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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 emphasize. 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?