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Hacking the Holiday, Academic Edition

Like many of my academic cohort, I can be quite bad at managing my work. To the tun of being bad at quarantining work-free times/paces for myself. As is often noted, 'tis the nature of the academic job. Which is why I feel pleased to report that I have just had my first ever (well, since being in grad school) work-free (almost), completely enjoyable Thanksgiving holiday. Possibly too enjoyable, as I am now experiencing vacation inertia like never before. I have been thinking today about why the holiday worked this way for me this year, and I think these are the steps I will repeat to keep the productivity demons in check.

1. Be home This is counter-intuitive to me on its surface because I tend to think that being away alleviates the temptation to Get Shit Done. But I also think the phenomena of travel fatigue and being out of one's space are the kind of thing that negate 50% of the relaxation of being away over a major holiday. For me, the deal with being at home and wanting to work is like the deal I've figured out with cutting back on cigs: If I don't have any in my possession, I obsess over them constantly, eventually buy a pack and jump back in with both feet. But if I keep a pack on hand and, every time I have an urge to smoke, tell myself to wait 10 minutes, I rarely ending up smoking the cigarette. Knowing I can smoke if I "need" to makes the process tolerable. Similarly, being away from my work or opportunities to work leaves me obsessing over it. A lot. At home, I can tell myself, 'well, you can always wake up an hour early tomorrow morning and take care of that if you need to." And then I don't.

2. Have a guest I'll be honest, the managing work obsession at home thing is way easier with a guest around. A guest forces you out of the routine and asks you to think about leisure as one of the day's goals, which is good for someone like me.

3. A low maintenance guest But obviously one's mother-in-law is probably not ideal for this. There are 3 or 4 people in my life who are the kind of guests that allow me to basically live a slightly more fun version of my everyday life: I don't have to clean or plan actual outings. I can sit on my computer and piss around for hours of their visits because they will do the same. They like my kid enough that they will play with her without me around. They like to watch movies we have all seen 100 times. This is the kind of guest you want for Thanksgiving.

4. Syllabus Design I suppose these points should be obvious, but it took me until this year to figure them out. Firstly, DO NOT teach anything new in the first 2 days of classes after Thanksgiving. If possible, teach the same text in multiple classes. Also: until this year I have always had a Major Thing due right before Thanksgiving, usually a paper of some sort. Bad idea, for obvious reasons. Seems like a good idea to build in the extra time for grading, but then it hangs over your head the whole time. My new approach involves realizing that the 2 weeks after Thanksgiving will suck regardless so there's no real benefit in redistributing one grading task to the holiday and thereby dragging it down too. But I didn't have nothing due; in 2 (of my 3) classes I had minor assignments due - an outline for the final paper and a bibliography of proposed sources. These were easily graded in less than 2 hours and are the thing that I would've done in front of the TV on a normal week. Having hem over the break and grading them over coffee and corn muffins on Friday morning made me feel like I was staying connected and accomplishing with extremely minimal effort. Which is an important game for me to play with myself.

5. Cook This won't work for everyone, but cooking at Thanksgiving (or any holiday) is huge for me. Cooking lets me take the productivity urges and see them fulfilled in a delicious way. When I can produce, by mid-afternoon, muffins, pies, spiced pecans, and bread - and all that on the day BEFORE Thanksgiving - I feel sort of All Powerful.

6. Live somewhere amazing such that it is 70 degrees on Thanksgiving and you can harvest pecans from your backyard. This cannot be sneezed at.

7. Don't try to be an at-home mom if you're not. In the past, I have felt obligated to use my holiday time the way many working parents do: spending quality time with kids who are in childcare. It's a lovely idea and is often restorative. But it also can be fucking boring and irritating. I am not used to spending all day for 5 consecutive days with a 4 yr old. I do not know what magic they work at school to keep her attention focused on something for more than 30 seconds, but I cannot conjure it. I do not find 4 yr old games relaxing. I do not want the monkey and the fairy to have to meet each other for the first time EVERY TIME we sit down to play with them. I am ready for them to move on to the next stage in their relationship. Also, I do not like to chase things or people. I have imagined myself as the kind of mom who spends holidays involving her kid in all the cooking and crafting centerpieces and name cards with her while the turkey cooked and creating all sorts of Heartwarming Memories. And while we created a homegrown memory or two (did I mention the pecans?), I also decided to go real lax with the movie watching and the computer playing and 'sure, get up from the table whenever you want' permission granting. And holy shit, did that decision make everyone sooooo much more relaxed. Thanksgiving is such an adult holiday; kids, at least preschool aged kids, don't really do cooking and sloth and gluttony. So increased screen-time seems a fair trade off. I mean, hell, Thanksgiving isn't good for anyone, really.

8. Don't be on the market. Snark, but true snark. Even with all of these thins enacted last year, I couldn't have really enjoyed the holiday because of the market. Knowing that the coming 2 weeks will potentially end your hopes for any of the applications you saved over, and, if so, will guarantee that you spend Jan-March repeating the labor of the last 2 months, that destroys any amount of carefully planned relaxation. So, for my peeps on the market, know I poured one out for all of y'all during the weekend

Holy Days Off

Dudes, I know I have become the shittiest blogger on these here internets. I'm only slightly better at correspondence, by the way. IOW, I kind of suck; ever since my laptop died in February, I've been primarily relying on ye old iphone as my primary computer, with occasional use of Mr. B.'s laptop or PK's desktop.

However! This MASSIVE SELF-DENIAL does mean that (1) my cobloggers have taken over the blog, which doubtless improves it greatly; (2) I have paid off our primary credit card, which was carrying quite a load, especially after we bought the house. So yay me. Now Mr. B's laptop is starting to act wonky, and having learned that it Is Possible to Live Without One's Own Laptop, I'm sort of advocating for him to replace it with a mutual desktop computer. I think he's on board, which means soon I should have my Own Actual Software and Enough Memory, which will be Really Nice.

Re. blogging, though, I gotta admit my heart isn't in it these days. The housewife thing seems to have totally taken me over, she says, like a hypocrite who is hogging all the credit for the fact that there is NO MORE CARPET in any of the main rooms. Actually that's all Mr. B's doing; he's been yanking the godawful off-white (?!?) carpet up for weeks now, a section at a time. He wants to tackle our bedroom next--probably tomorrow--and then, I guess, the study. I'm not sure if we're going to do something about the disgusting gray industrial carpet under the kitchen table yet; I doubt it's wood under there, and actually I want to replace both that and the kitchen vinyl with cork or rubber or something practical and hopefully semi-green. So that may be a project for later. But in the meantime it is SO NICE not to have carpet, even if we *did* discover a fairly large section in the tv/family room that doesn't have hard wood but is instead plywood, next to another section that someone in days of yore GLUED stuff to and that needs mineral spirits to pull up the yuck. That, too, is a project for later.

IOW, I am discovering, as generations have before me, that the American Dream of Home Ownership is really a Hobby for Life. If you don't want to take on an entirely new set of hobbies including do-it-yourself and gardening and organizing and surfing Craigslist and going to hardware stores and sewing and crafts and crap, KEEP RENTING.

That said, I am finding, to my great surprise, that I kind of like the organizing and cooking and planning parts of the American Middle-Class Nuclear Family (TM) gig. Not the yanking carpet parts, or the no-longer-going-out-on-the-weekend parts so much, or the cranky-neighbor-who-resents-my-kid-playing-in-our-shared-driveway-because-our-yard-is-a-pile-of-mulch-and-will-be-for-months part. But the parts that involve puttering and playing house, absolutely. I have actual plans to make curtains, y'all. And rugs. If I don't watch it I'm going to end up subscribing to some stupid-ass Martha Stewart magazine. (If that happens, please stage an intervention.)

Luckily Pseudonymous Kid, due, perhaps, to having spent some of his formative years in Canadia, is not nearly as materialistic as one imagines kids his age are supposed to be. Check out this adorable Christmas list of his:

For the sake of clarity, the boy wants:

1. a two-pound box of pick-it-yourself See's candy (picked by me) (none shared)
2. a new feather-on-a-stick [ed--this is a cat toy]
3. a chance at the wishbone (assuming there is one)
4. an iphone* (optional) (I don't suspect to get one)
5. a new gift certificate booklet (you know "go to the playground" "go to the candy store" that stuff.).
6. Josh, gagged and tied with his tough sliced out
7. A good christmas dinner

For the record, the kid is NOT getting an iphone, or an ipod touch--I've told him that's a present for when he turns 13, maybe. He is also not going to get his classmate Josh gagged and tied, nor will Josh's tongue be sliced out. The See's gift certificate is taken care of, and I suppose Santa will tuck a feather-on-a-stick in his stocking, and everything else he wants is HOME MADE. I love this kid so much.

On which note, by the way, let me suggest the "gift certificate booklet" as a gift for kids. It was a HUGE hit last year (sadly, it got misplaced during the move and has yet to resurface). I went out and got some printable business cards and used the business card template on my laptop's word processer to make a bunch of little coupons for him: "good for one trip to the park," "good for one trip to the library," "good for one playdate with a friend," "good for one trip to the beach," "good for one night sleeping with mama and papa in the big bed"--all the kinds of things that he asks for and I often say "no, not right now, we have to go to the grocery store instead" or "honey, I have to get dinner on" to. He LOVED it--the idea that here would be these things that he really wants, much more than he wants stuff, and he could control when he got them. I made it clear to him that it was up to him how he "spent" them--he could use them all up right away, or spread them out over the year, and on one or two things the card specifically said that it would require advance notice, but basically I told him these were promises that he could cash in any time as long as it was physically possible. (i.e., no trips to the beach at bedtime.) He's been talking about them all year as the bestest present ever. And that, I think--free certificates for time with his parents, doing the things he enjoys--is going to be his main Xmas present this year.

Everyone else is getting homemade curtains.*



*Not really.

Taken that Note Nobody Wrote

Jazz is everywhere, man. Did you know that?

Course you do. Cause you got the hook up to what's happening now and shit.
But did you know its even at the Little Brown Lounge? That's the bar in the Holiday Hotel out on the four-lane that runs past River City, Wisconsin, a soporific burg of 22,000 people named Kaminski.

So, we're hanging out last night, nothing much to do when Dear Friend says she's hungry. I begin to rummage the refrigerator for a third or fourth encore of the Thanksgiving remains.

Being the sensitive sort, I received the clear impression that one more plating of stuffing and cranberry relish and green beans almondine and orange jello with clementines shimmering from the shimmery orange interior meant blood on the sideboard. And the napkins. And the carpet. Possibly the draperies. Or window treatments, as my niece, Meche, calls them.

All this I read from the language of the eyes.

Also, the language of the mouth. In tones recalling the parade ground or scrimmage field, Dear Friend stated that one more lap with the aforementioned comestibles would end in blood and its spillage.

Probably mine. My blood, I mean. Well, my sideboard, too. My carpet. My napkins. And draperies. Or window treatments. Draperies or window treatments, you'll have to take that up with Meche.
OK, technically, they're my Mother's napkins.

But you'll agree, I think, that these are really side issues. The important thing, the thing to keep firmly in mind, uppermost and foremost, is that my blood stay right where it is, sloshing about from vein to artery and back again, happily coursing along the various channels and sluiceways of my organism, gaily pumping and perambulating and circulating and percolating; spilling only under the strictest medical supervision if at all. Its what I like to call the public option. Not private, unregulated spilling. No.
In consequence of the same and in the interests of domestic harmony and unspotted drapings, and, this being Wisconsin, I suggested a fish fry. They're very popular here and just about every bar and church and fraternal lodge has one going on of a Friday night.

A cursory review of the local paper narrowed the choices to two: Serb Hall and the Little Brown Lounge.

Serb Hall specializes in Lake Perch, the most desireable of the Friday Fish Fry fish fleshes. On the other hand, the Brown Lounge was sponsoring karoake along with the greased Haddock and that proved decisive. That and the fact that nearly everything served at Serb Hall tastes like its been dredged through gunpowder.
Over dinner I was reminded what it is that makes me crazy for this woman.
First, she tells me that she's decided to stop seeing Bud (the Stud).

That's what I call him. Bud (the Stud). That's because I hate him with a white hot hatred that is so hot and so hateful that I can barely express how much I hate him.
Although, I have to say, to all appearences, I'm totally cool. Entirely blase-blase. I am the absolute master of my emotions. Like, if we were out at the bar and in walked Bud, you, knowing the full hateful unplumbed depths of my hating hatred, you would say, Damn, Taddy, you are super-cool, man. And I'd say, Yeah, I know. And then I'd say, Are you going to get the drinks or what? Shit.

So, herself has no idea. Believe me. No clue. Zero. Nimbus. Ought. Void.

They both teach college. At the same college.

He's got tenure and a good salary and a Jaguar sedan and was acting head of her department last year.

He's a lot smarter than me and a little younger than me and has published a lot of deadly boring shit and has all kinds of accomplishments and shit, and a ski condo in Crested Butte and gets manicures and shit, blah-blah-blah.

She says he went for permanent appointment as department head but didn't make the cut and now he's all bummed out and pouty and whiny. Way too boring for her.
Now,inwardly, I'm doing hand stands and launching bottle rockets. Outwardly I'm all, Bud, Bud, Bud. Hmmmm. Do I know him? See? Totally blase.

Then she tells me that I need to start shaving again, that my whiskers have got her tender spots all chafy and shit.

This is a total confidence builder. I haven't had to shave since July. Even now, weeks after ending the chemicals, I'm downy as a little duckling and she knows I'm very self conscious about it.

For example, in spite of the waiters's remonstrations, I refused to remove my Denver Bronco's gimme cap when seated in the saloon bar of the Holiday Hotel.

First off, removing a hat in a Wisconsin bar located north of US Highway 10 is just a little too haughty.

Second, the growth on my pate can best be described as mosslike and I feel much better keeping it under wraps until it approaches it previous luxuriant hairiness if you don't mind.

Lastly, when we arrived at the Holiday Hotel, we found out that there wouldn't be karaoke after all. Some kind of machinery malfunction.

Rather, we would be entertained by the song stylings of Busted Flats, a jazz combo with a female singer, an electric piano, a Fender bass, and a guy on a trap drum set.

My dear friend is unaccountably hostile to jazz. That is the one great barrier to our love. Well, that and Bud.

Cause I just can't get serious with somebody who is not into jazz. I don't see how that could possibly, you know, work out. Might as well get serious with a goddamned Republican for Christ sake.

The thing is, not only did she not utter a discouraging word, she asked for a table right up front. Having already jettisoned Bud, this was practically a declaration that we're going steady.

So, the whole night left me with two questions. I would be glad of an answer to either or both.

First, with Bud failing to get the promotion, will he have to leave the college?

See, in business, and the military, too, its Up or Out. If you fail to be promoted, you're out. Is Bud out? Please tell me he's out.

I'd ask my Dear Friend but I sort of painted myself into a corner with that shit. If I ask her now, she might think I give a shit and that would mess up my shit.

Second, is there a word I can substitute for shit? Lately, I been using it a lot. Its a great word but, you know, its enough already.

Figgy Pudding

A day will come when I pierce the fog or miasma that is German artistic expression.

Today is not that day.

Here are two of my favorite pieces of traditional holiday music; one German (click Replay), one American.

Compare and contrast.

Happy families are all alike.

I have felt exceedingly happy for the last week. Mr. V has been at home for over a week, partly on account of the man-cold which plagued him, and having him hear has made M-F life feel easy, comparatively. The dry-cleaning comes and goes, the dishwasher is emptied, someone is laughing at my jokes. Someone else is showing affection to the CAT, freeing me up to continue to believe I hate her. Little V says a lot of sacchrine shit about how she feels like we're a "whole family" when Daddy works at home, which is a little much, obv, but she's happy.

The weather has been good, our good friend E is staying with us over the holidays, playing with the kid and cooking Puerto Rican food and being funny and warm.

And I have been feeling really happy.

I saw this guy speak a few years ago, and partly this is a good segue because, yes, he is beautiful, and that makes one happy. But it's an even better segue because he was talking about his new (at the time) book on Happiness. And not really about the book itself, which is, I think, an intellectual history of the concept of happiness. Like I say, I think. I am a flim-flam scholar who doesn't really read things. But what he mostly talked about what how he had a terrifically hard time being taken seriously in the academy while he was researching and writing, how people raised an eyebrow when he said he was working on happiness, how he consistently got the distinct impression that many people didn't consider happiness the kind of concept that one investigated with scholarly rigor in the humanities. Our model, in many ways, is very much the tortured Romantic intellectuals. So he spent some time, this good looking happiness guy, discussing our resistance to happiness within the profession.

This resonates with me with respect to the profession, but I bring it up here because I feel sort of sheepish when I blog to the blog about happy. Feeling happy is different than feeling grateful or calm or aware or balanced, it feels cheaper and less thoughtful somehow when you talk about it. When I think about feeling happy there is always an undercurrent on 'unearned-ness' with it.

But I can say this, I earned the shit out of baking-related satisfaction yesterday, so here's where I should segue to the Thanksgiving menu, which makes up for in deliciousness what it lacks in elaborateness.

Turkey. I don't really go in for anything complicated here. I brine it overnight in saltwater, then stuff pats of butter and blobs of minced garlic under the skin all over the thing, then oil and salt and pepper the skin. Then end.
Crockpot stuffing, which is killer and easy.
A potato gratin that I made up thusly: equal part sweet potatoes and red potatoes, cut into medallions. Make a sauce with enough heavy cream to cover 3/4 of the potatoes, a tbsp or 2 of butter, a tbsp of garlic, and some kind of shredded white cheese. Pour that sauce over, then sprinkle everything with fresh thyme and cayenne. Tope with a mixture of shredded parmesan and crumbled gorgonzola.
Corn muffins - take any cornbread recipe, replace 2/3 of the sugar with honey and then toss a can of actual corn in.
Pumpkin and pecan pies. The latter especially thrilling because we harvested the pecans entirely from our backyard.

You'll notice the total lack of vegetables. This is not my fault. We were running errands yesterday and the final one was supposed to involve a trip to the grocer's, which everyone assumed would be hectic and heinous. The list included green vegetables (beans and brussels) and alcohol. And somehow the other two grownups convinced me that the thing to do was to just forgo the greens and take the errand to the package store instead. So we're having a veggie free Thanksgiving, but we're all set on the Malbec.

I'm sending good vibes through the internet pipes to y'all. Try doing this posture if you feel like you've overeaten. The football games suck pretty much, so just go full boar with the naps and the Star Wars viewings. Happy day.

Until You Use Me Up

You know how some people say they don't feel jealousy? I know, I know, I think that's bullshit, too. But that's what they say.

What you going to do, argue with them? They say they don't get jealous. I say, O.K. I say fine. I'm not trying to argue. I go along with it.

Inside, though, I'm saying Oh, bullshit. You are so full of shit. Who you think you're talking to? Don't ever try to bullshit a bullshitter.

I will admit, though, I'm like that about guilt. I mean, I don't feel it. I don't feel guilt. No, seriously.

That's in spite of the fact that I was born and raised Roman Catholic and still attend Mass regularly. Semi-regularly. Frequently. Well, episodically.

Confession, too.

And, in spite of the fact I'm guilty of plenty of shit. Guilty, guilty, guilty. I make no excuses. I do what I please and mostly I don't care what anybody says or thinks.

Except for my Auntie. But that's because she has a tounge like a viper. And because I crave her good opinion. She's about the only one though.

So, I was going to write a post about how this Thanksgiving is special to me for a number of reasons. And then ding posted her excellent piece about how Thanksgiving commemorates erecting our nation on the burnt remains of the original nations. And I was put off for a minute because I do what I like but ding's good opinion, like my Auntie's, is one I cherish.

Still, I'm thankful for much this year.

I'm alive, for one. Its my first Thanksgiving in Wisconsin in a long time, for another. My Wisconsin family is coming to my little house on the flowage for dinner for another. My little Poco is here for another. My dear friend from Colorado is here, for another. She brought Poco out from Colorado.

A word about my dear friend. I met her when I was really down. I'd been hurt. Bad. Real bad. I'd been hurt bad by a woman I loved very very much.

After that, I never wanted to have anything to do with women or love or romance or women or any of that ever again. Ever. Even if it meant I would never get laid again. Even that.

She was coming from a similar place. Except she wanted nothing to do with men. So, right off, we had a lot in common. We agreed love was for losers. For weaklings. We spit on love. Death to love! Down with love!

Of course, we fell in love. After a fashion. Our fashion. Not the storybook fashion. Not in a fashion I ever thought I would find satisfying. But we did. And it is.

We come together. We drift apart. We come together again. We fuss. We fight. We love. We part. We collide and can't get unstuck.

She's in the kitchen, now, showing my little Poco how to make antipasto. With prosciutto and vension sausage.

He doesn't even like prosciutto. He just wants to be near her. He is the latest fellow she's used to make me jealous. Keep me compliant.

Here's where I was going to lay out the Thanksgiving menu. Turkey soaked in brine and smoked in the water smoker. Sweet potato pie. Some other dishes in between.

But I have to go. The afternoon sun is in her hair. I can tell Poco is getting tired. She's used him up. I'll put him down for his nap. Then its my turn.

And I don't Even know the half of it

I just came from CVS.

The lines were long. There was one weary cashier and one self-service station with the robot voice and the flashing lights every time you fuck something up. I waited in that self-service line three different times. Every person was making pathetically small purchases; one dollar, two dollars. Kids. Getting some kind of after-school snack. Bang for your buck says go for a chocolate bar. Most calories per penny.

There's a scene in season three of The Wire where Bubs, working as confidential informant for the police, goes to talk to a woman of interest. The shot shows her walking across the street toward her car, which is a shiny black SUV. Not an Escalade, but nice. She's hot—attractive and relatively well-dressed. And black. As she's walking across the street toward her car, she's digging her hand in that gotta-get-the-crumbs-way into a bag of potato chips. Family size.

I loved that scene. It's moments like that in the Wire that make the show not just interesting but so real to watch, a little detail like that. A detail that doesn't even matter, that probably less than a tenth of people would even notice. But I noticed it. You hardly ever see white women eating on television, and if they are eating it ain't junk food unless it's supposed to be some stereotypical shit about how she's chowing down on chocolate cookies because her man dumped her. I've seen so many black teenagers and young people eating junk food on the train and on the streets, sitting on the corner with a bag of fritos and a big red, and I know what they're doing. Bang for your calorie buck.

At CVS I cleaned out all my bank accounts. Can't go to the ATM because the ATM won't give you less than $20, and in all three I had less than $20. I'm buckling down for the weekend. So three times I went through that line--first my Chase account from Chicago, then my unemployment debit account, then my new Bank of America account. I'm now carrying a cool $32 in crisp bills in my wallet, and on that we'll try to make it to Monday.

I feel like shit, and more like shit for feeling it. 'Cause see, I may be broke, but I'm not poor. Never will be. I may go bankrupt, but I will never be poor. How does that work? Well, I got an education. Probably more than I need. I have no criminal record; my man has a job. We're struggling, but we're paying the bills. My account was looking good until I had to pay my car payment. Yeah, I have a car. I have a cute apartment in a safe neighborhood and we're current on the rent. That's not poor. I'm not poor even though I'm nearly $200,000 in debt from all that good old education.

Ever since I started working in legal services, a profession from which I have been ejected, but hopefully only temporarily, I've had a crisis of class. See, I always felt poor. I grew up around rich kids because I went to a private school on scholarship. It was a weird kind of scholarship, really the only one the school ever gave. They didn't do scholarships. But they did one for me and my siblings in honor of our dead mother who'd taught there for nearly 15 years. The poorest kids at the school, besides me, were the ones whose parents were teachers there, thus living on a salary of thirty grand a year or so. U.S. Dollars. Which in Cairo means living pretty goddamn well. And did I mentioning housing was provided? Everyone else was rich.

So I got used to being the poor kid. My friends lent me money, knowing it would never get paid back. We called it a loan to save my pride. What the hell did they care? They were high schoolers living fat off the homestead. So it didn't really matter to them whether I gave them back their 20 L.E. or not. When I got to college, I was still poor, but everyone else was too, so I felt good. My friends were all slightly older students, twenty-four or -five, who'd started, fucked up, dropped out, and started again. We all worked crappy jobs to keep us in cigarettes and hot dogs. Broke? Wasn't any shame in it. Just meant you bought Natural Light instead of Shiner Bock, maybe a six-pack of Maruchan.

You know what makes it really hard to learn how to manage your money? Never having any.

It makes me so furiously angry when conservatives assert that poor people are just suffering from some kind of money management problem that stands in the way of getting their shit together. Being broke, even for someone not-poor like me, is a cycle. Everything costs more when you're broke or poor. Can't buy in bulk. Paying overdraft fees. Paying late fees. Paying in time because it takes you two hours to get to work instead of 15 minutes. Can't save, and so when an unexpected expense comes along you're fucked. Can't buy things in advance when they're cheaper because you're waiting for payday. As soon as I get cash I'm out of it again. Don't want to borrow money because everyone I feel okay borrowing from is almost as broke as me and needs it paid back in two weeks, and I'm trying to minimize that payday bill drain.

And I'm not poor. But man, I feel like a fucking king of riches hanging out with the clients I've worked for. People sitting in the dark because the electricity got shut off. And eating lots of potato chips.

It was weird and disorienting to feel not the poor kid anymore. Even among the staff, who all lived very frugally. The same food, day in and out. Never traveling. Relaxation time was hanging out with family, not going out. I remember when I was planning my trip to Paris and people looked at me like I must be from another planet. Fucking Paris?

I don't know shit about being poor, but I do know what it's like to be broke. It's almost made me give up about a million times. But I sympathize with poor people, even though I can't empathize. And so I have to confess that during the 2008 campaign I got really, really tired of hearing about the middle class. Restoring the middle class. Uplifting the middle class. Help for the middle class.

What about the poor class? Have we just abandoned the notion that we can do anything for them, or have we just decided not to care? Here in the nation's capital, the poverty is shocking. I mean just stunning. There are pockets of the city that are some of the most depressing places I've seen in the country. And oh yeah, things are going to be different because Barack Obama's president? I love you and all, Barack, but he, like all the other candidates, seemed to really be stuck on talking about the middle class when he talked about aid to Americans.

I wonder if it makes a goddamn difference to the poor black people of DC who's in the White House. And if it doesn't, I'm not sure I can say why it should.

the price of our bounty

Yeah, it's me again, trying to bum everyone out with our problematic history and such. But while Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays, what kind of person would I be if I didn't also acknowledge that the bounty that I enjoy, and for which I am thankful, came - and continues to come - at a price?

So let's spread the colonialist guilt and introspection. Via Resist Racism comes a roundup of different ways to teach this 'holiday' to school-age kids.

Included in one of those links is a list of debunked myths about our national holiday (that encourages all sorts of different and over the top consumption.) A favorite myth:

Myth #10: The Pilgrims and Indians became great friends.

Fact: A mere generation later, the balance of power had shifted so enormously and the theft of land by the European settlers had become so egregious that the Wampanoag were forced into battle. In 1637, English soldiers massacred some 700 Pequot men, women and children at Mystic Fort, burning many of them alive in their homes and shooting those who fled. The colony of Connecticut and Massachusetts Bay Colony observed a day of thanksgiving commemorating the massacre. By 1675, there were some 50,000 colonists in the place they had named “New England.” That year, Metacom, a son of Massasoit, one of the first whose generosity had saved the lives of the starving settlers, led a rebellion against them. By the end of the conflict known as “King Philip’s War,” most of the Indian peoples of the Northeast region had been either completely wiped out, sold into slavery, or had fled for safety into Canada. Shortly after Metacom’s death, Plimoth Colony declared a day of thanksgiving for the English victory over the Indians. (13)

How do you talk about Thanksgiving with your kids?

This isn't the post about my Thanksgiving menu, but that one is coming

Guess what? The fucking CAT pissed on my bed. I blame y'all. Every last one of you.

In other news, has anyone wondered about that toxic class I've been teaching? Probably not, because Leblanc yelled at you so much for trying to offer advice. Me, I was just happy you were reading. I am exceedingly chill that way. On the off chance that you might have wondered how that all has been progressing, I'll tell you: it hasn't been so bad. On account of two things:
1) I caught one of the problem students plagiarizing a paper about a week after that last post. So I got to tell him, "Thanks for playing, try your luck another semester." That helped immensely in terms of future rabble-rousing. Without a cohort, a lot of that bullshit gets deflated.
2) I basically decided that the hard-line disciplinary subject position, which I had been trying to inhabit since realizing the class was getting out of control, was just not super comfortable for me, and therefore questionably persuasive. So I switch to more relaxed funny and sarcastic person mode. I settled back into my classroom routine of the last 4 or 5 years, generally starting class by telling a story about something that happened to me since I last saw them, or sharing an anecdote about the reading for the day. I decided, in other words, to relax my presentation in class. Once one of the troublemakers was out of the room, this was easy enough. It was, after all, always the experience of the decent kids I was worried about, and the toxicity of my tension about the dickheads was a problem. I'm not sure how to parse out how much of the solution was kicking a kid out of class (probably major), how much was an actual relationship between my being more laid back discursively and their being more ready to participate, and how much was my being more laid being meaning my not really noticing as much if the class sucked. Regardless, the upshot was a classroom atmosphere that did in fact improve. Which is not to say I ain't totally ready to be done with them in a couple of weeks. Cause I am.

Also, unrelatedly, this shit is funny.

Mouthpiece

It's been nearly a week since the Obama administration announced that they plan to bring Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) to the United States to try him in federal court. So we've had time for conservatives to weigh in. I'm actually surprised that we haven't had even more vitriolic freakouts from Republicans, but maybe they're coming and I speak too soon. As much as I think and write about politics now, I still often feel like a naif, because I was completely ignorant of American politics until 9 years ago. I moved to the United States in 2000. Before that, things like the Contract for America and the Lewinsky scandal were not in my consciousness. Also, I was a teenager.

So I still find myself perplexed at things Republicans do. Right now, I'm befuddled by their stubborn opposition to civilian trials for terrorists. I can't determine whether their opposition is mere allegiance to the line the Bush administration towed, or borne from conservative first principles.

Coherent or not, borne of stubborn loyalty or not, their arguments are here, and they will resonate with the people who trust them and vote for them. So it's important to identify where they're coming from, what they're saying, and how we can dismantle their arguments.

1. It will be a "circus."

Michael Gerson made this point in a Washington Post op-ed yesterday, where he said that Eric Holder "is asking them to make the case against five Sept. 11 conspirators, in a circus atmosphere." A quick google search for "KSM circus trial" will give you dozens of other examples.

What does this mean? I can only determine that it means the trial will be highly publicized. That it will be covered by every major press organization, analyzed in great detail. That the courtroom will be packed. That it will be a huge story.

Why is this bad? As far as I can tell, heavy press coverage of a criminal trial only presents one serious drawback: media accounts can influence jurors. But this isn't a novel problem. It is because of this drawback that sequestration exists. (Sequestration: jurors are isolated from the public and from all media during a trial, to prevent influence).

Perhaps the drawback is that wall-to-wall coverage of a criminal trial annoys the public. But that doesn't present any real barrier to the integrity of the process, and is hardly a reason to have the trial outside the United States.

Neither of those are sufficient to explain the conservatives' complaint that the trial will be a circus. I suspect that the real reason is fear of accountability: the more attention a trial gets, the more the actors involved will be concerned about their public image. They'll be more afraid to misstep, to say something inflammatory, to be overly harsh or insufficiently outraged. But by objecting to a trial's venue on account of excessive public scrutiny, conservatives are essentially saying that they think it's better if trials happen in secret. If no one's there watching, no one's there to object but the lawyers.

Bottom line: trials are better if they're held in secret, apparently.

2. KSM and others will use the trial as a venue to express their views.

Rep. Pete Hoekstra said that the suspects are "going to do everything they can to disrupt it and make it a circus and allow them to use it as a platform to push their ideology." There's that "circus" word again. But I want to focus on the possibility of their using the trial as a "platform to push their ideology."

What would that look like? I don't that Hoekstra or other who have said the same thing (notably, Sarah Palin and Rudy Giuliani) really know. First of all, it's likely that after an indictment is handed down, KSM will plead guilty. He expressed his desire to plead guilty back in December 2008. Many commentators think that's the main reason the Obama administration has decided to prosecute him in a civilian trial, because their victory is assured. But let's say there is a trial, rather than a guilty plea. The only chance KSM would have to speak would be if he testified in his own defense. And what is he going to say that's so potentially damaging that it's worth having the trial outside the United States? It's all stuff we already know. He hates America. He thinks we're a vile evil country and is bent on our destruction.

So what?

You can find similar and worse rhetoric on hundreds of websites, and at rallies hosted by Fred Phelps. You can find it on Osama Bin Laden's videotapes. White supremacists want to destroy at least part of America. And Ted Kaczynski's books have sure sold a lot of copies.

Do conservatives think that KSM's bogus rhetoric and message of America-destruction is going to be even close to compelling enough that it will be anything but laughable? KSM and his cronies are pathetic lunatics, and any passionate rantings they are permitted to do on the public stage will only serve to confirm that fact.

One thing I haven't seen anyone bring up is the trial of the Chicago Seven. That is, as far I can tell, the most famous (and perhaps only) major example of individuals using a trial to advance their political platform.

For those of you who aren't familiar with the trial, it was after the 1968 Democratic Convention. Seven individuals were tried for allegedly carrying out a conspiracy to cause havoc and violence in the streets. The defendants not only challenged the charges against them, but by their actions and words they challenged the legitimacy of the justice system and, by extension, the entire government. One defendant wanted to represent himself, and the judge insisted that he would not allow it. That defendant wouldn't stop objecting, so the judge had him literally bound and gagged, sitting in the courtroom. For some more detail on the trial, you can read, for example, this account. I won't recount it all here, because that's not what this post is about. But I think it's important to identify two major differences between the Chicago Seven trial and the forthcoming KSM trial:

1. The defense lawyers were cooperative with their trial-as-theatre scheme.
2. The defendants were right.

The trial was bogus. The charges against them were extremely thin. The judge made numerous decisions during the trial and during sentencing that were later overturned by the Supreme Court. I don't think there are many conservatives who would defend Judge Julius Hoffman today.

Neither of those conditions will be present in the KSM trial. I'm sure that whoever represents KSM will be very cognizant to not allow or encourage the trial and his client to get out of hand. This is, in part because of the public scrutiny that conservatives are complaining about, but also because they just don't make lawyers like Leonard Weinglass any more.

3. We already know he's guilty.

Surprised? I'm not. Michael Gerson says:

There is one serious argument for this course: that a civilian court will provide greater legitimacy for the imposition of the death penalty than a military tribunal. But the guilt of these terrorists is not in question. And it is difficult to imagine that those repulsed or impressed by Khalid Sheik Mohammed's confessed crimes will care much about the procedures surrounding his sentencing.

I like this argument better than all the others I've been hearing from conservatives. At least it's honest. Gerson actually comes out and says that KSM's trial doesn't need legitimacy, because he's guilty. He really seems not to understand the whole point of trials, which is to determine whether someone's guilty. But if we already know he's guilty, and we think the trial is going to result in a guilty verdict, what's the problem? Government expense? Fortunately for many defendants out there, expense is not a justification for dispensing of their constitutional rights, or they'd really be screwed.

Here we come up against the fundamental contradiction in conservatives' argument against a civilian trial for KSM: they want to say both that a guilty verdict is assured, so the trial is pointless, but also that giving him a trial in civilian courts provide constitutional assurances that might allow him to go free.

It's bizarre to see them arguing fervently that KSM should have a military commission instead of a civilian trial, on grounds that the constitution shouldn't apply to him. Because the government has been arguing since the inception of the military commissions that the commission system provides adequate constitutional safeguards. The Supreme Court explicitly ruled that the military commissions had to be an adequate substitute for regular civilian trial to pass muster.

4. KSM's presence in New York will actually pose a danger.

Rep. Gohmert says that ""You've got subways, tunnels, bridges all subject to terrorism... Unless they're trying to create a new jobs bill by allowing terrorism back in New York then this is insane." As far as I can tell, this is the most ridiculous argument of all. Is there some small chance that having these men in New York will pose some additional danger of terrorist activity that is not actually present? Sure. Is it any more than the threat that's raised by high-profile events that take place every day? Every time you ahve a rally, or a speech, or a public gathering, or you build a tall building or a bridge, there's some risk attached. But you still do it anyway, because it needs to be done.

Right Livelihood

Coming up in rural Wisconsin, I was raised by hunters, for hunters, and of hunters.

Hunting, particularly the stalking of the wily whitetail, was part of the regular round of activities; planting in the spring, cultivating over the summer, harvesting in the fall, and, after the harvest was in, hunting whitetail.

And, contrary to what you may be thinking, it was not a boys-only thing. The women of my family hunted right along with the mens.

My great-aunt Nelly filled her tag and the party tag for as many years as I can remember. She hunted right up to her 82nd year and it was only in her late 70's that she allowed me to be her gun bearer. I toted her her big old octagonal barreled Winchester Model 94 38.40 for her and carried the box of shells she loaded herself to save money. She used pistol loads to conserve on powder and minimize the bucking of the Winchester. That meant she had to get pretty close to the deer to put it down but that suited her just fine. One shot, one deer. That was her style.

She rolled her own smokes, saved the butts to smoke in her pipe, made coffee in a Hills Bros can set on the fire, drank Four Roses whisky out the bottle, kept a fletch of homemade bacon hanging in the front hall closet, knew all the words to Whisky Before Breakfast and was the onliest person I knew who could outswear my old man.

She scandalized her sisters with her appetite for life and pleasure. Auntie Nelly wore out more than a couple hired men and I don't mean with chores. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I realize she merits her own post. Give me a minute while I make a note.

So, where was I? Right, uh, hunting.

Anyway, this time of year, each year, my brothers, my cousins, my Pop, my uncles, my grandad, several of my aunties and great aunties all headed for the ancestral hunting ground along the Clam River to stalk the Virginia Whitetail Deer. Black bear, too.

Although hunting is certainly a sport, for my family it was part of right livelihood, filling the pantry.

Even a skinny doe browsing on acorns and pine needles can be turned into 70 or 80 pounds of chops and roasts and sausage. Mixed with a little cheap ground pork, the merest deer carcass can be stretched across the whole lean winter. If a Black bear is added to the bag, that's another 20 or 30 quarts of canned meat to fill the hungriest adolescent.

Service in the USN interrupted my annual deer hunt. Put a stop to it, in fact. After six months in Thua-Thien-Hue province, I sort of lost my enthusiasm for shooting at things.

Don't get me wrong. I had no deep philosophic problem with hunting or hunters. I was still fascinated with the exquisite machinery of firearms. I just lost interest. It no longer seemed part of my right livelihood.

My croft in Colorado is deep in prime elk and mulie country. People come out here to hunt and we make pretty good money boarding horses and mules for hunting outfitters. That is, we did.

Four years ago, I decided not to board stock for hunting parties anymore. Again, it was not a deep ethical or philosophic decision. I just didn't want to participate in hunting. It didn't seem part of right livelihood for me.

It wasn't a costly decision. It didn't require a big financial sacrifice. We still did a good boarding business for people who wanted to go into the back country for other reasons.

In this year of the Great Recession, though, I've revisited that decision. My niece Moya insisted on it.

Beef and milk prices are depressed this year. I've been on disability pay since June and I'm presently down to a quarter of my regular wage. Things being what they are, Moya says we can't afford to be picky and choosy about what kind of business we do and don't do. Especially now, as we enter into elk hunting season.

I'm not so sure about that. On the other hand, I suspect Moya is more in the tradition of her great-great Auntie than I am. Nelly did what had to be done to take care of her family and she let the philosophic issues sort themselves out. Its been my experience that women are less likely to stand on dignity and high flown moralizing and more likely to get the kids a hot breakfast before they head off to school in the morning.

Feeding the kids. That's what makes for right livelihood.

Against Pseudonymity and Sexual Shame

I've been fascinated with the internet since about 1998. It was during the spring of my sophomore year of high school that my best friend turned me on to a website whose name I can't even remember now. I do remember that it was a fan site for Ani DiFranco, with whom I was obsessed at the time. I wonder sometimes if it still exists. I think it happens this way for many people--their imaginations first alight on the internet because it provides the possibility of being able to connect with people who think like you, talk like you, fangirl-out like you, act like you or fuck like you.

In my particular case, my best friend and I would geek out on the Ani DiFranco fansite in the computer lab after school; neither of us had internet at home. Both of us were self-styled poets, and the fan site had a section where people could post their poetry, get feedback, and comment on the works of others. We would hurry over to the computer lab every day to see whether we'd gotten any more feedback and to look for the new entries of our favorite writers there.

That year we were both in an English class taught by a brilliant, beautiful, sharp-tongued Canadian woman who kicked our asses almost every single day. She was demanding, funny, incredibly secretive and more than a little neurotic. We didn't study that much poetry in her class, but it was her course that turned me into a poet. She believed it was vital that young students understand literary and rhetorical devices, and quizzed us on them relentlessly. Merely knowing the names of these devices, and being able to spot them, made me suddenly fascinated with the contents of my own work. We were assigned the task of writing a Shakespearean sonnet with a litany of said devices employed; I worked on mine for weeks. Having a massive girlcrush on a teacher is certainly a good way to get one to work hard.

We also joined the high school's Writer's Group, which met weekly and was surprisingly free-wheeling. Sometimes the faculty adviser showed up, sometimes he didn't. We sat in the backyard of one of the participants and smoked cigarettes right in front of the teacher, who either didn't care or pretended not to. We drank coffee and some of the seniors would even drink wine. We would read our latest work, attempt to give each other feedback, and shoot the shit.

It was these two communities, both online and off, where I started to grow as a thinker, a feminist, and a writer. I can't emphasize enough how important it was to me to be exposed to women just a few years older than me, confident and cosmopolitan-seeming, who said things that first shocked and then galvanized me.

Now I'm part of a different, bigger, much more diffuse community of feminist bloggers and thinkers. Yet, I don't feel that I can throw myself fully into membership, and I think that artifact of blogging, pseudonymity, is partly to blame.

When I started really being involved in the internet, like most people, I had no idea that I was going to become a blogger that anyone had ever heard of. My first significant contribution was as a commenter at Unfogged, which is where I first became acquainted with and deeply influenced by our blogmistress, the original Bitch. I commented under my own first name. I had a livejournal under my own first name (now defunct). I didn't know, or think about, the fact that who I was might end up mattering. Eventually, I started to think that it might matter. So, about three years ago, I adopted the pseudonym M. LeBlanc, deleted my livejournal, and started a blog called Rock, Paper, Swords which wasn't read by too many people beyond my friends from Unfogged.

Last Friday, I was guest-blogging for Spencer Ackerman at Attackerman, and one commenter said something that reminded me of this whole history, this whole life of writing that I've been relaying. He said "I’m having a hard time forming an opinion about your opinion, since you blog under an initial and I therefore can’t tell your gender." He was being funny, but I didn't realize that for about thirty seconds and I was like "whoa."

You see, when I first adopted the pseudonym M. LeBlanc, I was intending on blogging under a genderless identity. M. LeBlanc was the pseudonym of the nineteenth-century mathematician Sophie Germain, which she adopted so she could actually get some of her work published. I thought it would be an interesting exercise to conceal my gender and see if it affected the reception of my work.

But I couldn't do it. I couldn't keep it up for more than a few weeks. It was too hard for me not to say things that would give away my gender. To talk about my relationships with men, to discuss feminism in an intensely personal way, to talk about my experience of street harassment. I gave up. Quickly.

Three years later, I'm thinking about giving up my pseudonymity entirely. I had coffee with Ann Friedman of Feministing and The American Prospect on Friday and we talked about the problems of pseudonymity. The thing is, writing under a pseudonym is absolutely great for blogging. Unfortunately, it's not much good for anything else. If you want to write for a major publication, even one that's just online, and if you want to get paid for your work writing anywhere, you basically have to write under your own name. Which is all well and good, except for that without my writing that I've done under a pseudonym, I'm nobody, just a young lawyer with a little work experience and a lot of attitude.

So I feel torn. While writing under a pseudonym, I've written about a lot of topics and said a lot of things I probably never would have said if I were worried about how they would reflect on my real identity. I wrote about my feelings about porn. I wrote about menstruation. I wrote about my sexual life as an adolescent. I wrote about street harassment again and again and again; I wrote about using emergency contraception. I wrote about being raped.

I look back and think, man, if I were writing under my real name, would I ever have written any of those things, all of which I'm proud of? I know I wouldn't have.

But why?

What is the source of my nagging feeling that if those things were on the internet, popping up under a Google search for the name I was given at birth, that a wide swath of the employers I might someday want to work for would never hire me?

It's one thing only: externally-imposed bogus sexual shame. It's not as if my political opinions are so far out as to represent some kind of employment liability. I'm a pretty standard liberal. I haven't written anything racist or offensive. No, the only reason I'm worried about these writings is that they acknowledge, frankly and openly, that I'm a sexual being. But it's not like I'm writing a sex blog filled with the details of my exploits. I'm simply exploring the ramifications of sex and sexuality in the life of a young woman, a politically-minded feminist. And that, to my mind, is dangerous.

At the same time, I've written a number of things that I would be proud and unhesitant to have associated with my real name. Things that I even think would reflect positively on my abilities as a lawyer and advocate. I wrote about the rhetoric keeping so-called terrorists in legal limbo in Guantanamo. I wrote about becoming a lawyer; I wrote about growing up as the child of a single father. I wrote about re-conceptualizing anti-choice violence, analyzed anti-choice rhetoric, and talked about the moral case against torture. I wrote about racial identity and intersectionality.

I've been wanting to come out of the pseudonymity closet for over a year, and each time I discuss it with my boyfriend, he seems perplexed by my fear. Each and every time, he asks me, what is it, what, that you've written that you think would be such a liability? I name the same topics that I named above. He is unconvinced, always. When he signed up for a twitter account and "followed" both me and his boss, I did a double-take and asked him if he was okay with the possibility that his bosses might read my blog and know it was me. He shrugged and said he thought the women who supervise him would dig my work.

Feminists rag on male privilege a lot, but I think my boyfriend's attitude here is one of the best kinds of privilege I know--the lack of fear. Being unafraid to be yourself, being unashamed about your personal and political views. Being confident. Not having that feeling that you're on the brink of making a single mistake that could make your whole life fall apart and doom you to a life of obscurity and mediocrity.

Since I'm unemployed, I've been thinking a lot about doing more writing. Maybe even getting paid for it every now and then. But I feel hampered by fear. Once you're out, you can't go back in, it's true. However, on some days, courageous days, I think, will I ever want to go back in? I've been writing ever since I was a kid--short stories, poetry, essays, diaries, reviews, polemics, confessionals. What makes me think that I'm going to want to stop any time soon?

Like Butta Baby

Just want to thank everyone for all good wishes, vibes, prayers, meditations, emails, and much affection sent my way during the period of my chemical infusions.

You'll never know and I can never adequately express what a difference it has made.

From my heart to yours . Thank You.

Check Please!

A modest proposal for ending the occupation of Iraq: pay for it.

A lot of crocodile tears are being shed over the "cost" of a national health plan. The GOP and its allies in the media are beside themselves over the idea that health care is a national responsibilty. They are terrifed that the bill for caring for all our people might be shared by all our people, themselves included.

The fearful prospect of a healthy nation has moved the anti-democratic forces to dream up an entire movement of tea-baggers . They hope to distribute their anxiety at the prospect across the general population. They have even discovered they can expoit the issue to undo a woman's right to choose and to demolish health plans achieved by collective bargaining agreements.

Its all very reminiscent of their concerns at the time they were planning to make war on Iraq. I recall the anguish of the right over how we were going to pay for the invasion and the occupation.

Psyche!

Actually, I don't remember that at all. I remember a lot of blithe propaganda about Iraqi oil paying for everything. I remember some adviser of dubya's was fired for suggesting we could be on the hook for $100 billion or so. I remember my own Democratic Party, as recently as this spring, voting to borrow more billions from China to finance operations in Iraq.

Of course, that was before we knew how badly the right felt about debt and bailouts and borrowing money from China and mortaging the hopes and dreams of their grandchildren and (insert cliche) blah blah blah.

Who knew? But now we do. So, it would seem the quickest way to bring an end to the occupation of Iraq would be to pay for it. Cause you know how the righties hate to pay for anything. The richer they are, the tighter they are.

So, I propose an Iraq Occupation tax. This could be a surtax on Federal income tax (exempting households with members on active military duty). It could be a tax on defense contractors and mercenary outfits like Blackwater. It could be a tax on stock transactions (my personal favorite). It could be a tax on offshore accounts. There are all kinds of possibilities.

It would last until the Occupation is paid for (including veteran's care and any reparations owed Iraq) and China repaid.

The point is, the threat of paying for the Occupation would, I'm sure, bring it to a close quicker than you can say Check Please!

Sometimes I blog around

I'm guest-blogging today at Spencer Ackerman's blog, Attackerman. Just thought you all might like to know. My posts so far are here and here.

I shall update if there are more.

A sneak peek:

[W]hat’s wrong with hiring gay people? Okay, so homosexual conduct is a sin, according to them. But so are a lot of other things. Catholic charities actually hires a fair number of attorneys to carry out social services; I almost applied for a job with them. Were they going to do a moral purity test on me before hiring me? Because I sin a lot. I use birth control. I’m having pre-marital sex and have been doing so for over ten years without regret or repenting. Sinner! I forget, what do the Catholics think about oral sex? Isn’t that “spilling the seed”? The precious.

Enjoy the rest at the links.

UPDATE: Here's another one. I advise advice columnists on advice giving! So meta.

Life-saving, life-changing, affordable health care

Last week, Barack Obama famously said about the fight over universal health care currently gripping both houses of congress and most of the country: "This is a health care bill, not an abortion bill."

What does that mean? Abortion is health care. The health care bill, providing as it does for a "public option," which will be run by the government, necessarily describes what will and will not be covered by said public option. So, naturally, the bill couldn't exactly remain silent on the issue of abortion, one of the mostly hotly contested and unnecessarily controversial medical procedures.

What President Obama apparently meant is that he wanted the bill not to change the status quo on abortion. That, it seems, is the notion that "federal dollars are not used to subsidize abortions." Which, of course, isn't true. Medicaid does pay for abortions. In Illinois, physicians just need to fill out form HFS2390, which lays out the acceptable reasons for requesting that Medicaid funds pay for an abortion:



No, he means "elective" abortion. Which is a term that doesn't make sense. Plenty of the circumstances that make an abortion procedure Medicaid-eligible are "elective." I am certain there are many victims of rape and incest that "elect" to carry the fetus to term and give birth. So what President Obama, and the hundreds of elected Democrats and Republicans who agree with him mean when they say "abortion" is "elective abortion" which is really "abortions that do not make the women who receive them into bad dirty sluts."

It's completely arbitrary. Funding abortions of pregnancies that are a result of rape, and not funding abortions that are a result of consensual sex is apparently the bizarre status quo that we want to conserve.

Let's step back a bit. Why are we having this fight over health care in the first place? This knock down, drag-out fight over what we believe our government's responsibility it to ensure that its citizens are taken care of? Well, it's mostly because we are an extremely rich, industrialized country that has millions of people who are without insurance and thus, without health care. It's also because our health care system is incredibly expensive, and consumes a huge chunk of our GDP every year. So, we're trying to increase coverage, and control costs. As Matthew Yglesias pointed out today, in the grand scheme of things, abortions are actually pretty cheap. He quotes a figure of $200, but in my experience it's really more like $400. But two hundred or four, it's a remarkably cheap procedure compared to almost anything else. Routine blood work runs into the several hundred dollars. I had a mole biopsied about a year ago and I was shocked at the cost. Even a month's worth of prescription anti-depressants, if they're not generic, can run you over a hundred dollars.

Not only are abortions incredibly necessary for millions of women, they also don't cost that much. Which means that anyone who can scrape together the funds for one and can get to a clinic is going to get one if that's what they want to do. The only people who really, desperately need the abortions covered by their health insurance? Poor women.

The day the Stupak amendment was passed, I was somewhat blase about it, because I mistakenly thought that it merely continued the government's long-running ridiculous refusal to pay for abortions that it deemed to be in its fake "elective" category. Until I realized a few days ago, that it will jeopardize abortion coverage for private insurance as well. Many of which cover abortions as a matter of routine in all kinds of health care plans.

For instance, the insurance plan purchased from Cigna by the Republican National Committee, for its employees, covers "elective" abortion.

And huh, look at that, the insurance plan purchased from by Principal by Focus on the Family doesn't cover "elective" abortion, but Principal provides other policies that do!

Which is basically the same thing that all these Congressmen and women are up in arms about.

Jill Filipovic had a hilarious post up at Feministe today outlining all the things to which she morally objects and demands that she not be required to subsidize indirectly by paying taxes to the federal government. She's being silly, but the point is a serious one that I was making in conversation with my boyfriend last night: in general, we do not allow people to opt out of paying taxes just because those taxes pay for things that are against their beliefs, religious or otherwise. There are all kinds of wacky beliefs out there. And while the first amendment protects your ability to practice your religion as you see fit, it generally doesn't get you out of complying with the law, especially laws like paying taxes (the whole Wisconsin v. Yoder thing is a notable exception).

And yet, all this time, American taxpayer dollars have been paying for abortions all along. Just not the ones for the sluts.

A video is worth a thousand words; here are 11,000 words

Videos of dogs and kids welcoming their "daddies" home from deployment. You'll laugh; you'll cry. If you're me, you'll be SO DAMN GLAD Mr. B. separated from the military before we had a kid.

What we want

Yesterday, John Allen Muhammad was executed in the Commonwealth of Virginia for a horrific series of crimes that he committed in 2002 over a three-week period. I remember it well. The "D.C. Sniper," as he was called, terrorized this entire area for weeks while people were terrified to go outside, to get gas for their cars, to send their kids to school.

If there were ever an offense that called for the administration of the death penalty, I suppose what Mr. Muhammad did would be it.

But every time I see his face of television or in the papers or on my computer screen, my eyes close instinctively and I turn my head away. Because I can not accept what is being done in our name. Even though I am not a resident of Virginia, it is being done for me. It is being done, ostensibly, for all of us, for each person who lives in the state and area and nation, as retribution for the crimes he committed against us.

I understand the impulse toward retribution. I really do. I understand this feeling that we have, that when someone does something as awful as what this man did, brought so many families to the brink of destruction and caused them unimaginable pain, that we want to do the worst thing we can to them.

But what we do with that impulse doesn't make sense to me. The whole legal framework--the combined body of cases and laws and statutes and the granddaddy of all our documents, the Constitution, come together to create a world where it is against the law to willfully deprive someone of medical treatment, but it is okay to willfully kill them.

Even the members of the Bush administration asserted, over the course of a three-year torture scandal, "we do not torture." Because they believed, as I do, that torture is wrong. Instead, they drew up a set of tactics that doctors and lawyers assured them was not torture, and did that instead. But they would not call what they did torture, because as we all know, torture is wrong. But it is okay to kill? Is it right, is it proper and just, for a crowd to gather at the Greenville Correctional Center in Virginia at 9:00 pm on a Tuesday night, for them to stand before a curtain which is drawn back, and then watch a man violently shake to his death?

The prosecutor responsible for convicting Mr. Muhammad in the name of the people of Virginia says that he hopes the event will bring closure to the families of the victims.

Maybe it will. But does it matter?

Our justice system seems to be in a heightened and heightening state of confusion about how much we care about what the victims of crime want. Notions about victim satisfaction inform the very core of our entire system of punishment: it has never been, and as far as I can see, never will be merely about rehabilitation or deterrence. No, it has always contained some element of retribution, and who is the retribution for if not for the people whose lives the crime touched?

It is for them and not for them. Because the plaintiff is not the victim. The plaintiff in every criminal case is the state. Sometimes when the victim of a crime declines to serve as a witness for the prosecution, the case is abandoned--but sometimes it carries on without her. A victim's family's desire to see the killer of their loved one put to death or not put to death does not govern what the prosecution seeks.

In the end, what victims want only seems to matter when the victim wants a harsher penalty. I have seen individuals who were denied parole because of the strident objections of the victim's family. I have seen the wants and needs of victims invoked in every single execution committed in my lifetime. I have seen victims' opinions invoked by politicians and prosecutors and prison administrators as the reason that we must be swift or harsh or violent.

But aren't we all victims? Isn't that the entire principle of the criminal justice system, that we are all affected by crimes that are committed against our persons and our property? I've had enough death. I've had enough of brutality, enough of pain.

When you talk about the legitimacy of capital punishment, people often try to make it an imagination exercise. "If someone brutally murdered your husband/daughter/entire family, wouldn't you want that person dead?"

I honestly don't know.

I suspect I wouldn't. But I don't know because I haven't been there. And I have a difficult time imagining that I would wish for the death of another human being, although I'm sure it's more than possible.

What I do know is that there are people who have found themselves in that situation and haven't advocated for the death penalty for the killer. Why doesn't that matter? Why does it only matter that there are people who do pray for the death of the killers of their loved ones?

When will we stop pretending that it's about what we want? A vengeful heart is not enough.

And Belated Happy Birthday to the United States Marine Corps

You know what day it is today.

Its Give a Vet a Big Sloppy Kiss Day!

Then, you can take me to lunch.

Happy Veterans Day to all our Vets!

open thread: bert or ernie?

I just spent a whole day interviewing over-prepared, earnest, bright young things for a communications position at my office; I'm spent.

So ruminate on the awesomeness of the 40th anniversary of Sesame Street, the program that made me the commie-loving, freedom-hating, bra-burning woman I am today:



Or ruminate on whatever the hell you want; the Bitches are busy. Just keep it civil.

NO on Stupak

Whose Leaning on Stupak? Is it Your Rep? RHRealityCheck.org

From RHRCheck:

The House will vote this morning on an amendment to the health reform bill that if passed will effectively ban private insurance plans from providing coverage for abortion care.

Where does your rep stand?

These Dems lean pro-choice but need shoring up. Click here to find your representative and tell them to vote no on Stupak.



Arcuri (D, NY-24)
Bean (D, IL-08)
Bishop, S. (D, GA-02)
Boswell (D, IA-03)
Butterfield (D, NC-01)
Cardoza (D, CA-18)
Chandler (D, KY-06)
Cooper (D, TN-05)
Costa (D, CA-20)
Doyle (D, PA-14)
Edwards, C. (D, TX-17)
Etheridge (D, NC-02)
Gordon (D, TN-06)
Kratovil (D, MD-01)
Langevin (D, RI-02)
McMahon (D, NY-13)
Michaud (D, ME-02)
Minnick (D, ID-01)
Neal (D, MA-02)
Nye (D, VA-02)
Obey (D, WI-07)
Owens (D, NY-23)
Ruppersberger (D, MD-02)
Ryan, T. (D, OH-17)
Salazar (D, CO-03)
Space (D, OH-18)

The Wonk Room reports they have the votes to pass Stupak so we have to shave off support; so even if your rep isn't on this list, send a message.
I know. It's Saturday. But what else you got to do?

In the Name of the Most Merciful God

We believe in God, and in that which has been sent down on us and sent down on Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac and Jacob, and the Tribes, and that which was given to Moses and Jesus and the Prophets, of their Lord; we make no division between any of them, and to Him we surrender.
-Chapter 2, verses 135-136, the Holy Koran



The splitters, the dividers, the haters, the impious and the blasphemers, the traitorous trolls are trying to exploit the Fort Hood outrage to turn Americans one against the other.

They will, of course, fail.

They know they will fail but, in the interval, they hope to subvert our national grief and turn it into something ugly, something filthy, something they can employ to deface our American people and make us as ugly as them. They want to shame our country but they only shame themselves.

I stand with the followers of Islam against the haters. I stand with the Muslims of our country against the liars. I will not tolerate any slanders against the Muslims of our country because that is a slander against our country.

With our Muslim countrymen and countrywomen, I pray for those lost and wounded at Fort Hood and for their friends and family. With them, I pray for our country.

go 'head on, shoshana johnson

What happens when you get someone who knows what they're talking about on Larry King? This. Sure, read the post and look at the graph, but click on the Larry King video clip.

Minute 3.00 to 3.40 is beautiousness.

'I'm a POW! I got shot!'

I could look at that again and again. In fact, I will.

A Vacation From Unemployment

Well, we're coming up on the end of week three of my being unemployed, and so far I haven't managed to write a single blog post. I'm kind of sad that no one seems to be worried about me! But I'm fine. I could blame it on the fact that we don't have internet at home, which I'm waffling on whether we should get, but that's probably not the real reason. The real reason is that I'm unemployed, which is harder work than actually working.

But I'm taking a vacation from being unemployed today. No, today I'm not unemployed--I'm on vacation. Or taking a sick day. Whatever. Because yes, I am on my fucking period and my whole life I have wanted to be able to just take the day off on that dreaded Day One of menstruation where I am lethargic, bloated, tired, and writhing with cramps. But no, there has always been school or work or It's The Weekend And I Must Do Stuff. My last period Day One I had to spend the entire day packing and moving and trudging up and down the 3 flights of stairs to my old apartment approximately thirty times.

Today, my friends, I can take the day off. So far I have reorganized all the apps on my phone, deleted the ones I don't use and downloaded some new ones, and formulated plans to go to a fancy event at an art gallery alone tonight which I will probably end up not fulfulling because no one is counting on me and I am lazy. I have made eggs with the crumbly, salty Salvadoran cheese from the market up the street that I am currently obsessed with. Other than that, I have laid in bed. It is glorious.

This is the first time in my adult life that I've had both nothing to do and no prospects of having anything to do. Since age 18, I've gone from job to school to job and back again in an endless loop of productivity. But right now, there are no future plans for me except 1) I am going to California for Christmas; and 2) I am getting married in Wisconsin next August. Other than that, I've got nada. Zip. Zero. No job interviews, no social plans, no weekend visitors for whom I must prepare the house. No projects to complete, no papers to write, no briefs to file or status conferences to attend. No court dates. No lunch appointments.

But I still feel busy. Because I am unemployed, I feel like I must take care of everything else that is not working. I feel like I must plan the meals, I must do the shopping, I must assemble the IKEA bookcases, I must do the mountain of dishes that keeps on coming and coming and coming, I must do and fold the laundry. I must pay my bills on time and I must, above all, Take Care Of Business. Because there are no clients to call or meetings to keep or memoranda to draft, if I want to feel like I'm getting anything done I must always be sending faxes and sending out resumes and emailing people and networking and running errands of various kinds.

So yesterday I got my DC drivers license, which is unconscionably ugly, and got the car inspected. I did a huge shopping trip and bought a semi-boneless leg of lamb which I cooked up for dinner. I spent several hours trying to find a reasonably-priced flight to California (result: there are none). I certified my claim for unemployment benefits, which I will probably not receive because I worked for three days at a temp legal job which was well-paid and the most boring thing I have ever done. I wanted to lie about it, but papa don't play like that and I am not about to get in trouble. I made calls to the insurance company, the bank that owns my car, and the insurance company again. I filled out forms to get forbearance on my voluminous student loans. I filled out forms to try to get me and my dude admitted to the District of Columbia bar, which I'm really wondering if we're going to be able to do any time soon because it costs a fortune.

Are you bored yet? I am.

And then after all that there are the dishes, which will not stop coming. Seriously. How does a "family" of two produce so many goddamn dishes? Since I am unemployed and we have basically no money, our eating-out frequency has gone from very high to almost zero. Maybe things would be easier if I just fed us lean cuisines or sandwiches or something, but I can not bear to eat that crap and so everything we eat is a production made from scratch which dirties each and every one of the five pans we own.

I feel guilty. I feel guilty for not doing more. The house is still basically in shambles. We have way too much stuff and this apartment is pretty small (although gloriously delightful and in a fantastic location) so there is nowhere to put it. The dresser is overflowing with clothes, there are stacks of books on the floor. There are boxes everywhere, empty and full. We have no couch. And I have no idea where the next money I'll get will come from. But I feel like I should be doing Everything, because hey, I don't have a job. I am realizing that I would make a very, very poor housewife. I like cooking, but I like it in that "event" way, the way that dana says a lot of young men like to cook. I like cooking elaborate things that I have never cooked before. I like a challenge. I do not like things that are rote or routine or things that I am sure will not be a complete failure. I hate all other household chores that are not cooking, except maybe cleaning the bathroom because it is easy and satisfying and disgusting. I hate sitting at home wondering when my boyfriend will get home to entertain me. I hate feeling like I should only go places that I can walk to because why should I spend money on gas or the metro if I don't have to?

There are hardly any jobs. The job announcement pipeline is pretty hollow and echoey. I haven't heard about a position that interests me and that I'm qualified for in over a month. At this point, I'd be satisfied with some more temp work just to get some money in my bank account, but I have no idea whether that will come tomorrow or two months from now.

But I'm done whining. Today is my vacation day, and tomorrow I go back to the "work" of being unemployed. And really, it's good. My health is good. It is joyous beyond description to be back with my best friend and partner again, to share the banal moments of living, to wake up and chatter nonsense at eachother in the dark of morning, to stay up fighting late into the night, to fuck at noon on the weekend before brunch. I kind of like not having anywhere I have to be, and having time to reflect on my career and my goals. The fall weather in DC is beautiful and the trees are shocking colors of red and yellow.

So, it's good. But very different.

Pseudonymous Kid is a poet

In summer, it's warm.
In fall, everything falls down.
In winter, it's cold.

Flowers are yellow.
Leaves are usually green.
Sticks are brown: the plant.

Standing on a pole.
Octagonally shaped.
White words. Stop sign.

Luna is a cat.
Luna is very furry.
She hates Medusa.

A furry fuzz form
Darting from room to room. Flash!
It attacks! The cat.

gimme guidance: the GOP Health Care Plan

The Wonk Room reads the GOP Health Care Plan So I don't have to but that doesn't prevent me from being confused (which I'm completely at ease with admitting.)

My main takeaway: this plan screws over women (check out what it might mean for reproductive access), poor people and basically does nothing to 'reform' anything. Right? Or an oversimplification that might be close to the truth?

Anyway, if there's a diligent, apt, and pithy Bitch reader out there who can give a smart assessment/opinion on this plan vs. whatever plan is currently on the floor (there are several?), with a particular eye toward how this and other plans impact women and the poor (because none of the talking heads ever talk about that), I'd be extremely grateful.

Help a Ding out.

An insider’s primer (or rant) on 'pork'

Work, as usual, is kicking my ass. Tomorrow I’m supposed to take the Metra train out to the end of the Milwaukee West line to pitch a conservative GOP congressman’s staffer on why they should include my organization on his list of projects for the FY11 fiscal year. It'll be my third such meeting in the past month - which means I’m submitting 3 proposals to 3 different congressional offices for earmarks. Yeah, I’m talking about pork!

When folks get upset about 'pork' it's really clear they have no frakking clue what it takes to get it. And when politicians get huffy about it, it makes me even angrier because they should freaking know better. (I'm talking to you, McCain!)

The whole process is a crap shoot - especially if you're not a hospital, museum, research facility, university or extremely loaded agency with juiced up board members and/or lobbyists or consultants. If you’re like my agency, you send someone like me to talk to a staffer, pitch your org, gauge their interest and then fire a short proposal into the air and if it lands, we all cross our fingers.

Because the process doesn’t stop there.

If you're lucky enough to actually get through the district staffer then you have to get through the DC staffer, who'll be creating the priority list for the congressman/senator to review and approve. And then, if you survive that round, you still might not make the final list submitted to the appropriations committee. (If you’re submitting in a competitive district then the office only wants to back up proposals that have a good chance of making it. And if the environment is hostile toward earmarks, staffers want to make sure they beat the odds. So your little bitty proposal is competing with hundreds, when the office only wants to submit four. Nice, huh?) If you make it onto the committee list you might have a chance of making it through to the omnibus bill, but it all depends on how the budget negotiations for that fiscal year proceed.

In other words, when you're not hooked up with a lobbyist or a personal connection to the elected official, if a little org like mine gets 'pork' it is a frakking miracle. And sheer luck.

But once you get it, you don't really 'get' it. The process shifts from being discretionary ('hey, they do good work and could use some support') to a formal grant process, with all the attendant headaches. Have you ever written a grant proposal for a federal agency? They are frakking long, complicated and onerous. Most human services agencies don't have the capacity to write one because it takes an experienced team to do one well. There are budgets, narratives, assurances, logic models, research, and metrics that have to be submitted. In other words, these congressional awards aren’t a walk in the park - they make you work for your pork. They want every staffer or dollar accounted for - if you say you're going to spend $87.50 for a brochure, at the end of the award year your expenses better damn well reflect $87.50 spent for a brochure.

If you survive the grant application process (which could take a while) then it needs to be reviewed by their legal and compliance folks, which takes even more time. Then, if you are up to muster, you finally become a contractor with the federal government. When it comes to pork, you don't just receive a fat check in the mail to do with what you will. They either disburse it in small chunks per quarter or you incur the initial cost of providing the service and they reimburse you for the expense - later.

There is nothing ‘easy’ about pork.

And don't even get me started on how long it takes for this process to roll out. If you're applying for the FY11 appropriations year, anticipate getting money in your hot little hand maybe 18-24 months after you submitted your proposal. That's FY13. Do you have any idea what that does to an organization’s budgeting and forecasting process? How can you plan/hire for that program when the means for that program won't exist for another 18-24 months? And how do you count that money? Is that included in your FY11 budget or the fiscal year of the receipt of the pork?

And?!? This is one-time money. That's it. One year of funding to pilot or support a program and then - poof! Gone. It's a lot of effort for brief relief.

On the other hand, it’s a lot of effort for a community org to get funding to provide services to needy populations. It can mean the birth or expansion of a program, the survival of staff and the strengthening of a community. That's the only payoff that makes pursuing pork worthwhile.

So don't talk to me about how pork is ‘evil’ until you’ve walked over the coals to get it. Grrr.

Ok. Work-rant over. Carry on.