(see also)
Last night was incredible. The jumping, the hugging, the coming together with strangers in celebration, the drinking too much, the crying over beautiful speeches.
The election of a Black man in a country practically defined by its racism is unbelievable -- important regardless of the fact that that man needed to be nonthreatening, nonresponsive and centrist enough to weather every epithet the cornered GOP hurled.
And last night was heartbreaking.
Californians cared more about the size of animals' cages than the right of people who love each other to marry; Arizona and Florida fortified their religious bans against marriage for some, and Arkansas proved exactly how important that right is by voting to prevent unmarried people from adopting their own children or even being foster parents.
Michigan and Massachusetts loosened marijuana laws for medical use and possession of an ounce, but California defeated the attempt to reduce drug sentencing practices that are brutalizing communities (communities racially and ethnically distinct from those who will benefit -- if anyone does -- in MA and MI).
South Dakota tore down that unconstitutional abortion ban yet again, Colorado defeated the idea of a sperm stuck in an egg as human life, Massachusetts refused to repeal the income tax (thank you, adopted state, for being full of thinking people), and Montana's theoretically going to provide health insurance for their poorest and most vulnerable uninsured children. Meanwhile, Nebraska dissolved race- and gender-based affirmative action and Missouri voters made English their official state language in a virtually irrelevant but pointed statement about who they think should count in this country.
In other words, there's a slight chance the NY Times might be making an ass of itself with that headline its been braying since last night.
In other words, for every victory, whether small and true or sweeping and symbolic, there's that tidal pull backwards into isolationism, xenophobia, and viciousness.
Here's hoping the organizers and workers and idealists who made this happen (sometimes against their personal convictions but for the betterment of our country) are now going to turn that fierce pressure on the government we've created and force them as only we can to act on what is just, rather than what is expedient, political and usual.
Obama's election solves nothing. We all know that, right?
Wednesday, November 05, 2008
Monday, October 01, 2007
Ugly Guns & Monks in the Box
Today I opened my Hampshire email account, something I do only when I'm in the mood for deleting a lot of junk mail. Amidst offers of viagra and pornography was a message from someone named Colleen Conners with the Save Darfur Coalition. I get emails from her all the time, whoever she is, because a while back I went against the grain and signed an online petition for something or other demanding attention for the newest era of Sudanese atrocities. I generally delete these emails. I have nothing to divest and no patience with the buy a wristband / save a victim mentality of ass-sitting activism. Also, I have no money.
But I didn't delete it. The subject line was "Last chance, Catherine." This struck me as so severe and so formal that I immediately felt I was in trouble. Maybe my serial deletion of her well-meaning pleas had been discovered. God only knows what the almighty internet can track these days. Instead, I opened the message.
"Dear Catherine,
This is your last chance to take advantage of our matching gift offer. The deadline is midnight tonight!"
She informed me that "For as many as 400,000 slaughtered Darfurians, it's already too late." However, if I acted instantly, and with the aid of my trusty credit card sidekick, our "voice" would be matched by some "generous donors" to... what? Increase food aid? Assist refugees in an emergency immigration and naturalization program? Fund groups actively fighting the supposed "rebels" and the racist Khartoum government that almost certainly supports them?
Well, no. But in corporate boardrooms, Save Darfur will "urge companies to cut off the flow of oil money to the Sudanese government."
I write the above with unjustifiable snark. It is absolutely vital that the powers of the world stop funding petrolic despotisms like the one in Sudan. It won't happen, but it would be absolutely vital for a world in which human dignity or justice could honestly be discussed as possible aims. Groups like this perform important functions. Divestment is important. Increasing popular awareness is important. Being a known lobbying force in the U.S. Congress is important. It just doesn't have much to do with the struggles of people against brutal authoritarian regimes; with, as Colleen Conners put it, "the terrors faced by Darfurians every day."
Poor Colleen. I'm taking out frustration on her, and her respectfully purple request for funds, that actually stems from a BBC piece I read just before opening it. Titled "Lessons from the Burmese uprising," it informed me that "The military crackdown in Burma is a reminder that street demonstrations do not necessarily lead to success for popular uprisings.
"The key factor is the destabilisation of the existing regime and if protests cannot bring that about, they become vulnerable to the kind of repression the Burmese authorities have imposed. So far the Burmese military has held together. The campaign for democracy in Burma still hopes for rapid success but fears that the project will be more long-term."
Fears that the project will be more long-term? This of a constant democratic movement with an actual democratically-elected leader who has given up her free life and her exiled family to bring hope to her people for nearly twenty years?
Let me get this straight. The critique of the radical monks' protests is that they have failed to undermine a brutal junta on multiple fronts. Sounds an awful lot like a critique of non-violence to me. So let's say they had coordinated their efforts at a coup with guerrilla warfare -- which of course, seeing as they're Buddhist monks, seems a bit unlikely. Does Paul Reynolds, BBC World Affairs correspondent, imagine that the BBC would have spent ten days making Burma their top story? That the New York Times would have done so? That President Bush would have drawled at length about the country's "situation," would have given it a prime spot on his freedom agenda?
No. The monks--thousands of them now being taken to northern prisons, uncounted others shot, tear-gassed and beaten--have achieved the astounding: television-watching Americans are suddenly wondering where the hell Burma is and why the hell we haven't Done Something About It yet. Where are the t-shirts, the bracelets, the solemn celebrities intoning Aung San Suu Kyi's name? Here, as in Sudan, is an authoritarian government sustained on resource profits, one that has looked away from the active enslavement of its people, one that has collaborated with Western oil companies to devastate the farmland of its people, leaving multitudes homeless and starving.
The truth is, if a well-publicized guerrilla effort (such as the quiet armed struggle of the Karen over the past forty years) had accompanied those nonviolent protests, it would actually have served to legitimize the military junta, as far as the U.S. government was concerned. Who would receive military aid? The people who have been working for an open democracy throughout their entire adult lives, or the officials calling themselves Myanmar?
This leaves the people of Burma in an awful pickle, somewhat similar to that of the armed resistance in Southern Sudan, when theirs was the location of choice for the multi-generational Sudanese wars. You fight, and the powers further arm the juntas. You protest, and the powers voice polite alarm. Organizations ask for money to direct multimedia campaigns to raise awareness about you. Either way, you're being gunned down and the authoritarian governments of the world remain respectable trading partners and principles in negotiation.
Not that the U.S. should be sending Marines into Rangoon and Khartoum. International negotiation and censure have rarely been given the berth and heft that might allow them to function as true aids to the growth of non-authoritarian societies. But in the meantime, it seems that the message the superpowers and their folks are sending is just this: Only victims need apply.
Sure, we'll come to your aid. All we ask is that you do nothing to defend yourselves. Just wait with picturesque martyred patience until our slow-swinging gaze finds you fascinating enough to put on a poster. If, on the other hand, you pick up a gun in full public view and announce your intent for revolution, we'll make sure to sell so many land mines to your oppressors that your great-great grandkids will still be getting nickels to gather them out of the rough.
But I didn't delete it. The subject line was "Last chance, Catherine." This struck me as so severe and so formal that I immediately felt I was in trouble. Maybe my serial deletion of her well-meaning pleas had been discovered. God only knows what the almighty internet can track these days. Instead, I opened the message.
"Dear Catherine,
This is your last chance to take advantage of our matching gift offer. The deadline is midnight tonight!"
She informed me that "For as many as 400,000 slaughtered Darfurians, it's already too late." However, if I acted instantly, and with the aid of my trusty credit card sidekick, our "voice" would be matched by some "generous donors" to... what? Increase food aid? Assist refugees in an emergency immigration and naturalization program? Fund groups actively fighting the supposed "rebels" and the racist Khartoum government that almost certainly supports them?
Well, no. But in corporate boardrooms, Save Darfur will "urge companies to cut off the flow of oil money to the Sudanese government."
I write the above with unjustifiable snark. It is absolutely vital that the powers of the world stop funding petrolic despotisms like the one in Sudan. It won't happen, but it would be absolutely vital for a world in which human dignity or justice could honestly be discussed as possible aims. Groups like this perform important functions. Divestment is important. Increasing popular awareness is important. Being a known lobbying force in the U.S. Congress is important. It just doesn't have much to do with the struggles of people against brutal authoritarian regimes; with, as Colleen Conners put it, "the terrors faced by Darfurians every day."
Poor Colleen. I'm taking out frustration on her, and her respectfully purple request for funds, that actually stems from a BBC piece I read just before opening it. Titled "Lessons from the Burmese uprising," it informed me that "The military crackdown in Burma is a reminder that street demonstrations do not necessarily lead to success for popular uprisings.
"The key factor is the destabilisation of the existing regime and if protests cannot bring that about, they become vulnerable to the kind of repression the Burmese authorities have imposed. So far the Burmese military has held together. The campaign for democracy in Burma still hopes for rapid success but fears that the project will be more long-term."
Fears that the project will be more long-term? This of a constant democratic movement with an actual democratically-elected leader who has given up her free life and her exiled family to bring hope to her people for nearly twenty years?
Let me get this straight. The critique of the radical monks' protests is that they have failed to undermine a brutal junta on multiple fronts. Sounds an awful lot like a critique of non-violence to me. So let's say they had coordinated their efforts at a coup with guerrilla warfare -- which of course, seeing as they're Buddhist monks, seems a bit unlikely. Does Paul Reynolds, BBC World Affairs correspondent, imagine that the BBC would have spent ten days making Burma their top story? That the New York Times would have done so? That President Bush would have drawled at length about the country's "situation," would have given it a prime spot on his freedom agenda?
No. The monks--thousands of them now being taken to northern prisons, uncounted others shot, tear-gassed and beaten--have achieved the astounding: television-watching Americans are suddenly wondering where the hell Burma is and why the hell we haven't Done Something About It yet. Where are the t-shirts, the bracelets, the solemn celebrities intoning Aung San Suu Kyi's name? Here, as in Sudan, is an authoritarian government sustained on resource profits, one that has looked away from the active enslavement of its people, one that has collaborated with Western oil companies to devastate the farmland of its people, leaving multitudes homeless and starving.
The truth is, if a well-publicized guerrilla effort (such as the quiet armed struggle of the Karen over the past forty years) had accompanied those nonviolent protests, it would actually have served to legitimize the military junta, as far as the U.S. government was concerned. Who would receive military aid? The people who have been working for an open democracy throughout their entire adult lives, or the officials calling themselves Myanmar?
This leaves the people of Burma in an awful pickle, somewhat similar to that of the armed resistance in Southern Sudan, when theirs was the location of choice for the multi-generational Sudanese wars. You fight, and the powers further arm the juntas. You protest, and the powers voice polite alarm. Organizations ask for money to direct multimedia campaigns to raise awareness about you. Either way, you're being gunned down and the authoritarian governments of the world remain respectable trading partners and principles in negotiation.
Not that the U.S. should be sending Marines into Rangoon and Khartoum. International negotiation and censure have rarely been given the berth and heft that might allow them to function as true aids to the growth of non-authoritarian societies. But in the meantime, it seems that the message the superpowers and their folks are sending is just this: Only victims need apply.
Sure, we'll come to your aid. All we ask is that you do nothing to defend yourselves. Just wait with picturesque martyred patience until our slow-swinging gaze finds you fascinating enough to put on a poster. If, on the other hand, you pick up a gun in full public view and announce your intent for revolution, we'll make sure to sell so many land mines to your oppressors that your great-great grandkids will still be getting nickels to gather them out of the rough.
Thursday, July 26, 2007
radiowaves
For one of my jobs these days, I sit in a grey box of an office with a huge window all my own looking out across E Street at the yellow concrete of floors two through four of the JC Penney parking garage. Generally it seems to rain. Although parts of this job, the legal one, are interesting, I do spend a lot of time putting things in chronological order, and cataloging long columns of itemized personal injury medical costs. What makes this so enjoyable, besides my own delight in the nitpicky monotony of finite organizational systems, is that I listen to archived episodes of This American Life while doing it.
At first, I was just listening backwards one week at a time, until I hit big patches of weeks I'd actually heard when they aired, and decided I needed a new system. Through the due diligence necessary in my adopted profession, I discovered that Wikipedia lists every TAL episode featuring David Sedaris, and Sarah Vowell, and I'm sure other people as well, but who cares? This approach not only gives me a mind-boggling cross-section of topics to choose from, ranging from the earliest Radio Playhouse days, but a certain reassurance of quality. Either David Sedaris and Sarah Vowell could make me laugh anytime, by dint of inflection alone.
It's a dangerous game I'm playing. People rarely come into my office, but I'm sure that if they decided to start they'd be unsettled by the sheer range of emotions I've started displaying while filing. I mean, okay. Even leaving aside the obvious triggers, like the one with the undocumented college student who wants to be a doctor, but can't, because they just won't pass the damned DREAM Act. Even without that. Who could listen to Episode #24, Teenage Girls, and not get a big wad of nostalgia or empathy or just plain sad stuck in her throat? The suspicion that it could actually make you cry almost makes you smile. And #175, Babysitting? The teenage stud who terrorizes his little brothers into believing he's really a werewolf? It's perfect. Really, go listen to it. You'll see. And while you're at it, just try not falling in love with the author of the zine Infiltration who's interviewed during Invisible Worlds, #141. That's a dare. He starts talking 37 minutes in, during Act III. Go now. Give it your all. But be forewarned: it's not just his strangeness and his sweet voice and his amazing mind. It's also because he only dates people who come armed with a book, and then sounds almost surprised when Ira implies that might be odd. (Also because he manages to compare fish farming technique with complicity in a pseudo-fascist mindset.)
The one that's hit me the hardest, though? It's odd. I was listening to The Business of Death yesterday, (#60, first aired in 1997), and all of a sudden Michael Lesy was talking out of my computer speakers, and into the grey stillness of my files and lists and rain-pimpled window. For those of you who didn't go to Hampshire, Professor Lesy is something of an institution. As a writer, he's sort of a cult figure, author of Wisconsin Death Trip and more recently Murder City, along with other similarly stark photojournalistic histories of the country. As a professor, he's terrifying. He reduces people to tears, on purpose, on a regular basis. He's a ferociously keen observer, and considers undergraduate students to have unusually big, unusually frail egos. I took a class with him during my first year, because I heard these kinds of things. Despite considerable efforts toward a cool bravado, I was really scared of him.
Yet there was his voice, unexpectedly in the room, all around me. And there was something so weirdly, completely reassuring about hearing it. That irritable, mile-ahead-of-you voice. That pause, that sigh, that almost tangible air of judgement. I could hear him doing it to Ira Glass, imagined Ira (who I've never seen any pictures of, on purpose, but whom I of course consider very attractive) squirming as even his questions are left hanging, fullbellied, in the air. Ah, Lesy, and his rhythmic folding of "miracle" into casual conversation. His voice wielding words that swallow all of the oxygen out of most people's vocabularies. Divine miracles. Satanic miracles. Precious knowledge.
I know what the sensation was, the reassurance. It was the blessed rush of familiarity immediately preceding homesickness. And yes, it has come to this. Michael Lesy's eight-year-old recorded conversations on the Internet are making me homesick. And not so much for a place (although there is definitely that) as for someone I used to be, someone no less naïve but just a little more hopeful, just a little more devoted to her own improvement. Someone who wrote constantly, who couldn't keep herself from it, who watched and listened to strangers and figured there would never be a time that she'd stop.
...And in a queasy effort not to end this on a pitiful, melodramatic note: I am applying for jobs. Well, I have been since June. Entropy and realism are slowing the writing of cover letters these days. But mostly so far they've been in New York, Boston and D.C. If I get my stamina back, Seattle joins the list. Anyway, these are all long, long, long shots. So feel free to send me some good vibes, if that's your thing. Or advice. It's solicited, I promise.
And you?
At first, I was just listening backwards one week at a time, until I hit big patches of weeks I'd actually heard when they aired, and decided I needed a new system. Through the due diligence necessary in my adopted profession, I discovered that Wikipedia lists every TAL episode featuring David Sedaris, and Sarah Vowell, and I'm sure other people as well, but who cares? This approach not only gives me a mind-boggling cross-section of topics to choose from, ranging from the earliest Radio Playhouse days, but a certain reassurance of quality. Either David Sedaris and Sarah Vowell could make me laugh anytime, by dint of inflection alone.
It's a dangerous game I'm playing. People rarely come into my office, but I'm sure that if they decided to start they'd be unsettled by the sheer range of emotions I've started displaying while filing. I mean, okay. Even leaving aside the obvious triggers, like the one with the undocumented college student who wants to be a doctor, but can't, because they just won't pass the damned DREAM Act. Even without that. Who could listen to Episode #24, Teenage Girls, and not get a big wad of nostalgia or empathy or just plain sad stuck in her throat? The suspicion that it could actually make you cry almost makes you smile. And #175, Babysitting? The teenage stud who terrorizes his little brothers into believing he's really a werewolf? It's perfect. Really, go listen to it. You'll see. And while you're at it, just try not falling in love with the author of the zine Infiltration who's interviewed during Invisible Worlds, #141. That's a dare. He starts talking 37 minutes in, during Act III. Go now. Give it your all. But be forewarned: it's not just his strangeness and his sweet voice and his amazing mind. It's also because he only dates people who come armed with a book, and then sounds almost surprised when Ira implies that might be odd. (Also because he manages to compare fish farming technique with complicity in a pseudo-fascist mindset.)
The one that's hit me the hardest, though? It's odd. I was listening to The Business of Death yesterday, (#60, first aired in 1997), and all of a sudden Michael Lesy was talking out of my computer speakers, and into the grey stillness of my files and lists and rain-pimpled window. For those of you who didn't go to Hampshire, Professor Lesy is something of an institution. As a writer, he's sort of a cult figure, author of Wisconsin Death Trip and more recently Murder City, along with other similarly stark photojournalistic histories of the country. As a professor, he's terrifying. He reduces people to tears, on purpose, on a regular basis. He's a ferociously keen observer, and considers undergraduate students to have unusually big, unusually frail egos. I took a class with him during my first year, because I heard these kinds of things. Despite considerable efforts toward a cool bravado, I was really scared of him.
Yet there was his voice, unexpectedly in the room, all around me. And there was something so weirdly, completely reassuring about hearing it. That irritable, mile-ahead-of-you voice. That pause, that sigh, that almost tangible air of judgement. I could hear him doing it to Ira Glass, imagined Ira (who I've never seen any pictures of, on purpose, but whom I of course consider very attractive) squirming as even his questions are left hanging, fullbellied, in the air. Ah, Lesy, and his rhythmic folding of "miracle" into casual conversation. His voice wielding words that swallow all of the oxygen out of most people's vocabularies. Divine miracles. Satanic miracles. Precious knowledge.
I know what the sensation was, the reassurance. It was the blessed rush of familiarity immediately preceding homesickness. And yes, it has come to this. Michael Lesy's eight-year-old recorded conversations on the Internet are making me homesick. And not so much for a place (although there is definitely that) as for someone I used to be, someone no less naïve but just a little more hopeful, just a little more devoted to her own improvement. Someone who wrote constantly, who couldn't keep herself from it, who watched and listened to strangers and figured there would never be a time that she'd stop.
...And in a queasy effort not to end this on a pitiful, melodramatic note: I am applying for jobs. Well, I have been since June. Entropy and realism are slowing the writing of cover letters these days. But mostly so far they've been in New York, Boston and D.C. If I get my stamina back, Seattle joins the list. Anyway, these are all long, long, long shots. So feel free to send me some good vibes, if that's your thing. Or advice. It's solicited, I promise.
And you?
Thursday, February 08, 2007
Ah, Anchorage...
...Where every overheard conversation is guaranteed to contain at least one of the following words: oil, gas, pipeline, or deployed.
Oh, the battered eggplants, withered green beans and three frozen food aisles per store symbolic of the statewide Safeway monopoly on groceries.
And then there's the mayor, who goes on the weekly public radio call-in show today (the host is my high school friend's mother) and he gets at least one chance to preface a caller's answer with the phrase, "Oh hi there, Myrna!"
All three of them went on to talk about all those poor folks on the East Coast where it's so cold these days.
For a third of a million people, it's just such a darn cute little town.
Here's what I learned at work this week. Floriental. Yeah, apparently it's a word. At least for people who write advertising copy.
Here's what I learned during the half-hour break every morning between taking Baby J to preschool and showing up for work: my brains have atrophied. Those LSATs actually aren't going to be a piece of cake after all. And I haven't even gotten to the logic games. We're talking reading comprehension.
I finally read my final evaluation. Clearly my committee didn't get the memo about my atrophied brain. I was getting kind of down, thinking about how much I love evaluations and how I won't ever get them again since Hampshire doesn't have grad programs and even if we did -- Ha! But I guess the feeling could be duplicated by reading a congratulatory review of some book you'd written... assuming you were paying the reviewer.
Here's to spiked hot cocoa and comic books at midnight even when you don't live with a passle of hotties who love these things as much as you do.
Forty-seven days.
Oh, the battered eggplants, withered green beans and three frozen food aisles per store symbolic of the statewide Safeway monopoly on groceries.
And then there's the mayor, who goes on the weekly public radio call-in show today (the host is my high school friend's mother) and he gets at least one chance to preface a caller's answer with the phrase, "Oh hi there, Myrna!"
All three of them went on to talk about all those poor folks on the East Coast where it's so cold these days.
For a third of a million people, it's just such a darn cute little town.
Here's what I learned at work this week. Floriental. Yeah, apparently it's a word. At least for people who write advertising copy.
Here's what I learned during the half-hour break every morning between taking Baby J to preschool and showing up for work: my brains have atrophied. Those LSATs actually aren't going to be a piece of cake after all. And I haven't even gotten to the logic games. We're talking reading comprehension.
I finally read my final evaluation. Clearly my committee didn't get the memo about my atrophied brain. I was getting kind of down, thinking about how much I love evaluations and how I won't ever get them again since Hampshire doesn't have grad programs and even if we did -- Ha! But I guess the feeling could be duplicated by reading a congratulatory review of some book you'd written... assuming you were paying the reviewer.
Here's to spiked hot cocoa and comic books at midnight even when you don't live with a passle of hotties who love these things as much as you do.
Forty-seven days.
Monday, January 22, 2007
all the photographs i meant to take
In December and January, Katie:
• Finished her so-called Division III.
• Concluded that somewhere in her head, she actually dropped out of college last spring.
• Went back to Alaska early, missing her final meeting.
• Rang in this lackluster new year.
• Returned to Massachusetts, had her final meeting.
• Decided to move back to Alaska.
So, consider yourself updated on the life of a pingpong ball, pals.
It's hard to reconcile the need to be back in Alaska--the various needs to be back in Alaska--with the suddenly even sharper awareness of how much I've come to care for the geography here.* Things that made me homesick four years ago have taken on this throb of home now so, actually, no matter where I am I'm homesick for something. Whether it's the Chugach range or the Pioneer Valley pumpkin fields or something internal that I'm lacking, I couldn't tell you. I was solid as a kid. Life happens: people disappear, you leave places behind, time's erosion fades into view and sooner or later you realize that growing up is actually hollowing out. I keep looking for things to fill me, and they feel good for a while, but then... they don't actually fit in me and then the hollow is that much more resounding.
I'm preparing to leave, which apparently means putting off saying I'm leaving or packing stuff or thinking about how this isn't going to change very much at all except for taking me away from these incredible people I live with. Apparently, preparing to leave also means tabulating things. The ratio of crows to cows rutting for grain at a feed trough. The degree by which those bristling hills pale as they move layer by layer away from the road. How many invisible green cornrows it takes to fill each scabby January field. I just keep counting things and forgetting them and counting them again as I drive by as if really it's these numbers of things I'm going to miss and if I get them down in the right order I can reconstruct them at a distance.
But anyway.
Since this is already a pretty el jay sort of thing, all musey and angsty and Kings of Convenience-y, I'm not going to try for anything else. Here's the shortview of the Rest of My Life. I'm studying for the LSATs, but I don't know if I want to be a lawyer. I've got a cool gig writing an article about Alaska environmental/reproductive justice, but I don't think I want to go into journalism. I like tomatos, but I don't want to pick them. In the near future, I will be studying for the LSATs, working on the article, cooking with tomatos... probably while working at the Body Shop and substitute teaching and taking care of my fabulous, ferocious young cousin and reading novels and waiting for the flash of lightning that says something besides "God, what an awful lot of loans you have."
And definitely writing in my blog more than once every three months.
So, be well. And tell me what y'all been up to.
* Despite misleadlingly present tense prose, this was written over the last week so I wouldn't have to think in my present haze of loneliness for the Bay Road House + denizens. I am actually in the grimy grey city A-Rage even now.
• Finished her so-called Division III.
• Concluded that somewhere in her head, she actually dropped out of college last spring.
• Went back to Alaska early, missing her final meeting.
• Rang in this lackluster new year.
• Returned to Massachusetts, had her final meeting.
• Decided to move back to Alaska.
So, consider yourself updated on the life of a pingpong ball, pals.
It's hard to reconcile the need to be back in Alaska--the various needs to be back in Alaska--with the suddenly even sharper awareness of how much I've come to care for the geography here.* Things that made me homesick four years ago have taken on this throb of home now so, actually, no matter where I am I'm homesick for something. Whether it's the Chugach range or the Pioneer Valley pumpkin fields or something internal that I'm lacking, I couldn't tell you. I was solid as a kid. Life happens: people disappear, you leave places behind, time's erosion fades into view and sooner or later you realize that growing up is actually hollowing out. I keep looking for things to fill me, and they feel good for a while, but then... they don't actually fit in me and then the hollow is that much more resounding.
I'm preparing to leave, which apparently means putting off saying I'm leaving or packing stuff or thinking about how this isn't going to change very much at all except for taking me away from these incredible people I live with. Apparently, preparing to leave also means tabulating things. The ratio of crows to cows rutting for grain at a feed trough. The degree by which those bristling hills pale as they move layer by layer away from the road. How many invisible green cornrows it takes to fill each scabby January field. I just keep counting things and forgetting them and counting them again as I drive by as if really it's these numbers of things I'm going to miss and if I get them down in the right order I can reconstruct them at a distance.
But anyway.
Since this is already a pretty el jay sort of thing, all musey and angsty and Kings of Convenience-y, I'm not going to try for anything else. Here's the shortview of the Rest of My Life. I'm studying for the LSATs, but I don't know if I want to be a lawyer. I've got a cool gig writing an article about Alaska environmental/reproductive justice, but I don't think I want to go into journalism. I like tomatos, but I don't want to pick them. In the near future, I will be studying for the LSATs, working on the article, cooking with tomatos... probably while working at the Body Shop and substitute teaching and taking care of my fabulous, ferocious young cousin and reading novels and waiting for the flash of lightning that says something besides "God, what an awful lot of loans you have."
And definitely writing in my blog more than once every three months.
So, be well. And tell me what y'all been up to.
* Despite misleadlingly present tense prose, this was written over the last week so I wouldn't have to think in my present haze of loneliness for the Bay Road House + denizens. I am actually in the grimy grey city A-Rage even now.
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
I made a turkey. A whole one. Well, some sort of evolutionary chain of events made the turkey, but I successfully cooked its featherless carcass until brown and that, my friends, has added a level of confidence to my life that I never before knew. From here on out, it's all gravy.
It's recently come to my attention that (wait for it) American television 'news' programs are really, really weird. I guess I never watched 'em before except when trapped beneath an airport teevee blaring CNN, but now I read Media Matters on a fairly regular basis, which is like watching the only admirable traits human society posesses self-destruct in slow, slow motion. This mostly involves lots of delightful clips of people like Tucker Carlson and Glenn Beck -- people I was much happier not knowing existed, but whose EvilBot™ rants I am now too fascinated with to lose.
So, racism. We all knew it was everywhere, but I guess we're back to the point where apparently you aren't supposed to talk about it. This explains a lot, but let's stick to the movies. Case in point: Tucker Carlson, speaking with Arsalan Iftikhar of the Council on American-Islamic Relations on November 21. They're talking about the six Imams who were handcuffed & forced off of their flight home from Minneapolis because fellow passengers found it suspicious that they said evening prayers. So, fairly cut and dry, a violation of these men's rights because of some passengers' ignorance of one of the most basic tenets of Islam, regular daily prayer.
So, Iftikhar goes: "I think, Tucker, that this incident in Minnesota highlights the racial profiling and 'flying while Muslim' phenomenon that we've seen for the last five years, where American Muslims, who are lawful, peaceful, law-abiding citizens of the United States, have been disparately caught up in the fear and stereotyping that unfortunately has become pervasive in our society. ..."
And Tucker responds: "I don't know what you're talking about. Wait a second. I know Muslim groups always make it sound like, you know, we live in a fascist country that hates Muslims. Actually, we live in a very tolerant country. I know that it's popular to be anti-American, but the truth is, most Americans are really sort of open-minded and there isn't a lot of racial profiling going on. I don't know what you're talking about. I know you've got a vested interest in claiming there is, but I don't think you're right."
Seriously though, justgo watch it. It's hilarious and horrifying all in the same juicy moment, and it goes on. Reading the words on a silent little blog just doesn't compare with watching Carlson pompously bluster at this eloquent Muslim man that there isn't any damn racism in this country, boy, 'cause he flies all the time and there are, you know, South Asians on his flights. Hell, he's even been to a mosque! (Oh, sorry. That's that other racist dude.)
Not that Tucker Carlson's a racist. Just like Strom Thurmond and Trent Lott ain't racist. As TC will tell you, amidst a fit of hysterical laughter meant to distract from the fact that he's up against a wall. If you watch that Iftikhar clip through to the end, to the part where Al Sharpton takes him over his knee, you will be a happier person than you were only moments before.
Fifty, maybe seventy years from now when social anthropologists and political philosophers are writing books and collecting media samples to try and glean some stable, dissectable theory of how whatever chaos is coming came to be, they're going to be watching a lot of Glenn Beck and Tucker Carlson, and all the rest of these smarmy punchline pundits. And all of us, the faceless public, any silence we keep is going to be attributed to agreement with Beck when he says we should "embrace the Good Muslims," but that it's ultimately up to Them to persuade Us not to round them up and lock them in camps.
There's an awful lot of talking and not a lot of questioning going on. It's time to start teaching Hannah Arendt in high school.
It's recently come to my attention that (wait for it) American television 'news' programs are really, really weird. I guess I never watched 'em before except when trapped beneath an airport teevee blaring CNN, but now I read Media Matters on a fairly regular basis, which is like watching the only admirable traits human society posesses self-destruct in slow, slow motion. This mostly involves lots of delightful clips of people like Tucker Carlson and Glenn Beck -- people I was much happier not knowing existed, but whose EvilBot™ rants I am now too fascinated with to lose.
So, racism. We all knew it was everywhere, but I guess we're back to the point where apparently you aren't supposed to talk about it. This explains a lot, but let's stick to the movies. Case in point: Tucker Carlson, speaking with Arsalan Iftikhar of the Council on American-Islamic Relations on November 21. They're talking about the six Imams who were handcuffed & forced off of their flight home from Minneapolis because fellow passengers found it suspicious that they said evening prayers. So, fairly cut and dry, a violation of these men's rights because of some passengers' ignorance of one of the most basic tenets of Islam, regular daily prayer.
So, Iftikhar goes: "I think, Tucker, that this incident in Minnesota highlights the racial profiling and 'flying while Muslim' phenomenon that we've seen for the last five years, where American Muslims, who are lawful, peaceful, law-abiding citizens of the United States, have been disparately caught up in the fear and stereotyping that unfortunately has become pervasive in our society. ..."
And Tucker responds: "I don't know what you're talking about. Wait a second. I know Muslim groups always make it sound like, you know, we live in a fascist country that hates Muslims. Actually, we live in a very tolerant country. I know that it's popular to be anti-American, but the truth is, most Americans are really sort of open-minded and there isn't a lot of racial profiling going on. I don't know what you're talking about. I know you've got a vested interest in claiming there is, but I don't think you're right."
Seriously though, just
Not that Tucker Carlson's a racist. Just like Strom Thurmond and Trent Lott ain't racist. As TC will tell you, amidst a fit of hysterical laughter meant to distract from the fact that he's up against a wall. If you watch that Iftikhar clip through to the end, to the part where Al Sharpton takes him over his knee, you will be a happier person than you were only moments before.
Fifty, maybe seventy years from now when social anthropologists and political philosophers are writing books and collecting media samples to try and glean some stable, dissectable theory of how whatever chaos is coming came to be, they're going to be watching a lot of Glenn Beck and Tucker Carlson, and all the rest of these smarmy punchline pundits. And all of us, the faceless public, any silence we keep is going to be attributed to agreement with Beck when he says we should "embrace the Good Muslims," but that it's ultimately up to Them to persuade Us not to round them up and lock them in camps.
There's an awful lot of talking and not a lot of questioning going on. It's time to start teaching Hannah Arendt in high school.
Saturday, November 11, 2006
S.U.R.L.Y. (Sex, Violence, and the non-Continental Aftershock in the 2006 Elections)
"Can you believe I'm going to be the fucking president?"
~ George W. Bush to an Austin woman immediately after the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Bush v. Gore (Reported by Sidney Blumenthal)
~ George W. Bush to an Austin woman immediately after the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Bush v. Gore (Reported by Sidney Blumenthal)
Okay. I tried to let it go. But it just feels wrong.
The rest of the (progressive) country is in throes of righteous delight, especially those lucky sonsaguns who live in VT, and I'm hunkered down into my trashcan, grouchin' away.
It's as it should be, I suppose. I mean, Alaska just wouldn't be Alaska if every single election didn't leave you wanting to cry...
And sure, there's plenty to be happy about. The House, the Senate, the Nancy, the TAKE THAT SOUTH DAKOTA LEGISLATURE.
But let's not forget what one wise republican pundit on NPR (who will remain nameless 'cause I don't care enough to look him up) said weeks ago: if you lose the midterm elections, it makes it all that much more likely that you'll take the presidency. There's a reason those pink states stay pink: their races are considered lost from the outset by the Nat'l Dem Party... even though many, as in Alaska, are decided by less than a 10% margin within the one-half of voters who bother to show up. A little more local presence would do us all some good.
On the other hand, who cares about strategy?? This is all about indulging in a little bad mood badmouthin' of one of the most repellent campaign seasons America's coughed up--a truly remarkable accomplishment, all considered. And with everyone else basking in the honeymoon glow of freshly vowed bipartisanship, who better to review the highlights than the pissed-off girl sulking in the (northwesternest) corner?
Three Wishes for the Next Election
#1. Leave Gay Sex Out of It.
For god's sake, when we try to talk about marriage, all those Republicans are interested in is carnal out-of-wedlock ...innuendo. Why is there this need to drag a time-honored American tradition into as many RNC advertisements as possible? It's the new baby-kissin' or something. I'm trying to limit my references, so I'll give you the Brokeback, I mean "Brokebank Democrats" ad against Democrat Jon Tester in Montana. But OMG, isn't it hilarious when Lynne Cheney, acclaimed author of mediocre romance novels and coincidentally the Vice-President's spouse, goes on the teevee to denounce Democrat Jim Webb's explicit books... and Wolf Blitzer asks her if 'Sisters' (her own 1981 'frontier' romance) had lesbian characters and she DENIES it as if insulted. But um, the book is sort of published already and clearly does, so everyone ends up a little, WTF Lynne?
#2. No More Violent Abusers, Plz.
Foley's just a statutory-fiddler, so let's leave him out of this. There are, after all, so many other examples to choose from. Such as that PA Repub (Don Sherwood) who half-strangled his mistress and then paid her $500,000 to stay quiet about it on the condition that she receive the second half after election day. AND THEN gets his wife to send a letter to constituents saying she wished that mean democrat opponent would just quit dragging her husband's personal life into the election. Or how about the NY Repub (John Sweeney) whose wife had to call 911 after he started "knocking her around," and "grabbed [her] by the neck"? (His teenage son, by the by, recently pled guilty to felony assault charges. Family Values party, folks!)
#3. Just Say No to Totalitarianism
In other words, people shouldn't be fired for disliking the President. Or even for flipping him off. Especially if it gets middle school kids to cheer for their bus driver.
...and since that was a short one, let's add #4: Quit Using Memory Triggers to Sell Your Candidates. Actually, how about not using gratuitous violence-against-women images at all? It might help you cut down on those problems the GOP's been having with the, how do you say... violence against women.
In conclusion, a few words about our (other) moral shepards. Though it couldn't have fallen under Wish #1 since it's not poor Ted Haggard's fault that he got nonconsensually outed during campaign season. Of course, it is his fault that he's rallied the forces of hate and intolerance against guys who love guys while taking advantage of his own wealth and position of autonomous power to have transaction sex with... guys who love guys. I mean, how self-hating does a man have to be to get up in front of 14,000 people a week and tell them gay people are abominations; to lead the National Association of Evangelicals and hang out with GWBush and fight rabidly against civil rights for gay people... all while carrying on a three-year-long relationship with another man?
You just want to say you poor, poor, poor man.
But then on the other hand there's that whole vituperous abuse of power thing. And the allying himself with asinine comrades like Mark Driscoll, who's gonna blame Haggard's wife for his forays into prostitution and crystal meth.
(Like so: "At the risk of being even more widely despised than I currently am, I will lean over the plate and take one for the team on this. It is not uncommon to meet pastors' wives who really let themselves go; they sometimes feel that because their husband is a pastor, he is therefore trapped into fidelity, which gives them cause for laziness. A wife who lets herself go and is not sexually available to her husband in the ways that the Song of Songs is so frank about is not responsible for her husband's sin, but she may not be helping him either."
In fairness, Driscoll's recently edited that blog entry along the lines of "...let us pray that his wife and five children will be loved and supported through this incredibly difficult time. The horror they must be experiencing is likely unbearable."
Much more Christian, I'd say.)
My favorite blog during this wild election season, with its ups and downs and low, low blows has been Talking Points Memo. Ever read that one? Good stuff. Contributer David Kurtz wrote in last week with a suggestion for a new 'Hypocritic Oath:'
"I think that it is time that we ask that all Evangelicals supporting anti-gay marriage provisions to pledge that they themselves are not having gay sex
or doing meth."
or doing meth."
Amen to that.
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