Other unpopular opinions I hold

With credit to leblanc, who I am sure did a post like this not long ago, but I am too lazy to find it.

In addition to feeling that dogs are more valued than women and that kid-haters are bigots, I am of the opinion that:

- 7:15 is the right bedtime. Not a minute later.

- Barry Bonds is the legitimate record-holder.

- Shrimp are disgusting.

- Vincent is an incarnation of Jacob.

- Having already made a probably bad decision to write a dissertation in literature, the worst thing you could do is write an interdisciplinary one.

- Cinnamon-sugar toast only on the weekends; cinnamon-honey toast on school days.

- Chewing your toothbrush helps clean the teeth.

- Star Wars films, including originals, are in every way inferior to Star Trek films.

- The Picture of Dorian Gray is a snooze-fest.

Lets Stay Out Tonight

Not since Little Richard had anyone flipped the Rock and Roll script like David Bowie.
For a fellow set as firmly in the customary Rock and Roll script as myself, Bowie was, to say the least, upsetting. He crashed into my world like the Mystery Grandfather and his two brindle hounds, Whiskey, and Bad Cocaine.
And not the good Mystery Grandfather, either. Not the Mystery Grandfather who roamed the sky before the dreamtime, back when the earth was still a human being.
No, this was the dangerous Mystery Grandfather, the one who counted coup on Rabbit Woman. The one who loosed the Shore People. The one who set free Windigo to make the spring season equal parts hope and dread.

But that's the nature of visions, isn't it? Terrifying and seductive. Repellent and irresistible. Breathless and asphyxiating. Furious and soothing.
If we are open to the visions Mystery Grandfather sends us, we know life is a gift from one minute to the next. Nothing is for sure. There's more danger than safety. There's more danger than we realize. Everything is a risk. Its possible to defer risk. Its not possible to escape it. Well, maybe there is a way to escape but that's not living.
Anyway, that's why I found David Bowie upsetting. Little Richard had been upsetting too, of course. I mean, that lipstick, the eye shadow, the bouffant hair. The flamboyant mannerisms. The screaming. Very disturbing to a nice Irish boy who wanted to play like Mud.
But even if Little Richard was hollering about Tutti Frutti, he always sang about his gal, named Sue, who knew just what to do.
Mr Bowie, on the other hand; man I didn't know what he was singing about. OK, I knew what he was singing about but who was he singing about? Who was he singing to? He flipped the script. Got your mother in a whirl? Not sure if you're a boy or a girl? Of course I loved the Hot Tramp with the cue line and a handful of ludes. But I didn't like the uncertain identity of the adored object. How could they know? Looky here, now, I got to know.
To a guitar player, though, his riffs were from heaven. Listen to two bars of any Bowie tune, and you know exactly what song it is. Hell, listen to two notes and you know.
And they weren't terribly complicated. Listen to this. Its just an open D followed by an open E, the third and fourth strings held down by the same finger, stumbling at the first then run through the humbucker with the gain turned up halfway. And its got to be one of the most instantly recognizable riffs in all of Rock and Rolldom.
The only time I ever saw Bowie perform was in Dublin on the Reality tour. Hadn't even planned to go. Tickets were a ghastly price, enough to rent a house on the beach at Youhgal for a week.
I'm not sure how my brother got a hold of them, probably better not to know. Don't know what we ended up paying but it was worth it.
He did all his classics and flipped the script again. Each one was pared down to its basic structure and performed in an austere manner, the way Dexter Gordon might have done on the first run through. The audience filled in the crashing riffs out of their own memories, like in this one. Again, one of the most powerful riffs in Rock and Roll, surgically removed and then tacked on like a vestigial tail.
So, I've learned its good to break out of the script. If we like dancing and we look divine, then the Mystery Grandfather teaches us that nothing else really matters.
Still need a good riff, though.

Insanity Defense Isn't all it's Cracked up to be

Yesterday's Washington Post had an excellent piece on John W. Hinckley, the man who attempted to assassinate President Reagan.

Hinckley "lives like a kid on perpetual spring break" and "fills his free time strumming on his guitar, crafting pop songs about ideal love, or going on supervised jaunts to the beach or a bowling alley."

Some people might be outraged that someone who attempted to murder the president is living such a jaunty, care-free life. But when I read the piece, all I can think of is how our cultural conception of the "insanity defense" is grossly inaccurate. Although Hinckley's life may seem quite pleasant compared to that of your average felon in state or federal prison, he lacks the certainty of a determinate sentence. In fact, he doesn't have a sentence at all. If you win on an insanity defense, you actually aren't "sentenced," you are committed to a psychiatric facility. This commitment is indefinite. Like thousands of other mentally ill individuals across the country, Hinckley's fate is not up to him, not up to a parole board, but in the hands of a single person: the judge.

If anything, Hinckley demonstrates that "getting off" because you successfully argue insanity can often be worse than taking a plea or getting convicted at trial. Sentencing guidelines vary state by state, but in many states, individuals who are convicted of murder end up serving far less time than the 28 years that Hinckley has thus far been held. In Oregon, for example, the presumptive sentence for murder for someone with the most serious criminal history, "three or more juvenile or adult person felonies," is 225-269 months, or about 22.5 years, at the upper end. In Florida, the average time served for murder is 19.1 years.

Many states have abandoned indeterminate sentencing schemes, where an individual can only be released at the discretion of a parole board, in favor of sentencing individuals to a certain number of months or years. The theory is that this provides more structure and makes rehabilitation more likely.

This may explain why use of the insanity defense is so rare, put forth in less than 1 percent of all cases despite the fact that up to 16 percent of individuals in state prison have a mental illness. Even in the extremely unlikely scenario that the defense is successful, the accused may end up doing more time than if he'd been convicted.

dear fellow white people who think the new Arizona law is hunky dory

Just because the person at the next table in that restaurant has blond hair and blue eyes doesn't mean you ought to assume that they think the same things you do, or that they are, indeed, the same version of whiteness that you are.

Where your grandfather came over here as an immigrant "and obeyed the rules," maybe mine was born in Mexico. And maybe his ancestors (and therefore mine) go back on this continent a hell of a lot longer than yours. Maybe that blonde woman at the next table traces her family ancestry back to the goddamn American Revolution via the surname "Lopez", on both sides of the now-border.

So maybe, you know, there are people within earshot who might take some of your anti-Mexican bullshit kind of personally.

And even if there aren't? You're an American, goddammit. Read your motherfucking constitution and stfu.

My classes must be over because this post is damn long.

I have a friend here in this town, a dear sweet friend whom I was very close with during my MA program 10 yrs ago. We fell out of touch as I moved on to the PhD program in another place and somewhere along the way she moved to this here town where I now find myself. We've picked back up where we left off and I'm so happy for her being around. Not least of all because she loves my kid. She is, herself, childfree but maybe sorta wants to have a kid one day. But she's one of these grown-ups who is just excellent at recognizing kids as humans and assuming that they are interesting in the same ways that humans are. She takes care of Little V when I need help, solicits random solo playdates with her, and has become one of Littlw V's favorite persons.

She, my friend, we'll call her Sue, is also always curious about the experience of mothering and its various highs and lows. Last night, a few hours after the Vanes and Sue + fiance had spent the afternoon having a walk together, Sue called with a random question:

"I was just thinking abotu how much I love Little V and how I am so glad you guys are here since I would be nearly just as happy to spend an afternoon with her as I am to spend it with you. And this made me wonder: if you moved to a new place and you met someone who you thought would be a great friend, you really hit it off, etc, but it turned out she really didn't like your kid, what would that be like? Would it be a deal breaker? I am just really curious about what mothering is like in that capacity."

I've thought about it and come up with a 3 part answer that I think is sort of interesting (insofar as anything that goes on in the realm of PERSONAL WEBLOGS/MOMMYBLOGGING is actually interesting; it is, by default, more interesting than CAT BLOGGING):

1) An actual new friend who didn't like my kid: I feel like this is sort of a non-scenario, as it's hard for me to imagine a new person in my life both ingratiating herself to me and simultaneously making it clear that she doesn't like my kid on the level of discreet interpersonal relations. Because that would be really rude, right? Like, how would that become clear? Would she be mean to my kid? Or ignore her if asked a question? Or just flat out tell me, "Little V is sort of obnoxious." Would she roll her eyes and change the subject when I tried to talk about anything that had to do with my kid? All of those things, from a new acquaintance, would strike me as rude and would likely undermine the possibility of my really thinking I could be close with her.
I have relationships that don't have much to do with my kid, of course, but increasingly few. It seems to be the case that once you have a kid, and once you start a new portion of life with that kid, you really don't make the friends you used to in a way that doesn't involve the kid. When we are out on weekends as a family, the people who tend to chat us up are people who have kids around Little V's age, at the park, at a restaraunt, at the library. I consider some of my work colleagues friends; some of them have kids, some don't. But here, even those who don't are really kid friendly and the specifics of my situation have involved my asking for accomodations to manage my single-weekday parenting. So my colleague/friends watch Little V while I teach if she is feverish or invite her to department functions or entertain her during faculty meetings. I do have an old and childfree friend here - Sue - with whom to go out and do non-kiddie things, and I do that from time to time. But even the people she hooks me up with and lays friendship groundwork for are people who have kids Little V's age because she (rightly) assumes this would be a big help. So, for these reasons, it's hard for me to imagine even starting a relationship with someone in any substantive way if that person was aggressively not into my kid.

2) "Not kid types": Now, maybe I meet someone who doesn't necessarily dislike Little V in a personal way but who is "not really a kid person." And here I mean not necessarily someone who doesn't want to have kids or who doesn't have any experience being around kids or someone who lives a lifestyle that doesn't produce any exposure to kids. I mean someone who is expressive about a "I don't really like kids" attitude or a "I hate going to restaraunts or museums where kids are making noise" attitude or a "of course it's fine for other people to have kids but I don't want to be around them" attitude. This sort of thing is a deal-breaker for me. I've gotten pretty rigid about it in recent years as I become more assured in my certainty that it's an anti-feminist attitude and you suck if you hold it. Kids are a vulnerable, disempowered, inevitable portion of the human community and you do not get to "not like" them or to wish that weren't a part of your public space. Not allowed. I invite you to swap out "kids" for any other disempowered community in the above phrases ("women," "schizophrenics," "hispanics," "the blind") and notice what an asshole you sound like. If you are the type to espouse this position, you and I are never going to be close.

3) Pre-kid friends who don't like your kid: So, this is the tricky one. And the one most likely to happen. Maybe your pre-pregnancy friends are, unfortunately, people to whom #2 applies, which is to say, bigots. They don't like kids. 1 of 2 things happens here: you realize what a dick position that is and stop being friends with them in a gradual way (in part because they no doubt think you are a less interesting human for having made kids) or because they love you, they gradually soften on the "don't like kids" stance, not necessarily because your offspring is so charming but because they see you, the mommy/daddy as human and they realize that your offspring is also human and therefore not-cool to be bigoted about.

Maybe your pre-kiddo friends have their own kids and maybe your kids don't get along which kind of necessarily means they don't like your kid so incredibly much. This hasn't happened to me yet, but I suspect it will. What I imagine happens in my version of this scenario is that the parents in question realize the kid relationship isn't really gelling so they do less kid-things together and more kidd-free things together. Because, I'd like to think, if the relationship predated the kids there is sufficient motivation to not let the kids and their personality squigs muck it up.

Then there are the childfree friends who you just beat to the baby-having who genuinely love you and who genuinely intend to love your kid (and who do love your kid, obviously) but who kind of apparently on a number of occasaions don't so much like your kid. This is hard. And inevitable. Inevitable because no one really likes other people's kids all the time (to say nothing of how frequently a person doesn't like her own kids). I, for all my righteousness about kids as humans, am not all that good at engaging children who are not mine. And I tend to find the quirks of children who are not mine not especially endearing. And I certainly do not seek out opportunities to have children who are not mine in my house, under my care.

Which is to say, I understand how this reaction works. But I also understand that I work pretty hard to not make this reaction legible. Because it's not polite, expecially not in front of the other kid's parents. If a kid is just being a kid (and not, say, sticking forks in the eyes of the dog or something), it's rude to be all transparent about being uninterested in or irritated by that kid.

That said, transparency is at time inevitable if you are close enough. I have people who I have seen on many occasions kind of snap at my kid or grow impatient with her or correct her for things I wouldn't snap about or correct about. I have watched people we are close to evidence their 'not liking you this precise moment' attitude about my kid. And I embarrassed to say I have a shit emotional response to it. I KNOW it's normal, I KNOW it's healthy, I KNOW it's a component of human relationships. But when a friend reacts negatively to my kid (particularly when the reason is something that is a non-issue for me) it feels exactly and precisely like a judgment of/reaction to me.

This is an uncomfortable thing to realize. I wish it were not the case. And yet. To the extent that 'it takes a village,' it also takes accomodation of that village experiencing the entire range of emotions that a parent experiences with respect to a chaild, a range that certainly includes sheer and pointed irritation and disdain at times. Again, I am aware of the uncoolness of this reaction. It's like a heightened version of the reaction when someone doesn't like your partner and it feels like a referendum on yoru choices. Except when I see someone not liking my kid, it feels like a referendum on not only my parenting but on my actual personality. It's heinous.

I am curious about how common this is or whether many of you are more sanguine than I am about realizing that your kid is sometimes as asshole (and believe me I am well aware that mine sometimes is) and sometimes people don't like her. No big.

Jesus, this is a lot of words. Someone doesn't want to grade.

Lookin Good on the Soul Train

Saturday nights used to be a big night for me. Looked forward to them all week.

There was usually a house party going on. There'd be barbeque por supesto. There'd be coolers of beers. There'd be tequila, whiskey, and vodka on the kitchen counter with all the set ups.

There'd be arguments. There'd be a lot of boasting and bragging and out and out lying.

And dancing. Always dancing. And then there was after the dance.

Its not quite the same now. Mostly cause I'm not in shape for dancing. Or after the dancing.

But I'm getting there. The desire has returned. Like it says in Shakespeare, I forget which play or was it one of the sonnets, The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.

Well, according to latest reports, I've got another three months to go on the present recuperative regime. And then, I'll be ready for after the dance, no matter who said it.

Los Tigres del Norte

In the long run, the wasteful, disgraceful, anti-Mexican, anti-American, and anti-democratic Arizona law that orders the search and seizure of its Chicano residents may be a good thing. If not the last nail in the GOPO coffin, it might could be the second or third to last.

I mean, are there any American constituencies left for them to harass? Between this hateful police state Act and their defense of oligarchy, are they, once and for all, revealed as the party of totalitarianism?

Of course, the long run is not where we live. We must suffer the here-and-now. Or the there-and-now, depending on whether or not you live in Arizona.

I have two beautiful, brown, nieces living in Phoenix presently so I take this shit seriously. One is doing her medical residency at Maricopa County General and the other is doing baseball players' hair while she apprentices for her cosmetology certificate in that city.

Both are more hip-hop than Hispanic but you couldn't tell that by looking at them. I gather that's what Arizona law enforcement is supposed to do; eyeball the parade of residents and make a judgement as to which ones should be challenged for proof of citizenship. My nieces' granddaddy walked to this country from Guadalajara and married a woman from Catulla, Texas so, you know, they probably look, to an Arizona peckerwood, like they just strolled across the Sonora.

The fact that they are 100%, bona-fide, true blue, red-blooded Americans, who do not suffer fools lightly, means they are likely to crack wise the first time they are stopped by Arizona's newly deputized la migra. I'm not worried about them being deported. I'm worried about them being convicted of contempt of cop. Deportation has to be run through some sort of sketchy, half-assed, due process. Contempt of cop is a drumhead charge, subject to summary punishment.

Funny thing is, the people most likely to have proper documentation, whatever it is, are the undocumented. In my little, rural, Four Corners, county, I could direct you to a half dozen bars where you could buy any identity document you want. I have a friend from San Luis de Potosi who has I don't know how many Social Security numbers. Same with his wife. I've lived in this country all my life and I only have the one.

You want a driver's license? You can have it in an hour. For any state in the Union. You want a green card? By the time you finish your drink you'll be fully authorized, sanitized, and legitimized. You want a passport? Step into the parking lot of dos Hermanos. The State Department should be so efficient.

People have raised the question, and rightly so, about racial profiling; how do you know what an immigrant, an illegal immigrant, looks like?

I have a different question.

What does an American look like?

Internalized Misogyny 101

I never wrote about the Amanda Knox trial when it was going on, mostly because I don't really know anything about the Italian judicial system and I didn't want to seem like an asshole. But I was riveted and disturbed. My reading of what happened at that trial and in the media coverage surrounding it (and again, don't know shit about shit), was that the evidence presented against this young attractive woman was largely that she was a young attractive and possibly slutty woman and that the apparent deviance of her sex life should be read as very clearly implicating a much more dangerous potential for deviance/violence/cold-hearted sociopathic behavior. I'm sure a lot of you (and some Italian jurors) think that is a really willful reading, but, whatever, it's mine.

So I was intrigued by the headline on this Salon piece titled "I Could Have Been Amanda Knox." What I expected was a piece premised on the notion that 'I could have been Amanda Knox' because I was once a young traveling attractive woman who engaged in what is coded as "risky behavior" for women and one thing the Amanda Knox case makes clear is the extent to which we are wedded to a good girl/bad girl dichotomy for women. Thus, I could have been her in the sense that I also could have been held accountable for crimes I didn't commit on the grounds that I like to fuck, maybe in weird ways.' Instead, the piece was more of a ' I could have been Amanda Knox insofar as i traveled as a young attractive woman and was sort of turned on by being a 'bad girl' and was a cock tease here and there and one time skinny dipped with some wackadoo Brazilians and such deviance, well, it's a slippery slope to stabbing one's roommate, that.'

Lest you think I exaggerate:

On my high school senior trip to Orlando, Fla., I snuck into a bar and flirted with a 23-year-old blond professional golfer. When he invited me back to his room, I went without pause. A virgin, it never occurred to me that this might be a bad idea. I'd broken up with my high school boyfriend the summer before, and since then had kissed plenty of boys on beaches and in convertibles, behind the shopping mall and in basement rec rooms. The golfer had more than kissing in mind, however. I drank the Michelob he offered me. I kissed with abandon. But when he took my hand and pressed it against his hard-on, I headed out the door.

"Cockteaser!" he yelled. "Bitch!"

I did not learn my lesson.

and

For most of the time, I was a good girl. But spirited. Straight A student. Yearbook editor. Student body treasurer. A sorority girl who often had a handsome boyfriend from a good family who dreamed of being a lawyer or a politician. [...] I also found myself drawn to sexy guys with something dark lurking behind their eyes. Looking back, I see that those guys and my attraction to them were fueled by being far from home, where I knew no one. There, I could do things, try things, unnoticed. I was a good girl with enough of a wild streak to make foolish decisions.

and

In the past, I had shown only passing interest in sensational murder cases, but none had felt so strangely personal. Unlike Natalee Halloway, I was not a girl who would vacation in Aruba. Unlike Chandra Levy, I was never a striver on Capitol Hill. But to live in Italy? To date foreign, exotic men? To be both a good girl and a reckless one? The beautiful young faces of Amanda Knox and Meredith Kercher haunted me.

ohmygod, really? Salon, you are publishing this? Virgin/whore dichotomy much?

What if it had been us? We were foolish and naive and young. We had close calls and bad drugs and roommates who disappeared for a night with dubious strangers. But nothing bad really ever happened to young pretty girls who were basically good girls, did it? For us, that door always eventually opened and that roommate always returned, a little hung over or weary or in love. But just as we shaped the story we might have to tell the police or her unaware mother, she came home.

What if it had been us is the right question. It is us, is the answer. I don't know what Amanda Knox did, but I know the conviction of her guilt was based primarily on the exposition of her as a sexually active/aggressive woman. And I know this entire Salon piece is predicated on the idea the because the author has also been a sexually active/aggressive woman, but for the grace of god did she not commit heinous acts of depravity. 'I touched that guy's hard on once, it could've been ME crushing my roommate's windpipe!" Christ this article pissed me off. I may start using it in classes as an exercise in identifying internalized misogyny.

Away Sweet Away

Though I moved into this house on the Flowage at the end of September, I haven't really got to know many people around here.

Not that I'm unsociable. No, no, no. No.

Its just that, since I got here, its been one goddamned thing after another.

In the last week or so, however, the strength of my organism has reached the point where it can support the longings of my spirit. A bout of fair weather struck this weekend, without warning, and I was able to toodle down the road, a half mile or so, to the local public house for a jar and a bit of conversation.

I repaired to The Possum Eater's Inn and managed to fall in with a bad crowd, which is to say, a good crowd.

I met a fellow devotee of Dexter Gordon. I met the neighborhood cannabis hook-up. I met the local sports book. I met a guy who has over 120 quarts of canned bear meat in his cellar. And I met the lady who sells black market food stamp cards.

So, you know, I've arrived.

the limits of the single story

This is so perfect, I don't want to ruin it with my prattling: People of colour are not a story of suffering . . . Or resistance. « Restructure!

We should be familiar with the 'single story' told by our most familiar -isms: racism, sexism, classism, heterosexism, cisism, etc.

But these are some questions this prompted for me:
What is the 'single story' that feminism tells?
What is the 'single story' of our national identity?
What is the 'single story' of your city or town?
What is the 'single story' of your religion or political party?
(Even the Tea Party has a 'single story' being told by the MSM and others.)
What is the 'single story' of your work - especially if you work for a non profit human services organization?

This last is not a weird question: the 'single story' most orgs tell is of the broken down - nevermind the agency that these populations have shown, or that these populations very well might have their own stories to tell. But the 'single story' we tell about these populations is a direct product of the racial/class power and privilege of those of us who work in these orgs.

A friend of mine recently confronted this single story issue when she was preparing a proposal for a large corporate donor for one of our service areas. She was in the middle of writing it when something began to niggle at her. The whole thing felt wrong. The women we were purporting to serve weren't in it at all. It was all stats and 'statements of need' that made it seem like the west side of Chicago was just a bombed out crater, where women wandered the streets begging for bread and children lived in boxes. It was a standard grant narrative that painted the worst picture, without any room for self-determination, agency or stories other than the one we told of poverty levels, literacy rates and lack.

So my friend retooled her proposal to make that niggling itch go away.

It's significant to note that my friend is a woman of color and when the proposal was reviewed by a non person of color, the shift in frame was immediately noted - and instantly edited. My friend was told that the single story of women's experiences on the west side is the preferred story to donors - this is the reality that needs to be made even more starkly solid, and repeated everywhere we go, and to everyone we solicit.

The voice of our org, therefore, must reflect "No possibility of feelings more complex than pity." We must reify, no matter how problematic, unfair or racist, a power and privilege that has "the ability not just to tell the story of another person, but to make it the definitive story of that person."

As a writer I know that I've been guilty of telling only one story. It's an easy shorthand to fall into, especially if this is the way one's sector works. I don't quite know how to end this post except to hope that those of us who are privileged to be in the position to tell the stories of others take our stories seriously - and resist the impulse to tell them singly.

[originaly posted at Screed]

Off-season Trades

Even in the off-season, I can't help but think about football on Sundays. I think my allegiances are well-documented.

However.

Some lowlights:

"And a friend of [the victim's], Nicole Biancofiore, claimed that a third woman was "taken away by a bodyguard of Ben's" when she tried to open the locked bathroom door."

"Mr. Roethlisberger is said to have exposed his genitals in the nightclub hallway, ordered a woman to be ejected from the club's VIP section and made "crude, sexual remarks" to his accuser."

"Hey, I need to talk to you guys," Sgt. Blash reportedly told Officer Barravecchio, the off-duty Coraopolis officer.

"We have a problem. This drunken bitch, drunk off her ass, is accusing Ben of rape," Officer Barravecchio said Sgt. Blash told him. "This pisses me off. Women can do this. It's[bull] but we've got to do this, we've got to do a report. This is BS. She's making [stuff] up."

"On the way back to his home in Reynolds Plantation, the quarterback called his lawyer."

And while I appreciate the sentiment, I guess, telling him he ought to "Grow up," doesn't really cut it. He didn't leave his fucking bike out in the rain.

A friend ruefully said to me the other day, "Well, at least it's not dogfighting." Good point, at least it isn't. Because you got to fucking PRISON for dogfighting. This was juts some lacerations on a vagina and a woman walking out of a skanky bathroom with tears on her face and walking immediately to a police car. To talk to an officer who didn't want to file charges because she was drunk. I mean, jesus, it's not like fucking DOGS got hurt.

Here's a fun game to play: what if Mike Vick had raped a girl in a bar bathroom in Milledgeville GA? No charges filed? It's like a perverse game of rock paper scissors, Privilege Edition. White man beats white woman, but white woman definitely beats black man.

I assume Roethlisberger gets a 2 or 3 game suspension. And I assume when that's up, they go right back to starting him. At which point I don't watch the games.

So, the upshot is I'm taking suggestions for a new AFC team to pull for this season. Ravens are out, all other suggestions will b considered. Please present your case in the comments.

Poetry Friday

When I was 14, I thought about what it would take for them to 'tell the truth about me.' It's a thing about this poem, I think, is the way it knows that for a lot of us, at 14, have a sense that we can't tell our own selves, that we need to be told, seen, noticed, and can't have any agency in the process. I am so often so happy to not be 14, and all week I have had another line from another poem stuck in my head: "All childhood is an emigration." ('Originally,' Carol Ann Duffy)


Hanging Fire
by Audre Lord


I am fourteen
and my skin has betrayed me
the boy I cannot live without
still sucks his tumb
in secret
how come my knees are
always so ashy
what if I die
before the morning comes
and momma's in the bedroom
with the door closed.

I have to learn how to dance
in time for the next party
my room is too small for me
suppose I de before graduation
they will sing sad melodies
but finally
tell the truth about me
There is nothing I want to do
and too much
that has to be done
and momma's in the bedroom
with the door closed.

Nobody even stops to think
about my side of it
I should have been on Math Team
my marks were better than his
why do I have to be
the one
wearing braces
I have nothing to wear tomorrow
will I live long enough
to grow up
and momma's in the bedroom
with the door closed.

two steps back

I don't know shit about Sigourney Weaver, but I know that Dana Barrett was a cool working woman living in the city and that while the second film as a whole exhibited some pretty overt anxiety about the maternal/reproductive body, Ripley in general is kick ass.

But this is fairly insubstantial in comparison with this comment:

She said Jim Cameron lost to his ex-wife, Kathryn Bigelow, because she's a woman--who became the first ever to take home the Best Director Oscar.

"Jim didn't have breasts, and I think that was the reason," she told told Folha Online, a Brazilian news site. "He should have taken home that Oscar."

Unbecoming, Ripley. Grantd, it must sting when an itty-bitty flick like Avatar sneaks in and out of the box office without really getting the attention it deserves, and with such a low box office take too, but the identity-politics-backlash pandering is really well-beneath a chick who faced-off against a chest burster. Maybe it let you win because of your breasts.

Because you're worth it

I am lucky in a lot of ways, but one of my favorite ways is that I have a lot of people who are willing to listen to me talk. Some of them are my students, obviously, but they aren't all captive audiences. I have a lots of good listen-y friends. And usually I am aware of the different types of responses I am going to get from different audiences.

Lately though, if I have more than 10 minutes to get going, the narrative I go into always elecits the same response: "You really are being so hard on yourself." "Why can't you see this is harder for you than for Little V?" I am on repeat it seems.

The semester is almost over, which is a place I didn't think we would get to in this absent/present marriage situation. The routine is there and we all find the predictability narcotic enough, and even though the kid is doing well and her vocalizing about daddy-missing and evidence of any anxiety have tapered off, the mental space I devote to worrying has gone up. I worry nearly constantly about her happiness/stability, about the story she will tell herself about this. We all do this, right?

Mr. V hates the idea of my quitting my job so we can all get back together more nights a week (he will still travel a lot). I sort of hate it too. No one is unhappy enough for us to think about his quitting his job to be here; he can't find anything else and I don't make enough because we are spoiled assholes. Yadda yadda.

Lately he wants to buy a house here, in this beautiful town than I live in all week and he lives in sometimes. He seems to feel like the mental overhead of "transition" is what is doing the most stressing, and that a feeling of throwing in will change things. Like the difficulties are at least known quantities and who knows, maybe they will go away?

Now of course it's one thing to feel like the overhead of "transitiony-ness" is the biggest burden when you aren't the one managing dinner, bath, and bed on your own every night. But, I don't know. I like buying houses. I like owning a house. I like not always feeling in flux and I like having a partner who wants to embody commitments in very particular ways. These are useful things for me.

And yet I can't bring myself to throw in and I can't sort why. First I thought it was about weekends: we play all weekend these days. We never do any home improvement, any landscaping, no nothing. But, I dunno, I think we could still regulate that even as home owners. Then I thought it was the particular houses Big V liked: they were missing the right kind of porch, or the bathroom was not in the right place. But I can't convince myself of that entirely either.

When I hear myself talk to all of these good listeners, I realize I am lately always setting up one of two stories, and they both eleicit the same response. And which story gets told (and, yea, they are partly fictionalized and mostly exaggerated and have all sort of empirical problems, but they are my stories and come in my head and then try to tell me they aren't there) depends on which thing, on that day, I feel like I will have an easier time forgiving myself: having fucked with my kid's emotional stability and comfort for the sake of two careers, or having given up a hard fought career for the sake of my kid's stability.

I mean, fuck, right? It's ridiculous and so total first-world feminist mommy banal and overwrought, which of course adds to the nausea.

Should we buy a house then?

I can't bear to end it this way, so please to enjoy this video compilation, which resonably approximates many conversations in my own bourgeoisie home.

The Flight of the Earls

The countryside round here is thickly settled with the descendants of the Polskie. If they were Irish, the Irish would say, you can't swing a dead cat without hitting one. But they're not Irish. They're Polish. I'm not sure what the Polish would say.

The Irish and the Polish have many national traits in common. Chief among them, calamitous national history. One tragedy crowding on another, coming so quickly, so thickly that, well, you can't hardly swing a dead cat...

Both nations have the geographic misfortune of sharing the neighborhood with powerful, covetous neighbors. Both nations have been submerged for centuries, their powerful neighbors planning to drown dreams of an independent existence in a colonial sheepdip. Both nations have nourished the hope of independence through war and famine and diaspora. Both nations have surfaced, gasping for air and buoyed up by the decline or defeat or exhaustion of their imperial overseers.

Both nations have worked to take their place in the world as it is. Neither nation has forgot the world as it was, the world that had no place for them. Each nation has tried, in fits and starts, to cauterize the festering wounds of the old order.

Now, a new tragedy has been visited on the Polish nation. Providence will have its cruel joke. Its not enough that Poland was beheaded at Katyn in 1940. The fearful loss must be re-enacted. The airliner bearing the political and military and commercial leaders of the state to a Katyn commemoration must sail through fog and treetops. It must strike the earth at top speed. It must be a flight of the earls, carrying the leaders away from the homeland and never returning them.

Its a mark of the terrible outrages endured by the Polish people to say they will endure this because they have endured worse. Much worse.

The folks round here fly the Polish flag with the Stars and Stripes on most patriotic holidays. Today, the bicolor and the tricolor fly from many porches but with a bit of black bunting on the good ole Red and White.

At Mass this morning, there were prayers for Poland and for the Polish people. On the side of the High Altar there's a portrait of the Black Madonna. The frame was draped in black.

A banner over the doors of the church proclaimed Wiwat Polska! And that's what I say.

Wiwat Polska!

If there Be any Sorrow Like Unto my Sorrow

Remember that old chestnut about paranoia? It's from the Book of Proverbs, I think; just because you're paranoid, it doesn't mean that they're not really out to get you.

Or was it Lamentations? I don't know. I can't be expected to remember everything.

Anyway, its also true that, just because you're feeling blue, it doesn't mean that the shit isn't really tragic.

Lately, I've been feeling pretty blue.

You need reasons? I'll give you reasons.

I can't give you reasons. I have to justify? I have to justify the blues?

Alright, alright. You're entitled to reasons.

My mother is slipping away. They tell me there's nothing to be done about it. She's very composed about it. Serene. But I could lose the best thing I ever had. I am not serene.

My recuperations are dragging on and on. And on. Nothing hurts real bad. Everything hurts a little. Nothing is terribly wrong. Nothing is quite right. I'm fucking fed up.

I'm babysitting two shorties over spring break; an eight year old boy and a seven year old boy.

I want them each drafted into the Army. Not our army. Like, the Belarussian Army. Or the Serbian Army. A really harsh Army that's a really long ways away and serves really bad food and pays really bad wages.

You may have better reasons for being blue. I'm sure there are better reasons. These are mine. Let me wallow in them.

Better, let me wallow in Stevie Ray. That suits me. Suits me down to the ground.

This morning, I watched two bald eagles shatter a convoy of mallards paddling from the south shore of the flowage to the north shore. The eagles wheeled and dove and stooped and strafed them and just massacred them. Whenever a duck tried to rise from the water, an eagle would hit it, hit it so hard it made my teeth rattle. The ducks were absolutely paniced, right up to the end.

So, shit could be worse. I guess.

People Before Profits

Pray for the dead and fight like Hell for the living

-Mother Jones

If any of you have been asked...to do anything other than run coal (i.e., build overcasts, do construction jobs, or whatever), you need to ignore them and run coal.

... coal pays the bills.

-Don Blankenship, Massey Energy Capo di tutti Capo

The handsome gent at the center of the photo on the left, the one with the impressive soup strainer, is Bennie Willingham, a coal miner at the Upper Big Branch coal mine and an employee of Mr. Blankenship.

Mr Willingham has been swept away by the gigantic methane explosion at the Upper Big Branch. He is lost to family, gathered around him in the photo, and friends.

Mr. Willingham regularly worked 12 hour shifts 1000 feet below the ground at the Upper Big Branch. He moved tons of coal for the Massey Energy Company.

We don't know what Massey Energy paid its miners since it is not a party to collective bargaining with the United Mine Workers of America. If it were a party, Mr Willingham would have been paid $22.42 per hour in the final year of the contract, 2014.

Mr Blankenship, who, so far as anyone can tell, hasn't dug a teaspoon of coal for Massey Energy, was paid $40 million dollars for the two year period ending 2007, the last year for which I've been able to find any figures for his wages. I'm not sure what that comes to per hour. Its clearly a better deal than he would have got from the UMWA contract. And, he works in a nice office, ten stories above the ground. So, you know, its a good deal.

Still, you have to wonder who is more valuable to the shareholders of Massey Energy; the people who actually dig out the commodity that pays the bills or the bosses who run up the bills? Apparently, there is an inexhaustible supply of the former and a nearly pinched out premium supply of the latter, if we assume that the vaunted free market in coal determines wage costs in the coal fields.

These explosions have got to be damned expensive. The order to focus on nothing but running coal has resulted in an absolute halt to running anything. It turns out that protecting workers, operating a safe workplace, mitigating hazards, is good business. Who knew?

After the Sago mine outrage, the UMWA investigated and released a report on causes and corrections. You can read it here.

We won't know for some time what caused the explosion at the Upper Big Branch mine but the UMWA report gives some items to look for. The top three conditions I'm looking for in news reports are as follows:

1) were the abandoned areas of the mine sealed off with permanent bulkheads or temporary foam barricades?

2) were lines of communication between surface and underground armored or were they run through plenum?

3) is the mine's safety and rescue team an outsourced contract team, unfamiliar with the Upper Big Branch operation or is it a standing team of workers who know the Upper Big Branch mine?

Its reported that when Mr Blankenship visited with miner's families and loved ones Tuesday morning, he was escorted by more than a dozen police officers. Evidently, no expense public or private, is spared when it comes to Mr Blankenship's safety.

Perhaps this principle could be extended to the operations of his mines. What if Mr Blankenship's office were located 1000' under the roots of the West Virginia mountains instead of ten stories above the commerical district of Richmond, Virginia? What if Mr Willingham and Mr Blankenship shared the risks of their business, even if they didn't share the rewards?

I bet you if that were the case, you could eat off the floor of that mine. And Mr Willingham would be home with his family, right now.

Why PK is never going to serve

Everyone should watch the (very upsetting) video at this link: http://mobile.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2010/04/05/iraq/index.html

One thing Greenwald doesn't mention is that the video shows, not only what we're doing to civilians in Afghanistan (& every war)--which is certainly bad enough--but what we're doing to our own young people. Yes, they sound callous in the video. Imagine the effects of that job on your psyche. Even those who don't give two shits about Afghans or reporters with funny names ought to be appalled by that.

Quick Hit: No Homo

I know these videos are really old (where "really old" is, in internet world, more than like a month), but I figure if I hadn't seen them until this morning, perhaps a lot of you hadn't either.

Bryan Safi has a hilarious video about "no homo."



And then Jay Smooth breaks down the issue of whether non-homophobes can use "no homo," like, ironically.



PS I love Jay Smooth a lot.

This is what we're afraid of

Most of you have probably already heard that Scott Roeder, the man who killed Dr. George Tiller, was sentenced to life in prison last week.

He will have his first eligibility for parole in 50 years. Roeder is 51. So, you do the math.

Most of the news coverage gave some indication that Roeder gave a long, hate-filled diatribe during his sentencing hearing. At sentencing, defendants typically have an opportunity to speak to make their case that their sentence should be lighter than the maximum, if they want to. I've seen sentencing hearings, and usually, defendants keep it brief. Remorse is the name of the game.

As I read all the accounts of Roeder's defense of his cold-blooded murder of Tiller, I couldn't help laughing a bit. Roeder, and all the terrorists who are like him, are pretty pathetic. They are held hostage by an all-consuming desire to control others, to elevate themselves by committing violence, and by impotent rage at their sense that they have been deprived something to which they are entitled. It's sad, how desperately they want attention, fame, to be someone who matters, even at the expense of ending their own lives, either literally or figuratively.

I'm reminded of the hysteria from conservatives and democrats alike when it was announced that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed would be tried in a civilian court. People were concerned that giving KSM a real trial would offer him a "platform" for his "ideology," whatever that is.

Krauthammer said, "KSM has gratuitously been presented with the greatest propaganda platform imaginable — a civilian trial in the media capital of the world — from which to proclaim the glory of jihad and the criminality of infidel America."

You can find dozens of similar examples. A google search for "give KSM a platform" returns 32,000 results.

Any "platform" that KSM would have in his trial would be almost exactly the same as the "platform" Roeder had, which was the ability to spend a couple of hours putting his pathetic hatred on display for a roomful of reporters. And this is what we're afraid of? The rantings of a man consumed by his desire to matter, to mean something? A desire so great that it trumps all human decency and reason, trumps the most basic human impulses toward goodness and kindness? And self-interest?

Yeah, color me unafraid.

A Whisper of a Wince

First, the links:
Jill Scott says something.
And Ta-Nehisi Coates says this.
Then Racialicious said some other things.
And then Coates had a PS.
And then we wrap up the week with Kevin Powell writing all us black folk a letter.

And now, the stories (which aren't prescriptive, merely illustrative):

When my friend Prof. L- sent me the Coates link I wrote him back. 'When ppl open their mouths and tell me how they 'feel' when they see another person's relationship choice I want to tell them to keep their personal issues to themselves. If they aren't about to say 'I hope they're happy,' then folks need to STFU.'

And Prof. L- replied,'Is there much of a distance from discomfort to disapproval?'
...
Here's another story:
When I was in therapy, my therapist (a WOC) started to dig deeper into my family background when our sessions began to concentrate on intimacy and relationships and why I felt I was such crap at them.  She wanted to know about my relationship to my father; what it was like to grow up in my old Baptist church; how I felt growing up in such a patriarchal and religious environment; what I really needed in a relationship.

My relationship to my father: I love the man, and I'm his 'duffle bag' (don't ask) but he was/is also the only man to make me ramp up to rage in under 10 minutes when the subject is women, men, politics or women in the bible/church.
What it was like growing up in my old Baptist church: it was like being a visitor from the future and you landed in 1898. BC.
How I felt growing up in such an environment: I was angry at all the bloviating old black dudes who were traditional, controlling, bullying, manipulative, insecure, and completely transparent with their greed and ambition. I hated that I had to compete with them for my father's attention.  Because I was better than they were, I had contempt for them.
What I needed most in a relationship:  Safety; recognition; personal integrity; comfort; to be taken care of; trust; mutual, unconditional support.  Acceptance.

Dr. C- would ask, 'And you can't find this in black men?'
I'd say, 'I probably could, but I don't give them the chance to show me. I am so angry, I can't see straight. All I can think of is those men in that church or I'm anticipating how they are going to turn into those types of men.'
Dr. C- would ask, 'Those men in the church. What was your primary method of dealing with them?'
I'd say, 'Competition. I had to beat them. I had to be smarter than they were, than their children were. I had to be a better church person than they were. Understand the bible better than they were. Even if they didn't let me preach, I had to be better at preaching.'
'Why?'
'So my dad would tell me 'good job,' or something. They didn't think a woman could be a leader in anything and I had to show them I was better than they were.'
Dr. C- (who was married to a very nice black man) would say, 'What do you think about trying to date a black man?'
I'd say, 'Well....ok. If you think that will help.'
And she'd say, 'It always helps to challenge our fears.'

And I tried.  But every conversation I'd have with a black man would either remind me of a tired R&B song or fill me with such panic attack anxiety I took a break and fell back into a liaison with B-, which was even more unsatisfying because it was finally clear to me that he was utterly incapble of giving me the things I needed most.

But at least he didn't remind me of that old Baptist church.

Then, when I was at the point of letting my Match.com account expire, I met M-.  A white guy. Who didn't graduate college. Who worked blue collar most of his life. Who wouldn't know Foucault if Michel bit him on his ass. Who, when he drove me home on our first date, said he wanted to make me a mixed CD and cancel his Match account the next day.  And I never spoke to, or saw, B- again.  Because of a white guy.  The Other.

This month marks our 1-year anniversary. It is the most emotionally satisfying relationship I've had since grad school.
...
A third, and final, story (which long-time readers may have already heard):
When it was time for me to go off to grad school, my cracker barrel, deeply southern godfather pulled me aside after evening church services.  I was leaving for Michigan in a couple of days and I was excited. Scared, too, but excited. In my imagination, Ann Arbor looked like Boston. (Yes, I was completely inaccurate but the main point was it was 2000 miles away from my provincial church.)

It was clear my godfather was trying to do the avuncular thing and this was the sterling piece of advice that he gave me:

'Don't jump the fence.'

What kind of backwoods, country folk-ism was this? I was blank-faced for a few seconds until his fierce gaze and the eventual, firing synapses in my brain made me stiffen. Don't jump the fence.  Don't leave your side of the social divide. Don't get involved with a white guy. Don't sleep with a white guy. Don't have sex with a white guy. Don't betray your people.  I wanted to slap his southern face.

'My father 'jumped the fence,' James.'
'Well, now. That's a little different. You just be careful. Don't jump the fence. Stay where you belong.'

I stomped away and seethed for hours. That was the last time I spoke to him.

Just this past year, my father told me that old James had died and it was revealed that he had had an affair with a married woman in the church for years. My old anger at his goatish hypocrisy rushed back at me and all I could do was sputter over the phone about that 'fucking old man.'
...
The 'heart wants what the heart wants' and it's usually because of something pushed so way down deep, you can't even recognize it.  So I get Scott's wince.  I do.  (I'm a student of African American history and literature; I've read the same history books and wondered why everyone gets play but a black girl.)

But I've got a wince of my own and the whisper of it makes me almost ashamed; I almost want to hand in my own Black Card of Racial Solidarity because of it. Almost. This is not to say that my triggers are the fault of others. It's not all black men's fault that I have this whisper of a wince. But I have it.  It has caused me to close one type of door between me and black men.  Other doors (filial, platonic or professional ones) remain open; just not intimate ones. In this regard, the man who has given me what I need is a white man.

Not all white men. Not every white man. A white man.

When we are together, the looks or stares (or whether someone may or may not have a wince) people send us don't register with me.  He is more aware of it than I am. And he is now more aware of the complex ways that our being together works as a kind of social shorthand in different parts of the city.  (He'd never say it that way; he just tells me, 'My Mexican neighbors like me better now because of you.')  But shorthand or not, when he looks at me he tells me that he has been waiting his whole life for me and I know that because of him, my heart is bigger.

So wince away, you Scotts of the world.  You can't help it.  It's not your fault.

[originally posted on Screed]

Poetry Wednesday

A day late. April Fool's.

This entry inspired by my deeply thoughtful reflections on my mothering for the last 4 days.

This Be The Verse
Phillip Larkin

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.