post-turkey food coma would come so rapidly, the anger of laboring alone would be forgotten.

Sure enough, later in the evening my dad would put on his headset and sing loudly to contemporary Christian pop (don't ask) and wash all the dishes that had piled in the sink while my mother would finally rest, her earlier anger perhaps not forgotten but certainly repressed and swallowed. And I would go to my bedroom, write all of it down and vow NEVER to spend my holidays sweating over two ovens and a stove while my husband sits on his butt watching football.

These days, my sister has assumed the mantle of the Domestic Angry Goddess, though her husband is a little bit more tuned in than my father ever was (bless his clueless heart.) My brother-in-law wrangles the kids, clears the kitchen and preps the dining room, cleans the house and runs errands for my sister while she and I stand in her very small retro kitchen that reminds me of the apartment on Santa Rosalia and fight over counter space. And, true to form, my father saunters in 45 minutes before dinner is served and wonders when it'll be time to eat.

My sister's dinners are reminiscent of our mother's but with more Mexican dishes added to them and I wonder 'How the hell does Leslie do this without going frakking insane?' and I send up a little prayer of thanks that my kitchen back home in Chicago remains virginal and pristine.

My non-guilt at not cooking prompts me sometimes to tell my sister that the next day, on the biggest shopping day of the year, she can leave the kids with her husband while we make a day of manicures and pedicures at some spa, a movie and maybe some cocktails in the middle of the bright afternoon in a hotel. This is my Single Anti-Domestic Sister gift to her and I only wish that our mom was still here to join us. If anyone needed a day of complete self-indulgence and alcohol, it was my little mother.

So to all you Domestic Divas/Gentlemen out there, trapped in the Whole Foods or Vons or Dominick's or Byerly's of the nation, gritting your teeth over your turkey or your tofurkey or gnashing your teeth over head count and wondering why it's your turn to host again this year, have a wonderful holiday.

And book your spa appointment now.

Staring you in the face

As I've noted, I'm having some professional problems. But one thing that I thankfully never encountered, not even for a second, in my workplace, was sexism. It's pretty remarkable, when you think about it. Given how prevalent sexism is in the world, and hidden in all the ways we interact with one another, that I could just not experience it from a whole group of people? Awesome.

But man, the frequent sexist barbs I have gotten from other lawyers in the short time since I've been practicing really sting. Not only am I a woman, but I'm a clearly rather young woman (although maybe I look older--I don't know--people seem surprised when they find out I'm "only" 26). And this presents major problems. Probably the worst such one was about two weeks ago. I was appearing in an unfamiliar environment on behalf of one of our clients, for an administrative hearing. I was trying to make a deal with the city's attorney so we didn't have to go forward with the hearing. After going back and forth for a while, and my taking a few minutes to think about it, I ended up accepting the deal he'd offered. He began to draw up the papers. Up to that point, we'd been having a cordial, even friendly conversation--discussing the applicable statute, making arguments, and once he was drawing up the papers we engaged in small talk. He asked me where I went to school, about my job, and I returned the questions. We talked about how bad the legal market is right now. He told me that the city was paying him a law clerk salary even though he is a licensed attorney. I expressed surprise and said I thought that was, as I put it, "bullshit."

And then he turned to me, stopped what he was doing (he had been filling out forms all this time), looked me straight in the face, and said "yeah, they claim there's a hiring freeze, but I see them hiring people. And the only people they hire are women and minorities."

Just like that--I was silenced. I was so taken aback that I couldn't even think of how to respond. Conversation's over. I stood there in silence while he finished up the papers. As I drove back to the office, I was stunned. How could someone stare me straight in the face, me, a brownish woman with a funny name, and say that he couldn't get paid because women and minorities (I'm trying to replicate the disdain in his voice) were taking all the jobs? Was he trying to put me in my place? Just totally clueless? Put me in the "lawyer=one of us" box and forgot that he wasn't among his buddies? I don't know, but it stung.

And these are stories that I think need to be told, because although there is a lot of data out there about outright sexual harassment, there's not much done in the way of cataloguing the minor sexist slights a professional woman has to face in her expanded workplace. Not only is the effect psychological, but it's professional. Being subjected to sexism is distracting. I don't even know how many minutes of conversation I've missed because I was in my own head, saying, "did he really just fucking do that? What the fuck? Should I say something?"

I've been patted on the head. I've been asked over and over again, incredulously "Are you actually a lawyer?" I've been called "sweetheart," "dear," and "honey" by older male lawyers I didn't know. I've had multiple people say 'you're (lawyer's name) assistant, right?' even though I was participating in the discussion in a way someone's assistant would not do. I've had other lawyers attribute things I said, just minutes later, to my (male) boss, as if they couldn't be bothered to acknowledge me as a separate person with a name. I've had lawyers for the Cook County Sheriff, when we were visiting the jail, issue subtle threats of violence toward me and the only other woman in the room ("I don't even want to think about what those inmates would do to these girls if they got them in a room").

I don't know if any of this has hurt my clients. So far, I've done my work under older, male bosses with a lot of experience who others respect, so they put an imprimatur of seriousness on the work. But I really shudder to imagine what it would be like if I were going it alone. And I'm saddened to think of all the times I've been effectively silenced, because of how clear it was made to me by older male lawyers that they saw me as lesser and other. When you get sworn into the bar, a panel of judges talks to you about how you're joining an "elite group" of people. I reject that--I don't want to be elite. But I do want to feel a sense of camaraderie with people who are my colleagues, and for the most part, I haven't gotten it at all.

It's getting colder, so fuck the homeless

Chicagoist alerts me to some new signs that have gone up in a few CTA stations around town. Apparently, the CTA is trying to crack down on what they call "Continuous Riders." If you have a brain, you know that "Continuous Riders" means "homeless people."

And Mike Doyle of Chicago Carless contacted the CTA, which gave him some standard evasive answers and flatly denied that the new signs are directed at targeting the city's homeless.

The real question here is: what's the penalty? Let's say that someone is "caught" by CTA personnel about to enter the train going to opposite direction, without exiting and re-entering. What then? Do they get arrested? Fined? Both? The Chicago Police already have a slew of regulations to help fight against the city's homeless, and give them a way to boot them off the CTA. Which, believe me, they use on a regular basis. The CTA ordinance (pdf) contains a provision that prohibits sleeping or dozing "where such activity may be hazardous to such person or others or where such activity may interfere with the operation of the CTA's transit system." So, it's against the law to sleep on the train? It's news to me, considering that the summer I worked downtown I fell asleep on the train basically every day both to and from work. And even missed my stop a few times, which means I have also committed the DREADFUL ACT of getting off and getting on another train going in the opposite direction without paying an additional fare.

And if you look in that PDF, it doesn't say anything that would amount to a prohibition on so-called "continuous riding."

I find this all despicable. I know people for whom the only way they managed not to freeze to death was by riding the CTA up and down the length of the City of Chicago all night long. What's the harm? What's the problem with having someone just sitting on a train? Shall we try to throw homeless people off the train when they're just riding from point A to point B, rather than engaging in "continuous riding," because we don't like the way they look or smell, or they make us uncomfortable?

If the city is concerned about the city's homeless riding on the trains all night, perhaps they should fund additional shelters instead of spending money on enforcement of a law that is unfair, cruel, and almost certain to be disproportionately applied.

UPDATE: Wow, I really didn't know that the site was was read by so many anti-homeless. I said that thing about funding additional homeless shelters because, well, there really is a shelter deficit in this city. But even if there wasn't, like someone said above, there are often people who can't stand the shelters because of their onerous rules. Plus, they can be awful. I have a former client who described his experience in a shelter as "fighting off rats."

And so there are always going to be people who don't have anywhere to go for the night. Even if there are more shelters. Even if those shelters change their rules or become less sanctimonious. And I, personally, am ok with those small number of people riding the CTA to keep warm.

Commenter kid bitzer said "like some of the earlier commenters, i'm inclined to think that the el should be for getting from place to place, not for sheltering from the cold." Which sounds like a reasonable position. But you can't enforce this rule in a reasonable way unless you're only using it as a rule against homeless people. What about a homeless person who rides the el from beginning to end of the line, not to get from place to place, but just for shelter from the cold? No "continuous riding," just rides from one end to the other. Perhaps he gets off, has a cup of coffee, and get back on twenty minutes later going the other way. Should that be disallowed? It's not using the el for its intended purpose.

After all, the el is not to be used except for "getting from place to place." I personally like my right to use the CTA as I please, as long as I am a paying customer, and not interfering with other passengers or the train's operation. As a middle-class professional person, I have slept on the train, gotten off and gone the other way, and rode the brown line downtown and back one afternoon because it's a beautiful trip and I was bored. And no one bats an eyelash.

Let's just all admit to what is being said here, in coded terms: you don't want homeless people on the train. And I say, have some goddamned compassion for your fellow human being.

monday morning random blog post generator

1. I now have so many email accounts (for the blog, for me personally, for my class, for spam) that all my google cookies are completely confused and I am constantly having to go to a different page--say from blogger to google docs--to logout and log back in again. Beware the hegemony of google.

2. Resolved: tomorrow I up my meds. I think I'm ahead enough on refills that I can afford to do this without setting myself up to run out before the new year. Also I am tired of having no energy and I'm sure Mr. B. is tired of my shrewishness.

3. There is a certain irony in the fact that we're in the middle of a housing crisis and I canNOT get anyone to agree to let us buy their house.

4. Thanksgiving. SO. UNINSPIRED. Should I do the decent, responsible mother thing, and invite my own mother and her brother, thereby setting for PK the example I hope he will follow and allowing him to have his own relationship with my mother despite the fact that she drives me insane? Or should I indulge my selfish immaturity and not bother? And do we really have to do a damn turkey?

5. Clinton for Secretary of State: what???

6. iPhone: are you the parent of an elementary-school-aged child? Then you need one of these. "Here, honey, play with my iphone while I (shop/talk to this grownup/wait in line at the post office)." Also it gives you, the adult, something to do while hanging around during the kid's half-hour TaeKwonDo/soccer/fencing lessons, which are always somehow too short to drop him off and go *do* anything. Plus it syncs up your calendars, complete with alarms. So. Freaking. Handy.

7. Thank god that PK has half days all week (no afternoon volunteering for me!) and that it's a 4-day weekend coming up. Do you think it's remotely possible that I'll do some cleaning/get a "yes" about the latest house we've offered on/pay the bills/catch up on my grading/prep for the last few weeks of the semester? Okay, that last one is pretty unlikely, I admit.

Sunday Night Penne with Onion, Bacon, and Garlic

Like Sybil, I've been feeling quiet lately. I'm having some professional and personal problems, and have been home trying to figure things out most of this week. Luckily, things are really starting to look up. But while I've been resting and thinking, I've been doing a lot of cooking. It's really therapeutic, and it's fun, and there's a certain satisfaction in creating something delicious to feed the people I love. I haven't been cooking seriously for too long as an adult, although I spent a ton of time in the kitchen as a child with my father, chopping, frying, tasting, grating. Looking at recipes to try and make the foods I'd come to love when living in the US that weren't available in Egypt. Making homemade mayonnaise, and homemade maple syrup. Thinking about this stuff makes me miss my father terribly, and makes me incredibly happy that I'm going home for Christmas. Perhaps while I'm there I can cook a few meals for my dad, like the simple meals he cooked for me every night when I was growing up.

1. Dice up a medium white onion, then put a large pot of water on to boil for the pasta.

2. Scrape bacon fat from this morning's breakfast into a deep skillet over medium heat, along with a tablespoon or two of vegetable oil, because you realized you're out of olive oil. Throw in the onion, along with a handful of coarse sea salt.

3. Mince up about six cloves of garlic, and throw them in with the onion. Stir around with a wooden spoon, and put in a few shakes of dried oregano. Mm, fragrant. Add some dried parsley flakes for good measure. You can, of course, use fresh herbs, but dried ones will do. The whole point of this dish was for me not to have to go shopping.

4. Pull off five slices of bacon from the package, and lay them on top of each other and cut crosswise into half-inch pieces. This process is not precise. Throw little pieces of bacon into another skillet, and turn the heat on medium-high.

5. When the onion is soft and the garlic and oregano fragrant, look in the cabinets for canned tomatoes. Find "diced tomatoes with onion and garlic." Huh, that'll do. Open the can, drain most of the juice, and throw in with the onion/garlic.

6. When pasta water boils, throw in the pasta you have, which happens to be a pound of fortified whole-wheat penne. Check to see when bacon is mostly done and crispy. When it looks good enough to eat, throw the bacon, including all the fat, in the other skillet with the onion, garlic, and tomatoes. Season some more including a few more shakes of dried oregano, dried parsley, and the dried basil you just discovered in the cupboard. Grind a pepper grinder over the whole thing a few times.

7. Pasta is done! Drain it in a colander. While it's cooling off, dice up another two cloves of garlic. In the pot you used to cook the pasta, throw in two tablespoons of butter, shake some oregano in there, and throw in the new garlic. Stir around until fragrant.

8. Put drained pasta back in the pot, along with the sauce. Stir around over low heat for a minute or two to combine flavors and soak everything up. If you have crusty bread, serve it with that. If you don't, like me, just have seconds. It's a nice way to end a weekend, and will make enough food for two hungry people, plus leftovers for the next day's lunch.

Riding in Cars with Boys

Dutch at Sweet Juniperr has a beautiful and moving plea for the saving the Big 3. Given the debate here about the original bailout, I don't expect everyone to agree with him, and I am not sure how squarely I agree with him on all points. But the piece is gorgeously composed and the comments are just as illuminating. The post and the thread get at so many of the intangible and irreplaceable aspects of American culture - our stories and mythologies, our past, our indebtedness to that past, our seething snobbery about the working class. I'm interested in reading what you all think.

Dear "conservative" students

Your "liberal" professors don't hate you because of your politics. Really. I mean, we might very well hate your politics, but trust me: we also hate the liberal politics of your peers because they're so often stupid and based on specious reasoning, white guilt, and/or condescension.

That said, we *do* hate you. But we do so because you are smug little twits and because you think that your 18-year old libertarian nonsense is (1) conservative: (2) coherent; (3) something we haven't thought of; (4) self-evidently true and obvious.

Really. Wipe that smirk off your face and quit with the weird superiority/persecution complex, already. It's irritating.

Dear drunk guy on a bike

Watching your unsteady serpentine through the intersection in front of the mall at noon on a Thursday, big 42-oz plastic cup full of (presumably) beer, raising your glass to toast the four-lane throng of cars waiting at the light while you crossed on the pedestrian signal, clearly enjoying yourself in the Southern California November sunlight and good-naturedly hassling the dumbasses (including me) stuck in their stupid cars, well, you really put a smile on my face. Thanks, dude.

Mexican Winter Chicken Soup

Dinner party, M. LeBlanc-style. Rules: don't clean up, don't plan, don't stress.

1. Send email to friends telling them to come over for dinner. Assign one the task of bringing loaves of crusty bread, the other dessert.

2. Go shopping.

3. Wash and pick over about 1.5 cups of black beans (I bought the organic ones from the bulk food section at Whole Foods), and put in medium saucepan with water to cover, over medium-high heat. While the water's boiling, peel and mince up two cloves of garlic. When the water boils, throw in the garlic, a bay leaf, and a tablespoon of chili powder. Cover loosely and turn heat to low so beans/water mixture simmers. This will be simmering for the next hour and a half or so.

4. Pull out the whole rotisserie chicken you also bought at Whole Foods, on sale for $5.99! Start pulling the meat off the parts, first the leg, then thigh, then the breasts, and shredding it into bite-size bits with your fingers. Discard cartilage, skin, bones, funny bits into separate bowl for use in ambitious stock-making plan or for hungry boyfriend to eat when he gets home. Cover bowl of chicken flesh with foil, put in fridge. Sit down to read blogs.

5. When beans are close to done, take them off and put in a bowl, which you can leave sitting on the countertop.

6. Dice up a really big onion (or two smaller ones) and put in a bowl. Then dice up two jalapenos (remove the seeds and pith first!) very finely, two peeled russet potatoes (also small dice) and mince up 6 cloves of garlic. The jalapenos, potatoes, and garlic can all go in one bowl.

7. Put about 3/4 cup of vegetable oil in a giant pot, and turn on medium-high heat. When it's hot, throw in the onion, turn down to medium, and sautee for maybe 7-10 minutes until onions are soft. Then throw in the other bowl of chopped-up stuff (potatoes, jalapenos, garlic), and stir that around for a few minutes. Then put in a 1/2 cup flour and stir that around for a minute or so.

8. Pour in four cups of chicken stock and a cup of heavy cream. Stir around. You should be on medium heat still. While it's melding together, get out your can opener and open up your 28-ounce can of fire-roasted diced tomatoes and the can of chipotle peppers in adobo sauce. Take out a couple chipotles and dice them up (about three teaspoons' worth).

9. When your pot is boiling, throw in 2 cups of the tomatoes and the diced-up chipotles, and the beans from earlier. Get your chicken out from the fridge and throw that in too, as well as the 8-oz package of shredded monterey-jack cheese, and stir it all around. When all of that boils, turn the heat down to low and let it simmer.

10. Taste it. It should be decently salted b/c of the stock, the rotisserie chicken, and the adobo sauce. Grind a pepper grinder over it five or six times. Make sure heat is low and ask your boyfriend to keep an eye on it.

11. Take a shower, because you haven't in several days and people are coming over. Boyfriend, who is better cook than you, will adjust heat, salt, and add additional pepper. After about twenty minutes, the soup is ready. You keep it on low, though, until your friends show up. About a half hour.

12. Just before you're ready to serve, stir in a cup of milk to thin it up.

13. Serve up in bowls. Garnish with a couple slices of avocado, sliced green onions, and a dollop of sour cream.

14. Have seconds, and hang out with your friends.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention that this recipe will make a lot of food. Like me and my three dinner party guests had two helpings each, plus there are at least three helpings' worth of leftovers. And you could make it even more soup by adding more stock, more milk, or both. Mine was quite thick--more like a chili than a soup. If I had followed the recipe from Gourmet, which I doubled and altered, I would have had 10 cups of liquid (6 broth, 4 cream (!)) and instead I used 6 (4 broth, 1 cream, 1 milk).

But my period was *last* week

So yesterday Pseudonymous Kid and I were both having the "Must... get... out... of... bed..." thing going on, neither of us being morning people (getting him to school at 7:55 is so freaking hard, I swear to god), and I just decided FUCK IT and call him in "sick." After which we went back to sleep for a couple more hours. I did have to get up to go teach my class, at which point he got up and sat himself down in front of the Wii; I came back to find that he was a little annoyed because he'd tried to call my cell to ask if he had permission to use the stove in my absence (answer: no) but because he doesn't really understand the whole 1-before-area-code thing and for some reason my area code was on the fridge phone list he kept getting an error message from the automated operator.

In any case, he'd decided that lack of permission meant better safe than sorry (this kind of judgment being why I trust him alone for an hour or so in the house, foot-licking behavior notwithstanding) and had gotten himself some quiche out of the fridge. Which he was just about to microwave when I walked through the door. So I nuked his quiche, rewrote the phone list sans area code, wrote my cell # in sharpie on the landline phone, corrected the outdated numbers on the phone list, recalled his attention to which numbers belonged to neighbors, grandparents, teachers, and other Responsible Adults he could reach in a crisis if for some reason I'm not available (bad mama!), commended his judgment, and we settled in for a highly ennui-laden afternoon of mutual video game playing.

Until we had to drag butt out of the house for a PTO meeting. Love those meetings. Not. At which meeting I confessed to his teacher that no, PK hadn't really been sick, I'd just been having One of Those Days. Have I mentioned how much I love PK's teacher for understanding these things? (Also because he's the kind of teacher who happily accepts a invitation to go to the beach over the weekend with us, who willingly takes over the entertaining PK role once there, who will actually go into the very cold water for several hours with PK and build sand forts and then have a sand fort war, who'll teach the kid to skip rocks, and who winds up the afternoon by offering to bring back one of his wife's outgrown child wetsuits after they go home for Xmas, but I digress. I highly recommend, btw, young energettic elementary school teachers who love kids but don't yet have any of their own.)

Anyhoo. So after the meeting, PK and I went and bought takeout Italian and a two-pound box of See's candy. Went home, ate dinner, then went to bed (Mr. B. being out of town) and ate chocolate while watching Ratatouille. PK learned a new word, "self-indulgent," and I actually feel somewhat better this morning.

That said, I'm seriously wondering if it's even *possible* to have seasonal depression in southern California, where the temperatures have been in the 70s for the last couple days after being in the 80s all last week.

If it is, it would explain the regional popularity of See's candy.

Reflections

I got my hair cut this morning. First time since February. It was relaxing; and then this happened:

In my mirror, I could see the reflection of a woman behind me who was getting her hair colored. She was in her 50s, I would guess. She kept doing this thing where she used her hands to tug back the skin around her eyes, then around her neck and chin, cocking her head at angles and considering the results. She was doing a thing with her mouth that she probably never does in real life, but which she probably imagines is her default condition.

(Mr. Vane says I have a mirror-face; I expect we all do. A thing we do with our features when we look in the mirror that creates the face we see in our mind but which no one else ever sees)

While she was doing this, the woman applying her color was oblivious. The stylist was really young, maybe 22, super thin, a shock of red trendy-messy hair. Way too much makeup for a face that young. Skinny jeans tucked into massive boots, a cling clang of bracelets rattling around. The whole time she applied the little foil envelopes of color she watched her own face in the mirror. Cocked her head different ways to watch how her hair fell. Narrowed her eyes and pursed lips just a tiny bit. Checked out her profile while coloring the bangs.

I watched this scene for about 2 minutes and it was all I could do not to dissolve into tears. I ended up getting bangs cut into my hair for the first time ever. They are already distracting me with the feeling of something being in my eyes.

Recipe Bleg

Fucking Sybil's post below has made me starving already, and it's not even 9 am. I'm taking a few days off from work, so what better time to cook up some crazy-delicious shit? Here's what I want. There's the soup that I seem to be seeing everywhere--first at the grocery store, then at the coffeeshop I was at last night, and I want a recipe that someone here has actually tried, that turned out yummy. One version of the soup I had was called "Chipotle Chicken and Corn Soup" the other "Cheesy Chicken Chipotle." They were different, but the elements that I want include: some cheesiness, a mellow spiciness, beans, corn, chicken, perhaps bits of tomato, and a non-gloppy texture. The one I had last night had an orange "broth" that was thicker than water, but not like a cream-soup texture.

I want to make delicious soup! Help me, friends. I guess I could just try and improvise something, but I don't think I'm quite ready for that in my cooking development. Also, I'm strapped enough for cash that I can't afford spend a bunch of money buying ingredients for something that turns out to be an uneatable epic fail.

nom nom

Pictures of food can really make you hungry.

pseudonymous kid may need psychiatric help

PK: Mama, can I lick your foot?
Me (not really paying attention): No.
PK: Why not? It's my tongue.
Me: Okay, fine. Go ahead and lick my foot.
(PK licks my foot)
Me: !!! I can't believe you just licked my foot!
PK: Now some milk to wash it down.

They're not going to go without a fight

Despite the fact that most Americans might hope that Bush lays low in the final days of his historically unpopular presidency, he’s decided to try to push through at least one last-minute agenda: a plan that would allow health care providers to refuse to perform abortions and other procedures they object to on moral or religious grounds.



Go read Postbourgie for more. Ironically, it's the turtle--not the news item--that's work-inappropriate.

Quiet

I've been feeling quiet lately. Partly it's the season. I, like so many of us, am not so good with the dark and November is historically a shitty month for me. I have been really thinking a lot about my cooking as a way to appreciate, instead of dread, the season. Tonight I made an awesome slow cooker beef cabbage stew (my first time ever working with fresh cabbage); last night beet-flavored pasta with fresh cherry tomatoes and sweet peppers sauteed in red wine and garlic; the day before zucchini bread; and the day before roasted chicken and butternut squash tossed with feta and whole wheat orzo. It's been a tasty kind of quiet.

Being on the job market has me in a state. Not a verge-of-panic kind of state like the one I endured last year while my materials were out. This is a much more resigned and inward-looking state. I feel now, in a way I only knew before, the improbability of my career working out the way I thought it would. The chances of landing a good tenure-track job were always bad. Now, because of the way the world has turned, they are abysmal, even with a PhD from a good school with a strong department, good publications, extensive teaching experience, great evals, and a good diss. It's a lot to wrap one's head around and it takes a long time to really feel the truth of, "it's not me, it's the market."

And the reality is, feeling that might be worse in its ways.

I'm at a point where I am thinking I'd rather not even get any interviews this Fall. In part because that just stretches out a process that I still doubt will end with my getting a tenure-track job. If I'm going to just get on with it in a real job, I'd rather know sooner than later. And in other part because I feel not as confident as I used to about wanting that tenure track job. That ambivalence is somewhat circumstantial: last year at this time, for example, we felt a hell of a lot more confident about Mr. Vane being able to find a new job wherever we went and about selling our house for a profit. Now we feel way less confident about both. I don't know how much sacrifice I want to ask for for this career.

I know how that sounds coming from a woman and I am nauseous at the narrative it plays into. But it's more about the profession, to my mind, than gender. I don't know how much I am willing to do for this profession anymore. By which I mean both upending my family at financial loss or continuing to pound away at the tenure-track market year after year. Increasingly, I understand the profession as one that is not good to its people. That cannot find a way to institutionalize a paradigm that privileges or rewards teaching and service. That cannot sustain itself, or the number of trained would-be professionals it puts into the world, anyway.

Which brings me to my next point: in looking about some MLA career guide stuff today and in an essay by James Papp, came across this passage re: letters of recommendation:

Though the academy has a cherished tradition of confidential letters of reference, the prudent candidate will know what each letter says. Many referees are happy to share the content of their letters. At some institutions, a third party, such as a placement coordinator, is able to review it. There are job seekers who arrange for a dossier to be sent to the address of a relative (Bachmann 58). At the bottom of these tactics lies the truth that, though hiring committees desire substantive information in recommendation letters, certain negative or suggestive comments--however well intentioned by the author, to present a "balanced" picture--can remove a candidate from a field of apparently flawless rivals.

And I got to thinking: man, way shouldn't I have seen my letters by now? Yes, I signed the waiver about seeing them before they are sent, but to my mind that waives my right to screen letters before having them sent. Not my right to ever see them. And they're all out for this season now anyway. So I discussed with a few friends, wondering if we should have dossiers sent to ourselves, or each other, or what not. And one of my friends, in a casual conversation, mentioned this piece of advice to a tenured professor in our department. The latter proceeded to immediately fire off an email to the MLA chastising them for their highly irregular if not illegal advice.

This has me incensed. Really, tenured professor? It's so terrible for utterly disenfranchised academic job-seekers to want to know what their reccommenders say? To pursue knowing? Illegal? Please. The official governing body of the profession, who are responsible for ruining my Christmas one way or another, suggests that maybe academic job seekers could do more to take some ownership and agency over their process and you invoke legalism? Makes me want to scream.

So I guess I'm in and out of quiet. Sigh.

Which Side Are You On?

For all the reasons I was against bailing out the Wall Street gangsters, I am for bailing out auto workers.

Hands off the UAW!

Management: Assume the Position!

clearly, today is topsy turvy day

Frustrated by the failure to overturn Roe v. Wade, a growing number of antiabortion pastors, conservative academics and activists are setting aside efforts to outlaw abortion and instead are focusing on building social programs and developing other assistance for pregnant women to reduce the number of abortions.

Huh.

It's so crazily reasonable, I almost thought this came from the Onion.

Some abortion foes shifting focus - Washington Post- msnbc.com

Minnesota's US Senate Race - We Steal Now?

I thought my utility as a local reporter would cease after the Republican National Convention. Who'd have thought a contested Senate race would pop up here?

Norm Coleman is trying his level best to fashion the same judicial coup in the Minnesota Senate election that the Bush Administration successfully used to seize the Presidency in 2000. There's some chance he might succeed.

Here's the executive summary: Coleman evil, local media compromised (Star Tribune and Minnesota Public Radio), Franken not taking it seriously and needs help. Links at bottom.

Coleman is very canny and gets the propaganda game VERY well. Take this: the initial vote reports uniformly erred in Coleman's favor. The initial reported results, based on 3 AM call-ins from far-flung counties, padded Coleman's numbers by 500 votes. Coleman, being clever and manipulative, has turned that on it's head and is on the rampage about why the 'Democratic Secretary of State's Office' keeps giving Franken more votes. The reason? Because the first numbers were wrong. How were they wrong, Norm? They were skewed in Coleman's favor. Why is that, Norm?

The direct attacks on manifestly-biased Democratic FARMER LABOR! (note the social-democratic third party) Secretary of State Mark Ritchie have begun. Tim Pawlenty, jilted suitor, is got his sly digs in on one hand and is pretending to play off that he's above it on the other.

There is an attempt by the right wing media to say Minnesota 2008 is like Florida 2000. This is also turned on it's head - in Florida in 2000 Katherine Harris, Jeb Bush and their friends disenfranchised poor and black voters by the double handful, arranged Republican staffer riots, and succeeded in narrowing the discussion to the point where the Supreme Court could appoint Bush. So what I hear when they push that is 'I would like to steal Minnesota like we did there, please?'

Nate at 538 gives Franken a reluctant 'leans Franken' on the recount. Minnesota's voting apparatus is top-notch, with fully auditable paper trails and transparency. (earlier post)

Coleman has declared victory. Twice. The right-wing bloggers are uniformly pushing the talking points. My visit to Franken headquarters a few days ago (where I shared my 'Coleman sure turns things on his head, fight hard for this' thought) ended in a not-at-all reassuring 'Don't worry, we have some great people on this.' Right! As one of the commenters (Norsecats) on a Pandagon thread says,

Franken was not a strong candidate. I live in MN, and I do not know of many people who were really enthusiastic about Franken’s candidacy. Coleman started the mud-throwing, but Franken was throwing it thick and nasty as well. Just as an example: the Mpls. StarTribune put out a voters’ guide. Franken’s summary of his views spent half his time attacking Coleman.
I think Coleman is loathsome, but if you can’t draw more than 42% of the vote in a wave year, when the presidential candidate carried Minnesota with more than 55% of the vote, you are a weak candidate."

I'm by no means unbiased here. Norm Coleman is a dangerous wanker, one of the few political figures I actually hate. He was my hometown mayor, he's in a sham marriage and talks about family values, and his hypocritical stands are matched by canny triangulation.

He's engaged in a full court press. With Alaska gone D, and Georgia close, this might be THE filibuster breaker. The Star Tribune, the onetime liberal Minneapolis daily, is drinking Normade, and Minnesota Public Radio, the most aristocratic of public radio stations, is pushing RNC lines.

Please call the Franken campaign and get them to wake up. Call MPR and write the Star Tribune. Maybe this will work out, but the Right is putting more pressure on the Secretary of State's office than the other side. Minnesota has a good process that should be run without interference. If Coleman wins the recount clean, well then we kick him around for 6 more years, but if he succeeds in sending it to the courts, then we're still in 'Right Wing Judicial Coup' territory.

(Crossposted at nihilix. More Coleman stories available on demand)

(edit - thanks fatgirlonadate for the right Ritchie brother)

Pseudonymous Kid is not always cute

Me: PK, please finish your juice and then go brush your teeth.
PK: Mama, why are you writing a check?
Me: Because I owe people money. Finish your juice.
PK: Can I draw a picture of a spider on your check?
Me: NO.
PK: Aw, come on. Right here?
Me: No. Finish your juice?
PK: (brandishing a pen) A little picture?
Me: NO. Get away!
PK: Aw, Mama. Why can't I draw a picture of a spider?
Me: When you grow up you can draw pictures of spiders on your bills, but you can't do that on my bills. Now finish your juice.
PK: Mama, can't I please draw a spider?
Me: NO.
PK: I'll draw it right here! It won't ruin anything!
Me: PK, knock it off! Finish your juice!
PK: Mama, why are there wrinkles on your forehead?




I blame Lauren.

Into the West

...when I was younger I could remember anything, whether it happened or not; but I am getting old, and soon I shall remember only the latter"
-Mark Twain


Pop showed up yesterday.


I learned this in a phone conversation with my mother.

I'd love to talk, Jimmy, but your father's waiting supper for me.

This was a bit of news. First, Jimmy is my brother. Second, my father passed away in 1989.

I said as much to my mom.


No, Ma. Its Taddy.
Well, thank you, sweetheart. And don't call me Ma.

Yes, ma'am.
I don't care what you call me but I don't care for that.

Yes, ma'am.

After a little more of this Bertie and Jeeves repartee, she returned to the urgency of her departure.

Yeah, Mom. About that.

Yes, dear?

Well, uh, you know. Himself. Cooking dinner. I'm surprised.

He loves to cook, Jimmy.

No, Ma, its Taddy.

I know, dear. I love you too. I love all my boys. But now I have to go.

And don't call me Ma, sweetheart.


Yes, ma'am.

i stand here ironing

It's still true: Flea is my blogging inspiration. That post is actually sort of not typical for her--she tends more towards the story side, as I used to, and less towards the political essay. But it's two sides of a coin, the stories and the essays. And it's still in my bitchy opinion the best goddamn thing about the blogosphere, the way our stories add up to demonstrate why they matter. If you're not sure what I mean, go find and read the story whose title is also the title of this post.

Oh, and Flea points to The Black Snob who sounds like yet another righteous bitch. Somewhere in the heaven of our imaginations, Tillie Olsen is smiling down on us all.

last-minute notice

Those of you who are in California, and who were not happy about 8 passing, can do something about it tomorrow morning.

If this post is too late and you already have plans (or are reading it after 10:30 am on Saturday), there are other upcoming events you can take part in.

Pseudonymous Kid is planning on making his own sign for the protest tomorrow; as he put it, "I think a grunty holding a sign that he made himself is a lot more powerful than grownups holding signs that just say "No on 8, even." Kid knows his symbolism.

He is a night owl who generally prizes his ability to sleep in on Saturday mornings, but when I told him there was a protest, he didn't hesitate in saying he wanted to go. Afterwards we're going boogie boarding with his teacher, and then we're going to come home and bake peanut butter cookies even though it's supposed to be 85 degrees tomorrow.

Some things suck about California, like bigots--acknowledged or unaware--who vote to change our constitution to deny equal protection under the law. The weather, however, is awesome.

Give me the breast (milk)

This article (via Jezebel) claims that men have all the necessary equipment to breastfeed: mammary glands and pituitary glands. And as we all know, they have nipples. Apparently the pituitary gland is necessary because it produces prolactin, the hormone responsible for triggering the body to secrete milk. The article says that men naturally produce small amounts of prolactin, but their minds can "demand" that the gland produce more under unique circumstances.

But why couldn't we trigger breast-milk production by administering doses of synthetic prolactin? It wouldn't surprise me if a synthetic prolactin is already in existence--wouldn't it be useful for women who are having trouble breast-feeding? I don't know, I'm not a scientist or a doctor, but given that there are all kinds of synthetic hormones that are manufactured, it seems like they could at least try.

And that way, men would be able to breast-feed, right? Which would be really awesome. There are a ton of reasons I can think of that this would be beneficial for families and children. Sometimes women die in childbirth and thus can't breast-feed. Sometimes they are unable to breast-feed for whatever reason (e.g. breast reduction surgery can fuck up the milk ducts). It could be a huge step toward gender-equality in child-rearing. People always talk about how women are just "naturally" closer-bonded with babies, as a justification for why the responsibility of child-care should fall to them, but a good part of this has got to be that mommy's the one from whom food springs eternal. It seems like it would be awesome to have a family arrangement where both parents could breast feed.

Of course, I'm sure the idea of breast-feeding sends men all across the world into fits of nightmares about the loss of their masculinity. But hey, what's more macho than manning up and giving your kid the tit so he or she can be healthy? Not much, I say.

I demand research!

Down to the Triarii

Like the family of Senator McCain, my family has a military tradition. I'm prepared to concede its considerably less glorious than that of the Clan McCain. We boast no great war captains or Academy graduates or boys standing on the burning deck.

I would argue, though, that my family's military traditions are more typical of the military traditions of our Republic; we eschew Prussian chest thumping and parading under the ancient regimental banners. Our family credo is more along the lines of A soft answer turneth away wrath, as opposed to Come home with your shield or on it.

Our service to the State is less eager and more grudging than that of the Equestrian orders. Those of fighting age in my family are more inclined to grip a cold beer in their sword hand than they are the arm de blanche.

On my father's side, we are descended from a corporal in the Irish Guards. He was born in Armagh and signed up for the Guards Regiment at the age of 16 in 1913. Apparently, he was not much for reading the papers and was nonplused to find himself on the Marne River in early Autumn, 1914, being shot at by Bavarians on the opposite bank.

Deciding this was no place for a good Catholic boy, he hied himself to Ontario where he planned to sit out his enlistment among the expatriate Irish there.

The pitiless march of world-historic events interrupted his idyll when the spectre of conscription loomed over Ontario. He had taken a job booming rafts of white pine across the Great Lake from Thunder Bay to Ashland, Wisconsin and, after beaching the timber, decided to remain in the Good Old USA. Where he was drafted into the United States Navy.

Dispatched to a shipyard in the State of Washington, he spent the remainder of the war walking a sentry post at the shipyard and keeping an eye peeled for warlike flotillas of the kriegsmarine
attempting to force passage through the Strait of Juan de Fuca. You may judge the effectiveness of his service from the fact that not a single battleship or auxiliary of the Kaiser's fleet ever penetrated Puget Sound.

On my mother's side, her father was born in Norway and brought to the USA when his father suspected the King of Sweden planned to impress his son into the ranks of the Swedish Army. My great-grandfather had strong views regarding Swedish overlordship of his country and declined to offer his sons to the overlord's service.

So he moved to Chicago where he opened a butcher shop and basked in the tranquility of our peaceful Republic. Until 1917 when his son was drafted into the U.S. Army.

The warrior traditions of my maternal line are similar to those of my paternal line. My grandfather spent the period of active hostilities at Fort Dix, New Jersey, serving up nourishing meals to the lads training to make the world safe for Democracy.

Ironically, his brush with death came after the Central Powers made peace. He was shipped over to France after the Armistice to cook for the troops occupying the Rhineland. Where he came down with the flu. Thinking he was about to die, he committed to paper, in his own hand, all the sausage recipes he'd learned from his French instructors.

My mother sent me his recipe book this summer and it was a revelation to me. I don't know if he was high or delirious but a lot of the pages are annotated with the most wonderful sketches of womanly form. His recipe for mortadella, in particular, is obscured entirely by several panels of a tender boy-meets-girl story where it appears the boy and girl hit it off right from the start.

Now, this aspect of my grandfather's personality was very much at odds with the gentle, sober, Scandanavian gentleman who took me fishing and bought me Goody Bars as a youth. I raised this issue with my Moms who would only say, Well, your Grandfather was not always an old man, you know.

You can take the boy out of Chicago but you can't take Chicago out of the boy.

The next generation was less fraught with imperial complications and more bored with life on the farm. My father and his older brother could not wait to join up. In fact, my Uncle Jack did not even wait for open hostilities. He joined the Merchant Marine in 1940, was torpedoed in the Irish Sea in 1941, and spent the remainder of the war in a Swedish internment camp. How he got there is a story in itself and beyond the scope of this post. Suffice it to say, perfidious Albion figures largely in the tale.

My pop joined the Navy in 1942. He volunteered for submarines and spent the war stalking Japanese shipping across the wastes of the Pacific.

I also have letters from him, sent to his youngest brother, that my mother forwarded to me this summer. I guess she was cleaning out closets or something.

Anyway, censorship prevented my Dad from informing his brother of naval movements. So, they devised a sort of code. In their correspondence, they planned to revive Captain Cook's voyages and talked of where they would go first, where they would go next, and so on.

It dawned on me that my Dad was not planning a postwar tour. He was telling my uncle, and through him, his Mama, where he was. If I could figure that out, you'd think the Japanese codebreakers could too. Funny the USN censors never tumbled to it. If his correspondence to his brother had fallen into enemy hands, who knows the effect on the outcome of the war? I hear it was a near-run thing as it was.

When the family arms passed to my generation, the issues were less clear cut than they had been in 1940. I turned 17 in 1968 and drew the number 11 in the national draft lottery. My parents were dead set against the adventure in Vietnam and went so far as to make plans to send me to relations in Ontario.

For all kinds of reasons, that turned out to be impractical. I joined the USN on the assumption that volunteering for the senior service was the best way to stay out of the infantry being shot down at the rate of 50 a week in SE Asia. I was promised a billet in the Mediterranean Fleet. I ended up attached to a USMC unit in Thua Thien-Hue province. That's the Navy for you.

Now, a new generation is practicing the profession of arms. I have two nephews in the National Guard. One is in Diyala province. One is in Salahuddin province. As far as we know. If Scheherazade had sailed the Tigris, we might be able to devise a code for tracking their whereabouts.

I have a niece on the USS Dwight D Eisenhower, plying the Persian Gulf. Or Arabian Sea. My family takes no position on these matters. We just hope the saber rattling against Iran ends with the inauguration of President-Elect Obama.

When the counterrevolutionary powers of Europe sent their corps storming across the frontiers of France, the revolutionary government issued a decree mobilizing the nation. They instructed all classes to support the nation in arms according to their means and their abilities. The old veterans were directed to the village squares to fill the youth with martial ardor by recounting their own stories of derring do.

That is not the mission of veterans today.

The dubya regime of chickenhawks and warmongers has exploited veterans' love of this country and pride in their service for a program of propaganda and coercion. We are told we must support the occupation of Iraq to honor the service of those who have fallen there.

The country has rejected this lie. We have issued orders to our new leaders to end the occupation and get us the fuck out of Iraq. How that is done, we leave to them. We require only that it be done speedily and without further damage to our strategic position.

The right will resist. They will wave the bloody shirt. They will invoke the memory of our sacred dead.

Once again, its down to the triarii. Veterans can stand against this blasphemy the same way they have stood against our enemies. They can tell the story; how our mighty Armed Forces are the Shield of the Republic and must not be wasted on adventurism and buccaneering.

Soldiers and sailors of the Republic! We salute you! Now, once more, veterans Up Front!

p.s. Belated Happy Birthday to the United States Marine Corps!

Love

Please watch this video. Even if you think Olbermann is shrill or annoying or sexist (all of which he can be at times). I think, or at least I hope fervently, that what he's said here will catch fire as a defense of gay marriage that echoes in discourse all over the country.

It's tempting to characterize the fight for gays to marry as a question of fairness, because denying marriage to an entire group of people is so very fundamentally unfair. And it is, in a very real sense, a question of fairness. But I think the legalistic defense of gay marriage has sort of outlived its usefulness. People are well aware that by banning gay marriage, they are denying rights to others that they themselves enjoy--and arguing that it's not fair doesn't seem to persuade them. Emotional appeals, like the one Olbermann is making, are going to carry the day in the end, I believe.

And his central question, the one he repeats over and over, is the one I want repeated to every person who professes a stance against gay marriage: What's it to you? That is what I will ask, that is what I hope you will ask, that is what I hope religious and political leaders all over the country will ask. I am shocked by the disconnect that religious leaders have caused in the hearts of their faithful. I do not think that the people who voted in favor of prop 8, the people from all over the country who sent money to the Yes on 8 campaign, are hateful. Some of them are bigoted, yes, but many of them are not. They have somehow been convinced that the righteous and loving thing to do is to deny gay people the right to marry. Shame on the people who are responsible for convincing them.

The Mormons (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints or LDS) are taking a lot of heat for their huge Yes on 8 campaign, and they deserve it. I am sickened by the behavior of church authority, and infuriated by the blind obedience of the local leaders in every city, town and state that followed them. Their protestations that they are within their "right" to participate in the Democratic process just infuriates more. Of course they are within their rights. That's not the point. The point is that they nakedly used the people they lead, people who put trust and love in them, to further a political goal that is hateful. In an organization that talks about love more than any other I've ever known.

As I've mentioned many times, I'm an atheist. I was raised Mormon, and I haven't been to church in nearly ten years. But up until a few weeks ago, I had no particular desire to take myself of of the "official" rolls of the church. Somewhere in Salt Lake City is a file with my name on it. In that file is the record of when I was baptized almost twenty years ago now. In that file is the record of the tithes I paid as a child from my meager allowance. In that file is the transcript of the patriarchal blessing I received when I was 16. And somewhere in that file are the names of my beloved parents. Somewhere else in Salt Lake City there is a file with my mother's name on it, the beautiful, talented, brilliant woman I never really got to know. And in that file is the transcript of her patriarchal blessing, and her baptism.

All these things were some strange comfort to me. I've said that one of the things I would most like to talk to my mother about is her relationship with the church, and how she reconciled her problems with it. Because it's hard for me to reconcile what I know about her with what I know about the church. But as much as I dislike the institution, I have always maintained that the wards and branches across the country are full of good, smart, loving people.

Not today. Today the institution and the people that are part of it have come out against love. They have come out against the chance for love. And because I am pro-love, and will strive every day to be more so in my romantic relationship, my friendships, my family bonds, my career, and my service to my community, I must be against the LDS church.

So, by the end of this week, I will be officially resigning from the church in explicit protest of the church's behavior on Proposition 8, and its insistence on dragging the good loving people who follow its teachings into a battle against love, the last great hope for happiness and peace.

(For those who can't watch video, the transcript of Olbermann's comments are there. But really, if you can, watch the video).

Belated Weekend Family Blogging

I feel like I never blog anything of substance anymore, but partly that is because the substance is sort of depressing me. Like the fact that I heard today about the 4th job to which I have applied that is now cancelled due to budget cuts. And how I grow increasingly sure that I don't really have it in me to hack away at this tenure track market beyond this year.

So instead I write about what I did with my family over the weekend. And this weekend it was drive to FL to visit grandparents. Not the racist Obama-supporting grandma, but a different set. Who live in FL with the rest of the grandparents. I didn't see as much of these grandparents growing up, but as an adult I just cannot get enough of my grandma. Among the reasons:

- an 82 yr old woman with a BA in sociology? That she earned right out of high school? Don't see that much.

- She writes letters every day for most of the morning.

- She had 9 kids, 2 of whom were full term twins who weighed 7.5 lbs each (!!!!), and looks incredibly glamorous in every picture I have ever seen.

- She plays her piano, beautifully, every day.

We had a lovely visit, all things (where things = eventualities of traveling with a 3yr old) considered, except for this one thing that bugged the hell out of me. Baby V is obsessed with her grandpa, followed him around the entire weekend. He was bemused by this, but would've been indifferent to her ignoring him altogether. Whereas my lovely grandma, who isn't one of those pushy grabby grandmas at all, was so wanting some attention or even eye contact from her great-granddaughter, with the latter never managing it. Baby V did not give the impression of being scared or nervous, just disinterested mostly. Do you other parents/aunts/uncles/grandmas/friends see this same thing in the kids you love? An uncanny ability to direct attention at the people least likely to give a shit?

is the semester over yet?

So today, after taking PK to school, I lay down for an illicit nap. I should KNOW BETTER because inevitably I hit the snooze button a few times, sleep longer than I intended, and then end up rushing at the last minute to make it to class.

Today, no different. After dragging myself awake at ten to eleven (class starts at eleven thirty), I decided that I had to take a shower both for hygiene and alertness. Quick shower, dress. Check clock. Ten minutes before I absolutely must leave the house, okay, I'll mark journals so I don't end up doing it in class, which is always embarrassing and makes me look disorganized. Mustn't let on to the students that I'm disorganized. So I sit down to mark the journals, which takes all of five minutes (did they write? Yes? Good, full credit). Glance at the syllabus to see what the hell I'm supposed to talk about today....

WAIT, WHAT?? NO CLASS TODAY?? BUT PK HAS CLASS TODAY. VETERAN'S DAY IS TOMORROW.

Quick, jump on the internet to double-check the college schedule. Yep. No class today.

FUCK. I COULD HAVE SLEPT SOME MORE.

So insteaad I blogged it and will, I guess, eat lunch before going to help out in PK's class. Sigh.

Standing on the Rock

Everybody's got their list of what Barack has to do first. There's a lot of talk about the First Hundred Days and whatnot. Democratic constituencies have eight years of pent up demand. Twelve years, if you count President Clinton's second term.

There's an economy to right, an occupation to end, and a bin Laden to liquidate.

Beyond extending unemployment compensation, clawing back whatever chunk of the bailout ransom is being used for Wall Street bonuses and golden parachutes, and getting our people the fuck out of Iraq, like, pronto, I don't have any specific policy prescriptions to lay on Barack. My feeling since the Democratic primaries began, even before I supported him, is that Barack knows what he's doing.

But there's a stylistic point I'd like to raise with him.

Could we end the repeated references as to how the President's number one job is to protect America, to protect the American people, to keep them and their country safe?

The Oath of Office requires the president to swear to "...preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States." That's the President's number one job. That's why the President draws the weekly envelope.

Protecting the country and the people is the job of the American people, just like its always been. I never tire of pointing out that, of the four attacking columns launched against us on 11 September 2001, the only one repulsed was defeated by ordinary people.

Not the Navy. Not the Marine Corps. Not the Army. Not the Air Force or Coast Guard.

Despite the national wealth lavished on them for the last sixty years, they proved entirely unequal to the task of defeating the attacks of the September criminals. It was left to ordinary people to stand in the breach.

I take no pleasure in pointing this out. I am a long service veteran of the United States Navy and damned proud of it. Nonetheless, facts are facts.

So, please, President Obama, don't worry about making the country safe. Worry about keeping the Constitution safe.

Don't worry about keeping the country safe. Worry about making the American people strong. We'll take it from there.

the joys of real estate

Ugh. Remember the dead cat house?

The sellers are refusing to return our deposit money.

Do they have a leg to stand on? Who knows! Our realtor thinks not, I have a niggling suspicion she might be mistaken, but it's possible that they dawdled too long (or rather, their realtor, who never returned phone calls, may have done) and deadlines expired and they owe us the money yadda yadda yadda. In any case, I really don't want to have to expend the energy squabbling about it in small claims court.

Especially as we're in the process of trying to buy another house, one that's much cuter and cleaner and in better shape (we think, though there's a worrisome crack along the back exterior wall). Less conveniently located, but adorably Spanish. Also, no dead cats. Want!

Must call mortgage guy to find out if we can afford it even if we lose $5k on the dead cat house. SIGH.

Healthcare Blogging

I visited the Emergency Room for the first time ever! All told, a pretty decent experience. On Wednesday night, I went to have dinner with some friends I hadn't seen in a while. While at the restaurant, I ran into some other friends I hadn't seen in a while. All of this excitement was, I guess, portending a catastrophe. I got in my car to go meet my boy at the store some of his friends just opened, to hang out there. I park, I walk toward the store, and as I'm stepping up onto the curb right in front of the store, I think I stepped in a little pothole with my left foot and twisted the fuck out of my ankle. So, I'm on the ground, and going "wow--that really hurts." Not like smarting badly, but like, actually injured. So I try to get up, and attempting to put any weight on my left leg causes excruciating pain. I stand there, and see a bunch of people I know, including my boyfriend, sitting inside the store. Of course, they can't see me, and I can't really move. I eventually managed to get someone attention, and B came out and helped me inside. Ouch. After about an hour of icing it and some pain meds, there wasn't much appreciable difference, so I decided to head to the ER in a cab.

I was seen by the triage nurse right away, she took my blood pressure, pulse, and temperature, asked me a bunch of questions, and then sat me to wait in the waiting room. After about 15 minutes, someone came and wheeled me back to the actual ER. I waited for about 15 minutes, then was seen by a doctor who checked out my ankle and ordered an xray. Then I sat waiting in the room for about 45-50 minutes, which seemed like forever but I guess isn't really that long. I finally got wheeled over to xray, which was actually the most annoying part of the whole thing because getting up on the xray table was really hard with only one working foot. I basically had to throw myself across it and wriggle up there. It was all terribly dignified.

The xrays didn't show a break or fracture, so they told me to follow up with an orthopedic doctor, wrapped up my ankle in a supportive bandage, gave me crutches, and told me to ice it three times a day. We had to wait another 45 minutes for a cab, and all told we were there about three and a half hours. Not too bad.

The bad part has been everything after--trying to get around is absolutely awful. It's extremely frustrating, because I feel fine. If I don't move my ankle, I feel no pain whatsoever. But I haven't gone to work yet because just getting from the bed to the bathroom is a royal pain in the ass, and it's about ten feet. My big accomplishment of the day yesterday was going from the bedroom to the living room so I could watch tv.

And, luckily for me, I have to climb two flights of stairs to get to my apartment. After my ER visit, I had the joy of literally crawling up the stairs on my hands and knees. Delightful. I really want to get out of the house today, but I am not looking forward to leaving and coming back. Not to mention the fact that my car is still stranded a couple miles away where I parked it before I fell down.

So it's been kindof a bummer week for me since Obama got elected. I blame Prop 8.

party over: a primer on equality and Prop 8 - from a brown straight girl!

We'll take a brief break from the longest post-election party ever to turn a quiet, sober eye to California, my home state. There, among the raisins, peaches and lettuce, the people of California voted overwhelmingly to deny their fellow Californians basic equal rights while, at the same time, making it possible for Barack Obama to become President. Ironic, isn't it?

Basically, Prop 8 tells every gay person in California to suck it up and accept it: you will never have the same right or access to the same things to which I, my straight sister and straight brother in law have rights and access.

There. That's the Proposition in a nutshell.
(Come at me with your counter arguments trying to explain to the 'danger' of gay rights and not only will I call bullshit on all of it, I will ask you what made you hate gay people.)

Now there's been some talk about who's to blame for this vote. Was it black people? Was it Latinos? Was it black and/or Latino church folk? (We'll come back to that.)

Let's cut to the chase: it was straight people who tanked equal rights for gays in California. (Let that sink in a bit. We'll come back to that, too.)

Here's the thing about equal rights - they actually supercede religion and race and they do so because the idea behind equality and civil rights is quite simple:

IF SOCIETY WORKS ONE WAY FOR ONE PARTICULAR GROUP OF PEOPLE, TO THEIR BENEFIT, THEN IT BETTER WORK THE EXACT SAME WAY FOR EVERYONE ELSE.

I will repeat this often and loudly at whoever is puffing themselves into a self-righteous ball about why they voted for Prop 8:

Religion: you voted for Prop 8 because the Bible said so. Well, so what? We don't live in a theocracy and it's wrong for a portion of the population to be subjected to your narrow interpretation of the bible which should actually have no bearing on civic life. God will not send you to hell because you voted for something that gives Tony and Miguel the right to spousal healthcare benefits or visit one another in the hospital should Tony get hit by the RTD.

The 'Ick' Factor: you voted for Prop 8 because the idea of two women loving one another and exchanging vows in front of a judge skeeves you out. Again, so the frak what? Your personal, outdated and irrelevant homophobia just legally stripped an entire community of their basic civil rights which they should have because they're, you know - basic frakking human beings living in America.

The Race Thing: you're quite willing to vote for Obama but, lawd, that gay thing is what white folks do. Are you kidding me?? You are surrounded by gay people.

You sit in church, look up into the choir and know that Donny the pianist has been 'that way' for years. (Quiet as kept, you know big ol' flashy, stentorian Bishop So-And-So has been having liaisons with black men for years.)
You have a cousin who has brought her slightly butchy 'roommate' to every family reunion and you know they're not just sharing an apartment to save on rent.
You have heard stories of folks in your family who've never married or remarried after a spouse has died, but are suddenly quite comfortable moving in with their life-long same sex best friend - and you know it's not just about companionship.
You go to all the fests in Leimert Park and you see the all the gay men with their babies and their 'girlfriends' and you KNOW those men aren't straight.

And you know what? Luther - gay! Langston - gay! Snoop (on The Wire) - gay! My aunt Diane - totally gay (which I just found out about last year from my dad who was also caught by surprise)!

What the hell, my people?!
Y'all had best get off your high horses about civil rights and demanding to hear bullshit arguments to 'convince' you that gay people need the same rights as you. Who do we think we are? We do not own the patent on civil rights. Ol' Miss Sally mighta marched with Dr. King but Ol' Miss Sally has NO right to use Dr. King's fight to emancipate black folk to justify keeping gay people in a cage built by her cultural misunderstanding of what 'the gays' do, are like or really want.

You know what gay people want? What you and I have. Freedom. Autonomy. Dignity. The privilege to introduce the person they love to a room full of people as their spouse. They want to fulfill a human desire to create a family and have that family be protected just as your family is protected. They want what we have and we should give it to them.

Why? Because we keep taking it away from them!

This brings me back to STRAIGHT PEOPLE tanking this thing for the gays. White, black, latino or asian - a majority of the heteros in California voted for this shit. Why? Because we are drowning in our straight privilege and are, deep down, unrepentant homophobes. We don't like gay people. Apparently, we must hate them despite working with gay people, socializing with gay people and having gay people in our family. We might as well have just pinned a great big pink triangle on them.

And until we share some of their burden and hold our fellow straight breeders accountable for our homophobia, gay people will never get what they deserve - what we have.

(Why I'm using 'we:' we, even as self-identified friends to the gays, are implicated in this travesty. Clearly, if we straight people who support gay rights because we know and love gay friends and family or because we know it's the right thing to do or because we are (gag) 'tolerant' - clearly we didn't do enough. Our gay-hating friends, acquaintances, neighbors and family voted for this shit because we didn't call them out on this crap long before this stupid Proposition even got on the ballot.

The burden to change the paradigm of hatred and bigotry shouldn't fall entirely on the community oppressed by it; it should be shared equally by the privileged who must sacrifice something in order to see the promised land of equal rights for all.)

So go on. Let's celebrate voting for Obama and 'change.'
But deep down we straight folks are oozing with the same old bullshit tar of hypocrisy.

[A Private Note to Richard:
Yes, I do think anal sex is healthy, especially when done with respect, with someone you trust and/or love, with plenty of lube, as well as a condom.

In fact, Lawrence v. Texas pretty much guarantees that any and all enjoyment of butt sex is private and outside of the reach of the law. In fact, beyond butt sex, Lawrence v. Texas also upholds that the liberty given to us in the Constitution pretty much covers gay folks' freedom to enter into relationships without fear of reprisal or criminal prosecution, whether or not such a relationship has legal recognition. You know - like STRAIGHT PEOPLE. Thanks for asking.]

Tell Your Ma, Tell Your Pa, Gonna send you back to Arkansas

You've probably been wondering: What's Taddy going to do with all the cool duds he got for the campaign?

The shirts are going back to Shepler's. I'm not really into the embroidered-guitars-and-coyotes look, anyway.

The wranglers would go back but one pair is missing a couple buttons off the fly for reasons we need not explore here. The other pair has a wierd sort of stain I can't really explain. I think its salsa verde from the pan that was upended in the pandemonium that broke out when Ohio was awarded to Barack.

To me, it looks like a topo map of the Quachita Mountains of northern Arkansas. My niece, Moya, says it looks like the Virgin de Guadalupe and must not be disturbed if I want to sell the jeans on e-Bay.

My Auntie says its disgusting and when the hell am I going to grow up?

I'm keeping the bolo tie because, well, just because. I don't have any bolo ties and this one is pretty cool: the slide is in the shape of a cowboy atop a bucking Harley. No way I'm giving that back. They'll have to cut it off my cold, dead, uh, neck.

The new boots are not an issue because I put them on layaway. I sort of miscalculated and the lay-away period is going to outlast the campaign. If the election were held next month, I'd be golden.

So, I'm back in my regular duds from my favorite dirty clothes basket in the back of my favorite closet.

This morning I'm sporting a natty ensemble; baseball cap from the USNS Ticonderoga and, no, I will not remove it at the breakfast table. Unless Auntie tells me to. She has some rather rigid views on dressing for meals.

From neck to waist I'm garbed in a wool shirt, blown out at the elbows, pulled over a wool sweater, blown out at the elbows.

This combination tops a pair of jeans blown out at the knees from hours of praying the rosary and wore out at the heel from being trod by my favorite boots, a pair of pointy-toed elkskins blown out at the little toe.

I'm dressin for depression, yo.

Pseudonymous Kid is amusing

Today's PKisms:

Mama, I think little goth girls are cool.

It's not how smart you are, it's how dumb you aren't.

Thoughts on the passing of proposition 8

According to Andrew Sullivan earlier today, white voters voted no 55 to 45 percent, and Latinos--surprisingly to me--were evenly split. Blacks voted 69 to 31 percent to pass a constitutional ban against gay marriage.

Which leads me to something I tried with my father, and that I told my students today: regardless of how one feels about gay marriage, here's the deal. Voters passed prop 22, which banned gay marriage. The ban went to the supreme court of California, which found it unconstitutional, since California's constitution says we should treat everyone equally.

In other words, we just voted to change the constitution in order to say that everyone should not be treated equally.

That is a big. Fucking. Deal.

Now, that point didn't win over my dad. Nor did it win over the various folks who I've heard, anecdotally, felt "bad" about voting yes but feared they'd go to hell if they didn't (my response: maybe they'll go to hell because they did), or who support gay marriage but were afraid that the law would require teachers to teach kids about gay marriage (??), or who are okay with gay marriage but were terrified that their priests would be in trouble if they refused to marry gay people (?? again). If any of them actually thought about it in constitutional terms, that is.

And for all I know it didn't win over those of my students who supported Prop 8 (and there were a few). But I did notice some of them looking kind of sobered when I pointed it out. That, and the fact that, again according to Sullivan, "the under-30s voted for marriage equality by 67 to 31 percent," gives me hope that okay, this is some shitty shit. (And Arkansas' ban on gay adoption is worse). But maybe the kids who were in the last years of trick-or-treating, who were excited by our No on 8 sign, maybe they'll change it back again.

And there's an upside to the stories that it was fear of priests being arrested, or teachers "having" to teach kids about gay marriage, rather than gay marriage *itself* that made this thing pass. It suggests that gay marriage as such isn't that scary to most Californians. Oh, they're still a little squeamish about telling the kids about it (which is hilarious, given that the kids apparently already know and largely support it). And they don't want their priests to get in trouble. (I know. Don't say it.) But having to marshal these silly scare tactics to get people to "define marriage as between a man and a woman" suggests that the actual definition, as such, doesn't actually matter that much to people.

Equality under the law is a winnable issue. It fucking sucks that it didn't win this time. But it will. People are scared of new ideas, but they also do have a sense of fair play. As their fears subside, that sense of decency will express itself.

I hope.


Update: I swear I wrote this before learning that this is pretty much the same tack some folks are hoping will convince the courts to overturn 8

"The magnitude here is that you are effectively rendering equal protection a nullity if a simple majority can so easily carve an exception into it," she said. "Equal protection is supposed to prevent the targeting and subjugation of a minority group by a simple majority vote."

storied

Yesterday in a chat, leblanc and I were discussing the reasons we identified with Obama and marveling at the range of people from whom he seemed able to invite identification. What an amazing feat for a man with his story. So I thought I would share, on this day where everything feels so fresh, a version of what I said yesterday.

I have written before here, in bits and pieces, about how important stories are to me. I am very aware of the extent to which I understand myself as a series of stories, and how very particular stories written by others have helped me understand myself better. Like many people who do what I do and study what I do, I believe that our stories and they ways we tell them create more real communities than most other aspects of culture. Culture is stories, for the most part. Feminism, in its most poignant moments for me, has been about stories, spaces where women can share them, learn from them, validate them. Motherhood and learning how to do it the way I want to has been a process of sharing anecdotes, hearing my own ideas take shape as I put them into anecdotes, some shared with tears other with guffaws of laugher.

Among many other things, Barack Obama has embodied for me the power of stories and of knowing what they all share. The man has a story, of course, that is like none other that has attended an American president. Some people have heard it as a scary story, one filled with foreign lands and monsters and unfamiliar systems. But many many others have heard it and found something to identify with, even though the content may be so different from our own stories' contents. As I have listened to our president-elect speak over the course of this last year, I have always felt that part of his moving oratory style - which, let it be said, will do as much work as policies in uniting this country and goddamn anyone who wants to pretend that doesn't matter - is drawn from an awareness of what we can do with stories. Here I'm not just talking about making anecdotes about voters part of stump speeches, because that can be moving as easily as it can be Joe the Plumber. What I mean is both those everyday anecdotes and a less specific ability to fashion our choices and our obligations to each other as part of our story. And ability to tap in to the sense that we want and need a story to tell ourselves about what our country is and how we live in it. An intuition that our American story needed a new tangent.

Obama has stayed on message about unity and the coming-together that is possible for this country. I understand that message as a recognition that there are as many stories as there are Americans, and they are all very very different, but because they are stories they share a common narrative structure. And it is that structure that makes the different stories legible, and it is that structure that makes us all legible to each other. Our content differs widely, but as well all know, when the story is told in the right way it is relatable regardless.

Moved

This has been such an emotional campaign, and an even more emotional election day. From the first primaries to the Democratic convention, I've seen people get choked up with joy (and sometimes sadness) at the wonder that has been Barack Obama's meteoric rise to the presidency. In comments to the last few threads, some people have given interesting tidbits about the things that really move them, really get to them, and I think it's an important project to catalogue what about this election, and what about these last twenty-four hours has really gotten at you in your gut. We can form a kind of social memory, about what it feels like to see something truly great and transformational happen to your country.

For me, the thing that made me break down in tears during an otherwise tear-less night was McCain's concession speech (text). I know it sounds weird, but there it is, and I think this is why: Over the last year, we've heard so many speeches, after primaries, conventions, and debates, from McCain and from all the candidates who were, in some sense, running against Barack Obama--all the Republicans, all the Democrats. And in every one of those speeches, there was talk of the past "we fought hard and thank you for your support" and talk of the future "we will go out and win this election." But in McCain's speech last night, there wasn't much future. After hearing so many people say that they would continue to try and overcome Barack Obama, last night McCain had truly, finally lost the fight. There was no resolve to keep fighting. There was no plan. There was no rallying the troops. There was only defeat for McCain, and victory for this generation's most promising political figure and the greatest campaign in history.

And so for a truly gracious concession speech, I, for the first time in several months, commend you, Mr. McCain.

In a contest as long and difficult as this campaign has been, his success alone commands my respect for his ability and perseverance. But that he managed to do so by inspiring the hopes of so many millions of Americans who had once wrongly believed that they had little at stake or little influence in the election of an American president is something I deeply admire and commend him for achieving.

Now live up to your word and help our president fix this great nation.

Oh Happy Day

Yes we did.

I voted

Line: about 20 minutes. Pseudonymous Kid filled in the Obama vote, and then was upset with me because I didn't also let him fill in the No on 8 vote. The woman in front of me complained about the poll workers, but it seemed to me that they were doing their jobs just fine. People seemed pretty cheerful. There were a lot of kids there. When I dropped PK off at school, they had "voting booths" set up out in the yard and were sending all the kids to "vote." So PK got to vote twice. Hee.

If you have time today, you can do GOTV calls until 3 pm. I plan on hassling my students, even the one who I know will be voting for McCain.

Also a last-minute Bitch Phd endorsement for CA voters: Yes on 5. From a reader:

I am on a legal internship with the Drug Policy Alliance in Berkeley this fall. This was an unusal choice for me as I tend to focus exclusively on women's and queer rights issues. Taking on the prison-industrial complex, though laudable, seemed to fall outside my field. But then I took a look a the DPA's website (http://www.drugpolicy.org/communities/women/) and discovered an organization taking a holisitc approach to ending the "war on drugs". They left no stone unturned, dedicating equal time to women, GLBTQ, minorities, the environment, terrorism and international communities.

This unprecedented (in my experience) willingness to tackle every single cause and effect of a worldwide human/civil rights concern is what motivated me to join the DPA in their current fight to pass Proposition 5. Proposition 5 is a broad treatment-instead-of-incarceration initiative that incorporates 20 years of expert recommendations on how to "fix" California's grotesque prision overcrowding and recividism problem. Probably the best soundbite description of Prop 5 is that "we can't incarcerate our way out of addiction." Something a state with 66% recividism rate should have picked up on by now.

Unfortunately, the opposition to Prop 5 has managed to trick voters (much like the b.s. pulled by "sarah's law"), claiming we're going to cost billions and flood the streets with domestic abusers and meth dealers. (Digression: I find it remarkable that the prosecutors and judges suddenly care about women and families considering the number of cases we see at the DPA involving incarcerated women being shackeled during birth or prosecuted for "child endangerment" for using drugs while pregnant.) The claims are blatantly false as Prop 5 specifically excludes all violent and sex offenders and will save the state $2.5 billion in prison construction costs (no small feat for a state that built 21 prisons in the 1990s but only managed to shill out enough for 1 university). They further ignore the specifically feminist aspects of Prop 5 - that treatment be culturally, lingusitically and geographically appropriate for each indivudal. Not to mention specific provisions to provide childcare for participants with chidren. The latter provision is essential considering the 700% rise in the incarceration of women. In this exponentially expanding group, 1/3 are incarcnerated for drug law violations, over half are mothers of minor children and a staggering 2/3 are nonviolent offenders.

Essentially Prop 5 is an initiave set to guarantee that corrections policies concerning matters of women's health are grounded in science, comapassion, public health and respect for the rights of all humans. No wonder the prosecutors and prison guard are rabidly attempting to bring it down. Well either that or they saw our ad attacking their phallic obsession with prisons (http://www.prop5yes.com/incarcerex-vote-yes-on-prop-5) and decided Prop 5 had to go before too many voters started thinking for themselves.

By the dawn's early light

Not really. I showed up to vote around 9:15 a.m., before heading into work. No significant line, so I was sure it would be easy breezy. But once again, my knowledge of voting laws caused me to raise hell with a bunch of incompetent assholes. Just like 2006.

First, I got asked for ID. I said, you don't have to have ID to vote (even though I have my ID in my wallet--I'm difficult like that). Then they asked for my voter registration card, which I also declined to show (even though it was also in my purse). I say, it's not required! So I give my name and they look me up in the book.

Not there. Like, really not there. "Are you sure you're registered?" "Yes." "How do you know?" "Because I got my voter registration card in the mail a few weeks ago." "Can I see it?"

I tire of being difficult, at least momentarily. So I showed it. Yup, I'm registered. Yup, I'm at the right polling place. So they act confused for a while (like, for five minutes while I am standing there). Then one guy goes, "Oh! We should check the other list!" There's another list? There I am, on the "Supplemental Poll List." Dunno what the fuck that is. But despite the fact that it supplements the poll list, it is not like being on the actual poll list, and I have to go through all this other nonsense to cast my ballot.

First, one woman says "have him give you a ballot and you can fill it out while I figure out this affidavit thing." Of course, the "him" in question won't give me a ballot. I still am trying to figure out why the hell I am on this other list, and I have not gotten an even remotely satisfactory explanation.

I of course am asking a bunch of questions and the woman gets frustrated with me. So she says "Will you just come back later?" Fuck no I won't come back later! When I ask her why she thinks my coming back later is going to make any difference, she stammers that she wants to call the Board of Elections, then claimed she had been trying to get through for two hours and could not. Lovely.

They finally decide to give me a ballot, but then she says "well, I don't know what number to give you!" They all talk for a while about that. They finally decide to make me number 151. Then she starts to fill out this affidavit-thingy, which I had to sign, and has to be signed by two judges, who sign that they "know the voter" and that "s/he lives at xxxxx address." Which is total bullshit, because these election judges don't know me from Adam. But they don't seem to be reading it, and don't seem to know what it's for. She puts the form down and goes to get me a ballot, and I pick it up and look at it. Of course, it's been filled out wrong, with several items left blank. I bring this up, and say look, I'll fill it out myself.

At this point, they are starting to get really annoyed with me. I don't give a shit, so I give them the business about how they are asking everyone for ID and to see their registration cards. And one woman says, well we're not turning people away if they don't have it, so what's the problem? So I launch into my speech about how it creates the perception that people need ID to vote and this keeps people away from the polls who don't have it. Like I said, I'm difficult.

Meanwhile, the woman who told me to come back has just told another woman to come back later, and I don't realize what has happened until she walks out the door. I wish I'd had the presence of mind to do something about that. Because no one should be told to come back later when they show up to vote.

They finally give me a ballot, and I vote. But I don't understand why, despite the fact that I was on a list that said I'd registered, I had to go through all this nonsense, signing an affidavit, getting other people to sign this affidavit, before they would even give me a ballot.

And I get back to work and find out that my co-worker who lives a few blocks away, and registered at the same time as me, wasn't in the book and they didn't even check the list. But she was registered, so she was probably on the supplemental poll list and they just didn't think to look there. And had to cast a provisional ballot. And had to show ID. And overheard another person who came up to the poll workers asking for another ballot because she'd made a mistake, and the poll worker asked if it the mistake was for the one of the judges (which it was) and then told the woman that she should just leave it 'cause it doesn't really matter.

Chicago, man.

get to work

I love this video's closing lines, because it sounds not only like a call to get out the vote, but also an acknowledgement that winning the election is only the beginning. Here's hoping Obama's election really does inspire all of us to keep up the efforts to change America for the better.

We interrupt your pre-election jitters for this commercial announcement

Okay, it was exciting when Apple donated money to the No on 8 folks and all, but here's a corporate initiative that has made me a customer for life.

Some products are hermetically sealed inside plastic clamshell cases, while others (especially toys) use plastic-coated steel-wire ties. Without the right tools, wire ties can be painful and time-consuming to untwist. [Especially after midnight on fucking Christmas. -Ed.]

Today, we're excited to announce the beginning of a mult-year initiative -- Amazon "Frustration-Free Packaging."

Amazon is working with leading manufacturers to deliver products inside smaller, easy-to-open, recyclable cardboard boxes with less packaging material (and no frustrating plastic clamshells or wire ties).

.... In addition to making packages easier to open, a major goal of the Frustration-Free Packaging initiative is to be more environmentally friendly by using less packaging material.

Dear god. Thank you, Amazon. I *hate* the twist ties, and the pile of plastic crap that ends up in the Pacific Ocean. Have I mentioned that I love the Pacific Ocean? And that it's one of the main reasons I moved back to the west coast?

I know lefties like to bitch about Amazon because of their history of donating to Republicans (though that's changing), and because they fuck up your mum and dad mom and pop stores. And believe me, PK and I are still very sad about our local independent children's bookstore (the only independent in town that sold new books, period) closing recently--the more so as the owner was sort of a friend. And yes, internet businesses with more than, say, a few thousand a year in sales should have to charge the same sales taxes that would apply in, say, the shipping addressee's home state.

But. I, for one, will be *damn* glad to see fewer plastic clamshells and goddamn twist ties. And I rationalize my use of Amazon because hey, it's a Seattle-based business and I lived in Seattle for a long time (including during Amazon's early years). And yes, in fact, I have started making buying decisions based in part on whether or not whatever-it-is comes in a plastic clamshell.

I only hope that this Amazon thing will actually affect how the relevant manufacturers package their stuff for brick and mortar stores, too.

Hope

I just got off the phone with my grandma in PA. She is an Italian immigrant who has pretty much voted straight Democrat for her life, but who a month ago admitted to me that she worried that if Obama won "the blacks would be taking over." So, yea. She's a racist. And I don't know what she thinks this "taking over" would mean save that she might actually have to see black people in her tiny Western PA town. And I tried to parse this out with her a month ago, but didn't really get anywhere.

So tonight I called her after a little phone banking to make sure she was going to vote the right way. And she assured me, right off the bat, that she was definitely voting for Obama, as were her friends. And she went on to say that she couldn't understand how anyone could vote for a man who put "health of the mother" in air quotes. She was thinking in particular of my ectopic pregnancy, but was able to see the range of possible scenarios such a derisive attitude could apply to. She further extolled her enthusiasm for Obama, for the way he has managed his campaign, and for what he can bring to the country her great granddaughter will inhabit.

Listen to B. Make some calls. When I admonish my students to vote, I do the civic duty angle, but I also remind them how important our stories are; how much we need the stories we can tell ourselves about ourselves, about what we were part of and how those stories define us. Be a part of this story. Make it one you can hold on to for a long time.

Surfing the web?

It's only 7:30 on the west coast, so if you're websurfing, you *could* make better use of your time by doing a little bit of get out the vote phonebanking in Nevada. Go here, pick a state (Nevada's on Pacific time; Colorado and Montana are on mountain time, so as of writing you probably only have half an hour to make phone calls without being hideously rude), and start dialing.

Seriously, it's pretty easy. They'll give you a script (it boils down to: "Hi, I'm calling with the Obama campaign, who are you supporting? Obama? Great. Please don't forget to vote tomorrow"), you call and mostly leave friendly messages telling people where their polling location is on their voice mail, one or two people will hang up on you, you'll get a few wrong numbers or disconnecteds, and you'll feel all virtuous and like you did your duty.

Plus, extra bonus: in the crop of people I just called, there were several 18 year olds. It was pretty nice to be able to congratulate them on voting in their first presidential election. It also suggests that a lot of these last-minute GOTV calls are to voters who might or might not be reliable, so hey, every call counts.

Can't Argue with That.

Amen, sister.

pro-life? why you should oppose "fetal rights" measures

Please please watch this video. Share it with your women friends--especially those who are pro-life. Believe it or not, "fetal rights" laws can be--and have been--used to charge a woman who gave birth to a stillborn twin with murder (the other twin lived); to grant hospitals custody of a fetus "before, during, and after delivery"'; to force a woman to undergo a cesarean that killed her (and the fetus); and to arrest a woman in active labor. In that last case, the police officer strapped her legs together.

And for god's sake, vote no on CA 4, CO 48, and SD 11.

do it

For Older Blacks, Election Offers Fruits of Hard Journey

Why we stand in line to vote - a historical photo essay

Obama-Inspired Black Voters Warm to Politics

Obama's rise reflects a dream realized for many Detroiters

Oh! For a Muse of Fire!

Two words, brothers and sisters. One Day!





One more day to the day we seize our country from the creatures who have laid her low.



Most everything that could be said has been said. If I had a muse of fire, I would employ her now. But really, there is no need. We all know what has to be done.

All the months, years even, of canvassing, phone-banking, leafletting, rallying, fund-raising, debating, marching, and praying have come to this: get out there tomorrow and vote for Barack Obama and Joseph Biden to lead the United States of America.



Don't worry about the long lines. Don't worry about getting back to the job on time. Don't worry about the rain. Or the heat. Or the snow. Or right wing tricks.

Don't be lulled into a false repose. This thing is not over till its over. The right knows they are about to have their ass handed to them and will fight a desperate action. Only you can defeat them. Only you can overthrow them. Only you can bring this to a victorious close.

I'm persuaded Election Day 2008 will be remembered as a turning point in the history of our Republic. You don't want to miss out.

It chaps my butt to quote an English King on such an occasion, even a fictional speech of an English King. Still, I think it fits.

"He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam'd,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that outlives this day, and sees old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his friends, And say,
"To-morrow is Saint Crispian;"
Then will he strip his sleeve, and show his scars,And say,
"These wounds I had on Crispin's day."

Weekend Solo Blogging

I've come down with a head-cold virus, which is putting a bit of a damper on my solo weekend. But I've still been able to enjoy the following:

- adult Halloween party on Friday night, where I discovered that when making smores, if you replace the Hershey's chocolate with a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup, you are in for tastebud joyfulness.

- went to mall and bought some new shirts, shoes and jeans, unencumbered by either Baby V's impatience or Mr. V's general slowness (gosh, I wonder where Baby V gets the impatience).

- went to yoga

- preliminary work on conference paper I'm giving in 2 weeks

- yard work: pulled up tomato plants, cut back a bunch of perennials, pulled up a bunch of annuals, have the lawn one law mow/mulch of leaves.

- baked 2 pumpkin loaves and a pumpkin pie

- saw Rachel Getting Married, which I strongly recommend. It's kind of a hard movie, especially if you have a sister with whom you have anything approaching a complicated relationship. Which most of us do. For sure I do, as does my very close friend with whom I saw the movie. We cried a lot. And were sort of speechless for a stretch after leaving the theater. Anne Hathaway is incredible, as is the entire cast really. Debra Winger especially. It's a very intense film, but the first I've seen in a very long time that both passes the Bechdel Test and is about women without being about their women-ness. It's about women who are people, with their gender and sex being only incidental features of the story. Very refreshing; see it, but not when you are in a feel-good kind of mood.

republicans are mean and hate children*

*Yes, yes, I'm sure some of them are perfectly lovely people. But the headline pretty much wrote itself.

charming

So we have a "No on 8" sign in our yard, naturally, and our neighborhood has mostly older kids rather than younger ones.

Every. Group. Of teenage trick-or-treaters that came by? Said "I LOVE YOUR SIGN! NO ON 8!"

Mr. B. would ask them if they were old enough to vote yet, and none of them were. But it gives one hope for the future.

I also notice that someone's idea of a holiday prank was pulling the "Yes on 8" sign in our neighbors' yard. Snerk.

.......

Other random cuteness from Pseudonymous Kid over the last couple of days. (Btw, you should know that in our family, the word for "little kid" is "grunty." I haven't used it on the blog, b/c, you know, identifiable detail for family members. But basically everyone I'm related to now knows about the blog, so. And leaving it out ruins the rhythm of some of PK's more hilarious statements.)

Me: Pseudonymous Kid, you have TOO MUCH Halloween candy!
PK: I know... that's what you guys are for!

Me: PK, will you STAND STILL and let me brush your hair? Or else people are going to think that you're a neglected child. They'll say, "what's wrong with those people that they never brush their grunty's hair? Let's throw them in jail!"
PK: For assassination of grunty beauty!

Het Men Like thin women curvy women women

Apropos of the thread below and the comments to the Jezebel post I got the link from, I have a request:

Can we do away forever with the "men like women with curves better" nonsense? I am so very, very tired of seeing people display their belief that denigrating different women is the way to respond to one group of women being denigrated.

"Men" do not "naturally" like any particular kind of woman more than any other. Just because we decide that fat women aren't disgusting, doesn't mean we now conclude that skinny women suck and that "men" like this or that better as any kind of rule. Some men like fat women. Some like skinny ones. Some men like other dudes. Some men refuse to have a "type" and go along with any woman that happens to meet their fancy.

I don’t much like the idea of “type”. Like, oh, my type is skinny women, or fat women, or “curvy” women, or women with red hair, or short women, or women with dreads, or whatever. Women do this too, of course, but I think it’s a typically privileged-male impulse that women take up. I started thinking about this because I was having a conversation with my boyfriend and I said something about what I perceived his “type” to be (mostly because it makes me feel better) and I think I said “you like chicks with a little junk in the trunk, don’t you?”

He said, “Actually, I just like women.”

Oh. Good point. And he has said before that he “casts a wide net,” and I think that absent cultural pressures to find only conventionally attractive women hot (or a feeling that you are somehow special by choosing to only like Fat Chicks), most people would cast a wide net, too. I think most people do cast a wide net. I have had male acquaintances that would say, if they were more assholish, that they tend to prefer thin women, obvious from the fact that they only ever date thin women. But I have also been quite aware that those same male acquaintances were attracted to me. It’s like they didn’t know what to do when they had feelings that were outside the cultural script of which kinds of women you can date and be attracted to.

The reason I think that “having a type” is an appealing state of being is twofold: first, it makes you feel like You Are Special and your preferences are Part Of Your Identity (you see this all the time with kids who hold on to their dislike of lettuce for thirty years). Second, if you date people who fall into that type, the idea that that’s your type is reassuring your partners, too. No, he doesn’t like me because of a combination of uncertain factors that could disappear at any moment, he wants to bone me because I’m His Type! He’s biologically and psychologically programmed to lust after my ass!

I just don’t think it works like that. Sure, if I look in my dating past, it tends to be guys around 6 feet or so who are medium-build-to-stocky, with dark curly hair. Most of the time. But I’ve also desperately wanted to fuck guys who were 5′5″, and guys who were dirty blond, and guys who were really scrawny, and guys with red hair and freckles. So, yeah, I don’t have a “type.” Not physically, anyway.

I don’t think most people do, but I think that deciding you have a "type" is easier than trying to figure out every single time whether you are attracted to an individual, and people are lazy. Plus, they’re uncomfortable being attracted to people that don’t fit into their attractiveness narrative, conventional or unconventional as it may be. People really are quite odd. And they're much, much more complicated than would be indicated by suggesting that an entire gender prefers a specific other "type" of person.

(Majority of this post taken from a comment I wrote here.)

not always bitching

I've been afraid to blog any of the upswing for fear of jinxing it, but Baby V had a miraculous recovery and got to make the trip with her dad after all! Which leaves me Home Alone! I feel sure this is attributable in part to the good well-wishing energy that radiated from you bitchy readers. Now you'll excuse me while I go read a hundred magazines.