sunspark says...

Two Dragons

2011-12-22T01:47:00.002-06:00

Two Dragons

Two questions have haunted David Fincher’s much-anticipatedAmerican version of The Girl With theDragon Tattoo: will it be worth thewait? and is there really a reason tomake it in the first place? Well, now that it is here, it’s safe to saythat the answer to the first is that it most definitely was worth the wait: itis a relentlessly dark movie about relentlessly dark people with mysterious anddark histories. And it is brilliant. As to the second question, which begs thenotion of whether Fincher could add anything new to the visualization that the2009 Swedish version did not (other than a far greater budget), I was willingto bet that America’s greatest stylist could manage to make it his own in some sort of way. And I think I’d winthat bet also.

Fincher’s take on the first book of Stieg Larsson’sMillennium Trilogy turns out to be less Se7enand more Zodiac, not so much thethriller as the pulsating, slowing unwinding, inexorable mystery, which isexactly what Larsson’s book, with its vast complexities of financialmalfeasance, familial discord, and cryptic clues, is in the first place. Thedirector begins, as the book and the Swedish film both do, by presenting theacute reason for trying to unravel a cold case now 40 years old, the arrival ofa birthday gift. What follows this brief moment is a title sequence, over KarenO’s cover of “Immigrant Song,” that is surreal and haunting and ratherfrightening as it sets up some of the uglier backstory in enigmatic, Rorschachimages. Once free of this nightmare, though, Fincher moves somewhat moreconventionally.

Using a palette of white and gray and light gray and darkgray and several other shades of gray, (to which he generously adds some sepiawhen he moves indoors) Fincher shows us a part of Sweden trapped in anever-ending frozen state that one character not too inaccurately calls “theNorth Pole.” Niels Arden Oplev, director of the Swedish film, opted for a lessrestrictive palette, even allowing (gasp) sunshine to penetrate his Hedeby Island.Not so Fincher, whose island is in a snowstorm when Mikael Blomkvist (DanielCraig) arrives at the behest of the patriarch of the powerful Vanger family,Henrik Vanger (Christopher Plummer) to try to solve the mystery of his niece’sdisappearance forty years ago and it never seems to stop. The one notable exception to the dull color scheme is the bright, modern sharpness of the home of the Martin Vanger, the missing girl's brother, and Fincher has his own ironic reasons for that choice. The otherwise ubiquitous dull gray isreflected in the life that the Vangers are living, shut up on what might oncehave been their island retreat but now has become more of a prison: practicallynone of them likes any of the others and no one speaks to anyone else, theperfect self-punishment for what Henrik calls “the most detestable collectionof people that you will ever meet.” It also reflects the painstaking search forthe answers here. They do not swoop in conveniently: they are pieced togetherslowly from old photographs and opaque diary entries and decades-old hotelreceipts. This is real investigativejournalism, even if it is aided by a tech whiz with access to anything shewants.

Plummer does what he can with an undemanding role, andStellan Skarsgård shines as one of the members of the Vanger clan, but Craig’sperformance is revelatory. In every film he is in we see his strength as wellas his vulnerability, and both are at play here. Blomkvist comes to Hedeby onthe heels of a trumped-up libel conviction, and in Craig’s face and eyes can beread his character’s ambivalence about whether he even goes on writing. WhileMichael Nyqvist portrays this character well in the Swedish film, hisperformance remains oddly distant from the viewer: we do not get a chance tolive inside of Blomkvist’s mind as we watch him go through his difficulties(which include attempts on his life). The result is something that we canbelieve and appreciate and even enjoy, but that does not seem complete. Craig’s far more emotional,more vulnerable performance gives us that intimacy. When he has been shot, theaudience can feel the pain of the wound. When he realizes—too late—that he hasmade a terrible mistake, it only takes a glance at a knife to show us thehorror he is feeling.

The biggest question going into this film, of course, waswhether Rooney Mara’s performance as emotionally damaged hacker extraordinaireLisbeth Salander could be anywhere near as strong and memorable as thealready-iconic one created by Noomi Rapace in the Swedish version. The answer,with no offense to Rapace, is absolutely yes, but it is complicated. The twoactresses and their directors create the character in very different ways.Rapace, who allows more of the natural feminine of her face to remain visibleand unshadowed, for all of her smallness and thinness stays distinctly femalethroughout the film. Even in the most horrific scene (in both films), the rapeand revenge sequence with her “guardian,” she manages a small feminine smile asshe finishes her revenge telling him not to move or what she is doing to him“won’t look nice.” Her vulnerability comes from being a young woman in a man’sworld, a woman who has been hurt many, many times by many, many men. When shegives herself to Blomkvist in one scene, it is a brief, entirely sexual encounter,over the second it is complete.

In contrast, Mara hides more of her face in shadow throughthe angles in which she turns her body, behind her forbidding piercings, and(most notably) behind an ever-morphing head of hair that either pulls attentionaway or covers part of it intentionally, leaving herself more unknown, more ofa mystery. She is a riddle: her clothing gives nothing at all away of gender;her lifestyle gives nothing away of the genius she possesses. The only part ofMara’s Lisbeth that lives on the surface is her anger. It is always rightthere, waiting to explode. Mara’s Lisbeth is a wild animal keeping herself inline by sheer strength of will. She has developed a tremendous capacity forcompartmentalization; otherwise she would certainly be institutionalized. It isnever clearer than in the revenge scene. Rapace’s Lisbeth cannot wait to zapher assailant with a stun gun; Mara’s has a plan and will carry it out asdispassionately as possible…until shegets him trussed and vulnerable, the way he had her. The she can let the animalloose. And no sweet tones in hervoice when she tells him not to move or it won’t look good. She practicallyhisses it.

Nonetheless, within a few scenes, she’s in bed with a woman.And within not too many more scenes, she’s in bed with Blomkvist.Compartmentalizing. It has become as natural to her as her photographic memoryor her hacking skills. It helps her survive. It can be argued that Rapace showsthis capacity too, but not to this extent. And that is one of the definingdistinctions between the characterizations. Another is the sheer urgencyof Mara’s characterization, as well as her clear vulnerability, which comes outin many places during the film. Mara’s Lisbeth is vulnerable for a differentreason than Rapace’s though: she has methodically destroyed the feminine withinher unless she wants it there, so now she is vulnerable because she is the unwanted. What she has made herselfinto is exactly what society does not want. Both actresses are small and thin,though each shows herself capable of putting up a good fight, and it seemsclear after watching both of them that whicheverhad come first would have been seen as the archetype for the character.

I’ve read reviews online that find fault with Fincher forhis use of the book’s final chapters (which bring to a conclusion theconvoluted and fairly arcane financial matters that got Blomkvist into troubleat the book’s start), which Oplev’s version merely glossed over. But, althoughit does seem a bit of an anticlimax, I won’t fault him for this. I’d ratherfault Oplev for cutting the entire relationship between Blomkvist and hispartner at Millennium magazine, Erika Berger (Robin Wright), an error thatcaused no end of havoc in the subsequent films of the series. I might questiona pretty significant alteration to the ending that readers of the book withnotice right away and wonder why Fincher felt it necessary. (Oplev managed it.) But the bottom line is that this big budgetAmerican version of the Swedish popular novel is well worth seeing, whether ornot you’ve seen the Swedish version. Here's hoping audiences reward Fincher's effort so that we can see what he does with the considerably less confining storyline of the second novel.

2011-10-27T16:22:00.001-05:00

work at home http://ping.fm/vlKT7

Thoughts in the Wake

2011-07-23T12:11:00.001-05:00

In Norway, a bomber and gunman blows up a government building and then travels to a youth camp and systematically executes dozens of teenagers, apparently because they were youth activists in a political party he did not agree with.

In England, a talented, internationally famous but long-troubled 27-year-old singer is found dead in her home for reasons not immediately clear.

Good morning, world. Welcome to Saturday.

As I sifted through the news reports from Oslo last night, I first felt something akin to deja vu--this seemed familiar, as if I had been transported back to 1995 and the city were Oklahoma City and not Oslo at all--but when the youth camp reports started coming in...first seven deaths confirmed, then ten, then perhaps 17, then "as many as 30," then, suddenly and horrifically, 80 or more... How does one react to that kind of concentrated carnage, that kind of evil from the mind of a single man?

I have been in touch with a blogger from Norway who tells me that this man is a part of an extreme right wing movement in her country that distrusts the government, that believes it is involved in a great conspiracy with Muslims. And again my spidey sense tingles: where ave I heard that before? What will it take before the people of the world, including the people of the US, wake up to the fact that, despite all the Bin Ladens anywhere, their biggest enemies most often lie within their borders? The radical extremists with agendas who cannot be reasoned with who hate their governments passionately and without attention to reality: these are the people to fear.

And 80 kids lie dead on an island in the most peaceful country in the world, kids who were trying in their own ways to make a difference. The singer, her life also ended far too early, is a sad morality tale of a life that could have been so much more. But on this day that tale will have to wait for its telling. Those kids on that island are telling a tale far more demanding and far more critical. And if we don't listen, I'm afraid it will be a tale we will hear again and again.

Mischief Managed (review of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part Two)

2011-07-16T01:16:00.006-05:00

Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) and Lord Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes)

From the very beginning of the seven-book, eight-movie series, so many years ago that most of its fans have never known a world in which it did not exist, there was one single inevitable conclusion it could have: Harry Potter and Lord Voldemort, the Boy Who Lived and He Who Must Not Be Named, must ultimately meet face to face and settle things once and for all. As Harry tells his friends, Hermione and Ron, "I think I've known it all along, and I think you have too."

This final chapter of the most successful film franchise in history opened to a predictable record midnight box office, but Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part Two will not be remembered for whether it made as much money as it certainly will. Let's face it: this film could have been a complete dud and still broken into the all-time Top 10. No, the only way to judge this film is against the expectations that its fans have had all along. The fans are legion of JK Rowling's incredible journey of a young boy growing up in new, unusual and often frightening circumstances and faced with a legacy not of his own creation upon which, he discovers, everyone in this new world depends, and these fans ultimately will determine the final film's success, whatever its box office says.

As a fan both of the books and the films, which are most definitely two different worlds with plotlines that vary in key aspects, I entered the theatre (IMAX 3D) wanting to see the Ultimate Harry Potter Experience. I had been entertained by each of the films that had come before, but none of them, I had to admit, completely satisfied. The films, by their nature having to leave out many important subplots, often ended up feeling slightly forced to me, though I could admire their technical wizardry and both the visually magic world and the amazingly perfect casting for which much-maligned initial director Chris Columbus should receive a percentage of every one of these films. Still, when I read that Rowling's final book was going to be split into two films, my first thought was that, yes, they would finally have the time in the movie to get it right. And through the slow, easeful sequences of Deathly Hallows Part One, when so little was happening and so much tension was building, I believed that director David Yates was going to do it. I even forgave him the absurdity of burning down the Weasleys' house at the end of Part Six only to have it completely restored with no explanation at the start of Part Seven because he was getting it right.

And the lights came down and the IMAX screen lit up, and the last episode of the ten-year saga played before me, its brilliant staging and powerful moments made more so by the huge screen (though I must say that the 3D did little to enhance anything at all). The incredible set pieces we have all heard about--the vault at Gringotts, the various pieces of the Battle of Hogwarts, etc., are some of the finest of the series. Tiny moments, like a captive dragon enjoying its first free moment in, perhaps, eons, or a giddy Professor McGonnegal (Maggie Smith) exclaiming as she prepares for a horrific battle that "I've always wanted to use that spell!" or Ron and Hermione (finally!) falling into each other's arms and kissing stand out amid the nearly nonstop action here, and the characters we have grown to know and love through the years all make at least brief appearances, even though this film, like its predecessor, concentrates almost entirely on Harry (Daniel Radcliffe), Ron (Rupert Grint), Hermione (Emma Watson), and their nemesis, Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes). A few other characters who have been with us all along, Draco Malfoy (Tom Felton), Neville Longbottom (Matthew Lewis) and especially Professor Snape (Alan Rickman), have their chances to shine here as well, but this one is truly the Harry and the Big Bad show.

To that end, the intensity, the pyrotechnics, the horror, the deaths, and the personal struggle are all ratcheted up to eleven. As Harry and the gang seek out more horcruxes to destroy, Voldemort grows mentally and physically weaker (though his magic is still powerful), more and more paranoid and--if it is possible--more evil. Fiennes is brilliant in his portrayal of a megalomaniac coming apart at the seams. His perfect wand is not working; his dream of immortality is slipping away; his entire world view is breaking down, and all because of one teenaged boy who simply refuses to die. In one telling moment, almost a throwaway, he tosses a killing curse at one of his own men for no reason at all; his mind is so twisted and torn that almost anything can set him off. And when he discovers that he needs to kill one of his most trusted people--for complicated reasons involving making that wand work for him--it doesn't occur to him that, hey, maybe his trusted friend deserves a gentle death. Instead he kills him viciously, with gratuitous (and thankfully offscreen) violence, ultimately leaving him barely alive for Harry to find in what then becomes a major turning point for the story.

As for Harry, Radcliffe has grown tremendously as an actor over the years. It was not long ago that he would have been simply incapable of conjuring the depth that his character needs in this final chapter, in which he discovers a terrible truth about his fate and then must face it alone, in which he must deal with the deaths of several good friends who were fighting because of him, and in which, ultimately, he must become a man (and not just in the five-minute long epilogue that takes place nineteen years later). Three films after he pretty much whined his way through the teen-angst filled Order of the Phoenix, Radcliffe here shows that he has come a long way. Harry is given fewer lines in this film, but he doesn't need them: Radcliffe finds ways to portray many levels of emotion in silence. As he walks through the destroyed halls of Hogwarts amid its rubble and the wounded and dead bodies of friends and colleagues, Yates allows him all the time he needs to take it in and to fight his own horror at what this war has wrought. It is an unexpected and powerful performance.

Most powerful of all, though, is the performance of Alan Rickman as Severus Snape. Throughout the series, Rickman and his character have been the glue that have held everything together. From the children's movie beginnings under Chris Columbus through to the darker middle films and the final very dark films, his Snape has been one of the constants, that scowl and sneer and odd habit of pausing in unexpected places during lines lending darkness and mystery to a character who has, from the start, been cloaked in mystery. In this film we learn a lot more about Snape, and Rickman is allowed finally to expand his range to wonderful effect. By the film's end, he has given us a far deeper glimpse of what makes his potions professor who he is than we could ever have imagined, and if we look back to earlier films we begin to see more and more the layers that had to be constructed to get us here.

In all, this final installment of the Harry Potter series is a winning and most entertaining one, but it is not entirely successful. Just as with every other Potter film, I find myself in the end wishing there had been more of the book left in. But this time I am less willing to be forgiving; this time, with the book split in half the the running time of this second part a scant 130 minutes--the shortest of the series--it seems clear that Yates could have made other choices. Sacrificed elements could have been left in, and these might have added so much more depth and pacing variety to what truly is a nearly nonstop action thrill ride.

Examples pop up right away. In the Lastrange vault at Gringotts, the goblin Griphook betrays Harry, as he does in the book. But why? In the book, we understand this fully. In the film...we don't have the foggiest idea. In fact, the only thing Griphook has said to Harry has been highly complimentary, as he noted Harry's unusually soft feelings for both goblins and elves. Thus his completely unmotivated betrayal is at best confusing, at worst downright bizarre. The entire plot that involved Dumbledore's past has been excised, and very oddly: we are introduced to the competing versions of the legacy at the wedding in 7.1, the Hallows themselves are utterly intertwined within that legacy, yet in 7.2 it is simply not mentioned other than a brief nod at Aberforth's place to the fact that he and Albus had a sister. Without that backstory the character of Dumbledore remains flat as the god-like mentor and we never understand some of the most bizarre things that he does. We certainly cannot understand what is revealed in 7.2 in a flashback, for it is so extremely out of character. The time was there to show this to us--Harry Potter fans surely would not have cared even if the final film had been four hours long--but for some reason Yates did not.

In addition, many scenes are relocated for the film. This is very effective in moving the death of one character to a previously unused boathouse location that affords some powerful lighting and settings. Far less effective, though, is the removal of the final battle between Harry and Voldemort from the Great Hall to the grounds of Hogwarts. In the Great Hall, circling each other before everyone, with Harry's words searing into him, this scene was majestic; it also brought the books full circle, as everything began in the Great Hall as well. In 7.2, the battle runs, flies, and smashes all over Hogwarts, ending up outside on the grounds. It is visually exciting in a CGI sort of way, but it lacks the compelling character issues that Rowling's original design crafted into it.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part Two is an exciting and wonderful film, and it certainly serves as a fine ending to the saga that has held the interest of so many for so long. Yet something within me feels that it could and perhaps should have been so much more than what it is. It is a strong and entertaining piece of filmmaking. It should have been a film for the ages. None of this detracts from my enjoyment of the movie or my desire to see it again (in 2D this time, I suspect: truly the 3D is pretty much worthless), but what I'd really love to see is the film this might have been.

truths twisted about teaching

2011-06-22T11:01:00.000-05:00

I worry about the future of education in this country.

Day after day I read news reports about state governments passing laws against teachers' unions and about the desperate need to reform our schools and get rid of the deadbeat teachers who are apparently the root cause of all of the problems of our society. I read stories about the unbelievably lavish salaries and pensions that these public servants take for themselves from the public trough while fighting against legal changes that would make it easier to get rid of even the weakest among them. I read about their selfish desire to protect their jobs instead of focus on our children. And I read how our children continue to fall behind China, India, Japan, South Korea and other countries in test scores, all because teachers' unions have made education such a cushy little gig with lifetime job security, incredible salaries, and so many other perks that teachers just don't seem to have motivation to do a great job teaching anymore.

I read these things and I wonder (as a teacher who knows the truth) just how many of our best and brightest minds, seeing all of this, could possibly desire to enter this profession in the 21st Century? Where will our next generation of great teachers come from? It's been difficult enough to recruit teachers with the (negative) salary disparity that (actually) exists between this and any other profession, but add on the societal blame game that the GOP is fomenting and I am not sure that I would have entered the profession despite my strong calling to it.

A teacher in Topeka, KA, recently published a column in the Topeka Examiner in which he wondered,

In what other profession are the licensed professionals considered the LEAST knowledgeable about the job? You seldom if ever hear “that guy couldn’t possibly know a thing about law enforcement – he’s a police officer”, or “she can’t be trusted talking about fire safety – she’s a firefighter.”
In what other profession is experience viewed as a liability rather than an asset? You won’t find a contractor advertising “choose me – I’ve never done this before”, and your doctor won’t recommend a surgeon on the basis of her “having very little experience with the procedure”.
In what other profession is the desire for competitive salary viewed as proof of callous indifference towards the job? You won’t hear many say “that lawyer charges a lot of money, she obviously doesn’t care about her clients”, or “that coach earns millions – clearly he doesn’t care about the team.”

A facebook friend of mine, in response to my posting this article, suggested perhaps a minister might be another example of such a profession. But I've been involved in many behind the scenes discussions in our church council about our minister and his inadequacies, some involving a faction of the church who want to see him gone, and still I have never once heard anyone claim that he does not know what he is doing.

Whether you are speaking of the professions that require apprenticeships and technical training before certification and licensing or those that require considerable education before even stepping into the field, members of every other profession are accorded by the public the courtesy of the simple acknowledgement that, by virtue of their profession, they know more about their fields than lay people do. Not so for teachers. I assume that a professional hockey player knows more about the game than I do as a fan. I assume that a film director knows more about his profession than I do, though I teach film. I assume that a plumber knows more about plumbing than I do, and I'd better be correct because I know next to nothing. I assume that a doctor knows more about medicine than I do. Heck, I assume that the barista at my local Starbucks knows more about making a good cappuccino than I do. So why, given that I have two MA's in my field and over 30 years of experience, would any lay person assume that he or she knows more about teaching than I do? Yet they do. Nationwide, they do, again and again and again.

They think that, because they have read a few articles and listened to a bunch of talk shows, they know enough to question the experts. Let them use WebMD to do the same to their doctors; see how far it gets them. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and these people have a little knowledge but believe that they have so much more. One issue here is simple consistency. Treat everyone the same way. Remember that the people to whom you have entrusted the education of your children are educated and licensed professionals and they are using the most modern techniques available to help your children learn, just as you'd expect your doctor to use the best methods possible to cure their illnesses. Teachers are constantly updating their knowledge in their fields and in the psychology of education. What these people have read and think they know, we have read and studied and discussed in groups and argued about and put into practice. But children are not little pieces of plastic that can be molded so they come out the same every time. Perfection is not a possible outcome. So people should stop expecting it any more than they expect a doctor to be able to cure everything that comes into his office. Treat all professional people the same way. Consistency. And it is a thing that the majority of the loud voices and politicians in this nation cannot seem to figure out how to do.

People complain about other professions, true. People complain a lot. It's their nature. But they do not believe that they know more about the profession than the professionals in it. With education, it is only natural I suppose: we've all been in school and we've all had our share of teachers who we feel have been less than edifying in their instruction. So if things do not go well it is not a great leap to begin to believe that too many teachers must be like these weak links from our past. And from there that tiny bit of knowledge I spoke about before, gleaned from right wing talk shows and magazine articles, reinforces a belief that teachers are the problem. It is patently absurd. It's also pretty much unique in the world. Most countries treat their teachers with utmost respect and honor. And if you want to ask why we are "falling behind" in education--a disputable "fact" anyway, since most of the countries we are trailing in test scores desire to emulate us in the creative and openly socratic methodology we use in our classrooms--you might begin with that very basic and simple fact. As I said at the outset, I keep wondering why in the world any intelligent young person today would want to be a teacher in America. And I deeply fear for the next generation.

An article in the New Yorker last fall even questioned the entire concept of the "crisis" in American education itself:

It should raise questions when an enormous, complicated realm of life takes on the characteristics of a stock drama. In the current school-reform story, there is a reliable villain, in the form of the teachers’ unions, and a familiar set of heroes, including Geoffrey Canada, of Harlem Children’s Zone; Wendy Kopp, of Teach for America, the Knowledge Is Power Program; and Michelle Rhee, the superintendent of schools in Washington, D.C. And there is a clear answer to the problem—charter schools. The details of this story are accurate, but they are fitted together too neatly and are made to imply too much. For example, although most of the specific charter schools one encounters in this narrative are very good, the data do not show that charter schools in general are better than district schools. There are also many school-reform efforts besides charter schools: the one with the best sustained record of producing better-educated children in difficult circumstances, in hundreds of schools over many years, is a rigorously field-tested curriculum called Success for All, but because it’s not part of the story line it goes almost completely unmentioned. Similarly, on the issue of tenure, the clear implication of most school-reform writing these days—that abolishing teacher tenure would increase students’ learning—is an unproved assumption.

The article says that "The school-reform story draws its moral power from the heartbreakingly low quality of the education that many poor, urban, and minority children in public schools get" and the issues we are now dealing with were first dealt with by laws passed under Johnson's Great Society. It's nothing new. But as to trying to reform American education as a whole?

One should treat any perception that something so large is so completely awry with suspicion, and consider that it might not be true—especially before acting on it.

No one--OK, I'll speak for myself--I don't have any problem with getting criticism. What I do have problems with is getting criticism from those who have never been inside a school (as adults), who have never taken a single course about the ways in which students learn, who have never once tried to do the thing that they are criticizing in order to know first hand all of the infinitely variable elements and aspects that compose it. I particularly dislike being the pawn of politicians' whims of the moment. Here is a terrible, insane irony: we have spent the better part of the last decade working to "reform" our educational system by creating more and more standardized tests and demanding that our students score higher and higher on them, emulating models we believe have been successful in China, Japan, South Korea, India and elsewhere. What those countries have been doing for the last several years has been to study our educational system. They have realized that all their lovely "teach to the test" methodologies have achieved for them is to created nations full of little brilliant automatons, while here in the US we create thinkers. They want to know how the creative, interactive classroom model helps to achieve that because it is in the ability to imagine and invent that we unlock the keys to the future, and these are abilities not scored on any test. These are what good teachers provide to their students. Of course, in this country, mired in our emulation of the model that our "rival" nations seek to abandon for the one that WE are seeking to abandon, we will only discover when it is far too late that we were actually the leaders all along...which is why those countries sent their best and brightest to our universities.

I will concede that the notion that teachers are considered the "least knowledgeable" in the educational profession is a moment of rhetorical flourish by the writer of the story I linked to. But he is entitled to it, I think: hyperbole helps us to understand the underlying argument. These things are descriptive. They are a form of metaphor, which is in essence what hyperbole is: a means to make a comparison in a creative and inventive way that captures the reader's attention. But what he IS saying is that our opinions about education often are valued less than those of the politicians and the micro-educated (see my above comments) though well-intended Tea Party advocates who feel the need to believe themselves to be sudden "experts" on every subject from the national debt to their children's education. I admire these people's zeal and their desire to make the country a better place. Sadly, their information is almost always poor and misguided. And of course it is: they have gleaned in months from the internet and talk radio and magazines what professionals have learned in years and years of careful study that has often led to MA's and PhD's. These sudden experts are on the rise in this country, and they are causing problems in pretty much every area that is important. And the real problem is that they are drowning out the voices of those who truly do understand the issues and who truly do know the options we have in resolving them. No one has ANSWERS; these problems are not so black and white as that. But true experts have ideas based on lifetimes of study, experience and, yes, expertise. When state governments disempower teachers from decision making in matters of education, when well-meaning people believe that the only thing that matters to us is job security and the mostly apocryphal cushy salaries and retirement packages we are earning, our ability to affect the right kind of changes in our own profession is weakened and even eliminated.

I don't know how we are going to get out of this. Dave Eggers and Ninive Clements Calegari argued last month in the New York Times that we need to do the exact opposite of what we are now doing.

The consulting firm McKinsey recently examined how we might attract and retain a talented teaching force. The study compared the treatment of teachers here and in the three countries that perform best on standardized tests: Finland, Singapore and South Korea.
Turns out these countries have an entirely different approach to the profession. First, the governments in these countries recruit top graduates to the profession. (We don’t.) In Finland and Singapore they pay for training. (We don’t.) In terms of purchasing power, South Korea pays teachers on average 250 percent of what we do.
And most of all, they trust their teachers. They are rightly seen as the solution, not the problem, and when improvement is needed, the school receives support and development, not punishment. Accordingly, turnover in these countries is startlingly low: In South Korea, it’s 1 percent per year. In Finland, it’s 2 percent. In Singapore, 3 percent.

That's a future I would love to see. And it's one that might just save American education. But it's not the one we are currently heading toward. I fear for us.

(First published in DailyKos.)

how to fix the oscars

2011-03-01T23:24:00.000-06:00

Nobody asked me, but...

As I was watching the Academy Awards ceremony, a predictably dull affair despite the best efforts of brilliant actors but amateur hosts James Franco and Anne Hathaway, I couldn't help wondering what--for the umpteenth time--was going wrong. It's not as if something going wrong was such a shock; something is always going wrong with the Oscars broadcast. Sometimes it is far worse than others. (Witness the David Letterman or Chris Rock fiascos.) This time...well, it was an ill-conceived experiment gamely played out by a couple of strong performers despite a complete lack of quality material handed to them by the writers.

Hathaway and Franco are not comedians. They are not trained at improvisation. They are actors--and damned fine ones--whose job it is to create characters from scripted words. If only someone had thought to give them some decent scripted words to play with...but no: from the start, the writing was derivative, lame, pandering, and just plain unfunny. OK, it's cool to put the hosts in a Best Picture montage, but it's been done about a million times before. And the sheer gratuitousness of the "Back to the Future" sequence destroyed any hope for continuity that the montage ever had (if the "brown duck" dance had not already done so). And was there a single remotely humorous line in the monologue? These writers had months to come up with this stuff and the best they could do was to have Hathaway's mom correct her posture and Franco's grandmother ogle "Marky Mark"?

If the writing elsewhere in the show had gotten any better, this weak opening might have been forgivable--sort of--but it simply didn't. I need offer only one simple bit of evidence to prove my point: Franco in a Marilyn Monroe dress for no discernible reason. The hosts simply never had a chance. And on top of that, someone got the brilliant idea that Franco should be tweeting and video-blogging from backstage during the entire live show. Anyone wonder why he looked a bit distracted? Anyone wonder why Hathaway needed to be über-perky to pick up the slack?

From Bizarro-World presenter dialogue to bits that clearly did not work (I understand Shrek was supposed to present an animation award) to the unexplained notion to split the Best Song performances in half (leaving the audience utterly confused) to the Best Picture montage that seemed weirdly to presume a victory for "The King's Speech," this was a ceremony that just made no sense at all. Not only that, but there were absolutely no surprises: everything that was supposed to win won. If it were not for the wonderful human moments (Kirk Douglas and his wonderful sense of humor, Luke Matheny, the winner of the Best Live Action Short, walking up to the microphone with his head of unruly hair and saying "I should have gotten a haircut," both writing award winners' brilliant speeches, Colin Firth's and Tom Hooper's heartfelt moments, Randy Newman's hilarious rant, Charles Ferguson of "Inside Job" calling out the fact that no one responsible for the economic collapse has yet gone to prison, Cate Blanchette's "Gross!" upon seeing the "The Wolfman" makeup that would take home an award, Christian Bale's sincere (and grownup) speech, Sandra Bullock's lively Best Actor introductions, Steven Spielberg's reminder that the Best Picture "losers" would be in the company of pictures like "Raging Bull" and "Citizen Kane") there would have been nothing to watch for.

So, after a night when pretty much everything that could go wrong for Oscar did (including major category victories--yet again--by films that have been seen by about ten people each), how can we look ahead and try to fix this dinosaur of a ceremony as it moves into its 84th year?

Tell you what we don't do: let's not "go for the younger demographic." That's called "pandering," and the "younger demographic" recognizes it in about a half a second and tunes out. So, assuming that we cannot simply rehire Billy Crystal to a lifetime contract (and I think anyone who watched the other night would agree that this would be a great idea), where do we begin?

Let's begin with the one thing this year's producers got right: the elimination of the "applause-o-meter" from the "In Memoriam" section, which has always been about the tackiest thing about the Oscars. Of course, the utterly random order in which the deceased stars were presented just made the whole thing rather confusing...

OK, another thing they did right: eliminated time-wasting "tribute" montages. Good for them.

After that, well, since they didn't do much else right, we're free to play. So let's think way outside the box.

Open the evening with a montage of the ten movies up for Best Picture. Let's see what the evening is all about, right from the beginning: we're here to celebrate the best of the best in motion pictures from this year. I'm not talking about a silly joking montage; I'm talking about a serious one, the kind usually saved for near the end. This is the story of the night. Lead with it.

After the montage, let the host enter. The host should be someone who is an actor/comedian with improv training. He or she should have multiple talents, including the ability to sing, and should be able to help write the show to have a greater stake in his or her performance. The monologue should acknowledge the year in film: the great and the not so great. It should not pander to the lowest common denominator. This is Hollywood's greatest night. Make fun of the bad movies, sure. But save the psycho Charlie Sheen jokes for another venue.

The Awards: This is critically important. The Academy needs to rethink the awards themselves. First, it needs to rethink which awards are presented in prime time. This has been done before; there is precedent. Second, it needs to consider changing, deleting, and adding awards to its list. It's about time: the list has been fundamentally unchanged for most of the Oscars' existence, with only some technical awards being added (and Best Animated Feature).

Change:  All categories  Refine rules to clarify that, if fewer than five eligible films exist, fewer than five nominations wil be made. (Already the case in some categories.)

Change: All categories  Refine rules so that a sixth nominee may be added if the voting between #s 5 and 6 is extremely close. This adds a bit of unexpected flair to certain races.

Delete: Best Song  I know: it's sacrilege. And we'd lose Randy Newman. But this category (Best Song composed for a film, musical, or television program) belongs in the Grammy's.

Delete: Short Films  Not from the awards, but from prime time. No one has seen these things. We should have, but we haven't. And we won't. So give the awards out some other time and place.

Recombine: Sound Editing and Sound Mixing back to Sound. Seriously. Does a split in these awards ever even occur?

Add: Best Title Sequence  They do it at the Emmy's. (This idea is not originally mine, but I have lost the link where I first saw it. It's a good one though; these folks work hard and sometimes make mini-movies.)

The Show:  Without Best Song, random montages, and several awards that no one in the television audience knows anything about or cares anything about, the broadcast will tighten up considerably. Allow the host to return throughout the show to do brief monologues; otherwise keep the pace moving. Let the presenters (I know this is going to be a really crazy concept) present the awards instead of wasting everyone's time with allegedly witty banter that usually falls flat anyway. A brief discussion of the importance of, say, art direction, and we're off to the races.

Keep the show about the movies. Keep the things we see on TV about the movies. Let us see stars. Let us see clips of great performances. When we get the Best Actor/Actress, consider giving us a comparison: show us a tape from an early rehearsal to compare with the actual performance. Won't we all be impressed and amazed by what these people can do to mere words from a page?

And when we finally get to Best Picture (much earlier than usual because this show has hummed along), we've already had our major montage (back at the start, remember?) so we can do something completely new. Maybe we could create a clever new kind of montage out of single lines from all ten films interwoven together. Or maybe...we could just give out the award and finish the program. Whatever. But I'll bet this Oscars broadcast is about a hundred times better appreciated than the one last Sunday.

(It would also help if, you know, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2" were up for Best Picture. Can we arrange that?) :-)

in praise of medicaid

2011-02-02T17:57:00.000-06:00

Hi. It has been a few month s since I have posted anything here, and I feel terribly remiss. I would love to say that something wonderful has occurred to spur me into writing again, but that would not be the truth. In fact, it is something pretty tragic (in the colloquial usage of the term). Let me explain:

My 25-year-old son was married at age 18 in a gay/bisexual/transsexual/pagan/backyard ceremony presided over by a Unitarian minister. It is not in any way recognized by the state, but he and my son-in-law recognize it, so I do; what else matters? Both young people have had multiple personal issues and emotional problems; for years neither had a steady job, and currently (for about the fifth time) they live in my basement. My son, Rory, is finally working steadily at a Build-a-Bear and enjoying it. His husband, who goes by Echo, is studying for a master's degree online.

Two weeks ago, Echo--who has had numerous physical ailments over the years--started vomiting a lot. He also began feeling dizzy, and then started slurring his speech. Rory rushed him over to the hospital emergency room, knowing that, though Echo has no insurance, they have to accept him there. Fourteen hours of preliminary testing later, they admitted him: there was something wrong, they said, with his brain. It might be minor--an infection, perhaps. Or it might be significant: a tumor.

Echo could not speak for himself; Rory explained that he had no insurance. They filled out forms for Medicaid and were admitted. The care they received was nothing short of amazing. Five nights and days in a private room on the oncology floor. Rory was allowed to sleep there on a fold-down couch so they could remain together. Echo had visits from at least five different doctors and round the clock care. He had two CAT scans and two MRIs. They did a biopsy of what they had by then determined was in fact a tumor.

It turned out--worst diagnosis possible--to be the most aggressive kind of malignant brain tumor. The doctor, with whom they have an appointment tomorrow, wants to treat it with chemo and radiation combined. They will learn more about the prognosis at that session. But all of that, and all of the hospitalization and testing, has been covered by Medicaid with no question. These indigent 20-somethings with no insurance are getting exactly the kind of health care that everyone in this country deserves, exactly the kind that the GOP does not want us all to have.

So this is what the jackasses on the other side want to cut back? This is a thing that is too expensive? Another one of those "entitlements" that we cannot afford because we spend too much on unnecessary wars and tax cuts for the über-rich?

This has been my initial experience with Medicaid, and I am here to sing its praises. I would climb up to the rooftops and shout them to the world, but for the risk that all of the snow up there would result in a fall that would cause yet another hospitalization for my family at a time that already has produced enough trauma.

The irony of course is that, had they actually had the insurance, their carriers might have fought them tooth and nail about each and every one of these tests: further evidence for a single-payer, non-profit based system. But this is the dream. What we have right now, thanks to President Obama's successful push for reform, is a first step toward care for everyone. If Medicare and Medicaid are gutted or diminished, we will be taking a giant step backwards.

Someone on Daily Kos suggested that the Democrats roll out the slogan "Democrats Care." He (she?) was roundly criticized. For naivete, I suppose. But I don't care (in a small moment of personal irony) who calls me naive. I think that could be the basis of a very strong bit of differentiation between the left and the right. We need to find a way to do this somehow. At this point, they have been allowed to define the game. We have two years to redefine it.

My son-in-law is 26 years old. I fear for him. His deeply entwined, symbiotic relationship with my son makes me fear for him too: I honestly do not know if one can survive should the other die. But at least I know that, thanks to a system that the government has funded, he is getting the best care he can get. I take some solace in that, and keep reminding them to do so as well.

And to say a prayer or two. I'm not sure what I believe in regarding a deity, but it can't hurt.

in my america

2010-11-04T18:10:00.000-05:00

There once was a time when I kept my politics close to the vest.

In the pre-Bush days, I described myself (especially in school) as an Independent and strove--each time I accidentally made a liberal argument in any discussion--to take on a devil's advocate counter argument as well. Most of my students in those days probably would have been hard pressed to know exactly which side I favored, and in fact I did vote for many GOP candidates, even for Governor--though I must say that I was always let down after the elections. I have never voted for a GOP presidential or senatorial candidate, though--not that I wouldn't if the right one ever came up, but the GOP simply never nominates anyone who is any good whatsoever. Even when the Dems nominate people who are absurd (think Dukakis), the GOP goes and nominates Bush, Sr, just so I won't feel bad voting for the liberal. (Not that Bush, Sr. was that bad, but honestly: who could really actively and enthusiastically support the guy?)

When W. stole the election (and nothing, any time, as long as I live, will ever convince me that Florida was anything other than a set-up in 2000, or that the Supreme Court had more than zero right to insert itself into a presidential race) and then systematically went about assuring that computerized guarantees were in place for his re-election (a thing I knew as soon as I read, some time in 2002, about Diebold getting no-bid contracts for election machines nationwide, but a thing W. nearly managed to blow anyway against yet another Dem absurdity because he was just that incompetent) and gaming the economy to benefit his Wall St. and Big Oil pals, not to mention driving us inexorably into an illegal invasion of a sovereign nation, I could no longer even pretend to be "fair and balanced." It was easy to see the fallacy of Fox's motto: there is NOTHING fair or balanced about giving even weight to a side that is simply WRONG. So I stopped trying and declared myself to be what I had evolved into being: an unabashed liberal.

Hell, I'm more than an unabashed liberal; I'm a fricking socialist. In case you couldn't tell from everything I write. And I am damned proud of it. In my humble opinion, social liberalism is the most noble political persuasion one can have. I believe in the cause of humanity. I believe that it is my job--and thus my government's job, as my representatives--to assure that every soul living in this country is cared for. This is not the Puritan ethic that America was founded upon back on Plymouth Rock but I have a whole lot of bones to pick with Puritans. (I have never forgiven them for that whole Witch Hunt thing, for starters.) In my America, there are laws in place assuring that 100%--not merely 95%--of all citizens have health care. In my America, social welfare provides a meager but livable wage in exchange for working for the common good in jobs that the government may administrate but that private business creates and oversees. The incentive to find better, higher paying jobs remains, but these people are working, not simply on the public dole, and the government instead of paying them handouts kicks in with benefits like day care (providing yet more jobs) etc.

In my America, by the way, the jobs that they are working on are part of a great initiative that has everyone in the country performing some kind of national service before going to college. It might be military, but it does not need to be, and in fact it is not for most people. Most people take advantage of the myriad job opportunities that are created by private industry (and, yes, subsidized by the government) that are helping to rebuild the country, to teach and care for the children of this great nation, to provide emergency relief to devastated areas of America, etc. It's Americorps on steroids, and everyone becomes a part of it after high school, delaying the entry into the work force by a year or two and earning money that will help pay for college.

In my America, everyone can afford to go to college without leaving in debt for life.

In my America, the gap between executives and workers is more like what it was before ReaganBushCo altered the entire scheme in the last thirty years. A 10-1 differential makes some sense. A 208-1 differential is completely ridiculous. In my America, no one lives so far removed from real life that they simply "don't get it."

In my America, no one is allowed to work as a lobbyist in Washington if he or she has ever worked in government. And no one is allowed to work in government if he or she has ever worked as a lobbyist. And corporations are NOT people and have NO rights as if they were.

In my America, human rights are sacrosanct. The law of the land says that everyone is equal and that means everyone. Discrimination, hate crimes, and anything else that smacks of a violation of anyone's rights due to race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, or anything else, are punishable by stiff fines--and these fines grow stiffer with the ability of the offended to pay them, so that corporate offenders are punished far more strongly than individuals.

And the government does NOT go into the business of torture.

Period.

In my America, tax rates are reasonable and people understand them and pay them willingly--if grudgingly--because they know what they are getting for their dollars. (They know this because each year the government, in its commitment to real transparency, publishes a comprehensive and clear listing of what tax dollars are spent on.) And the wealthy pay considerably more than the poor, who pay very little, and the impoverished, who pay nothing at all. But it is fair: everyone understands in my America that hoarding money does not make one richer; it just makes the numbers on some computer screen higher. Bill Gates and Warren Buffet have figured that out even in the Bizarro America we live in today.

In my America, every political ad is paid for by public funds and must satisfy an objective truth test: no longer is is enough for the candidate merely to "approve this message." Now the message itself is screened for content by a third party whose job is simply to fact-check it. (Thousands of jobs are created in this new media watchdog group, which is paid for by the parties themselves.) Any ad that airs must bear the stamp of the watchdog. Further, the watchdog is empowered by its charter to quantify the objective truth in newscasts and radio and television punditry, the result being even more jobs and far more responsible journalism, for even Fox News dislikes being labeled "Flagrantly Untrue" over and over again by what everyone agrees is an unbiased arbitrator.

In my America, presidential campaigns run for one year. By law. Presidents are elected to a single 8-year term with no re-election. Senators and Congressmen are elected to four year terms. There are no mid-term elections unless leaders are recalled, which by law they can be. Fewer elections equals less expense. It also equals more governing, since the leaders will be concentrating on their jobs instead of election campaigns.

In my America, the Supreme Court serves 20-year appointments, not life terms. 20 years is enough time, I think, for anyone to sit on the nation's highest court and affect the country's course.

In my America, there is no War on Drugs. Abuse of drugs is viewed not as a crime to be prosecuted but as a health problem to be handled with treatment. Most formerly illegal drugs are legally available with prescriptions (the worst of them only from treatment centers) and thus have been brought under the control of the government. Many of them have been carefully, slowly redesigned so that the users gradually have less craving and find themselves needing the drug less. The lesser drugs, like marijuana, have long since been made legal and are sold like tobacco over the counter with huge taxes attached, a new source of revenue for the Fed. The prisons of the nation stand half-empty.

In my America, there is no such entity as a for-profit prison.

In my America, the military continues its worldwide philanthropic missions to build peaceful connections between America and other nations by providing help where it is needed. But we stop wasting our money on unnecessary arms that might have been useful fighting the Soviets in an imaginary war back in the 80's. And we most definitely do not get ourselves involved in wars of choice in countries that have never done us any harm.

Sadly, my America lives only in my dreams. I wake from them and I find myself firmly ensconced on Bizarro America, where corporations have been invested with personhood by a Supreme Court that long ago publicly declared its political partisanship, where oil companies, Big Pharma and Wall Street pay for ads that elect government and then exact strong measures of control over legislation, where people are marginalized still because of skin color or sexual orientation, where candidates for US Congress can openly declare that they will deny a woman the right to an abortion even if she is raped by her father and still manage to get elected, where a large number of relatively uninformed people are manipulated by a media monsoon into voting against their core interests for people who will, if they are left unchecked, turn this country even more into an oligarchy, where those same people are encouraged to call their President Hitler and obliquely threaten him with assault rifles, and where the fight for equal rights for Orange Americans has left reality television and entered the world of the US House of Representatives.

I fought for Barack Obama in 2008 because he was the best hope to move Bizarro America in the direction of my America. He still is. We have moved incrementally in the right direction, though not at all as far as we need to or as far as I'd like. I know that, unlike me, he is no liberal socialist, but that's OK: Bizarro America would never elect a liberal socialist. I feel fortunate that we managed to elect a left of center moderate. Obama is someone who bleeds purple, which he told us all in his 2004 Democratic Convention Speech. Why then should it surprise any of us that his Highest Principle is compromise and bipartisanship? Why should it shock us that he has and does fight for it again and again like Charlie Brown against a tidal wave of Lucy Van Pelts pulling their Republican footballs out from under him? It is who he is. And do you know what? It is why I like him.

You'll argue that it is the very definition of insanity to expect a different result from the same action, but I don't think so in this case. Here the variable is not an absolute; it is a human being. Obama keeps giving his opponents the chance to act according to their better angels. And they keep failing him and us. Many of us here on the left want him to stop already, to withdraw from the game, to tell the army of Lucys with their footballs to go home because he is no longer playing. I cannot deny that I have been among those voices, that I am among them right now. But I admire Obama still when he does not give in to this chorus, when he lets Lucy play, when he takes that running start.

Of course, just once, I do sort of wish he'd veer off a bit and kick her in the teeth...

But in my America, she'd have full dental.

future shock! (GOTV!)

2010-10-29T20:01:00.000-05:00

Please take a moment to indulge me in a tiny mental exercise.

Close your eyes.

Wait. That won't work. You won't be able to read my next words.

All right, then: Don't close your eyes. Just sort of pretend they are closed, for the purposes of this exercise, and join me as we take a journey in our minds.

It will not be a long journey. And I promise I'll have you back before the commercial ends. Or before the boss realizes you're surfing on Kos. Or before the kids wake up from their nap. Or whatever.

It's a journey in time. Come on. It's easy. Really. Just take a Leap of Faith with me and you'll be there.

You made it! Congratulations; that wasn't so hard, was it? So, let's see now: when have we ended up? It's always best on these journeys to get one's bearings immediately. Ah...next Thursday. One week from today.

One week from today.

Look around you. It's only a week away, but are you sure you are in the same world? I know: it does seem familiar. The banner headlines on Huffpost proclaiming doom for Obama's entire remaining agenda seem a bit excessively ominous, as usual. But then the cnn.com interview with John Boehner in which he is declaring his intention to stall anything and everything the president wants now that he will be Speaker and to open numerous investigations into Obama's actions in Afghanistan and Iraq and for all I know maybe even into the whole birth certificate thing--all sorts of fishing expeditions designed to take congressional time in random efforts to find some excuse to try to impeach Obama--doesn't exactly make everything sound hunky dory.

And what in the world are we supposed to do with Senator Angle, who is calling a--WTF? press conference? We are supposed to put up with her insane ravings for at least six years? Along with Demint, whom we were already stuck with (and who, thank GOD, is not going to get to be the majority leader--they're saying that will probably be Dick Durbin) and Ensign and other already-ensconced GOP idiots, we have Rubio and Rand and Angle with their lunatic fringe policies and me-first, everyone else be damned right wingers like Ayotte and Toomey and Mukowski as well.

Look: Olbermann is on TV, saying something about how it looks as if there won't be a need for Second Amendment remedies. So there's that, anyway. He says that tomorrow he'll have a Special Comment: The Tea Party Congress--When the Mad Hatter Takes Over the Shop. It sounds like something that would be interesting, but we can't stick around that long. Wait: before we head back, though...this looks interesting...

The story is about how this horrific result could possibly have happened.

You see the gist: the right hated Obama for all of the obvious reasons so they rallied the troops against him from Day One, very successfully as it turned out. This chart says that GOP turnout was much higher than in normal midterm elections. But what is this one? If the Dem turnout had equaled the GOP's in percentage, we'd have swamped them? All we had to do to avoid Speaker Boehner, Senator Angle, Senator Rand, Senator Mukowski, etc. was to get fellow democrats to cast their ballots????

Just a second: How many of you are going to cast yours next Tuesday?

WHAT?

EXCUSE ME?

I know you have what you think of as valid reasons. I know you've been less than perfectly happy with the administration. I know some of Obama's policies, appointments, etc. have utterly pissed you off. But FOR CRYING OUT LOUD we're talking about Speaker Freaking Boehner here! We're talking about Senator Sharron Runs-From-Press No-Abortion-Even-When-Raped Revolution-Every-20-Years I'm-A-Certified-Loony Angle here! We're talking Rand Paul! Ken Buck! We're talking guys who think it's cool to dress up in Nazi uniforms. We're talking about ceding these nutjobs control of our government!!!

No, no, no, NO! This is not the election to sit out in protest. Look around you! This is NOT the world you left a few moments ago. It is already beginning to change. It is already feeling more paranoid, more frightening. In fact, I'm feeling more frightened just being here. We have to go back.

Come back.

Open your eyes again.

Oh wait. Right. You didn't close them. Well, then, open them wider. Look hard. See the mess that is about to happen.

And get out and vote on Tuesday. And get everyone you know to do it too!

cutting off our noses

2010-10-25T01:33:00.002-05:00

I click on the Huffington Post front page this evening and am treated to the following banner headline:

'DON'T TAKE US FOR GRANTED' Will It Get Better? Gay Voters Consider Staying Home...Alan Cumming: Obama Has Done 'Diddly Squat' For Gay Rights

And my first thought is this: Sure. Why not? Why should gay people be the sole members of this American society who are immune from the current rampant epidemic of Teh Stupid?

Honestly, people, when it is nine days in front of a midterm election and it is possible that the complete imbeciles and jerks who led this country to the brink of a second great depression and would gladly wipe out every single social advance of the 20th and 21st Centuries will be swept back into power by a public voting against their own economic interests in an election fueled by anger at the economy, I freaking give up.

Has this entire country lost its collective mind?

This election should have been a total cakewalk.

We have a president elected on a populist platform who immediately set out to do--guess what?--pretty much what he was elected to do! In fact, according to politifact.com, of 506 campaign promises, he has already kept 122 with another 236 "in the works." 41 others have been compromised on, 82 have been stalled, and only 22 have been "broken," but most of these are items with first year time limits that still are likely to be completed in the first term. AsSteve Benen pointed out in his Washington Monthly column back in June--long before the Consumer Protection Agency was founded as a part of the administration's latest achievement in financial reform--"President Obama's record of accomplishments, after just 17 month in office, is as impressive as anything we've seen in generations."

To this we add a GOP in such disarray that it has managed to nominate a host of candidates who are, by any objective standards, simply the worst slate ever produced by any major party in history. To call them fanatical and lunatic is to risk libel suits by representatives of fanatical loonies. And this batch of insane chowderheads has continued to make one crazy statement after another after another throughout the entire cycle. Further, even the actual GOP leadership is joining in the fun, with Boehner and McConnell and Ensign and others competing against each other in a game of Which Republican Can Say the Dumbest Things? I won't bother to recount them here, though I'm sure that a diary of GOP Greatest Hits of Stupid would go straight to the Rec List (and I do want a call-out, whoever writes it), but honestly: when Orrin Hatch has become the voice of reason for your party, something has gone seriously wrong.

And this absurd Bizarro-World version of the GOP campaigned from the very beginning on two basic premises: first, that it would block Obama from doing anything that it could succeed in blocking him from doing, and second, that--if sent back into power--it would do the exact same things that it did before, when it had power. You know: the things that drove us to the edge of destruction.

I mean, there is No Way On Earth this should even be close!

But three factors, I think, have mitigated things.

First, there is the incredible power of the only 24/7 political megaphone, Fox Noise, as it bleats its non-stop GOP infomercials to the masses, twisting stories until they are unrecognizable under layers of lies, making things up completely, and ultimately doing even more damage than the utterly unprovoked assault on the Constitution that the Supreme Court made in its Citizens United decision. And let's face it: any network that is responsible for unleashing both Hannity and Beck on the world deserves a special place in the Broadcasting Hall of Shame.

The second factor is the Democrats themselves, who have behaved like morons during this campaign season, listening to the beltway pundits and the Fox talking heads instead of the people who elected them in the first place and running away from their very strong record of legislative achievement. Sure, the legislature has been watered down because of the need to appease Blue Dogs and enough GOP senators to pass cloture, but the point is that Obama and this Congress achieved what few--if any--others ever had. Yet they hide from their achievements and allow the other side to define them as poor.

The final factor are the American people, who a mere two years ago proclaimed that they understood that the economy was a disaster that had taken eight years to create and that Obama could not possibly solve it in two years or even a single term. A Wall Street Journal polljust before his inauguration showed 71% approval of the efforts of the incoming executive in readying his economic team, yet 57% believed that the recession could go on for 1-3 years at that point, and another 17% believed it would go on much longer. We "got it" back then, until the GOP and Fox started their nonstop bleating, and we kept hearing them say it should be over even though it was partly their insistence on tax breaks in the stimulus that slowed recovery down, and we didn't have jobs, so we listened. Like sheep we followed. And those who knew nothing or a tiny bit about politics decided to follow their Fearless Leader into Glennbeckistan and Teapartistan and proved once mroe that a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing.

But it is not only them. It is us, too. The Left. The educated. The liberals. Even those of us who allegedly understand how politics works. We became lost in the starlight that reflected Hope at us, and we Believed that it would all happen at once because we wanted it so badly after eight years in the dark. And maybe without Boehner's artificial orange glow it might have worked, but he did his job well. The man is a wart on humanity, but give him that much credit. And we saw that Obama was being forced to compromise, and that in fact his default game plan was to compromise, and we disliked that after years of a GOP who neer once thought to compromise with us. But that's just it: they should have. THEY SHOULD HAVE. So we are. And the game plan, if given time to work, will eventually pay dividends.

But...In our annoyance, we are hurt. Justifiably. We expected more, and it was a reasonable expectation. But the man we put into the White House has been making decisions about how to prioritize, what order to do things in, and how to do them. Some of these decisions piss me off too. I'm transgendered; I'd like him to be doing more right now for LGBT folks, but still... We have been hearing it for months now:

Obama has not done enough for {fill in name of liberal interest group du jour}. We don't think we will be supporting him this November. That will show him to take us for granted.

No. It won't. There is an old expression for this insane action: cutting off your nose to spite your face. It will solve absolutely nothing. Do you think for one second that the GOP will care more for your liberal special interest than even the bluest of blue dogs? THIS GOP? Because you are wrong. They won't. And they not only will not help your cause; they very likely will fight tooth and nail against it.

So go ahead, gay people and all other disaffected left wingers everywhere. Sit it out. Or, hey, what the heck: vote for the GOP candidate in your state. What the heck: if you're going to vote against your own interests, you might as well go nuts. Then, as you watch the government completely go to hell and your civil rights get legally stomped upon and, should there be another Supreme Court justice to name, yet another conservative added to the mix, you can just smile and say to yourself:

It didn't matter anyway.

truth and other trivial pursuits

2010-10-20T23:44:00.001-05:00

So the folks at my church gave me this column in our monthly publication and they said: do whatever you want, and I thought: cool, maybe I’ll spend several hundred words placing complicated clues in my article that seem to point to something Really Important if you take the time to figure them out so that people will spend days and days puzzling over them, tearing hair from distended follicles and rubbing already dry skin until it peels off like old cracked corn husks. I mean, what the heck: people love that kind of crap!

But the thing is that I really didn’t have anything Really Important to reveal, so I was just about ready to give up on the whole thing when I saw a campaign commercial and it occurred to me that it really didn’t matter whether I did or didn’t: no one actually cares in the long run whether you speak the truth; they only care that they think you do. Or anyway they only care that they can act in a way that makes them believe they think you do. And that is usually good enough.

Being deep is not a human characteristic. Neither is making sense.

Too many people spend too much time fighting over which version of The Truth is Really The Truth and they forget that most versions include some kind of message about being kind to each other. It would all be pretty funny if they were fighting over, say, whether it is ever permissible to eat pastrami on dark rye. (Absolutely.) Or whether sea foam green is the new fuchsia. (I’m not quite sure that fuchsia was ever the new fuchsia.) But fighting over whether it makes more sense that Ultimate Truth was handed down on a bunch of stone tablets or a burning bush or a carpenter who liked to hang around with beggars and hookers or a prophet who was, by all accounts, seriously image-shy, seems rather a waste of good television time.

I mean really: we might have just as easily been handed “The Truth” by a rainbow colored sandpiper or a free-floating chalk drawing or some guy named Bob who lives in a cardboard box near the train station. Walk around in a dark room with a flashlight. Every once in a while, randomly point it somewhere and turn it on. Then think this about whatever you see: that’s The Truth. Because it will probably make just as much sense as most stories.

As UU’s, of course, we’re not all that into “The Truth.” We’re more into the search for it. Which is sort of cool. It’s always more fun to look for something than to think you know the answer. Life is not about the finding; it’s about the searching.

Harry Chapin said it best:

“It’s got to be the going, not the getting there, that’s good.”

And that’s The Truth.

At least that’s what Bob told me when I visited his box last week.

9/11 through poetry

2010-09-11T15:48:00.002-05:00

I had not intended to publish these here. I had not intended to publish them anywhere, really. But I was reading some others' reactions to 9/11 and I was suddenly compelled to talk about my own. I could discuss in great detail the deep depression that came over me for perhaps a month, despite knowing no one directly affected by the event. I could talk about my sister's getting a flag tattooed on her previously unmarked arm, a seemingly extreme but I think, now, emotionally understandable response to the trauma. I could talk about remaining glued to the TV despite the pain it caused me to watch those pictures and videos over and over and over and over...or the abject horror of sitting through the raw footage shot by that documentary filmmaker embedded with the firemen who were in the Towers. I did watch. I forced myself to. I felt I had to. But, far simpler, I decided to share three brief poems that, in three different ways, get at the ways I have reacted to this seminal event in American--and my--history.

Photos hidden away

i still can’t look at the pictures.
so many years later,
the thick white ash
a fragment of a
bad dream,
the reams of papers
raining
from the smoky sky
in a nightmare hurricane
just an image from
some long past mirage,
and the headlines—
the headlines—
called up in the animated
dust
of no-longer buildings
and used-to-be people—
the headlines
i read then, and
folded away
carefully
to keep for
someone else’s posterity and
never have seen again
and never will
bring the surreal
vision to the too real
world
where the pictures
of flames shooting from
buildings
of buildings collapsing
into smoke
are not magicians’ illusions
as they should be
as they would be if
the world were
sane.

Stumbling upon ground zero

driving one day through
lower manhattan
i was struck
by the sudden increase
in security.
the u.n. i said to my daughter,
and then,
realizing,
oh god,
do you know where we are?
her face shifted for
one moment and she knew:
i don’t want to see it,
she said,
and i understood,
but we have to,
i said, we have to,
so we drove around the block
where a giant hole still sat
in the ground
so many years later
and there we stood,
while hawkers
sold souvenirs on
the walk behind us
and someone literally
on a soap box
blathered about blame,
staring in absolute
silence
at crossed
twisted
metal bars
at an american flag
at a vast expanse
of still-nothing
at the price
of freedom.

Strength

I’m not proud of this:
When it happened, I was teaching.
It was a sophomore class, just a normal
Tuesday morning.
When a colleague alerted me,
I turned on the radio
And sat.
Just sat.
The newscaster spoke of the confusion,
Of the plane striking,
Of the second plane and
The news from Washington,
And I simply sat.
When the period ended
I suppose the students assumed
That they should leave
And just moved on,
For the next class took their places.
And we all just sat,
Listening.
Catatonic.
When the buildings fell, we sat.
Small cries escaped us.
But we did not move.
I heard later that some of my colleagues
Taught their lessons that day,
Kept their heads together
And bulled ahead.
I was not among them.
I was unable to function for days.
Weeks, really.
I’m not proud of this.
I’m not.
I wish I were stronger.
I wish we all were.

9/11 through poetry

2010-09-11T15:48:00.000-05:00

Tea Party Contract

2010-08-20T13:32:00.000-05:00

This is not mine. I did not create it. I do not know who did. But I like it. It's been kicking around for awhile, but in case you have not seen it...

THE ANTI-SOCIALIST/TEA BAGGER CONTRACT

I, ________________________, do solemnly swear to uphold the principles of a socialism-free society and heretofore pledge my word that I shall strictly adhere to the following:

I will complain about the destruction of 1st Amendment Rights in this country, while I am duly being allowed to exercise my 1st Amendment Rights.

I will complain about the destruction of my 2nd Amendment Rights in this country, while I am duly being allowed to exercise my 2nd Amendment rights by legally but brazenly brandishing unconcealed firearms in public.

I will foreswear the time-honored principles of fairness, decency, and respect by screaming unintelligible platitudes regarding tyranny, Nazi-ism, and socialism at public town halls.

I pledge to eliminate all government intervention in my life. I will abstain from the use of and participation in any socialist goods and services including but not limited to the following:

Social Security
Medicare/Medicaid
State Children’s Health Insurance Programs (SCHIP)
Police, fire, and emergency services
US Postal Service
Roads and highways
Air travel (regulated by the socialist FAA)
The US railway system
Public subways and metro systems
Public bus and light rail systems
Rest areas on highways
Sidewalks
All government-funded local/state projects (e.g., see Iowa 2009 federal senate appropriations)
Public water and sewer services (goodbye socialist toilet, shower, dishwasher, kitchen sink, outdoor hose!)
Public and state universities and colleges
Public primary and secondary schools
Sesame Street
Publicly funded anti-drug use education for children
Public museums
Libraries
Public parks and beaches
State and national parks
Public zoos
Unemployment insurance
Municipal garbage and recycling services
Treatment at any hospital or clinic that ever received funding from local, state or federal government (pretty much all of them)
Medical services and medications that were created or derived from any government grant or research funding (again, pretty much all of them)
Socialist byproducts of government investment such as duct tape and velcro (Nazi-NASA inventions)
Use of the internet, email, and networked computers, as the DoD's ARPANET was the basis for subsequent computer networking
Foodstuffs, meats, produce and crops that were grown with, fed with, raised with or that contain inputs from crops grown with government subsidies, or which were subsequently inspected by any branch of the government
Clothing made from crops (e.g. cotton) that were grown with or that contain inputs from government subsidies

If a veteran of the government-run socialist US military, I will forego my VA benefits and insist on paying for my own medical care.

I will not tour socialist government buildings like the Capitol in Washington, D.C.

I pledge to never take myself, my family, or my children on a tour of the following types of socialist locations, including but not limited to:

Smithsonian Museums such as the Air and Space Museum or Museum of American History
The socialist Washington, Lincoln, and Jefferson Monuments
The government-operated Statue of Liberty
The Grand Canyon
The socialist World War II and Vietnam Veterans Memorials
The government-run socialist-propaganda location known as Arlington National Cemetery
All other public-funded socialist sites, whether it be in my state or in Washington, DC

I will urge my member of Congress and Senators to forego their government salary and government-provided healthcare.

I will oppose and condemn the government-funded and therefore socialist military of the United States of America.

I will boycott the products of socialist defense contractors such as GE, Lockheed-Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, Raytheon, Humana, FedEx, General Motors, Honeywell, and hundreds of others that are paid by our socialist government to produce goods for our socialist army.

I will protest socialist security departments such as the Pentagon, FBI, CIA, Department of Homeland Security, TSA, Department of Justice and their socialist employees.

Upon reaching eligible retirement age, I will tear up my socialist Social Security checks.

Upon reaching age 65, I will forego Medicare and pay for my own private health insurance until I die.

SWORN ON A BIBLE AND SIGNED THIS DAY OF __________ IN THE YEAR ___.

_____________ _________________________
Signed Printed Name/Town and State

the antiheroes of voteblue flight 2010

2010-08-14T01:06:00.001-05:00

VoteBlue Flight 2010 from Washington DC had arrived at its destination safely on Wednesday, having yet again successfully carried its passengers through a serious storm, this time the unexpected but dangerous Hurricane Stateaid. As usual, of course, no one credited the captain and the crew, whose expertise had weathered the buffeting blowhard winds and nasty deceiving tricks of the storm; rather, this was one more success added to a seemingly endless pile of such successes that had been building for the eighteen months the crew had worked together, a pile that--no matter how mountainous--remained oddly invisible to the masses.

VoteBlue's captain remained imperturbable in the face of this idiosyncratic behavior. He knew that, if the previous captain had had a tenth of the success in his eight years of piloting the craft as he'd already garnered in eighteen months, he'd have been hailed a hero, bigger than Sully (who after all had only managed not to crash one plane, whereas he--the captain--had managed not to crash not only his own plane but the entire interconnected network of aviation, despite the mess his predecessor had left it in). Instead, though, everyone only looked at the flaws in his accomplishments.

And there were flaws, to be sure. To do what he had already done, he had to ease off on some of his key principles. Some of the things that he had told the airline and its shareholders were most near and dear to him were things he had placed on hold; with others he had achieved success where no one ever had before but at the price of key aspects of his goals, as in when he made the first successful nonstop HealthCare flight, but only after having jettisoned the Public Option from the cargo hold over the Pacific Ocean. Still, he felt, this was a thing he could recover later, now that he had achieved what some had believed to be impossible.

"Do something impossible every day"; that was his motto. And the captain tried to accomplish it. And if that meant a bit of compromise, or even a bit of delay, so be it. And though it did bother him that people seemed oblivious to his great achievements, he still showed nothing but his trademark outward calm.

It was the crew that cracked first.

First Officer Rahm, who frankly had never seemed all that stable to begin with and, some felt, should never have been promoted above beverage boy, began to show the fault lines early on. But it wasn't until a full meltdown by the generally reliable Senior Flight Attendant Gibbs that the captain--and everyone else--began to understand that the crew had begun to lose it.

Maybe it was the fact that the flights were getting longer and harder. The competition had upped the ante early in their run by introducing the Filly Booster Engine, a frightening and powerful new power source that allowed only a few of the competitor's airplanes to wipe out entire routes planned by VoteBlue. Far too much time and energy had to be devoted to "breaking" the Filly Booster, an action that involved high levels of negotiation with officers on opposing crews, bargaining with them so they would not use their weapon. Often it left the VoteBlue crew broken and exhausted, yet they battled on.

They got through the HealthCare run. They unloaded the outrageously expensive TARP routes that BushCo, their predecessor, had left them with when they had bought them out. They managed to stop what might have become The Great Crash, though things were still far from normal. Somehow they had even managed to do some good for other unrelated people, as if the old discredited Trickle Down theory actually worked, but not in economics--no--rather, in sheer good will. And Detroit was coming back. And, though it was indeed a slow process, lost rights were being restored. And though the rest of the world saw this and credited the captain and the crew and felt good about VoteBlue and about America for the first time in the new century, the people here couldn't see it.

They saw only the dilapidated Gitmo Airport that was still open despite a promise to close it. They saw the discrimination still unresolved against gays--left over, to be sure, from previous crews--and blamed the captain for not waving a magic wand and making it go away. They saw the wealthiest stockholders continue to grow wealthier and the poorer ones still struggling to get by and wondered why the captain couldn't find a way to resolve that horrific discrepancy in his first eighteen months on the job. They saw far too many of the company's employees deployed overseas in dangerous engagements begun by BushCo and wondered why the captain had not brought them home.

Senior Flight Attendant Gibbs made a point each day to give passengers a recap of the great things the captain had done, but more and more all he heard were the complaints. And finally, on Wednesday, he snapped. He had been struck in the head once too often by stray insinuations that some traveler tossed around like so much loose luggage from an overhead bin. Gibbs demanded an apology from the passenger, but the passenger refused and they began to argue. Suddenly, the passenger told a stunned Gibbs to “f— off."

At this point, according to virtually all who were in attendance, Gibbs took the flight microphone and started talking to all of the passengers, beginning by directing that same insult directly at the passenger: "To the person who just told me to f--- off, F--- OFF!"

Gibbs continued speaking on the PA system, saying that he could not understand why "all of you m--f--s on the professional left" couldn't understand that the captain had been doing his very best and couldn't see what he had already accomplished. He opined that they "must all be on drugs or something." The people on the right side of the plane, it was later reported, were very confused. A couple of hippie types sitting on the left side applauded.

Saying "I've been in this business 28 years. I've had it. That's it," Gibbs then activated the plane’s inflatable emergency slide, grabbed two beers from the galley, slid down the chute, and disappeared into the terminal.

A spokesman for VoteBlue later indicated that Gibbs had never before had any instance of such behavior. However, the spokesman said, "Perhaps it might be indicative of the pent-up frustration Mr. Gibbs might have felt knowing that, in a few short months, the captain could be taking orders from John Boehner and no one really seems to get it."

vulnerability

2010-08-10T16:18:00.001-05:00

This one is very personal.

I don't really know why I am writing it.

On the rec list of a blog I read regularly, a diary has been listed for the past day or so called "I was raped and it doesn't matter." It is a political diary, and it deals with the politics behind rape. In response to that diary, I considered titling this "I wasn't raped, but it does matter." But I am not really writing about the same subject, so this is not really a reply to that one and the title isn't quite right anyway.

I wasn't raped. What I did, I did of my own volition. But I did it because I felt trapped, felt that in my stupidity I had backed myself into a corner and lost control, had given control to a man I did not know who now had me in a vulnerable position. I was terrified and I made one stupid decision after another. And the result was...what happened.

It happened seven years ago. In Paris. I thought I was long over it. I mean it was so long ago and so stupid. And it was not rape. But with my 18-year-old daughter in Paris this week, these memories have come flooding back and I cringe involuntarily as flashes of his apartment, of his face, of my own absolutely foolish behavior slap at me and overwhelm me at odd moments.

First you must remember that I am a transsexual woman. In 2003, when this happened, I was only four years post-op, and frankly I was overwhelmingly naïve. I understood that a woman alone was easily victimized, yes: I felt that the first time I walked alone as a woman in downtown Chicago in the evening, across streets I had walked countless times in a former life, dressed as a man, with little or no thought to personal safety. That very first time as a woman, however, I became acutely aware of just how vulnerable I was, how suddenly I was viewed as potential prey by people who had not taken notice of me before. It was unnerving.

So I knew this. Still, the European trip was my vacation of a lifetime. It was a whirlwind journey through several countries, staying with old friends, culminating with three weeks in Scotland where I would be taking a class. Paris was my final stop before flying to Glasgow, and I only had a single day there; it was a transfer point and I was by myself that day.

I had had a wonderful time everywhere I'd been and had been welcomed as a woman by my old friends and their families. Still, of course, everyone along the way had known me before, had understood my past, and somehow that altered things a bit. I could not tell if they truly saw me as a woman or not. I had not yet developed that kind of self-confidence. Nor had I developed any kind of social understanding of male/female relationships, since I had not even dated as a man particularly and, as a woman, well, that was a new pond where wanted to wade but into which I had only made a few forays.

So I made it to Paris, City of Lovers, City of Lights, and I bought a guidebook and I took the metro to Notre Dame and then wandered back up the Champs-Elysees. I did not have all that much time, certainly not enough to see Paris really, but I figured I'd be back some day and wanted to get at least a kind of overview. It was not perfect, but whatever. Que sera sera and all that.

So I'm wandering up the grand boulevard, enjoying an absolutely perfect summer afternoon, trying to make sense of the map I was reading, when suddenly I hear myself addressed by a man nearby, who had been walking in the other direction. In French, he called out to me, asked if I needed help with the map. My French is not anywhere near perfect, but I definitely grasped his meaning. I smiled and tried to say I was OK, but he came over to me. He was flirting, calling me lovely, offering advice, telling me he'd be happy to walk awhile with me if I'd like. He was about my height, Arabic, nice looking, and gentle, and it was a bright sunny day, and I thought it might be nice to have company and besides, a chance to speak French to a real Frenchman? Hard to pass up considering how weak my own command of the language was. And besides, he kept saying how pretty I was, which was something I still had a hard time believing.

So we walked, and he made jokes, and he showed me things that were outside of the normal "touristy" parts of the city centre, and shortcuts to see places like L'Hotel Des Invalides and Le Tour D'Eiffel. It was interesting and fun, for the most part, but I kept thinking I should stop this, I should say thank you very much and goodbye, I should get out before I was in too deep. And I tried on several occasions, but each time I started he professed not to be able to understand me, and I thought it likely that he could not; my own French construction being so very poor.

So we came to the Eiffel Tower at dusk, and I loved the sight of it but I was starting to feel a bit leery. We had been walking together several hours, and he had even kissed me on a couple of occasions. He had made several highly suggestive comments that I had shrugged off, but I was unnerved and was beginning to feel ill at ease. Yet it was his city, and I was not on solid ground on several levels: the language, at which I was at best a journeyman; the territory, at which I was unfamiliar; my gender, with which I was certainly not used to this type of interaction; my emotions, which kept liking the fact that he liked me even while I was frightened of what I was getting into. And it grew darker. And my hotel was out near the DeGaulle Airport.

I finally got him to take me to the Metro, but to my chagrin discovered that the whole system had closed for the night. I was stuck. It would reopen at 5 AM. I did not have enough money for taxi fare; I didn't know what to do. "Pas de problem," he said. "Venir chez moi." Come home with me. And I said no, no, I didn't think that would be a good idea. But it grew later and later and he said it would be just to sleep and I had to sleep somewhere and he'd get me to the Metro for the first train.

I told myself it was a horrible idea. I told myself I had no choice.

We walked along side streets that no tourist ever sees to a tiny apartment in some tiny section of town. And he pulled out a futon for me to sleep, and then I realized that this was also where he slept. Oh no, he assured me: he would sleep on the floor.

I tried to get to sleep. And I almost did. But an hour or so after he had turned out the lights he crawled into the bed, curling his arm around me. On such a tiny surface I could not successfully pretend to be sleeping. I tried to turn his advances away--I most definitely did not want them--but his hands were busy and he was hard and pressing against me. And I was completely terrified. He was strong. Not overly muscular, but strong. And he obviously felt we had "connected" or something, and I was not managing to communicate with him that I did not want this, even if I had not objected earlier in the night when he had taken the liberty of kissing me. But what worried me most was the thought of what might happen if he tried to force himself on me and it didn't work.

I could see what he was working with, and I sincerely worried it simply would not fit. I'm not built to stretch the way genetic girls are. And if he figured out I was TS somehow, how would he react? Would he hurt me? Would he kill me?

I panicked. I stopped him finally by doing the only thing I could think of that I pretty much could guarantee no man would ever turn down. And as I did it, desperately trying not to gag and praying that I could hold on long enough to satisfy him, I prayed it would be enough and he'd roll over and go back on the floor.

He didn't. But he did go to sleep, which proved to be enough. In the morning, he walked me to the train and put me on it. In truth, I do not believe that he had any clue that, in my memory, he lives as a monster. His version of the evening might be that there was this American girl he picked up, showed a bit of the town to, brought home when she missed her train, and got some from. But there in my mind he lingers: soft laughter, flirtatious smile, complimenting me at a point in my life when I happened to be most vulnerable to compliments, preying on the lone American redhead with the unfolded map who only had wanted to take in as much of Paris as her single day could offer.

As it turned out, I took in far too much.

city of shattered lights

from notre dame up to champs elysees
i saw the paris all were meant to see
awestruck i walked the glorious golden way
with multitudes who wandered there with me

the tower lit with firework sparkling lights
exploded summer song into the air
and brilliantly shone out into the night
to call the souls of all who gathered there

to lift into the evening and to fly
to drift into the softly flowing breeze
and join the spirit of the city’s sky
in swirling soaring flight above the trees

and my soul, too, as if within a dream,
became ungrounded by that siren’s call
and later in the streets beyond the gleam
i wondered if it still was there at all

for in the smallest hours of the dark
too earthbound then to stay above my tears
far from the tower, nowhere near the park,
another paris, haunted by its fears

of never being part of all that breathes
the life into the place beside the seine,
pulls silence as a blanket round its eaves
not knowing when its sun will shine again

in some small dismal room in some small street
that second paris stabbed me in the heart
by morning’s light it managed to defeat
the concorde i’d imagined at the start

when dreary sunlight once more filtered down
and morning sounded its discordant song
my broken weary soul slipped from the town
i’d dreamed of being part of for so long

how fitting that i got no final taste
of daylight dappled on that golden mile
the second paris laid that dream to waste
its golden lights replaced by shadowed guile

perhaps someday i might at last forget
perhaps someday i might at last return
for now, the darkness isn’t over yet:
we only keep the memories that we earn

UPDATE:

In the comments I received after posting this on the aforementioned blog, 100% of respondents said that, yes, I had indeed been raped.

Among the comments:

He might be surprised you remember him as a monster, or he might not -- he would have known when the Metro stopped running and how expensive cab fare would be -- sounds like he may have done this before . . .
so sorry you had this experience, but please do not blame yourself for being vulnerable
there are men like that out there

and

What you did was a survival mechanism in the midst of a rape. You were most definitely vulnerable, not just to your own emotions but my guess is that he would not have responded well to learning you were TS and you could have been in more danger. Thank you for sharing this story - it's chilling to think just how many small decisions can lead to something so frightening. We've all done it - there but for the grace of God...

and

Regardless of how or why you got into the situation, you did what you had to do to keep yourself relatively safe. I was raped when I was 15, and for too many years I second-guessed myself, believing I could have fought harder. But the truth is I didn't want to die, so at some point I did what I had to do to survive. Just like what you did.

and also

After all, women are told from birth that rape prevention falls on our shoulders. Somehow, the message never gets ingrained in the same way in men to not rape, to leave us alone, to stop touching, to stop pushing our boundaries to see how far they can go, to just stop.
You were raped, sunspark. Coercion is a form of rape. You were alone in a strange city, with no transportation, with a language barrier, in a new body with a very real and valid fear of worse things happening to you if you did not "perform." That's coercion, and it's rape.
And you are not to blame for it.

I've been telling myself for years that I brought this on myself, that yes, he was a monster, but I was stupid and naïve. I should have known better, should have done anything other than what I did. I still think that. It's an easy and obvious thing to think. But there is no denying that he was a kind of monster, and maybe that ought to have more weight in assessing blame for the incident. I don't know how to let myself off the hook. But I know I do need to try.

This must be the meme: Look at the track record!

2010-07-24T01:08:00.000-05:00

So the polls say that voters are roughly tied in preference between Dems and GOP candidates for this fall? You're concerned that we might lose seats, might even lose majorities? You think there is a chance that John Boehner could end up Speaker of the House and Michelle Bachmann might actually be taken seriously?

Is that what's troubling you, Bunky?

Well, as the Democrats and the Obama administration struggle to find a way to present a single cohesive view of what they are doing for the public to understand while FOX News shoves their manufactured "truth" down everyone's throats loud and obnoxiously clear day in and day out until it sounds in its blathering repetition as if it were actually reality, maybe we in the blogosphere should take this bull by its horns and figure out for ourselves how to create the meme that can spread the message we need to send to every corner of this land.

And that message, quite simply, is this: when you look at the track records, why on earth would anyone who is not a millionaire vote Republican?

All we have to do is focus people on the real priorities of Democrats and Republicans, based entirely on their actions, instead of the messages that the party talking heads want them to hear and we're home free. This is nothing new, so we don't need to limit ourselves to the current administration, but for the moment we can start there.

What has Obama actually done in a year and a half in office?

Answer: Lots. And important stuff, too. As Rachel Maddow said:

A lot of the things that have happened in the less-than-two years of this administration are the biggest, or first, or most important in generations...The last time any President got this many things accomplished in his first two years of office, booze was illegal.

Passed most significant Wall Street reform since FDR.
Passed first national health care bill in United States history.
Passed stimulus bill to help pull economy back from brink of second depression. (As Maddow pointed out, this bill included a $100 billion investment in national infrastructure--"the largest investment in infrastructure since Ike"--and a $60 billion investment in green energy sources.)
Signed Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act
In the largest middle class tax cut in US history, cut taxes for all but the highest-earning 2% of Americans
Negotiated START III agreement with Russia.
Set up an international nuclear non-proliferation agreement.
Passed the Hate Crime Prevention Act that had been stalled for years.
Allowed the FDA to regulate tobacco.
Dismantled the Minerals Management Service after many Bush-era scandals
Overhauled student loans system to get banks out of the way
Has ordered a 40% reduction in nuclear warheads.
May well create more jobs this year alone than Bush did in his entire Presidency

Not too shabby. In addition, Mr. Obama has appointed to the Supreme Court two excellent female moderate/left jurists, has reduced by half our troop presence in Iraq, has resurrected America's international standing despite some tough talk both in Cairo and in Oslo, and, oh yes, has won a Nobel Prize.

Now let's see what accomplishments might be credited to his immediate predecessor in eight years of office...

Passed two separate tax cuts affecting all Americans but benefiting mostly the upper 10% of earners.
Passed unfunded mandates revamping education and senior citizens' prescription services.
Increased the National Debt by a stunning 27%.
Brought America into its two longest-lasting wars, neither of which has yet to end.
Passed the PATRIOT Act allowing the abridging of Constitutional freedoms in the US.
Allowed torture of captured war prisoners.
Opened a prison camp in Guantanamo Bay which facilitated torture.
Banned stem cell research.
Established worldwide gag law regarding abortion information in health clinics.
Established the President's Plan for AIDS Relief
Banned partial-birth abortion
Signed seven Free Trade Agreements.

Hmmm...a good thing or two in there, but...

In addition, Mr. Bush appointed to the Supreme Court radical conservative justices Alito and Roberts (after failing to get Harriet Miers past a stupefied Senate). He also withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol and openly invited energy company officials to help set energy policy, resulting in (among other things) historically high prices for gasoline, record profits for oil companies, and (yes) the BP oil spill. Among his more controversial appointments were Attorneys General John Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzalez, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, UN Ambassador John Bolton, and Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson, who presided over the near collapse of the entire economy at the tail end of Bush's second term. By the time of the 2008 elections, his approval rating had dropped to the historic low of 25%.

But this is too simplistic for a new meme, isn't it? It assumes that people are capable of putting aside their current personal biases, looking past what FOX tells them about Obama and Bush and (gasp) assessing things for themselves. I think that might be assuming a bit too much. If 42% of people are actually ready to vote Republican two years after Republicans nearly drive this country into a depression, then it is clear they are not thinking for themselves. They are not thinking at all. They are being led by the nose, to quote the Bard, "as easily as asses are."

So while we should certainly be aware of these stark differences and should be screaming Obama's real accomplishments at the top of our lungs, that is not the meme that will win this election. The meme that we need to get out there, the one that the GOP cannot counter and FOX cannot overcome with all of its liars working overtime, is this:

Look at the historical track records of Democrats and Republicans. Which of them are truly representing you?

And here is where it is extremely easy to distinguish the differences between the parties:

On the major issues of our time, where did (and/or do) the parties stand?

Social Security: Democrats Yes, Republicans No
Medicare: Democrats Yes, Republicans No
Civil Rights: Democrats Yes, Republicans No
Integration: Democrats Yes, Republicans No
Health Care For All: Democrats Yes, Republicans No
Middle Class Tax Cuts: Democrats Yes, Republicans No
Equitable Tax Burden for the Rich: Democrats Yes, Republicans No
Ending Corporate Welfare: Democrats Yes, Republicans No
Right to choose: Democrats Yes, Republicans No
Gay rights: Democrats Yes, Republicans No
Protecting Civil Liberties: Democrats Yes, Republicans No
Women's Rights: Democrats Yes, Republicans No
Unionization: Democrats Yes, Republicans No
Minimum Wage Laws: Democrats Yes, Republicans No
Bipartisanship: Democrats Yes, Republicans No, No, and once again No

On the economy, Democratic Presidents other than FDR, who was after all trying to get us out of a depression, have incurred less of a deficit and added less to the national debt than their GOP counterparts. The two greatest offenders? Reagan and (by a landslide at #1) GW Bush, both of whom were wedded to the concept that Bush, Sr. labeled "voodoo economics" because it just doesn't work. As far as jobs are concerned, the eight years of GW Bush were a complete disaster. In eight full years under Bush, only 3 million jobs were created in this country. Compare that to 23 million during the Clinton years. Oh, you argue, that's unfair. Clinton did not have a recession to deal with. OK, how about this? Remember the last Democratic President before Clinton, the much maligned Jimmy Carter? Remember how he only got four years because no one liked how he was handling the economy? Guess how many jobs he created? 10.5 million. In 4 years. It's what Democratic Presidents do. And President Obama, who inherited a national job-slough-off of nearly unprecedented proportions, in the first eighteen months of his administration has turned it into a slow but steady increase, despite what FOX tries to tell you, and is on track to pass Bush's meager 3 million this year.

There is little that can be done with anyone who believes cries of socialism or birtherism or the ludicrous and so easily disprovable statement that Obama has raised our taxes (which apparently 64% of Tea Partiers believe). For these folks, logical argument is hopeless. Let them vote as they choose. But for anyone still capable of synaptic firing, we need to push this very simple, easily understood meme:

Republicans have been out of touch with America for almost all of this century, and today's Republicans are more out of touch, more out of the mainstream, than ever before.

Dwight Eisenhower could not be accepted as a Republican today.
Barry Goldwater could not be accepted as a Republican today.
Richard Nixon could not be accepted as a Republican today.
Ronald Reagan could not be accepted as a Republican today.

On every important social issue, the Republicans have said NO. On the economy, they have increased the deficit and destroyed jobs.

This party is lost. Don't get lost with it.

LOOK AT THE TRACK RECORD. Never mind what FOX or anyone else says. Who is REALLY on your side?

Democrats YES, Republicans NO.

conservative brother diaries 2: rejoinder

2010-05-13T18:02:00.000-05:00

I published a diary a couple of days ago in which I posted a letter I had sent to my very, very conservative brother in Florida responding to his generic dig at the recession that "your President" had caused and urging me to "vote conservative" in the midterms. IYou may read that one in the archives if you'd like.

My brother’s response was minimal and (again) generic:

Unfortunately – you are wrong on just about everything. But – I have the solace in knowing that the vast majority of Americans finally are starting to get it... liberalism (progressivism) simply doesn’t work.. as Margaret Thatcher so eloquently stated: “The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money”... She couldn’t have been more prophetic as every social democracy in Europe is imploding under their own insane “good intentions”...

He closed by citing "the Founders" as his trusted sources and wishing me luck and love.

At first I thought, well, that's that. But upon further review (as they say in football) I decided to offer another rejoinder. Before I get to it, please let me respond to a couple of comments from last time that leapt to conclusions about my brother: it would be fallacious to believe that my brother is a stupid man. Far from it: he is a good, kind, sweet and intelligent man. He is a college graduate who has built his own successful business from the ground up. And FWIW, I truly enjoy spending time with him. He is fun and funny and generous to a fault: when we are together, he is always the one who ends up paying for everything and the man knows how to throw a party.

Greg's one flaw--and I'll grant that it is a big one--is that, for whatever reason, he has swallowed the Fox News Kool-Aid without a single second thought. He has become very successful and shared his success, offering partnerships to both my other brother and my father. But all three are victims of a mindset that galls me. I don't understand it. But I think that it is one of our liberal biases that suggests that all such victims must be stupid because they cannot see what we feel ought to be so easy to see.

There are some beliefs, I think, that are not the result of thought and intellect but of emotion, and even the brightest can fall prey to them. Blame instead the hypocritical purveyors of the lies that suck these people into that apparently inescapable vortex, and I am with you. Argue that my brother is a bad man or a stupid man or a moron or a jackass or whatever, and you're going to have to go through me first. He is a good man who has become blinded to the truth and ended up with very, very bad politics. And so, unfortunately for us all, are a lot of other people.

Anyway...moving on...

There were many commenters on my initial diary when I posted it elsewhere. Taking arguments from many of them (and of course extending them, revising them, playing with them, and adding to them), I fashioned the following response and sent it to Greg. Frankly I do not expect him to acknowledge it, but I do want to share it with all of you. And thank you to those whose arguments I used. You know who you are.

Hi again, Greg.

You say that "we'll continue to look at the world through different eyes." And so we will. But I must take exception to your blanket condemnation of "everything" that I wrote. Specifically what, for instance? Surely you have seen this chart:

This chart, updated through April, shows the actual job losses/gains in each month since the start of 2008, George Bush's final year in office. Even a cursory perusal shows that the economy, bleeding jobs badly when Obama came into office, began to stanch the exit flow of jobs after the Stim was passed and, once Obama's first budget actually kicked in--remember, it was Bush's budget we were operating on through October 2009--things picked up quite rapidly. "Obama's recession"? The numbers do not in any way verify that.

As to "run(ning) out of other people's money," why do conservatives never seem to count the extravagant buildup of the military-industrial complex, furnished by tax dollars (all of which resulted in new debt to be paid by future generations), as "other people's money"? (Sorry: I should have said "neocons"--true conservatives have not been in charge of the GOP in at least a quarter of a century, and would never have allowed the outrageous deficit run-ups authorized by Reagan, Bush and Bush, who have been the only Presidents in the last fifty years to leave office with the country owing more than when they came in.) Why does this phrase only count when it is talking about things like health care and social services? (And by the way: did Margaret Thatcher get rid of National Healthcare? Isn't that paid for by "other people's money"?)

And, um, "every social democracy in Europe in imploding"? Well, let's see: No, they aren't. Europe, as it turns out, is full of governments that, one way or the other, could be described as social democracies, whether they are "officially" socialist or not, from England to France to Italy to, yes, Greece. And Greece and a couple of other countries that were allowed to join the EU without really having enough of a monetary foundation are suffering and threaten to pull down the whole darned apple cart, but if you look purely at the more established economies in these arguably "socialist" countries, then no, they are not "imploding."

You know who has been? The USA. And our implosion occurred, as already noted, under the watch of a neocon government employing the neocon-approved "trickle-down" economic strategy of deregulating everything, letting the market run the show, allowing the rich to grow richer and richer, and waiting for them to seed the growth of the plebes who wait under their tables for crumbs to drop down. The thing is: they don't drop down. The rich, as it turns out, like to keep their money. Go figure! And the big corporations--wait for it--care more for their bottom lines than for humanitarian causes. (I know: shocking, right?) So the "trickle-down" model is a monumental failure (unless you happen to be among the richest couple of percent in the country, in which case it is manna from heaven). It is worth noting that even Alan Greenspan has acknowledged that the economic policies he espoused for twenty years were, to a great extent, in error.

Oh, and Greece? It does have a true Socialist government, yes. That government was elected in October 2009. The crisis in that country began in November 2009, just weeks later. Are you really going to argue that a massive economic collapse can be caused in a couple of weeks? That would be like saying that Herbert Hoover caused the Wall Street collapse of 1929: completely ludicrous.

By the way: let's look at that graph again. Who exactly is it who has brought us back from the edge of a second Great Depression? Would that be Wall Street and the greedy corporate corridors of the private sector? Have they done something to ease America back from economic collapse toward recovery? Or did they, when they were bailed out by the very people they had systematically screwed over for years, continue to thumb their noses at the poor and middle classes, resisting all efforts to persuade them to renegotiate junk mortgages or inflated credit card debt that they themselves had used to grow bigger and more powerful by foisting on the American public? When the insurance companies were told that they would face specific regulations, did they, in good faith, begin moving toward fulfilling their obligations under those regulations? Or did they begin researching every loophole they could find to get around the new rules while, at the same time, using the law's implementation window to jack up rates, rescind more policies, and generally do unto their clients what they would never have anyone do unto themselves? And who did the neocons put in charge of regulating these entities? Oh. Right. The entities themselves. Yes, that worked. The wolf guarding the henhouse: always a good idea.

And let us look at the sainted (and semi-mythical) Founders:

According to an article in the Wall Street Journal,

When the Founders got the chance to run their own economic affairs, they stumbled. Throughout the Revolutionary War Congress lacked the power to tax the states. (It could make requisitions on them for money--i.e., beg. Robert Morris, superintendent of finance, said this was like "preaching to the dead.") Congress turned instead to fiat money and borrowing. American dollars quickly became worthless. In 1780 Congress called them in and printed new ones, worth 40 old ones; the new dollars inflated in turn. Congress got loans from France, America's ally, and from Dutch bankers who were willing to take a flier on the new nation. But once America stopped making interest payments, the loan market dried up. After the war the states, which had run up debts of their own, tried raising money in a variety of ways, from printing state paper money, to levying desperate and crushing taxes (Massachusetts' land tax provoked an armed taxpayer revolt in 1786-87, Shays's Rebellion). By the end of the decade American securities were trading at one-quarter to one-third of their face value on European money markets. The Founders, for all their personal and political daring, were on the way to founding a banana republic, though, if the U.S. had been the first one, the name would be maple republic.

If it had not been for Alexander Hamilton saving their bacon, this entire hallowed experiment in democracy probably would not have lasted thirty years. So whose views on economics are you espousing here?

I was wrong about a few things, Greg, as I have acknowledged. I should have been more careful in my phrasing regarding the 1950's tax rates; the way I wrote it originally could be misinterpreted. Of course I meant that the top marginal rate was 90%. And no one really paid that much: there were shelters. But the richest people did pay 40-50% in taxes. And that is way more than they pay today. (Again I note: under Obama's first budget, the national average taxpayer is now paying the lowest percentage of total taxes in sixty years. It blows my mind that, when this is true for 98% of Americans, so many of them simply don't see it, or they are so blinded by the Glenn Becks of the world that they don't know what to make of it.) I was also wrong about the TARP numbers, which failed to take into consideration that only about 60% of the TARP allocations were actually paid out. The Boehner reference, as it turned out, was simply false. Mea culpa. I had seen it in several places without reading the articles, and I had not realized that the articles in question were snark. But the essence of that one, if not the specifics of it, is true: in both SCOTUS nominations, as in every other nomination Obama has put forth, the GOP has objected without regard to whether they have any real reason to object. One appointment, filibustered for six months, was eventually approved unanimously. I misspoke a bit about Jimmy Carter too, but you won't argue with me there because my error goes against rather than for him. :-)

I'm perfectly happy to acknowledge these errors because I do deal in facts, by which I mean information that can be confirmed independently, by sources either not politically aligned or (in the case of the WSJ article) aligned on the other side. If I see things only from MSNBC or Daily Beast or Mother Jones or Huffington Post, and I cannot verify them from some independent source, I discount them. (That is why I'm embarrassed about the Boehner thing: I should have read the articles instead of merely noting the headlines.) What about you? If Fox or Drudge reports something, do you wait for it to pop up elsewhere before accepting it as fact? Do you listen to other people's interpretations of the news to see if the slant that Fox is giving it is "fair and balanced"? Or do you just assume that they are giving you the unfiltered truth? And what about Hannity, Beck, Limbaugh, O'Reilly, etc., whom even Fox acknowledges are commentary rather than news? How do you consume their ideas? I'm really curious, mostly because I find it hard to believe that you cannot see through a caricature like Glenn Beck, but hey, maybe you do. Maybe you see him for exactly the (dangerous) loon that he is, and ignore him completely. (BTW, purely as an aside: are you aware that FOX is partly owned by a Saudi Prince? No wonder they are so firmly on the side of oil interests!)

Oh, I forgot: you said "I have the solace of knowing that the vast majority of Americans finally are starting to get it...liberalism (progressivism) simply doesn't work." Really? Well, according to the latest Research 2000 poll (one of the most accurate polling companies, according to Nate Silver), Obama's approval rating is now at 55%, much lower than in his honeymoon period but 20% better than Bush's at the end of his term. Ronald Reagan, BTW, in his fifth quarter as President, had a 46% approval rating. Interestingly, that came at the start of the 82-83 recession; at its deepest trough, his rating declined to 35%. A concurrent R2000 poll shows that the "Is the country on the right track?" question is still below 50% (42% to be precise) but that too is trending up slightly for the first time since last summer. And, BTW, that same question elicited a far smaller number when Bush was still in office. So where is this "vast majority" that "gets it"? And what do they get?

I'll tell you what the right wing doesn't get (and it's a basic history lesson): the first midterm election is almost always "buyer's remorse," as the euphoria wears off and the reality that the new guy can't solve all of the problems overnight sets in. So, yes, the GOP will likely pick up seats. The party out of power always does. But in 2012, as the country begins to recognize what the GOP has allowed itself to become, it will look less and less like a viable and reasonable alternative to anything, and Obama's personal approval (that amazingly high 55% despite all the efforts of FOX to paint him as a Nazi socialist antichrist granny-killer) will easily carry him over whichever of the current crop of pretenders the GOP nominates. This mood is unfortunate for the Democrats, but it is perfectly normal.

My last thought for now is a very simple one:

As much as I profess myself a liberal (and a proud socialist at that), I will in all likelihood be voting for a conservative this fall, if I have to choose along that divide. Assuming we vote at all, we all will: almost everywhere, liberals are not running any more than honest to God conservatives are. By any meaningful definition of "right" and "left," the Democratic Party has moved right of center. The GOP, as I have noted, has gone so far right that they've fallen off an edge somewhere. The true conservatives in the GOP have to kowtow to the wingnuts, and the moderates have all become Democrats. So the question in November for most of us, those without the few real liberals left in Congress in their districts, is basically this: How "conservative" should I vote? Nelson Rockefeller conservative? That's where the Democratic Party, on the average, is hanging out right about now. Richard Nixon conservative? The Dems may well be heading there, especially if Obama continues his flirtation with Bush's imperial Presidency. Or, of course, the third option: hate-mongering, cryptofascist, tinfoil hat conservative, which is--sadly--the state of the GOP as it bends over backwards to accommodate the lowest common denominator of its constituents. I reiterate my argument that this path will only lead to its ultimate destruction. A party that stands for hatred and little more cannot sustain itself.

Returning your best wishes and love,

Karen

"vote conservative"?: a response to a right wing brother

2010-05-11T16:21:00.007-05:00

I have a very, very conservative brother. (Actually--full disclosure--I have two. And a father. I don't know what is wrong with the men in my family.) :-) The brother in question owns his own business down in Florida, and my son, in his mid-twenties, has been having difficulties finding a job (like everyone). I had never asked before, but I decided to impose upon my brother to see if he might be able to help, though I doubted if, in today's economy, he would.

In his response (negative, of course), he took the opportunity to make some pretty blunt statements about "the mess that your president has made of the country’s economics." He went on to say,

I only wish that someone in the administration at sometime had enrolled in a college course of Economics 101… Apparently, they all studied “Greek Economics” instead…

He closed by inviting me to "vote conservative please" in the midterms. I do not usually engage any of these men in political discussions because it is usually the verbal equivalent of repeatedly hitting my head into a granite wall, but this time I just couldn't help it. Follow me below the fold to see my response.

sunspark says's diary :: ::

Hi, Greg,

I seem to recall that the current economic disaster began and in fact grew to its monstrous size underyour President, whose policies were so short-sighted and reckless that he managed to turn a several billion dollar surplus into a near total economic collapse in eight years. The TARP was his program, a last minute bailout of his buds on the Street who had treated the money entrusted to them by the middle class as their own private casino funds, bet it all again and again in speculative endeavors that even they admit were absurd, and--gee whillikers!--ultimately collapsed under their own artificially propped up weight.

You may certainly disagree with Obama's Keynesian approach to resolving the problem, but if you examine what is happening in the economy today there is little doubt that it is working. Not as quickly as everyone would like it to work, certainly, but then it took a very long time to create this mess, so fixing it in a little more than a year is and always was highly unlikely.

Still, let's see what Obama has presided over thus far, shall we?

When he came in, the stock market was in free fall.
Today, it has completely recovered and is setting records.

When he came in, the American auto business was in danger of becoming extinct.
Today, Detroit may not be thriving, but the Big 3 are alive and well and looking to the future.

When he came in, Bush had allocated $700B in TARP money, more than $400B of which was given to "too big to fail" corporations.
Today, all but $200B or so has been repaid.

When he came in, the nation was bleeding jobs, losing them at a pace that seemed assured to land us in another Great Depression.
Almost immediately, after passing the Recovery Act, the bleeding lessened. Every month of his administration, it has continued to lessen. Then, in December, the economy began producing jobs. Every month since then it has produced more jobs than the month before, with over 200K produced in April alone.

He has managed to accomplish something that Presidents have been trying to do since Teddy Roosevelt: get Congress to adopt a national health care policy that regulates the insurance industry and guarantees coverage without recision. It is not enough, but it is a start.

He has removed the banks as middle men in the student loan industry for the first time since Reagan put them there. Do you know when college education costs started skyrocketing? I'll tell you: the Reagan administration. Hmmm... Again, it's not nearly enough, but it's a step.

Despite being fought tooth and nail by opposition whose only cohesive policy appears to be "say no to everything Obama wants," he seems to be making headway against most of the big issues that faced him when he came into office. If the GOP would stop playing politics and start (oh, I don't know) trying to govern, we could be well on our way not only to recovery but to a truly remarkable time in America. But the GOP would rather foster unrest and encourage anger and hatred and doubt than do anything positive at this point in their existence.

Truly, that's too bad. When I look at the sorry state of the Republican Party right now, I just feel sad. It has been taken over by its worst elements. You ask me to "vote conservative"? I don't think I could if I even wanted to. True conservatives are hard to come by in this charade of "tea party" extremists. When Bob Bennett gets kicked out of the Senate by his constituents in Utah for not being "conservative" enough, the world is out of whack. When Charlie Crist and Arlen Spector can't find a place any longer within the GOP, something is seriously wrong with the party of Lincoln. When John McCain has to stoop to picking Sarah Freaking Palin as a running mate to appease the ultra right wing knuckle-draggers in his own party and then agree to allow her to foment vitriol in rally after rally to the extent that things got so out of control that even he had to step in at one rally and set his voters straight, someone has lost all sense of propriety. When the party becomes the home of bigots and birthers and men who show up to Presidential rallies wearing weapons, sanity has left the building. When the State of Maine, which usually remains somewhat above the lunacy and which has (to its credit) the only two moderate Republicans still allowed to roam free, loses its collective mind and issues a political platform that is so utterly (as one writer put it) "batshit crazy" that at one point it actually demands that the State of Maine officially oppose any attempt to create a one-world government, the whole party has officially come unhinged. Talk about giving in to the conspiracy theorists. Why don't they just mandate tin-foil hats?

The thing is that conservatism, true conservatism, is needed in this country. Just as yin needs yang, as dark needs light, as up needs down, so liberal needs conservative. Everything requires balance. Bush proved that. When the Dems were rolling over and playing dead, acquiescing to everything he asked for in his first term instead of using the fact that his majorities were slim to negotiate better bills, Bush rode roughshod over the Constitution, deceived us into an immoral and very costly war, became the king of the unfunded mandate, and spent years rewarding the richest people in the land and ignoring everyone else so that, just before everything went to hell, the gap between executive and worker pay was by far the largest it had ever been in history. The rich got richer and richer and the middle class and the poor could not make ends meet.

These were his legacies, Greg. His legacies, not Obama's. Because he was a neocon, not a true conservative. I do not agree with conservatism, as you are well aware. But I respect it. It is honorable and sincere and those who believe in its philosophies truly have the best interests of America in mind when they run for offices under conservative banners. But the neocons? Uh uh. History will record--if they have not started us on an irreparable path to our own national destruction--that they were one of the greediest and most self-righteous groups of leaders ever, that their hypocrisy was matched only by their amorality, and that they presided over the systematic and intentional undermining of a system of checks and balances that had been in place since the Great Depression which, once gone, unleashed a torrent of cash into their coffers and aggressively destroyed the economy for everyone else.

Sadly, there would be no place in today's GOP for any GOP President in American history save Bush and (maybe) Reagan. Pappy Bush would never make it. Nixon? He's practically a liberal. Ford? Forget it. Ike? No way in hell. Do you what the taxes were like under Ike? The top tax bracket was 90% of the highest marginal income. 90%. Imagine that! And what did the poorest people pay? Nothing.

Communist!

Where is the party of these Presidents? Where is the party of William F. Buckley? Where is the party of Russell Kirk? Hell, Barry Goldwater, who was considered so outrageously conservative in 1964 that Lyndon Johnson's voters actually believed the "daisy ad," would be in the Democratic Party today. William Safire defined himself as a "libertarian conservative"; is there even room for that in today's GOP?

This GOP has earned its "Party of No" moniker. When Obama got his first chance at a SCOTUS nominee, the GOP began torching the selection long before they knew who it would be, proclaiming (basically) the downfall of civilization as we know it if this nominee (whoever it happened to be apparently was unimportant) got through. They played pretty much the same game with his second selection, though many of them--to their credit--actually like Elana Kagan. (We'll see if they actually support her. The two don't necessarily equate. They filibustered one of Obama's appointees for six months before finally approving her 98-0.) Despite the fact--the fact--that Obama has, from the outset, reached out to them time after time after time, angering his own constituents in the process by (in the opinion of many on the left) giving away the store before negotiations even start just to show his good faith, the GOP insists on maintaining the lie that he refuses to include them in anything. The health care bill is chock full of Republican ideas, but all you heard from them was "he's shoving it down our throats." The first thing Obama did in the Recovery bill was to agree to tax cuts despite the fact that Keynesian economics tells us that they are utterly counterproductive because it would, he thought, bring the GOP to the table. In the final Stim Bill, there were I think almost $200B in cuts. My taxes were lower this year; were yours? A study just today says that we are being taxed at the lowest rate since Truman. Do you understand that? We are paying a smaller percentage of overall income in taxes than at any time since 1950 (and a significantly smaller percentage than during the Bush years). Good Lord! What does anyone have to complain about the job the government is doing with the little we are still giving them?

Don't get me wrong. I don't want to give them more. I can't afford to. But I'll tell you what: unlike the idiots who took the Washington Metro to anti-government rallies to chant against all taxes and government interference in their daily lives ("but keep your hands off our Medicare!") and then bitch about the long waits to get back home on the (government-run) trains, saying that someone should have put more cars on duty for the rallies, I understand what I am paying for. I am paying for the infrastructure of this nation. Much of it is old and crumbling and in desperate need of repair, and, yes, in need of our tax dollars to make those repairs happen. But I wouldn't be driving on interstate highways with excellent police protection to places that won't burn down because fire codes are strictly enforced where I can eat healthy food that I know won't kill me because health codes too are enforced (and I could go on) if it were not for those tax dollars. That's just the truth. And I for one would not wish to do without any of these things. And, seeing the excellent job that the banks and the insurance industries have done of keeping college and health costs down through good old fashioned capitalistic free enterprise, and watching the way Wall Street has consistently screwed the middle class while padding its pockets, even during the current crisis--even while taking taxpayer handouts!--I think I'd rather have the government in charge and take my chances.

(Oh, and before you say "but Medicare is a shambles," just stop. It's not. It's just underfunded. Thank you, Bush tax cuts. There is a reason those tea partiers are holding those "hands off my medicare" signs, and it isn't because they like crappy health care.)

I don't usually bother trying to get you to see "my" side of the political argument, Greg. Frankly, it's not worth it. You are an amazingly smart guy, but you've spent too many hours watching Fox News and believing that you are seeing something that actually is true. Heck, I think Rush Limbaugh has even begun to believe the garbage he spews into the ether, and he was perfectly willing to admit several years ago that he is, first and foremost, an entertainer. (FWIW, I don't think that Ann Coulter believes a word she says. I think she is a huge hypocrite saying whatever she thinks will sell books, and she's found a ready audience on Fox. She's become such a caricature of herself that she simply cannot be taken seriously and, unlike Rush, she never was an entertainer, so there's no excuse.)

But anyway, for whatever reason, I just thought I'd give this a shot, even if it falls on the deaf ears I suspect it will. You think I have swallowed Obama's Kool-Aid and I'm just echoing the party line, but I'm not. It's the Fox News types, the Tea Partiers, who have swallowed the Kool-Aid, and it really is poison. As for me, well, I question Obama all the time. I'm very unhappy with the fact that Guantanamo is still open, for instance. And I am deeply disturbed by the fact that he has not issued an Executive Order--as would be within his authority--halting execution of DADT until Congress can eliminate it. I think that at least one of these SCOTUS nominees should have been a flaming liberal; Bush did not hesitate to appoint ardent conservatives. I also think he appeases the GOP too much, especially when they have shown again and again that they are utterly unwilling to compromise in any way. My feeling is that he should just say "screw it" and use his Democratic majorities to forge powerful left-leaning legislation, just as Bush did on the other side with far smaller majorities (and even with a Senate tie): if the GOP doesn't want a part in things, the heck with them. But he continues to be a statesman despite everything. And you know what? After eight years of having a class clown as President, I sort of like that.

I do hope that you have read this thoughtfully and recognize that I am, though unabashedly liberal, ardently in favor of a strong, thoughtful, rational opposition party. At this moment in time, the GOP is not that party. I fear that it is heading down a road from which it may not be able to recover for a very long time, if ever. When the Democrats were in a similar position--hijacked by their fringes--in the early 70's, they turned inward, re-examined their priorities, and ended up nominating Jimmy Carter. You'll argue that he was a disastrous President. I have two responses: first, it was circumstances, not policy, that caused the problems of the late 70's, and anyone in the White House at that time would have been in the same boat. He was tremendously unlucky and, distrusted by the still very active fringes of the party, received little support in Congress.

(Of course, it can be argued that it was Carter himself, an outsider governor distrusted by the Establishment Democrats, who constituted the "fringe" at the time, and certainly his opposition included many of the major Democratic leaders as well as the outliers. I would argue, however, that after the debacle of the McGovern candidacy, history had already begun moving the party away from its farthest left wing--unfortunate though that was, since at its heart that left wing was absolutely correct about almost everything, and McGovern himself, though he never stood a chance at election, would have made a fine President. The problem is that the party had moved as a whole way too much toward its left wing, and that left wing was too far out of the mainstream to be electable on a national level. Thus it is reasonable to categorize Carter as more in the center.)

My second argument is simple: because of the above, he lost in 1980, setting in motion both the ensuing twelve years of Republican rule and the rise of the neocons, which ultimately led to Bush and the near-destruction of the American economy. A party hijacked by its fringes fails. Even winning the Presidency in 1976 became a failure for the Democrats because those fringes within their party refused to let Carter govern, aligning themselves again and again with the GOP across the aisle. So the fringes caused what amounted to two decades of disaster for the party.

And I hate to say this, but the Democrats on the fringe, though clearly outside of the realm of political reality, stood for something morally good. They stood for basic human dignity and welfare, for equal rights for everyone, for helping those in need. What does the fringe of the right today stand for? Hatred and distrust. Hatred of Obama, hatred of gays, bigotry, anger, distrust of government, lack of faith in even the evidence right before their eyes that Obama is in fact a US citizen. I am worried that a party that gives in to this kind of fringe will implode, never to return. A new second party will emerge, perhaps the Libertarians, who are in a good position, but it would be a shame.

Abraham Lincoln is often cited as the standard bearer of the GOP. They like Teddy Roosevelt too. And Ike. But these guys would not recognize the party of today. And they sure as heck would not want to be a part of it.

But that's OK: they wouldn't be welcome if they did.

Karen

US Military's "collateral murder"

2010-04-05T17:32:00.003-05:00

The news source wikileaks.org has released a video this morning that everyone who has ever expressed any doubt about the military's forthrightness in discussing its actions needs to see. It is a long and very specific video of an engagement in 2007 that left a dozen people dead and two children injured in what the army categorized as "combat operations against a hostile force." The video shows clearly that the "hostile force" was nothing but a bunch of guys milling about on a street, minding their own business, and one guy in a van whose only crime was stopping on his way to take his kids to a tutoring appointment so that he could help a severely wounded man who, as it happens, was not an enemy combatant but a photo journalist. It also makes it clear that the "combat operations" were, in reality, simply an outright slaughter.

Dan Froomkin's article in the Huffington Post included the entire video, which was leaked by unnamed sources and stands as a strong and clear indictment of the coverup of an action that paints the US military as a bunch of trigger-happy goons acting as if they are in their parents' basements playing video games. For your convenience, I am embedding it here:

Please be aware that this is a very disturbing video.

Froomkin quotes Julian Assange, the editor of the wikileaks.org, as saying that

the killings either violated the the army's rules of engagement, or those rules of engagement "are very, deeply wrong."

Placed side by side with the Pat Tillman affair and Abu Graib and other celebrated actions by America's military that might never have seen the light of day but for the good fortune of photographic evidence and investigative journalism, this video once more casts us in the role we do not like to perceive ourselves: not only the aggressor, but in fact the evildoer. It's an uncomfortable concept: we are Americans. We are supposed to be on the side of the angels, aren't we? But as I watch this video, the bile slowly rising in my throat, the anger rising in my soul, it's very difficult to see anything "angelic" about any of this.

Among the dead were two Reuters journalists, a 22-year-old photographer named Namir Noor-Eldeen and his driver, 40-year-old Saeed Chmagh, who were in the area on assignment. They can be seen clearly in the video, along with their equipment. The fact that they were killed was a significant part of the reason that this engagement did not simply fade into the mire of the war: Reuters demanded the full story.

Noor-Eldeen is seen speaking on his cellphone to another photographer in the video before the shooting begins. That photographer arrived on the scene an hour later:

"When we reach the spot where Namir was killed, the people told us that two journalists had been killed in an air attack an hour earlier," said Ahmad Sahib, the Agence France-Presse photographer who had been traveling in a car several blocks behind Mr. Noor-Eldeen but was delayed by the chaos in the area. He said he was in touch with Mr. Noor-Eldeen by cellphone until his colleague was killed.
"They had arrived, got out of the car, and started taking pictures, and people gathered," Mr. Sahib said. "It looked like the American helicopters were firing against any gathering in the area, because when I got out of my car and started taking pictures, people gathered and an American helicopter fired a few rounds, but they hit the houses nearby and we ran for cover."

The injured children, who were evacuated not to an American base but, on orders from somewhere, to local authorities (and therefore to lesser facilities), are clearly visible in their father's car on one video, belying an army general's claim that

I know that two children were hurt, and we did everything we could to help them. I don't know how the children were hurt.

When the more local evac is ordered, one soldier is heard to sneer, "Serves them right for bringing their children into a battle."

Who in hell are we? I mean this is not Vietnam, where soldiers are shooting desperately because they don't know who the enemy is or where he is coming from. These are men safely ensconced in a helicopter firing 30mm cannons into a crowd on a street below them. They are tracking their victims with sophisticated equipment, following them as they crawl half-dead from the carnage, begging them to reach for a weapon just to provide an excuse to fire again. And I ask again: who are we?

They say that war is hell, and I don't even pretend to know what it is to fight over there or anywhere else, nor do I want to. And I am absolutely certain that every one of these men believed in his heart he was doing his duty. But what have we become when this is what we perceive our duty to be?

Froomkin writes:

Unveiling the video at the National Press Club on Monday morning, Assange said the helicopter crew approached its job as if it were a video game, not something involving human lives. Their desire was simply to kill," he said. "Their desire was to get high scores on that computer game."

Have we become so desensitized to everything now that this is what war has become? A video game? And these "enemies" that the men on the video refer to by various unpleasant names? They aren't even human anymore? Just scores?

One crewman, watching the good samaritan trying to load the injured journalist into his van, begs his command: "Come on, let us shoot!"

Who are we? And how are we supposed to convince the world that we are still the good guys?

the end of a troubled life

2009-11-29T03:21:00.001-06:00

Mike Penner, the LA Times sportswriter who in 2007 made headlines with a column revealing that he was "a transsexual sportswriter," has died, an apparent suicide.

The article in the Huffington Post is poignant and sad and respectful, as befits the story of the tragic end of a difficult life, and its use of the masculine name in headline and text derives from Penner's own reversion to that name in the past year. Penner never explained why the public persona of "Christine Daniels" vanished, and perhaps we will never know. But after writing

It has taken more than 40 years, a million tears and hundreds of hours of soul-wrenching therapy for me to work up the courage to type those words.

and so publicly transitioning with such apparent support, this kind of an ending simply underscores the hardship that this emotional baggage carries with it. I write from experience. As many of you already are aware, I am a transsexual woman myself.

The report of his death reminds us, of course, of how he lived his life.

"Mike was one of the most talented writers I've ever worked with, capable of reporting on any number of topics with great wit and style. He was a very gentle man who will be greatly missed. This is a tragic ending and a difficult time for all of us who knew him," said Times Sports Editor Mike James.

By all accounts he was an absolutely fabulous sportswriter. But sportswriters live in a rarefied world of undiluted testosterone; it must have been especially difficult for Penner to carry this secret so long, and even more difficult to reveal it.

Making public the transition, he once said, was the hardest thing he had ever done.

"How do you go about sharing your most important truth, one you spent a lifetime trying to keep deeply buried, to a world that has grown familiar and comfortable with your facade?" he asked

I found it fascinating to read the comments thread following this article. (In fact--full disclosure--this diary originated as a very, very long comment for that thread.) Many of them noted that the comments were all respectful. I can guarantee that, if this were not a "fully moderated" thread, that would most definitely not be the case. Sadly, there are many, many people out there who seem to thrive on taking the opportunity to make fun of terrible events like this when they connect to people such as Mike/Christine Penner. And me. I transitioned in a pretty public place too: on the job as a high school teacher in a high-profile conservative district eleven years ago, the first such event to happen in the US.

I can't pretend to know why Christine went back to using the name Mike. It is possible that this was one of the many cases in which the required "real life test"--spending a year living in the gender you were not born into--proves too difficult and the subject reverts because it really was never "right" in the first place. Or perhaps the difficulties were external and specific to the career that Penner was working in, the afore-mentioned hyper-masculine world of professional athletes. We'll never know.

What I do know is that, though I was accepted--officially--as Penner was, the fight did not end there. Prejudice and bigotry do not disappear by executive fiat. Even now, eleven years later, I have to deal with bigoted parents pulling their children from my classes not because of my teaching reputation--I'm known as one of the best in the school--but for my past. The love of my own children, the joy I feel in reaching new kids each year, my church, and my 2.5-year marriage to my husband have helped me through many difficulties. If Penner did not have supports such as these, the internal struggle could easily have led to the result we have so sadly seen.

To those who cannot imagine what that struggle is like, I suggest this:

You know that you are a male or a female simply because you know it. You don't need to look down at your body to verify the fact. That is how I have always known it too. But each time I looked down at my body all of my younger life, I saw the wrong thing. I tried--so hard--to make it all work, but it fell apart. Ask yourself: if you woke up tomorrow and, for some inexplicable reason, you were suddenly in the body of the opposite gender, but still absolutely yourself, and there existed some way you could rectify the situation, wouldn't you take it? I woke up this way every day of my younger life. And there was a way. And I finally did take it.

Penner, when she called herself Christine, was heading there too. It was something--I know--that she had been feeling all of her life. It was a deep, unresolvable pain, an emptiness that never stopped, that could never stop because it was renewed each time she, in that male body, interacted with anyone at all. And then, as it was finally coming to fruition, after she had done the hardest thing imaginable and taken the very public step of becoming herself, something went irretrievably wrong.

That the editors at HuffPost had to moderate the thread to prevent it from becoming overwhelmed by the haters is a sad comment on our society. I can't help wondering, though, if that fact is somehow connected to Penner's suicide. You cannot stop the ugliness of the world, and for some people it is just too much to take.

RIP Mike/Christine.

on the nature of memory: 11/22/1963

2009-11-22T21:46:00.001-06:00

We write. It's what we do, right? Reflect? On page after page, day after day, we reflect through our words our emotions, our experiences, our lives, and our memories. Through the things we write, we discover ourselves and we share ourselves. This is the quality that makes us all writers. We take our memories, examine them, pore over them, play with them, re-invent them, and they come out as fictionalized fragments of ourselves.

Let me take you back to the memory that is the earliest of my life, the one that happened on this date in 1963, the one that changed the world and somehow managed to change a small child in New Hampshire as well.

I've never been able to understand memory. There are, of course, certain things that happen to you that are always at the forefront of your mind, events you discuss or think about often, (although probably never in the same way twice). Then there are others, more secretive, that float in and out of your mind unbidden, tantalizing, but hazy and never fully visualized.

This is where most of my childhood memories lie, in that vague, unrealized category. Sometimes it will seem as if a file has suddenly slipped open in my mind, spilling its contents momentarily for me to glimpse. But I never get a clear look at what is inside. Other memories from those earlier times never seep out, but I feel certain that these memories never really disappear; they just get misfiled somewhere. Sometimes, searching through the vast catalogue of unmarked files that make up memory, you come across one that seems strange, almost dreamlike--childhood dreams and nightmares that have somehow, over the passage of time, been placed in the wrong folder.

There are others, though, that are shockingly crisp and clear, memories which, at the slightest provocation, can be dredged up in vivid detail, even if, sometimes, you wish they would simply go away.

A few years ago, I asked my junior classes to do a journal entry on the earliest memory that they had which was complete, which had the kind of detail that makes it stick with you. At the same time, I wrote, over several days, my own entry on that topic, an entry which resurfaced today when I realized that this is, after all, the forty-sixth anniversary of the event that spawned it. (I feel my bones creaking simply writing the sentence that I have memories that old.) I realize that it is somewhat trite, and that, to you, it is history as ancient as World War Two was to me; nonetheless, the assassination of John F. Kennedy, a day which changed the world, also left an indelible impression on me unlike anything else had until that time.

I was reminded of all of that this weekend, since the same assignment is out there for my current juniors. Kennedy's death was, of course, as so many have written, the end of American innocence, the end of faith and trust, the end of a kind of naiveté that had, for whatever reason, sheltered this country from the storms of the century. Untouched (at least our land) by war, undefeated (although, in Korea, tied) in our role as world policemen, unfazed even by the recognition of scandal in our midst (as in the McCarthy hearings or the Quiz Show scandal), we persisted in the illusion that all was right in the world, that America was the greatest good in the world. Perhaps the people of this country were not such children then; perhaps the old black and white TV images of Lucille Ball or Donna Reed are lies, exaggerations much the same as some of our own icons, like Roseanne or the Bundys or the Simpsons.

We are not all the Bundys; surely we were not all the Cleavers. But the image remains: the fresh-faced child with no greater concern than his homework or his first date, in a world and a country which did not know of child abuse, which would have been horrified beyond words at child criminals, which had never heard of AIDS, which left its drugs in the pharmacy or in the hands of a small number of those considered utterly unbalanced, which smoked and ate red meat and wore furs and sold its toothpaste with dancing tubes and its Alka-Seltzer with a singing fizzy guy named "Speedy," which left its cars and houses and bikes unlocked no matter how long they were unattended, and which believed in itself enough to decide, for no real reason other than to satisfy a dream, to send men to the moon.

I was six years old. I have no earlier memories with this kind of detail; for that matter, I have no other memories before junior high which have this clarity. (That is another odd thing about memory: as you get older, it fades away, leaving more and more of those dreamlike half-memories and fewer and fewer of the clear ones.) Today, on the date on which this memory occurred 46 years ago, I offer it to you.

Eternal Tears

The crackle of a classroom speaker.

Dozens of small voices, stilled
by the sudden intrusion,
stop at once.

A silence.

No movement in the room but
the rhythmic metronome of the teacher's ruler
swinging back and forth in her craggy hands.

The crackle sounds once more,
and our faces turn in unison,
in anticipation,
towards its source.

A small, broken voice--
recognizable but not normal,
not the rich, strong voice usually carried into the room that way,
but a fragment of it,
a shell, without depth,
cracking like the speaker itself--
interrupts the silence.

"Bow your heads in prayer," it says.

Confused eyes stare at the oval grill
awkwardly jutting out of an ancient beige wall.
The voice, more broken now, continues.

"We have just received word that the President has been shot."

Vaguely we try to recall just what a President is;
visions of white-haired men in blue coats leap out of history books into
our brains, blur, roll into each other. Names, mostly from holidays,
flash through our minds.

And one more.

Again the electronic crackling,
as if the speaker itself does not wish to hear the news:
"President Kennedy was shot this afternoon in Dallas."
A pause. A sound like weeping. "Pray for him."

Dozens of eyes,
glassy,
confused,
watch the teacher sit in stunned silence at her desk,
tears welling in her gray eyes,
the ruler grasped still tightly in her palm,
some connection to the world which has ended so abruptly.
Her face quivers, the gray in her hair even duller,
and her head slips to the desk.
We look at each other, recognizing
that something is terribly, unalterably wrong,
and bow our heads as well.

Eternity goes by.

No sound in the room but the humming of the clock
and the almost imperceptible click of its hand
every minute.
An airplane in the distance rattles the blinds on the window.
Somewhere a woman is calling someone,
her pained voice reaching out into the bright autumn sky.
Somewhere a baby is crying.
And we sit, heads on our desks, unsure exactly
what it all means,
still as we have ever been, waiting.
Waiting.

And the history book images flood back in:
Abraham Lincoln was a President who had been shot, but that was long ago,
very long ago,
and the quaking voice from the speaker had said, "this afternoon."

Voices from the mind: fathers' voices, mothers' voices,
in dinner conversation,
working around the edge of a roast,
red and dripping,
saying something about a new age, a new life for the country,
a new hope.

The speaker comes to life again, startling us out of our thoughts;
the voice is choking back tears.

"President John F. Kennedy died this afternoon in a Dallas hospital."

Wailing from somewhere down the hall.
Silence in the classroom.
Our faces blank, our minds blank.
All silent.

The speaker fades.
In the halls, there is silence.

Something terrible has happened, something
which will shape and define our lives.
So young, but we know that.
And we file quietly to our buses,
no tears in our eyes.
On this day, the tears are left to the grownups.
On this day, it helps to be a child.

And the buses roll through empty streets,
early afternoon traffic
stilled by the flickering blue light
of the television screens all are staring at,
and we go home to the arms of our waiting mothers,
and the blue lights transfix us too

Perhaps some of us cry then.

Perhaps some of us wait
for the scratchy images
of a frigid November morning
with a horse-drawn carriage
rolling along the street lined
with men in black and
women in dark veils and
the young boy raising his hand
in a silent salute,

or perhaps we wait until the small flame
begins its eternal vigil,
solitary on the hillside,

or perhaps we never cry at all,
and return to our desks
on Monday,
bursting with children's vigor,
forgetting what we have seen
and heard,
not fearing the next crackle of the tiny speaker.

But there are some memories,
stark or vivid,
that haunt and cling and will not let go.
And there are some tears, shed or withheld, that never go away.

rest in peace, rita b

2009-10-27T00:20:00.001-05:00

On Saturday morning, my mother called from New Hampshire with the news that my grandmother, whom I have always called Rita B, was dying. It was not unexpected; every time I've said goodbye since she was in her late 80's I've wondered if it would be the last time, and now she was finally at her end. It was peaceful, my mother said, and she was sleeping, but she would not live out the weekend.

Sunday afternoon I got the call. 94 years and one month precisely after her birth, Rita Brouse passed from this world, and the world is a lesser place for it. She's suffered from Alzheimer's for the past decade or so, and it has been awful to watch such a vibrant woman reduced to something so dependent, so broken, so much a shell of her former self. But for all of that, and even though I have long known it was coming, her death caught me off guard. I suppose death always does. Finality has a way of declaring itself that can never truly be appreciated until it is upon you.

I'm a lucky person. I am 52 years old and this is only the second time I have lost a close relative. The first was my uncle. His loss hurt, but he was only a man I loved and admired. Rita B, on the other hand, was one of the most important people in my world. And death took its time with her, and in the end a lot more than a life was lost.

There wasn’t much left of her familiar home when my grandmother lay dying. She had lived in it almost as long as anyone could remember, certainly far longer than she had been able to remember for a very long time, but it had ceased to be hers, had ceased to be at all recognizable as the home she knew, when my uncle had moved in to care for her.

The walls, where once ornate mirrors and art work hung, where tall bookcases stood filled with hard cover volumes of books she had read, taking meticulous care not to break their bindings so that for all purposes they appeared brand new, are nearly bare now, years of cracked and faded paint showing and nail holes remaining unfilled. One wall is haphazardly covered with his photography, but little adorns the others except a few random notes pinned here or there.

The furnishings, once richly textured couches and chairs, elaborate coffee tables, matching glass-fronted bookcases, and lovely ornate lamps, have given way to a giant wall unit, far too big for the space, folding chairs, and a small Office Max desk paired with an industrial-type six-foot table in one corner on which is stacked my uncle's computer equipment. Near the front doorway, a single low-lying bookcase from the old days remains, a relic, a fossil of another period. Those books still on its shelves are covered by a fine layer of dust, its glass panels having long since disappeared. A garage-sale coffee table holds a television and dvd player, and stereo equipment fills one corner of the small living room which, for all the sparseness of its contents, seems oddly cluttered.

In the room in which my grandmother lay at the end, there are even fewer remnants of the life she had lived. Gone are the great mahogany bedroom pieces, the doilies and the collection of tiny perfume bottles and dainty brushes. Long past is the time when the bed was covered in layers of quilts and coverlets, decorative pillows stacked for artistic effect at its head. It had always been dark, this room, for the ornamented draperies kept out the sun’s harshest light, but now the blank, empty window frames allow the earliest rays into her chamber and block nothing at all until the night’s dimness reclaims things. We grandchildren would have loved to have this light with which to explore the treasures of this room, back when it held any treasures. But in those days the room belonged only to her, and the grandchildren knew without being told that they should not be in her private space.

Those were the days of giant family gatherings and vacations to the ocean, where my family and my grandmother would linger by the seaside for a week at a time in one of the rental homes along New Hampshire’s coast. It didn’t much matter whether it was a nice place or a dive—and we had our share of both—because the sea and the family were all that were important. If Rita B had wanted comfort, she’d have stayed home. What she wanted, what she always wanted, was to sit and relax with friends or with family, to sip what she lovingly called "a baby one," which was a gin and tonic made by allowing the gin to wave at the tonic from the glass, and enjoy what life had given her. The "baby one" was always accompanied by an elaborate spread of whatever Rita could find in her refrigerator or cupboards—patés, crackers, cold pizza, sandwich meats, leftover pasta, pies, fruit, dolmades (those delicious Greek grapevine leaves), and just about anything else she could find—so that almost any time anyone visited, even if you just dropped by to return a book, her kitchen table suddenly became a buffet and the visit turned into a party. And my grandmother understood how to throw a party.

But Rita's life was not a party. There was too much of it that was too far beyond her control. One night, many decades earlier, a much, much younger version of my grandmother waited for her first husband, my mother's biological father, to leave for work, gathered her three small daughters and whatever she could take, and fled the house. It was an action unheard of in that time and place, a bold and powerful reaction to a situation she had no way to speak of to anyone, not in those years. But she feared for herself, and she feared for her girls, so she took action. She moved them into a tenement apartment, took the first of her many waitressing positions, and fed her daughters New England boiled dinners until the very phrase "boiled dinner" caused bile to rise in their throats. If her husband sought her out, he did not look very hard.

She called on the strength of that night many times in her life. The strength of a woman in her fifties whose youngest daughter, a schizophrenic, commits suicide and leaves a note blaming her, but who goes on. The strength of a woman whose youngest son, so beautiful, so gifted, whose only record received accolades from several major reviewers before alcohol reclaimed him and he could not manage a followup, died of alcohol-related liver failure at age fifty. The strength of a woman who long ago buried the husband who gave her a new name and a stable home after her tumultuous first marriage had blown up. The strength of a woman whose friends had almost all died before her, who was almost the very last of them, the last of a generation that had defined a town, that had defined a country.

It was the strength that allowed her to take in a young grandson, abandoned by his mother, my youngest aunt, who later became the suicide, in the midst of an ill-fated move to the west coast that would also see the death of Rita's fourteen year old granddaughter. The strength that kept her working in a stressful, physical job well into her eighties, well beyond the time when most people in far less demanding professions would have called it a life. The strength to fight through the ever-expanding haze of Alzheimer’s for those increasingly rare lucid moments during which she could look at the world and see its beauty.

I sat pondering her life and her death, and I must have dozed for a moment or two, for I had this vision or dream about her. Rita lay curled up on a bed that she would never recognize as her own, dressed in a yellow-stained nightgown and a diaper, dreaming. In her dream she was a young girl, and her frock was green, and each time the swing came forward she knew that it was blowing up and exposing her pretty white tights, but she didn’t care. She wanted to go higher. She arched her back and pushed with all of her might, reaching forward with her legs, stretching them until they almost touched the sky before she began falling backwards again each time to earth. It frustrated her. No matter how high she made herself go, she would always fall back.

Someone called her name and she saw her sister on the grass looking at her with that expression that meant that Ma was mad again.

"We gotta get home," her sister called. "Now!"

And she thought, "I’ve gotta get home." And she allowed herself one final backswing before pressing forward with all of her might and, letting go of the ropes, flying feet first into whatever lay ahead.

I had tickets to a concert last night, two of my favorite singer-songwriters in the world, Antje Duvekot and Lucy Kaplansky. Each has a song that she wrote in tribute to her own dying grandmother. I asked them to play these songs, and they did. I sipped a gin and tonic, even though I don't particularly like gin and tonics, and raised a glass to Rita B.

I'm going to miss you, Grandma. I love you.

it's not 1993, Mr. President

2009-09-05T17:49:00.001-05:00

Dear President Obama,

You appear to have decided that the ultimate lesson to be drawn from the defeat of Bill Clinton's health care plan was that it led directly to losing the house and senate the following year. Therefore, it seems, you are more than happy to push any health care bill through Congress so that you will not have to face the same destructive voices crying that you failed in a central campaign promise. This you believe will prevent your support from eroding further and the GOP's resurgence from taking root.

I believe, Mr. President, that you are wrong on several counts

First of all, to argue that it was entirely the result of the health care debacle that President Clinton lost the Congress is to fail to remember the political reality of the early 90's. Clinton was only elected in the first place because Ross Perot split the vote; he did not have a majority of the electorate behind him, and a large number of so-called "Reagan Democrats" still created a de facto splinter party within the ranks of the left, folks who were far worse than DINO's or even Blue Dogs, since they actually voted for the other guys.

There was not very far for Clinton to fall in order to lose Congress.

Further, his majorities were not as large as yours. And he was weakened from the start by the perception that he was a liar; remember "Slick Willy"? Further, he had used up a lot of political capital on the gays in the military fiasco that turned into the DADT fiasco. And then of course there was the anti-Hillary contingent: the fact that she was in charge of the health care task force provided two strikes against it before it had begun its work.

So he lost seats the next year--as pretty much every incumbent's party does in the off year elections. (Newt and co. promised things they never delivered, BTW, and it was they who next lost favor.)

So you (probably wisely, though for personal reasons I detest the fact) pushed GLBT issues back several months in order to get the monumental economic and health care bills through Congress. Fine. And the Stim passed--maybe not as big as it ought to have been, maybe not with the focuses many of us may have liked, maybe with still too much emphasis on the banks and companies on Wall St that caused the problem in the first place--but it passed, and slowly, slowly, as the money starts to flow outward, things may start to change. (I do wish that you had had the guts to try a BOTTOM-UP stimulus, though; applying those billions of dollars to paying off consumer indebtedness and shoring up bad mortgages would have done more to ameliorate the economy than all of the bank bailouts in the world.)

But now, with the most important bill of your early presidency, your vision is failing you. You have allowed the minority to control the process as well as the argument. You have allowed them to frame this as yet another of their absurdist fantasies, and you have done far too little to mitigate the spread of lies. And you have allowed the creation of the bill itself to be in the hands of conservative Democrats and even Republicans--people who are intrinsically skeptical of true change--instead of in the hands of those who want what the people of this country voted for last November, and what you promised us: change we can believe in.

Bipartisanship is a wonderful ideal, but what kind of "negotiation" can you have with a party that will not give in to anything but their way? And even if they were being reasonable--which all but one or two of them have long since forgotten how to be--what kind of negotiation begins with giving away the best bargaining chips? You and Senator Baucus removed single-payer from the table before anything even began, allowing the GOP to concentrate all of its efforts into painting the completely benign "public option" as if it were the reconstruction of the Soviet Union here in America.

Instead of a "robust public option," then, we appear to be heading toward a bill that only the investors of the major insurance companies will love. Well, they and the GOP, who will, essentially, have gotten their way.

Mr. President, as you go through this final weekend before you make your too-long-awaited major speech on this issue, please keep in mind that it was not great ideas that re-elected George Bush in 2004 (even if one believes his victory to be legitimate). No, the man never had an idea to his name. What he did have, however, was an absolutely energized base. No matter how many absurdist memes had to be spread for them to support him, support him they did, in droves, because they believed in him. He gave them what he told them he would. It was terrible for the world, and even terrible for them, but they were convinced that they wanted it. And, even when he faced a Democratic congress, which should have been able to stand against him and check him, as is its Constitutional duty, he still got his way.

There are voices that you trust telling you to take what you can get. They are telling you that you will risk losing all if you end up with no bill. Mr. President, don't listen to them. This is not 1993. The world has changed. The economy has changed. The issues have changed. What will cause you to lose this time is not the lack of a bill, but the lack of a good bill.

One week ago, you spoke the eulogy for Ted Kennedy. You have the will of the majority of the American people behind you, as well as the majority of the US Congress. Do Senator Kennedy's memory proud, Mr. President. Give him, and this country, the health care bill that he fought so long to get us. Make it happen. If you demand it, we will have it. And that, Sir, will be a monumental win for both you and for the people of America

the last stand of american racism

2009-08-18T18:16:00.003-05:00

I watched the news reports and my jaw literally dropped. This was more than a wacko with a leg holster and one handgun; this was a crowd of people, and some were carrying semi-automatic rifles. The kind that should be illegal if you don't happen to be in Afghanistan or Iraq. And they were conspicuously protesting outside of a building in which the President of the United States was appearing.

This is what we have come to? This is our new political discourse? This is the way we protest now when we disagree, by bringing weapons within firing range of the President? And what happens when one man becomes twelve becomes fifty becomes five hundred? Are we really supposed to wait and, in the name of the Second Amendment and the fear of the NRA, allow this lunacy to build until, with all of the intensity and hatred and frenzy in the air that has been whipped up by the hatemongers on the right, one of these gun-toting loons does something irreversible?

Is this who we have become?

I do not think that it was all that long ago when it would have been unthinkable to anyone that an American would bring a weapon to a Presidential appearance. I'd say you'd have to go back...maybe nine months. Truly: would anyone on the left have even considered showing up at a Bush rally with a gun? And would anyone on the right have tolerated it if someone had? The Bushies didn't allow you to get anywhere near them if you disagreed with them, shunting you off into "free speech zones" and forcibly removing you from town halls. (Yes, back then, if you protested loudly at Bush town halls, you might find yourself under arrest.) Bring a loaded gun? I don't think so!

The man who began this gun nut protest was a New Hampshireman who, disgracing the state of my origin and simultaneously showing its independent and creative spirit (I'll give him that, anyway--once is creative), strapped that weapon to his leg and walked down the street in plain view of everyone with a t-shirt on which he referenced the Thomas Jefferson quote, "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants." the same quote that Timothy McVeigh wore on his shirt when they captured him after the Oklahoma City bombing. McVeigh's shirt also said "Sic Semper Tyrannis," a reference to the statement that John Wilkes Booth shouted as he fled from the scene after killing Abraham Lincoln.

What are we supposed to take from this? With the hate speech ratcheted up to unprecedented levels and protesters showing up at town halls carrying signs bluntly equating President Obama to Hitler (something that only months ago would have been seen as so over the top as to be almost unimaginable), and with dozens and dozens of hate sites springing up all over the web to allow people to vent the venom that right-wing talk show hosts like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck are fomenting in them, who exactly are we to assume the "tyrant" in the Jefferson allusion is?

The online hate groups spew their bile and swell in size. Earl Ofari Hutchinson, in a diary on Huffington Post, says that most are just delusional loonies. But there are indeed, he says, others.

The majority of the hate groups and the conspiracy spinning anti-Obama websites, however, spout hot air talk and are filled with the stock delusional conspiracy stuff about sinister forces taking over the government. Most vehemently deny that they advocate violence, but not all. Some openly scream about taking back the country and arming for an Armageddon type showdown with the government.

And the fact is that, as Hutchinson point out, old fashioned hate groups such as the KKK and the Aryan Nation are also in resurgence. Far from being a post-racial era, the start of the Obama Administration is becoming the Last Stand of American Racism.

The only questions remaining to be resolved involve how this is all going to play out. It is abundantly clear that a great deal of the unrest right now is the result of the racism remaining in much of America. It may be buried under code words like "socialism," but it is racism pure and simple. (When protesters claim that Obama is both a socialist and a fascist, you can't really accept that they are all that well schooled on political theory.) So there is a potentially benign way this could play out: like those who initially claimed that gay marriage would cause the sky to open and fire to rain down and swallow us all and chickens to lay poisonous eggs and disco to rise from its mirror-balled grave--I'm paraphrasing, but it was something like that--they could slowly but surely begin to realize that none of that bad stuff actually happened and just begin to fade away. We haven't won the war about gay marriage yet, but we're starting to pull ahead, and the other side is fading. This too may fade.

Or...

If the embers are not allowed to burn out gently, as they naturally do in all fires, but are instead artificially stoked by the continued lies of the right, fanning the flames, something might burn out of control. That too is the nature of fire. You can use it for heat or for cooking or just to look pretty, but it has a mind of its own. It will do as it will do. And if someone in one of those armed crowds gets it into his crazed head that there is a reason to pull a trigger, all hell will break loose, whether or not the President is involved. And if the demonizers on the right continue to pour gasoline on the fire, the chance that some crazed and demoralized loser will do something historically outrageous increases every day.

A year ago, it happened in a Unitarian church in Tennessee, as a man filled with righteous anger by the likes of Rush and Bill O'Reilly finally snapped and took two innocent lives. It happened in Pittsburgh, where a gunman (with many other issues, to be sure) expressed concern about the current administration taking away his guns. (Where did that idea come from?) It happened in Washington at the Holocaust Museum, where an angry 80-year-old, fueled by hatred and racism, killed a security guard. Despondent people, desperate people, angry people...people with guns.

And now these people, in numbers, are gathering where our President is speaking. The Last Stand of American Racism is coming. I pray that it does not go down with a bang, but with a whimper.

the left and the loons: why i am a liberal

2009-08-15T10:57:00.001-05:00

Every once in a while it's nice to reflect on why you believe the things you believe and why you feel the way you do about them. Some of us are unfortunate enough to have personal experiences that directly connect them to left-wing causes. Some do not. But all of us have examined the political dichotomy in this nation and have come down on the Left side of the spectrum.

Why is that?

At the end of a long, thoughtful, interesting discussion about health care on facebook with several of my former students (now all in their thirties), we turned our thoughts inward a bit, and I found myself exploring what happened in my life that led me to feel these things so strongly.

Took me a long time to get to this point. Though I have personal issues (GLBT) that would naturally incline me to lean Left, I spent much of my life trying hard to ride the fence, trying hard to be "independent." In high school--at least before Watergate--I actually leaned right. (Good old NH upbringing.) But every time I did anything as foolish as vote for a Republican, I ended up regretting it big time.

As I watched them systematically refocus America on religious nonsense and economic philosophies that have (in yesterday's news) ended up creating the biggest divide between rich and poor in the history of this nation, and then do everything in their power to thwart a democratically elected President, including hounding him into impeachment, and following that steal the next two elections so that they could finish the task of reframing America into their vision of what it ought to be (a Christian oligarchy) and instead managing to disregard or outright shatter the very Constitution that their Supreme Court appointees claim to hold in such high regard, my disenchantment became disrespect became distaste became disgust.

If the true conservatives still ran the GOP in this country, I'd have no problem. We need two parties for balance, and there are indeed times when conservative ideas need to be heard, and even followed. But they don't. The neocons and the religious right took over in the eighties and nineties, and all that remain today are the wackos. To be fair, there are a few who sincerely try to hold true to the historical tenets of their party. Both Maine senators come to mind, as well as quite a few congressmen I could name. But when there is no room in the GOP for Arlen Spector, well, this is not your father's Republican Party.

In response to something someone posted, I said that we no longer have conservatives in any positions of power in this country; we have the Left and the Loons. I ought to amend that, pithy though it is. We do have conservatives. The thing is: they are now in the DEMOCRATIC party. The GOP had no room for them, so they migrated over to the only party that actually accepts alternative viewpoints. And that, BTW, is why Dems have such a hard time coming to consensus on things. The GOP is lock step because...well, LOOK at them: they could be the IBM folks in that famous "1984" Apple commercial. Better dressed, but still...

The Dems look, sound, and act like America, and it gets pretty sloppy out here sometimes.

Those folks in the town halls are scared, but they are scared because they are being fed lies and distortions by a well-honed lie and distortion machine that has been getting stronger and stronger since Willie Horton proved its effectiveness. It makes the disinformation in the Big Brother commercial look tame. Today it includes FOX NEWS as a media outlet (a channel with the word "news" in its misleading name to confuse people into believing that it is "fair and balanced"), most of the GOP leadership, and such pseudo-celebs as "Joe the Plumber," as well as a mind-bogglingly effective and well-financed behind the scenes group of lobbyists and PACs to do the real dirty work.

Dems don't keep their hands clean. They are not "holier than thou." (The single greatest unfair attack ad of all time is still the "daisy ad," after all.) But these days they look like a church choir next to the garbage that the right pulls on a daily basis. And there is something to be said for motive as well: when the right wing pulls this crap to retain or regain power, its goal is to pad its already plentiful bank accounts (or to wage random unnecessary wars to prove it does not collectively require Cialis). No one claims that left wingers are immune to graft, but I think it is pretty clear that the goals of the Left are far more altruistic.

So, after many, many years of just too much, I learned my lesson from, ironically, FOX NEWS. You can't be "fair and balanced" when one side is clearly wrong. You've just got to say it is wrong and speak up. Anything else is just a lie.

Back when my students were in school, I rarely spoke politics in the classroom, and whenever I did I always felt the need to give time to the other side. There were plenty of students who were unsure what my affiliation was (and I myself would have said "Independent" if asked). During the Bush years, though, that changed. If something is wrong, you can't just look the other way. I acknowledged (always) and respectfully listened to those students in my classes with dissenting opinions--though, as the years wore on, their numbers dwindled to almost zero--but I made no bones about where I stood and why. My bulletin board last fall filled up with Obama For President paraphernalia. I attended the Grant Park celebration. (So did several of my students.) I didn't preach politics in the classroom because that would be wrong--it's not my place or my job--but I didn't back down when the topic came up as I might have in the past. Not this time.

I'm holding this administration to a very high standard. It has already done a good job in some ways and disappointed me in others, but I'm a realist. It's only been six months, and the job is tough. And this is politics: the solutions will neither be pretty nor perfect. But if I look back on this President after his terms (yes, I'm assuming two terms) and fail to see Hope realized, then I will know that the American Experiment is truly waning, and I will begin to consider spending my retirement years in some other place.

Maybe France. That would piss off the neocons.

my email to senator durbin

2009-08-09T18:02:00.000-05:00

"ANOTHER BLOW TO PUBLIC OPTION," the headline on Huffington Post read. "Durbin Open to Dropping It."

I read that and my first thought, which should have been WTF!?, was instead, alas, more along the lines of, {{sigh}}.

"So we'll see how this ends, but I don't want the process to be filibustered to failure, which unfortunately, many senators are trying to do," Durbin added. "I want to make sure that we do something positive for the American people."

And I say again: {{sigh}}.

Why do we always seem to roll over and fall down just when everything seems truly possible?

Then, however, I started getting mad. These are the people we elected to do, among other things, this job--this specific job--passing health care reform, and they are about to let the minority play them yet again?

So, though I actually am not the kind who writes many letters to my congressmen, I could not allow the moment to pass without making some kind of statement. This is what I sent to my senator:

Dear Senator Durbin,

The Huffington Post today has a front page article that states that you are now open to abandoning the public option in favor of co-ops as a measure for "compromise." I sincerely hope that this is not true.

Along with millions of others, I have pushed hard during recent elections to provide for a Democratic majority--and now supermajority--in order to make amends for the disastrous policies that have been visited upon this country by your colleagues across the aisle. Now that Democrats are firmly in place because of a promise--a PROMISE--for "real change," how do you expect to hold onto those voters who put you there if they see that you cannot follow through on that promise?

The GOP, with a weak President, managed to get its bills passed *even when they were in the minority* because they stood their ground. They continue to stand their ground today. They do not believe in compromise. Personally, I feel that it is a worthwhile and positive goal, but that it is not as important as the "real change" that was promised to the American people.

Please, Senator Durbin, do NOT back down from the public option. Encourage the President to take a firm stand demanding that the bill contain such an option, and then rally the Senate--YOUR Senate, regardless of the GOP or the more conservative among the Democrats. If you need to use conciliation, use it. But *don't* let this historic opportunity pass us by with yet another empty promise, yet another failed effort at real change.

I have voted for you every time I have been asked to, Senator, and I have never written to you before. Now, as one of your constituents, I am asking that you remember why you are there and why millions of people replaced the GOP majority with a Democratic one. The ideas of the other side are what my fourteen year old daughter would call "epic failures," but I'm terrified that, if you and your colleagues let us down at this crucial point in time, the result might be a backlash that will end up ultimately restoring them to power.

I am not naive. I know that you are a politician and that politics is, as they say, "the art of the possible." But why, with the GOP reduced to making reprehensible claims about "Obama Death Panels" and other bits of made-up insanity just to get a foothold, is it not, at this moment in history, POSSIBLE to do something truly historic?

I don't know if the message is any good or if it has any hope of doing any good, but I feel better having sent it.

never can say goodbye: letting go of our past

2009-07-05T15:07:00.001-05:00

Last night I could have gone to see Todd Rundgren at a local festival. Tonight, Huey Lewis and the News are there. In the past few years in my own town, just down the street, I have seen such acts as America, what passes as CCR these days without John Fogerty, The Grass Roots, Grand Funk Railroad, Tommy James and the Shondells, and Electric Light Orchestra. Nostalgia acts like these can be found in festivals across the country, and they always draw crowds of people who enjoy sitting on lawns or hillsides listening and singing along with songs that take them back to days they wish that they could get back.

In the outrageous outpouring of emotion over the death of Michael Jackson, one thought I heard struck me most: the simple and logical question that a friend had asked on facebook: why do we care so much about someone whose career has not mattered to us in years? And it's true: most of us probably cannot name three songs Michael recorded after "Thriller." So what gives?

I think that our reactions to both Michael's life and his death are linked both to his undeniably intriguing individual characteristics and to the nature of pop/rock itself. As much as Michael the Entertainer riveted us and Michael the Curiosity confused and enthralled us, Michael the Aging Pop Icon held onto our hearts.

It isn't difficult to see (or prove) that, nostalgia aside, pop and rock are youth-oriented industries. That's why Mick Jagger famously said, "I'd rather be dead than singing 'Satisfaction' when I'm forty-five." Well, of course he is long past forty-five and still singing "Satisfaction," and as far as we can tell he has made peace with the fact that he is very much alive. The Stones still sell out stadiums, still release new recordings. But--and please forgive me, Stones fans--they don't matter any more. It has been years, probably decades, since they have released anything with real staying power. When you think of the Stones, your mind does not travel to anything of recent vintage; it takes you to "Wild Horses" and "Brown Sugar" and "Paint It Black," and, yes, "Satisfaction." And it's not a coincidence that it is those songs that the Stones are playing in those sold-out stadiums.

Paul McCartney, too, playing before international audiences in recent years after 9-11 or at the Super Bowl halftime show, did not regale us with ditties from "Chaos and Creation in the Back Yard." No. He played Beatles songs. These men, these giants of the pop rock world, have long since passed the days when their music mattered in that world. That is left to the stars of the moment, and each generation has its share. Next month I am taking my daughters to see Green Day, their favorite band. (I think of it as an alt punk REM.) But even Green Day may be pushing past its prime: the band members are all in their thirties now, and this is as much a young man's sport as pro basketball.

Yet we cannot deny that the musical icons of our youth are important to us in ways that perhaps we don't even understand. And because we--the middle aged fogies who seem so old to those children at the Warped Tour concerts--were, after all, the generation that invented rock and roll, the generation that gave birth to its icons, we have managed to keep them alive in ways that might well be unprecedented.

Think to the 60's and 70's. Your local AM radio station played all the hits as well as all the oldies. It played the Carpenters and the Beatles along with Steppenwolf and the Everly Brothers and the Big Bopper. But how far back did it ever go? On a super-oldies weekend, maybe you'd get 1956 and "Rock Around the Clock" or "The Wayward Wind." You certainly didn't go further back than that. In our youth, we acted as if music began when rock began.

We still do.

And that fact influences everything, even now. The high school kids I teach enjoy their contemporary bands, but many of them also have a deep appreciation for the Stones, the Beatles, the Doors, Eric Clapton, and so many others who are old enough to be their grandparents (if they are even still alive). They listen to a variety of radio stations, some of which broadcast only today's music, but others showcase rock's history. And the music of our generation remains alive.

It doesn't matter if Michael Jackson never again reached the pinnacle he reached with "Thriller." It doesn't matter to his musical legacy that he experienced whatever personal nightmares he experienced that led to his very public personal implosion. Like the other stars of the 60's and 70's, he defined an age. And perhaps more than most of the others, he defined it personally for many of us. We watched him grow up. We marveled at his dance skill and his singing voice. And then, in his incredible self-reinvention with "Thriller," we were, well, thrilled. He was the defining entertainer of his time. And it was no real mystery in the end: as we feel toward the rest of the icons of those days, we simply have a hard time saying goodbye.

For the Love of a Boy

2009-04-11T19:43:00.001-05:00

My daughter is seventeen.

As if that were not enough of a concern, she also happens to be very independent and intelligent, forceful and (sometimes) headstrong. These characteristics, I suppose, are the gifts I have bequeathed unto her, byproducts of my feminism, my own independent spirit, my education, my Unitarianism, and what have you. Ordinarily these qualities make me proud, but they have their drawbacks, and one of them has become overwhelmingly apparent in the latest battle between mind and emotion over the boy in her life.

Background:

She has always professed to be lesbian, which has never bothered me in the least. (In fact, I loved it when she announced it at age 13: my reaction was something along the line of Thank God I won't have to worry about her getting pregnant in high school.) She still professes to be lesbian, but bisexual only in the case of this one boy (which is apparently OK since he claims that he is gay, and therefore the decidedly heterosexual relationship between them falls between the cracks of sexual identity...I assume). They met at camp (thousands of dollars so she can learn independence and I get this?) and have now been seeing each other for two years.

Not quite true: he broke up with her for four months late last year. She spent the time deeply, darkly depressed. And when, finally, he came back, she uttered the words that made me choke on my feminist parenting mantle:

I don't care about anything else in my future, Mom, as long as I'm his.

To the boy's credit, he recognizes that this is amazingly stupid. To her credit, she does too. But what can I do? she says. I can't help what I feel. And I am left with visions of the life she has been trying to create for herself with all of her AP courses and planning slipping away in adolescent romantic fantasy.

So far it's OK. SO far she is still talking aboutt he same solid colleges she was talking about before they got back together. So far his presence is not part of the plan. So far. But she's only a junior. And her emotions appear to have won the battle.

My daughter is seventeen

welcome back my friends to the cold that never ends

2009-04-06T15:11:00.003-05:00

"I'm dreaming of a white Easter..."

I can hear the carolers outside singing Easter carols as the aromas of gingerbread and hot chocolate filter through my home. Somewhere, the Easter Bunny is getting ready for his annual journey on his magical sled pulled by eight tiny reinmice through a winter wonderland of candy-colored egg-shaped ornaments, and people who almost never go to church are preparing to attend because it seems like the right thing to do.

Haven't we been here before? Say, about 14 or 15 weeks ago?

Arrgh!

I don't know if I have ever mentioned this, but...

I HATE WINTER!!!!

midvacation silliness

2009-04-03T15:54:00.001-05:00

It's getting on toward the end of spring break and I hope everyone has had a good week. I'll be looking forward to seeing you all on Monday. Meanwhile, enjoy this 2009 take on a 90's bit of pop:

Breakfast at Tiffany's from Olde English Comedy on Vimeo.

--kt

2009-03-31T21:06:00.001-05:00

Sending this status update from ping.fm to four networks at once!

the bluster over filibuster

2009-02-06T11:27:00.001-06:00

This is sort of a semi-response to a DailyKos discussion of "The Myth of 60" in a diary which was itself a variation of a theme Kagro X has explored before: that the so-called "magic number" of 60 senators to make things "filibuster-proof" is a bunch of malarkey.

Oh, it would be awfully nice if it were true. Then we could actually find out what would happen in a world governed by the left. But this is Obama-nation, a nation of compromise and post-partisanship, at least as seen from the POV of the left, and thus when we speak whimsically of the filibuster-proof majority we are talking about a concept that, even if it could actually accomplish something, would be doing something that our president does not even want.

However, that is not the real issue anyway. The real issue is far simpler: for all of their talk and threats, there is simply no way that the Republicans will filibuster either of the two most important bills that the administration will be sending to them. They have too much to lose if they do and absolutely nothing to gain.

There is probably no doubt that President Obama made both a philosophical error and a strategic error in his first major attempt at bipartisan dealings with the Republicans. Philosophically, he made the mistake of assuming that anyone on the other side of the aisle actually cares more about rescuing the country than rescuing their party from its self-created and richly deserved governmental exile. The unanimous GOP "no" vote in the House proved that, at least in that chamber, his assumption was entirely mistaken. We shall see, maybe today, whether it is also in error in the Senate.

Strategically, as Rachel Maddow has pointed out on several occasions, he made the elementary negotiating error of giving away too much far too easily and too soon. Handing the GOP what should have been its biggest desire, the $300 billion in tax cuts, essentially as a "gift," might have seemed like immense largess to the president (and in fact was) but has been taken by the GOP as a signal that this White House is weak and can be manipulated. Obama might have predicted that a party built on manipulation and backroom dealing would never recognize an honest front-end offer for what it is. He should have predicted that. He did not, and now there is really no further room for any serious negotiation, and the GOP is left saying that the Dems will not listen to them.

Certainly Obama and the Democrats have, by giving in to their desire for post-partisanship, ended up with a far weaker and less effective bill than they might otherwise have presented to the country. And still it does not seem to "satisfy" the Republican minority.

Every day Mitch McConnell and his cadre of cretinous cronies cackle on and on about whatever their Talking Point of the Moment might happen to be (though half the time it's something that has been settled and even removed from the bill already), threatening the president with the withholding of their votes from the ultimate bill. And the Democrats say they "don't have enough votes" to pass the package, by which they mean they don't have that magic 60. But the thing is: they don't need sixty votes. No one is going to have to stop a filibuster.

Let's explore the reasons why the GOP would never filibuster this bill, or the health care bill that will be coming, Ted Kennedy promises us, before the year is out.

First of all, despite every bit of evidence to the contrary, the GOP senators are not stupid. Some of them are actually quite intelligent. As for the rest? Willfully ignorant, yes. Morally bankrupt, undoubtedly. Self-righteous and greedy? Check. But not stupid. The nation's economy is in the crapper and the GOP has been loudly and publicly blamed for the problem with resounding losses in the last two elections. They are in serious danger of being relegated to the status of meaningless regional party, and they know it. Not a one of them would ever admit it, but they know it. They are a party in as much disarray as the Democrats were when they were struggling through their fractured factionalized days back in the early seventies. You know, the ones that led to Richard Nixon winning landslide victories?

The GOP sees Barack Obama and his 70%+ approval ratings and they know what they are up against. They see their own subterranean approval ratings and they know what they are up against. They are in trouble. If they filibuster the stimulus package, it will be entirely their fault that it fails to pass. If they filibuster the health care bill, it will be entirely their fault that the 50 million Americans without health care remain in ever-present danger of catastrophe. They cannot allow this to be the case.

So what are their options?

With the stimulus bill, they've already done their dirty work: they have loaded it up with tax relief instead of infrastructure programs--with the full cooperation of the president--so that the bill probably cannot accomplish what it sets out to do. Now all they have to do is let the program fail. And the hilarious thing is that its failure, which itself would reinforce the fact that their outmoded ideas are wrong wrong wrong, will be used by them as evidence that they were right all along! So the GOP is left with a difficult decision: whether they wish to vote for it, re-emphasizing their devotion to their so-called ideals, or against it, which is in effect a vote that repudiates everything that they stand for. But they are not in a position to filibuster the thing.

Unless they are in fact stupid.

Oh wait. They do have that Vitter guy, don't they?

only obama

2009-01-22T14:00:00.001-06:00

As I watched Hope congeal on the steps of the Capitol Building on Tuesday, one of tens of millions watching from a distance while millions more watched up close, braving the chill of a winter day to see history being made, as I heard the powerful words spoken by the most powerful man in the world, a strange thought wound its way through my brain.

I had had this thought before; it was not a new one. Probably many of you have had it also. But as I listened to this speech of all speeches, I suddenly realized how vitally important it is to recognize what it all means and to understand what a titanic event is transpiring before our very eyes.

The thought, a simple one, was this:

Barack Hussein Obama is the only president ever elected who could have made this speech and been seen as absolutely sincere. He is the only man ever elected to this office who has ever truly had a chance to heal the partisan wounds of this nation. He is the only man ever elected to this office who might succeed in getting the vast majority of the country to buy into and believe in something beyond ourselves, our parties, our ideologies. More than any of the great presidents before him, this is so. And the reason became absolutely clear as he spoke in that Washington chill.

It lay in his own words that poured out into the enthusiastic crowd:

We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth; and because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation, and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.

He was speaking of America, but he might as well have been speaking of a very specific segment of our country, a segment of which he--and he alone among the men who have been elected president--is a part.

Obama's status as the nation's first black president has been played out again and again in the media. Pundits have rammed it down our throats since the campaign began, and certainly since the election itself. We've probably seen enough references to Lincoln, King, Tubman, slaves, Little Rock, Selma, Parks, and so many other iconic symbols of civil rights by now that, like Stephen Colbert, those of us who don't happen to be black wish we were.

(He makes this plea about 5:15 into the video.)

COLBERT: Welcome to the Report. We continue our live coverage tonight. Today, the 20th of January, in the Year of Our Lord 2009, Barack Obama was sworn in as the 44th President of the United States of America.

(wild applause)

Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. It was very brave of me to admit that. You can already feel the change sweeping across this land as a new era begins: a time of brotherhood, when men of different backgrounds and beliefs will come together to marry one another.

Now a lot of people thought I didn't want Barack Obama to be president; that's not true. I just didn't want him to be President of America. I thought he could do a great job in Nicaragua. If I am sad it is only for the Nicaraguans.

But this man is now our president and, as an American, I pledge to support him unconditionally for as long as he remains popular.

The inauguration began this morning at 11:30. Everyone was there dressed to the nines. Aretha Franklin even managed to steal a bow off a Lexus to wear for the occasion.

(Aretha sings)

Wow. Sorry I got something in my eye. I don't know what that is. Um. Of course the Queen of Soul got a great response from the two million people who came to the city from all walks of life to put aside their differences and stand as brothers.

That's nice. What is wrong with my eyes today? Is there a cat in here? I'm allergic.

Then...Then, Barack Hussein Obama made his power grab. Wow, that is one good looking man.

OBAMA: ...preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

ROBERTS: So help you God?

OBAMA: So help me God.

COLBERT: Oh my God.... Jimmy?

OBAMA: America is a friend of each nation and every man woman and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity and we are ready to lead once more.

COLBERT: Oh my God. That is so...that just feels so right. I'm sorry. I'm sorry I'm not angry. I know we have a deal: you watch and I scream. I'm really dropping the ball here. OK, I can do it. I can do it. I can do it.

Jimmy, play something else.

NO, NOT THE CHILDREN! NO< THEY"RE SO BEAUTIFUL! OHH! OHH!

Ohhh...ohhh...ahhhh...Oh my God. Oh, I'm sorry. I just feel like my heart is gonna burst because it's full of rainbows.

LOWERY: When black will not be asked to give back. When brown can stick around. When yellow can be mellow. When the red man can get ahead, man.

COLBERT: That is the best Dr. Seuss book ever. Oh, I loved that old man. I just loved him. He was just so authentic, you know? Ah, why can't I be black? You know, you know just for one day. Why can't I be black today? Could I be black for just a while? Could I put on makeup? Could I put on makeup? I'm being told, no, I shouldn't do that. That would be a career-ending decision. That even talking about it is a bad idea. OK. Oh, fuddle. I've got to get it together.

Come on, Jimmy. Show me something that will turn my heart to ice.

(Pic of Cheney)

OH, GOD! Oh, my God! Whew! Oh! Oh, man! I said freeze, not kill! Man that gave me the shrinkydinks.

But silly comedy concepts aside, what ran through my mind is the notion that only a man of color, a man who does not possess the intense baggage of the atrocities against other races that any white man carries by proxy, who does not carry with him the expectations of a power elite that has banked on Privilege for decades, if not centuries, and counted on our leaders to help it along, who does not (in short) have ties to any of the things that have held this country down for so long, can hope to cut through the brambles and briars and get to the garden which has been nearly choked off. Who else can say, with no irony and with the expectation of being both believed and accepted, that he believes in the notion of emerging from dark chapters of history "stronger and more united," believes "that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself"? Who else ever could have said that?

Barack Obama, when he tells us that he wishes to be the president of all of us, to heal the wounds of the country, to reach out even to his enemies, has credibility because he comes from a people who have suffered. He can offer harmony and Hope because, while he personally has never "toiled in sweatshops and settled the West; endured the lash of the whip and plowed the hard earth," he can speak from Power for those who have. His wife's ancestors were slaves who, as the pundits couldn't stop informing us, helped build the very marble monuments on which he was being inaugurated. He can offer an end to suspicion and disunion because, for the first time in American history, the meek have inherited.

And the fact that he has no ties to the vast corporations who have been running the show forever means that President Obama can be trusted to make non-partisan decisions about everything from defense to Wall Street. He has no one to appease, and when he says,

The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works - whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified. Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end. And those of us who manage the public's dollars will be held to account - to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day - because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.

we have no reason to doubt that he means what he says.

The GOP, desperate to maintain anything remotely resembling its former leash on power, will do what it can to impede progress. It already is, with its lame and lamentable efforts to hold up the seating of Senator Franken and the confirmations of Attorney General Holder and Secretary Geithner, and other officers, among other annoyances. And of course they will attempt to throw roadblocks at his grander plans as well, though he had this to say about that:

Now, there are some who question the scale of our ambitions - who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans. Their memories are short. For they have forgotten what this country has already done; what free men and women can achieve when imagination is joined to common purpose, and necessity to courage.

What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them - that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply.

Our president has challenged us in the most fundamental way to rethink and restart the "story called America." And the challenge is working. This morning I saw a newspaper whose front page consisted of nothing but a full page photo of Obama taking the oath of office. Across the top--no masthead, no date, no anything except these words: America 2.0.

That's what Hope is. That's why his approval rating has been as high as 82% and why more that 3/4 of our country right now is optimistic about the future of the nation despite the sorry state of just about everything.

Another fake news program, The Daily Show, pointed out with tongue in cheek last night that Obama's inaugural address and Bush's second one shared some very distinct similarities:

JON: White House Bureau Chief Jason Jones was in Washington. Jason! Obama's speech today.

JASON: Jon, his speech was incredible. Typical Obama: inspiring rhetoric.

OBAMA: This is the source of our confidence: the knowledge that God calls on us to shape an uncertain destiny.

JASON: Mixed with square-jawed determination.

OBAMA: For those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents: you cannot outlast us and we will defeat you.

JASON: Mmm Hmm. And it's what our country desperately needs at this time.

JON: But, I have to say, Jason: Our nation's relationship to the Almighty, a message for our enemies...isn't that...Bush?

JASON: What? No, no, no. I'm not following you here. This president had a new message for a new day.

OBAMA: We will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense.

JASON: There you go: pride of country, straight from the tap! Ha? A real self-esteem booster.

JON: But if I may: (in a mock-Bush voice) We will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense. Heh heh heh.

JASON: Whoa whoa whoa! Jon, the cowboy days are over. My God, when I even hear that, it makes me want to take off my shoe and just jam it down your--

JON: Right. But those aren't Bush's words! I'm just reading the Obama quote you just played for me; I just did it in Bush's voice. It's the same rhetoric.

JASON: You're the same rhetoric.

JON: But watch this:

(montage)

BUSH: Freedom is the universal gift of Almighty God.

OBAMA: ..the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free.

BUSH: We will work with our friends and allies across the world to defend our way of life.

OBAMA: We will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense.

BUSH: We will usher in a new era of enhanced prosperity and peace.

OBAMA: America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.

BUSH: Did our generation advance the cause of freedom?

OBAMA: We carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.

JASON: Why are you doing this?

JON: I don't know! It's all I know! What am I supposed to do?

JASON: It's Hope Day One!

JON: I know! I don't like it either!

JASON: I know.

JON: I don't like doing this either!

JASON: It's like: why is cheese delicious on Italian food, but when you melt it on Chinese food it's disgusting? I don't know! Honestly Jon, I guess that it's just when Obama says this stuff I don't think he really means it. And that gives me Hope. Can I go back to the party now?

JON: Yes you can.

Yes, some of these are the same words. But "this president had a new message for a new day," as Jason Jones said. How is that possible? It may not have been the point that Jon Stewart was intending, but I found in that montage additional evidence of what I was already thinking. Bush could say these things and everyone listening could see that he was full of crap, that he was simply mouthing the platitudes of this party and the neocons. Contrary to what Jones says at the end, when Obama says these things, I do believe him. I believe that he will follow through. I believe that he understands the consequences of his actions. I believe that he knows that he cannot do things unilaterally. I believe that he will always act in the best interest of America, and that is something I never believed about George W. Bush.

If any other president since Kennedy had said this:

Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends - hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism - these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history. What is demanded then is a return to these truths. What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility - a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task.

he would not have been received so warmly and enthusiastically. And Kennedy, too, had as many enemies as friends.

What Obama has the opportunity to accomplish is unprecedented in the history of our nation precisely because Barack Hussein Obama himself is unprecedented in the history of our nation. He is not merely a master politician, schooled on the streets of Chicago and tested against the toughest political machine ever created; he is a true leader. The key to being a great leader, often, is being the right person in the right job at the right time, and Barack Obama appears to be that person. His even temperament, so thoroughly chronicled already, is exactly what this country needs to weather its myriad Bush-created crises. The key to being a great leader is to be a good listener; Obama is proving that he does listen, even to former adversaries. The key to being a great leader is not to be True Believer; our last president was a True Believer and look where that got us. Obama is a practical man. If he is a True Believer in anything, it is his family and the United States of America. I doubt that anything else at all is too sacred to be placed on the table.

Some of us may not like that about him. But I say hallelujah. Our partisan biases and petty bickering and personal ambitions have blinded us for far too long to what is important here: making our country work. And I am a True Believer in that. I believe that Obama has the best shot ever at succeeding at it. I don't even believe in God, but I'm praying for him.

life with brian 1: monologues (fiction)

2008-12-26T19:43:00.000-06:00

1: Monologues

It’s not that I like speaking in monologues, but when the other party in the conversation abdicates his responsibility to come up with anything responsive, it’s either that or shut the heck up. And I like the things I have to say too much to shut the heck up, so I monologue. Besides, after two years being married to Brian, I’ve pretty much gotten used to it. Entire weeks have gone by when I have not even heard his voice. He sits, he nods, he smiles sometimes, he makes odd little sounds in his throat that seem to signify cognitive responses that I pretend to understand, and he sits some more. Every once in while some pearl of wisdom will escape his encapsulated mind:

“Do we really have enough money?” or “We don’t have any room.”

Mostly he just lets me talk for both of us, and I am perfectly capable of it. Days come and go, problems come and go, money comes and goes (and goes more than it comes): there is always something to say.

I don’t want to give the impression that Brian is just some great lump who sits around and does nothing. That would not be the truth. Not at all. Oh, he’s not working right now, but he does other things that have value. He does all the cooking for one thing, and he’s very, very good at it. I can hardly believe what that man can whip together from a bunch of nondescript ingredients, and that is a good thing considering the sorry state of our larder these days. The most words that come out of his mouth each day often come right around the time he says something like “There’s food,” to whoever is listening, and the various denizens of the household migrate toward the dining area to discover what culinary bit of whimsy he has brought out of his imagination this time.

We might eat alone, Brian and I, or maybe with the girls, Allie and Marie, if they aren’t with my ex. Or maybe the Subterraneans will surface for a dinnertime visit. We do see them from time to time, though less so than you’d imagine considering that they live just down a flight of stairs from us. If they come, though, at least there will be someone else willing to carry on a normal conversation at the dinner table. If anything about the Subterraneans can be called normal.

Besides his expertise in the kitchen, Brian is also an artist. I mean that literally: he paints. His work adorns almost every wall in our cluttered, messy, overstuffed, chaotic, utterly packed little townhouse. When he moved in, he turned the already ridiculous front room of the house (then already full with my desk, computer, filing cabinets, bookshelves, and about a dozen other things in a 7x8 space) into a studio.

“Good light,” he said, elaborating as always on his reasoning for cramming even more crap into the first room people see when they walk through the front door. And now his easels and paints and brushes and half-finished canvases are pretty much everywhere that the other stuff wasn’t, and the effect is sort of like living in the immediate aftermath of an earthquake, if the walls could sort of stay up. I try not to look left when I walk in the front door. My orange tabby, Shakespeare, usually greets me, and that helps, because he curls around my feet and makes me bend to pet him, stopping me long enough in whatever I’m doing that I will remember the clutter and avert my eyes.

Brian insists that Shakespeare is yellow. No one knows why.

At this moment, Brian is depressed. I ask him why he is depressed and he won’t tell me; this of course is not a tremendous shock. If he had told me, had actually articulated something that significant when invited to, I might have had to call the New York Times or Newsweek or something. But of course he didn’t; he mumbled something about needing to figure it out for himself and rolled over on the couch. He does this a lot too: sleeps on the couch. I don’t actually understand it; we do not have a particularly comfortable couch. Still, he falls asleep on it frequently, and he often even sleeps the whole night on it. Actually I suspect that he is not sleeping right now because he is not snoring. When he sleeps, he snores, and his snoring can scare trains out of tunnels. So the silence from the couch makes me believe that he is simply lying there thinking.

He thinks a lot.

Today’s bout of thinking stems from Christmas. Christmas was yesterday, and it was a fairly low-key event as far as such days have been in my life. Allie and Marie are away, so we decided not to celebrate the holiday until next week when they return. And finances are such that we really had little to spend on presents. I think what is bothering Brian is that we spent anything at all. I can’t seem to convince him that a little deficit spending around the holiday is a good thing, that it does the soul a world of good. He just sees that it does the wallet a world of bad. And he’s right of course about that, but it’s Christmas and I don’t care. So he’s depressed. And so he’s thinking.

He should be painting; it would take his mind to better places. When he paints, something within him is freed. I think his soul lives in the brushes and canvases and waits for him to release it; if he doesn’t paint it remains trapped there, unable to breathe, unable to fly. He said this morning that his dreams had died. How? With canvases unfinished and others yet unimagined? But he’s like a shark: if he stops moving forward he starts to die. And now, as Shakespeare sits on the windowsill above him looking at a fresh December snow, he is not moving.

worried? don't be.

2008-10-25T21:12:00.002-05:00

It always happens the same way.

I'm talking with a friend, and we're chatting about whatever topic of the day happens to be on our minds, when the conversation–because it's late October and this is an election year–turns political. My friend will get this look on his or her face, a suddenly drawn, dazed, faraway look, and I know what is coming. The words vary, but the sentiment does not.

"I'm so worried that we'll blow it again."

Or a frequent variation:

"I'm so worried that the Republicans will steal it again."

It amounts to the same thing, I suppose. Either way, Sarah Palin is a heartbeat away from the Oval Office and the guy there ahead of her has sworn to appoint more "strict constructionists" to the Supreme Court. Oh, and he has this nasty temper, makes kneejerk decisions, seems to think that the solution to any international crisis is the use of force, and supported Wall Street deregulation with more fervor than just about anyone else...until it crashed. Yeah, and he hates everything Bush stands now for even though he bragged again and again about doing everything in his power to get the guy elected and re-elected...and voted with him well over 90% of the time.

Nothing to be concerned about there.

So my friends look at me, shadows forming around their eyes and their skin turning pale from lack of sleep, and utter their deepest, darkest fears. Like Cubs fans, they see their side looking like champions, but know deep down inside that something, somehow, is going to go terribly, unavoidably, heartbreakingly wrong.

And I look back at them and smile.

"Not gonna happen," I tell them. I know all of the arguments. Heard 'em all a thousand times. And I do believe that the last two elections were stolen by Rovian machinations. And I do believe that eight years is plenty of time to put mechanisms in place to secure the outcome of this one as well. Yet I say loudly that I am not worried. I'm not complacent--not at all: I still believe we need to do everything possible to get out the vote, everything possible to prevent fraud, everything possible to call attention to the problems some people are already having at the polls, everything possible to counter the hate-filled campaign that McCain and the RNC are running. I'm just not worried.

I have many reasons for this, I tell them. First, there is the simple matter of scope. No one, not Rove or anyone else, could have predicted that the extreme swing of voter registration numbers combined with the dismal Bush approval ratings and the tanking economy would put so many "safe" red states in play and, not only that, but turn many of them quite solidly blue. If no one predicted it, no one would have needed to do anything to cheat to prevent it: this is just logical.

Then there is the magnitude of Obama's reach. Polls have him ahead by so much in some so-called "swing" states that unleashing an organized election day attack--even one involving paperless voting machines--would leave a stench that could hardly go unrecognized. Too many attacks would need to be unleashed simultaneously; someone would be caught, and Rove may be a scoundrel but he is a smart scoundrel: he knows this. He would never risk having the whole vote fraud operation found out in this way. I do not believe the "OK" will ever be given.

And even if it is: by Election Day, as many as 1/3 of the total number of votes cast in 2004 will already have been cast via early balloting. And a hugely disproportionate number of these early voters are the very ones that the GOP would love to disenfranchise come November 4.

Besides, there are several states sliding even now from solidly red to frustratingly (for the GOP) purple. I had a friend up from Georgia today who told me that, like Bob Barr, she actually believes that her state will vote for Obama on November 4. Whodathunk we'd even be talking about a thing like that?

Finally, and most importantly, I have two words that assure me any time I begin to have the same doubts that cause my friends' sleepless nights:

Barack Obama.

I have been supporting his candidacy since Kerry lost, believing even then that the freshman senator from my home state of Illinois would throw his hat into the ring this year. In the winter of '07, when he announced, my husband said "So what?" because it was of course going to be Hillary. I just said: Wait. When this is over, Barack Obama will not only be the nominee, but he will win the Presidency. His strategy has been letter perfect. The enthusiasm of his supporters has been incredible. His ability to harness the youth vote has added a dimension to the American political scene that has never before been witnessed. His campaign has been, to put it as simply as I can, among the very best of all time.

In June, I went on record as saying that this election would not even be close. I predicted a 15-20% popular win and an electoral blowout. Again, everyone said I was nuts. Sarah Palin's nomination has caused me to reassess the popular vote prediction, which is by far the less important of the two numbers, but nothing has caused me to doubt at any time that the national press would eventually get over its initial infatuation with the newcomer and get on with its vital task of vetting the candidate that McCain did not bother to vet.

Why would I give the press that much credit? Two reasons: bloggers, whose rise to prominence has been, again, something that the Rovian strategists have not foreseen (and McCain has not quite figured out even today), and who continued to beat the drums against the liars until someone in the traditional news media had to take notice of the rising noise; and (again) Barack Obama, whose campaign never met a smear, a lie, or a problem it could not face eye to eye and beat backward home. Palin, who started her national rise already under the shadow of Troopergate, was in retrospect pretty easy pickings, but the Obama campaign and its surrogates forced the vetting of this would-be VP to take place under the public microscope, and every disclosure looked that much worse for John McCain.

So my friends look all worried, but I smile. I point to fivethirtyeight.com, show them the latest polls and Nate Silver's insightful and comprehensive interpretations, and I ask what they are doing to assure an Obama victory. And every day I wear a different Obama pin. Today was "Unicorns for Obama." It makes me smile.

I have a costume I am going to wear to school on Halloween, the scariest one I have come up with in years. It consists of a blue wig, a red top, and red slacks. On the wig, I will affix a cardboard puzzle piece of Illinois. Elsewhere, on the top and slacks, I will affix the other 49 states. I'm calling this costume: Karl Rove's Final One-Finger Salute to America, or "It's the Voting Machines, Stupid." Undoubtedly it will give my friends more nightmares.

But isn't that what Halloween is for?

2008: The Year the American Voter Grew Up

2008-10-06T16:51:00.003-05:00

I've been having this feeling for awhile now, and lately it has begun to be echoed by actual pundits: the American electorate in 2008 is not going to vote based on its typical diet of inanities like which candidate they'd rather have a beer with or who got in the most zingers at a debate or whether someone windsurfs or rides in tanks. This year, for the first time in a long time, the election is going to be decided based on things that matter. It is going to be decided by issues.

Michael Tomasky of The Guardian discusses this very matter in an article posted today. He says:

Superficialities and attacks...usually dominate. We understand this. In fact, more than a few liberals have spent the last four years trying to persuade Democrats to be every bit as superficial and nasty as the Republicans are at election time. But this year, something feels different. Voters are actually paying closer attention to issues.

Tomasky says that it is the Wall Street crisis and the ensuing economic breakdown that has brought this about, with a huge assist from America's declining standing in the eyes of the world. I agree that this is the filter through which it has found its most recent focus, but I do not think that our current crisis alone explains everything. In fact, I think this has been coming for quite a while.

Take a look back at the primaries. As Obama's forward-thinking campaign kept pushing Americans to use their brains, to consider issues and ideas and substance instead of platitudes and sound bites, his momentum increased, at first slowly, then like a steamroller wiping out everyone in his path until the only one left was the formidable Hillary Clinton. And what did Hillary, by then in a desperate condition, do? She went negative. She played by the Republican playbook, the old rules.

Arianna Huffington, in an interview with Wolf Blitzer last May, said that Clinton "has really taken a page out of Karl Rove’s playbook," and cited most specifically her successful, at the time, "3 AM" ad.

Huffington compared Clinton’s “3 a.m.” ad to advertising against Sen. John Kerry orchestrated by Rove during President Bush’s 2004 re-election bid. “The assumption was that if people elected Obama they would not be as safe as if they elected her.” “Their children would not be as safe,” added Huffington.

At first, the "kitchen sink" strategy improved her standing, but only at the cost of increasing her already high negatives. And the Obama campaign ultimately succeeded in countering all of the negatives effectively in the most unbelievable of ways: by presenting facts to the electorate. Yes, it took awhile for facts to sink in through all of the hubbub created by the right wing punditry (and the hillaryis44 folks), but it did sink in. Obama won the nomination.

Now this in no way is meant as a condemnation of Clinton's strategy or of her followers. She did what she felt she needed to do, and they supported the candidate of their choice with gusto, as indeed they had every right to do. But the negative attacks that have worked in other years--and indeed worked in the short term at times this year--actually redounded on the attacker, and the public chose the candidate who (though he can attack in response as fiercely as anyone) appeals to their intelligence, not their base animal instincts.

We've seen all of this playing out again with McCain's campaign. With absolutely no issues to run on, with America's economy in tatters after eight years of Bush policies (which he supported), with Bush's foreign policy, as evinced most especially by the war in Iraq, (which he also supported) a shambles, he pretended to run an honorable campaign while actually running a filthy one that fooled absolutely no one. He gained no traction at all until just before the conventions, when his "Celebrity" attack ad found an audience, but given the vicissitudes of the voters in this election year that traction soon slipped away.

As the "Palin bounce" dwindles into the Palin pit, it's only natural that McCain will try again, full force, with an attack strategy he has never paused (or even "suspended") since August. As Aiden Maconachy said last February about the Clinton campaign, "People who are losing tend to cry foul and shout louder." And indeed, the Huffington Post is now reporting that

The McCain campaign has now shifted virtually 100 percent of his national ad spending into negative ads attacking Obama, a detailed breakdown of his ad buys reveals.

And his surrogates, including the recently "freed" Sarah Palin, are attacking as well. Virtually all unbiased opinions (when you could find any) of the VP debate focused on the fact that her "answers" (which were rarely in fact answers at all but mini-stump speeches and talking points that often were completely off topic, as even she acknowledged) almost completely lacked any specificity. Instead, she spent roughly half of the time praising herself and McCain for being "mavericks" and the rest attacking Obama and Biden. Meanwhile, Joe Biden, who managed quite a few attacks himself against McCain, did so by at all times derogating the Republican's ideas and programs, not the man himself. And Biden's specificity and detail has never been questioned by anyone. He is a walking encyclopedia of Senate information.

And even as Palin talks about Ayers and Wrights, trying to resurrect old "scandals" that bubbled and popped last spring, the economy continues to tank. Today's Dow fell another 800 points, breaking last week's all time record for a one-day drop-off. And McCain's camp continues to smear and attack and lie and distract. And Obama? As reported by Mike Baker,

Obama said he would keep talking about the economy and didn't answer questions about the associations McCain's campaign has questioned.
"The notion that we would want to brush that aside and engage in the usual political shenanigans and smear tactics that have come to characterize too many political campaigns is not what the American people are looking for.

Barack Obama is not the candidate who would allow Rovian smears and swiftboating to derail him anyway, but the reality is that 2008 is not the year of politics as usual. We have entered a new political arena. Whether it is for now or forever remains to be seen, but right now the shift is evident: though a lot of folks remain easily swayed, the majority of American voters have grown up. And frankly, it's about damn time.

Faith Forum: Obama Played This Beautifully

2008-08-17T03:30:00.001-05:00

After watching the Faith Forum and a couple of hours of talking heads, I have arrived at an inescapable conclusion, and it is not the one that most of those heads came up with. Predictably, both MSNBC and CNN managed to have far more conservative commentators than liberal ones tonight, so of course the meme du jour was the Incredible Performance of John McCain.

Wow, the TH's raved, Obama may have come off fine, but his nuanced approach was blown off the planet by McCain's poignant stories and powerful, direct remarks.

Well, sorry, talking heads, but I didn't see it that way. First of all, I had to begin with the fact that McCain had a HUGE home field advantage here, so Obama's goal of necessity had to be different from that of his GOP rival. Given that simple reality, which the TH's all simply ignored, the results of this evening cannot be seen in any direct light. My nuanced interpretation is this: Barack Obama played the Traditional Media like a violin tonight.

It was remarked in other places tonight that Obama does not do things haphazardly; he always knows exactly what he is doing and plans things carefully. I believe that to be true and submit the entire campaign as evidence. This night is no exception.

Obama did not agree to this forum lightly. He understood that this audience would be, at best, polite to him. He knew the kinds of questions he would be asked. He knew that his answers would not be entirely pleasing to the evangelicals. And he knew also, or anyway could guess with a strong probability of being correct, exactly what John McCain would do: pander to his base with stump speeches and POW stories. McCain, of course, did not disappoint. And he was very, very comfortable there in his element, a fact that was oh, so surprising to the TH's.

But why shouldn't he have been? Warren allowed him practically free reign, letting him rove wherever he wanted, ramble through as many POW stories as he wished without interruption, and even fail to answer the question entirely several times. With Obama, Warren seemed to be rushing him a lot, pushing him onto the next question. This could have been a result of Obama's slow, nuanced answers, I suppose, and perhaps I should give Warren the benefit of the doubt. Whatever the reason, though, the result was that McCain was able to tell his stump stories and lurch as far right as he's ever lurched and receive cheer after cheer. All of which is fine, because, as I said before, it is exactly what Obama expected.

The early results of such an event? All of the TH's do their predictable Love Affair With McCain dance: Oh my, he really came across well; he's going to be a much more formidable opponent that anyone thought, etc. Good publicity, at least initially, for the wrinkled silver haired dude. But--and it's a very large but--John McCain did himself no favors with independents and center-right leaning Democrats tonight. Not with his "I wouldn't have picked Ginsburg, Souter, Stevens and Breyer" and "human rights begin at conception" comments. In addition, Obama, who looked sincere and human and honest all night, came across as looking maybe not appealing to these evangelicals, but certainly not scary, and definitely, definitely Christian.

And then there is that violin: Obama must have known two other simple facts. First, that the media would eat McCain's act up, especially after the way Senator Goofup has spent the last month making one mistake after another in practically every forum he has been given. Assuming that McCain did not screw up tonight (a stretch, to be sure, but it turned out that way), the media would have to see it as astonishing, right? And they'd sing that tune loudly, which leads to point two.

The debates are coming up. Given Obama's performance of late vs. McCain's, the media would expect him to wipe the floor with his opponent. (They clearly expected that tonight.) Now, after this forum, expectations will be, if not reversed, certainly lessened on Obama's side and heightened on McCain's. And the best part of it all is this: Obama played this melody on a night when not all that many people, aside from the media and the junkies like us, are paying attention. The Olympics are on. It's August. The conventions have not yet occurred. People don't pay attention until after Labor Day.

So Obama has just succeeded in a trifecta: he has made himself less scary to a volatile segment of the opposition, he has allowed his opponent (the erstwhile "maverick") to completely redefine himself as a fundamentalist conservative, and he has allowed the media to begin shifting the expectations game.

All in all, a nice little concerto for the junior senator from Illinois.

REVEALED: McCain's Campaign Strategy

2008-07-26T23:17:00.000-05:00

John McCain campaign spokesperson Bill Ingdapour said today that the Arizona Senator's campaign strategy is working perfectly.

Asked at an impromptu press conference about media attention being focused on Illinois senator and presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama during his trip to Europe and the Middle East, Ingdapour responded, "We knew that would happen. The press is fawning over him right now. That's what Senator McCain desired."

When it was pointed out to him that Senator McCain, as well as other campaign surrogates, have spent considerable time this week complaining about unbalanced coverage, Ingdapour said, "Duh! We need to lay the groundwork, don't we? Senator McCain will get his due attention when the world realizes just how much the media is favoring Obama."

Ingdapour went on to say that McCain's entire general election strategy hinges on the "historic" nature of Obama's campaign and the press's infatuation with it.

"They are playing right into his hands," he said. "Come October, Senator Obama won't know what hit him."

Ingdapour and his associate Rich Engready discussed the McCain strategy in detail for the assembled five members of the press.

"It's simple," Engready explained. "Obama gets all the attention and goes around looking all Presidential and talking to foreign dignitaries, yada yada yada. Meanwhile McCain spends all of his time doing things that, if they get reported in the media at all, make him look like a complete ass."

"Right," Ingdapour said. "Like the cheese aisle thing. Great locale, that. I wanted the beer aisle, but we all know he's against beer."

"He's going to veto it!" Engready laughed.

"Just after Cindy sells it to Belgium," Ingdapour added. "And that absolutely hilarious CBS interview boner: God, the guy is a pure genius!"

"But the best part," Engready said, "is the Surge. God, I love the Surge! And now he's going around defining and redefining the Surge so often that, hey, it might have started before he was even born!"

"And don't forget Phil!" Ingdapour said. "Talk about genius! 'Nation of whiners!' Oh my God. I never laughed so hard in my life! And the Senator absolutely surrounds himself with people like that."

Asked how any of this amounts to a "strategy," both spokesmen laughed.

"Can't you see what's right in front of your face?" Ingdapour asked. "Everything McCain is doing is so utterly stupid that only a complete moron or someone trying to lose would do and say these things."

Engready continued. "The press reports it all, making McCain look really bad. But we all know they are fawning over Obama, and we all know that McCain is not a doddering old fool, so it's clearly the press who are slanting the coverage to make him seem like one!"

"So," Ingdapour said, "in October, we move into Florida, where the only people left after the summer sunbathers have gone home are all of the old folks, and we start rolling out our Florida geezer support league. The whole nation sees these old folks with their walkers and their 4:30 early bird dinners next to strong, virile ex-POW McCain, and Voila! Bye bye, Barack. Hello, sympathy vote!"

Engready got in the final word. "We can't convince anyone that he's not old. The guy is older than Moses. But he's a fighter. Look at my left ear: he tore a chunk right out of it last week when I didn't want him to do the German restaurant thing. He doesn't back down to anyone! Besides, you can't go around picking on geriatrics, you know. People don't like it."

full body reboot

2008-07-06T16:03:00.004-05:00

It's a beautiful day here in Lake Wobegon.

OK, I'm not really going to write that. But it is a beautiful day, sun shining, light breezes, temps in the low eighties, pretty much the epitome of a summer Sunday. And, though I was indeed outdoors for an hour or so and will be again, I actually missed half of it! Yes, I somehow managed to sleep a full twelve hours last night, utterly shocking my senses when I came to grips with it.

Twelve hours. Half a day. And half of such a beautiful day!

This began on the Fourth of July. My husband and I had been thinking about going up to Wisconsin for the day, but decided against it, and the weather was so perfect that I thought: this is the time we finally ought to get around to staining the deck! Temperatures in the low 70's, sunny: how could it be more perfect to work outside? Actually, I thought originally that I would do it, as my husband was not thrilled with the idea and he has all sorts of physical limitations anyway, but it needed to be done and I was up for it, so on with the show!

The deck is cedar and wraps around the back of our townhome. It's nicely sized but not huge; how difficult could this be? Two hours or so into it, I knew the answer: hard. Maybe it was due to the fact that I am dieting and might not have as much energy as I usually do. Maybe it was just the sun. Maybe it was all of the bending and reaching and brushing. Maybe it was just that the whole thing was such a pain in the...well, actually in just about everything! And it did not help that I was suffering horrendous acid reflux, the pain so awful that I had to stop every few minutes just to let it pass. I was aching and exhausted, and it was going to be a very, very long day.

I called in to my husband. "Dirk, I need your help."

He replied, "I wondered when you were going to ask," and within minutes was by my side. Together we tackled the project for the rest of the day, and after six long hours had the first coat finished. Shocked at how tired we both were at what seemed such an innocuous little job, we were more surprised to find ourselves falling asleep for an hour on the couch in the living room, where we had collapsed after the job was complete.

That little sleep revived us, and the fireworks were lovely. I watched them from my balcony, as I usually do--the view is perfect, as the lake that the town uses is a direct line from there--and Dirk, as always, pretended that he could not even hear the loud kabooms and bangs and whistles. He does not like fireworks. "They're all the same," he says. I can never talk him into coming out to watch with me, though our town has fireworks three times a year.

I got to bed late and was up pretty early--I am a night person and often find myself up until the wee hours but I have been determined this summer not to allow myself to sleep later than 8:30 for a variety of reasons--so we were able to get an early start to the second coat. The second coat, it turned out, was a lot easier than the first one, but it still required about four hours to do, and once more I was completely wiped out when I was finished. (I had told Dirk to pack it in an hour or so before the end because quarters were getting cramped on the deck.) Once again I found myself dozing on the couch, but this time my nap was quickly interrupted by the arrival of my children, who had been with my ex for the holiday.

Watch Twilight Zone with us; watch Howl's Moving Castle with us; watch this; watch that...I convinced them that this was not a good night for me and, fortunately, they decided to watch things on their own. I actually ended up collapsing into bed far earlier than they did, far earlier than is my norm: 11:30.

Which brings me to this morning.

I know that the alarm went off as usual to awaken me at 8:30. I remember Beatles tunes--Breakfast with the Beatles was playing--in some vague recess of my mind. But I did not process them, did not process the time, did not process the whole notion of waking up. And the next thing I knew, my cat was nuzzling my toes and it was 11:30...again. But it was twelve hours later.

There is a simple pleasure in accomplishing something like staining your deck. People do it all the time. But in this hectic world, it is so darned easy to pick up a phone and call someone, pay him a few hundred dollars, and voila! the deck is all stained! You didn't have to lift a finger after you put the phone down until you sign the check. Hell, it probably looks better, too, given that these guys are professionals and all. But where in that equation is the sense that you actually did something yourself? Where is the feeling that you took the brush into your own hands and, with your own effort, did this work?

There are lots of things I pay others to do. My townhouse association hires people to cut the grass, to plow the snow, to trim the trees. I have a cleaning service come on every couple of weeks to make sure that my house doesn't go completely to seed. Today, enjoying the beautiful weather, I took my car to a car wash; it needed a very thorough cleaning and vacuuming. I pay professional people to do these things, as I pay plumbers and electricians, as I paid people to paint my walls and ceilings two years ago because the job was simply too overwhelming. I really don't think of these things as luxuries; in a rushed life you need to prioritize things.

But once in a while it is important to slow down and take the time to do something yourself, even if you do it imperfectly. So what that there will be places on that deck where the excess stain is noticeable or where drips did not get wiped away? So what if it is a bit uneven? We did it ourselves, and frankly I think it looks damned good.

And if the price I paid for that was a full body reboot, so be it. I suppose that, after several weeks of late, late nights and (relatively) early mornings, it was bound to happen eventually.

And that's the news from Lake Wobegon, where the deck is now red and the birds still are not coming to the feeders...

cultivating my garden

2008-06-23T18:46:00.002-05:00

It's been a while since i wrote a non-political diary here, and the honest-to-blog (as Juno might say) truth of the matter is that I've been exhausted.

That's it, bottom line, no fancy excuses, just that: I've been wiped out. At first I think it was simply physical; the end of the school year this time around took quite a toll. Not only did I have my annual Oh my God I have all of this to grade still?!!? moment sometime the week before finals, but on top of that I was told that I had to pack everything in my room into boxes by the last day of school so it could be moved to a new room over the summer.

Now let me put that in perspective for you:

I've been in the same room for about eight years. Before that I was in the same room for ten years. When I last moved, they just took everything from one room to the other. And let me tell you: I've accumulated a whole lot of stuff over eighteen years in those two rooms (not to mention the other twelve bopping around elsewhere). A month before school ended, we were having a department meeting in my room and the superintendent came in.

"Whoa," he said, looking around. "This is the best classroom I've been in." He meant that it seemed to be comfortable, to be lived in, to be real as opposed to some clinical shared space. And I am proud of that, but this was the price I was about to pay: pack those years into boxes. At the same time I was supposed to be grading my finals and getting everything else done.

Right.

After eight consecutive school days of desperately working in my room until at least 6 PM (much of it physical labor, too...while I had those grades hanging over my head), I finally got it all done, but the stress was getting to me, and when it was all through I basically came home and crashed. This is not the right way to begin a summer vacation.

Ah, but I do have one of those. And in that I am indeed fortunate: the ultra-mega-perk of being a teacher. Summer vacation. I spend mine with my kids and writing. Some less cash-bereft folks travel. But it's great to have the time to regain some equilibrium after the chaos of the end of the year. It's taken me two weeks to begin to reclaim some sense of my own but it's coming back; I can feel it. Instead of worrying about everyone else in the universe, I get to spend a little bit of time concentrating on this little patch of ground around me: my home, my "garden."

In Candide, Voltaire's characters, having come to the recognition (through horrific experience) that this is not indeed the "best of all possible worlds," decide that what they must do is the one thing they have control over: "We must cultivate our garden." It's a short-sighted world view, I guess, but for a lazy summer day it is just what I need sometimes. My garden was wilting; it was overstuffed with grades and deadlines and room-packing and politics and so many kinds of insanity that I think the flowers were simply choking from want of air. There are still plenty of things to be done and there is still plenty of world to worry about, but the deck is comfortable and there is a nice breeze, and maybe a hummingbird will visit the feeder.

My mental garden needs to be tended; I'm going to lie here and help it to bloom.

intuition: why obama will win in a landslide

2008-06-09T12:00:00.003-05:00

“I feel there are two people inside me - me and my intuition. If I go against her, she'll screw me every time, and if I follow her, we get along quite nicely.” --Kim Basinger

I have always been a huge devotee of the value of intuition. All of my life I have had a powerful inner voice, a strong and focused something within me helping me to understand and react to my world. I have--almost always--respected it. On those occasions when I have failed to listen, I usually have found myself wishing that I had.

Intuition is, I think, at times simply a wonderful moment of clarity when we sense something beyond that which is possible in any physical way to sense. Sometimes, my intuition has worked that way. More often, though, I think intuition is simply the ability that many of us possess to look at the realities around us with clear and unambiguous eyes and see what is happening, and then to make the kind of creative leaps that unfettered imaginations make when confronted by blank canvasses.

It's this kind of intuition that makes me know that Barack Obama's victory in November will not be close, no matter what the pundits say. It will be a landslide.

The first kind of intuition is a rare one. Call it clairvoyance, but I don't know if I truly believe in that, and in any case it's only occurred a few times in my life and has never been something I control; it is a thing unto itself. And it has, on occasion, not been entirely accurate, so clairvoyant would be a difficult word to apply.

In May 1985, expecting my first child, I had a run of incredible intuitive power. A radio station was giving away what then were the just-released new Apple Macintoshes. Call in if your name is called and win. I sent in my post card and I knew they would call me. They did...but I was (sadly) not listening at the time. A second wave of intuition hit me: they would call again! They did, and I got the computer. That summer, so convinced was I that the child would be a girl that we never chose a boy's name; it was a girl.

These are small things, I know. But I think they are the first kind of intuition: the purer kind, the kind that some could call chance or serendipity and, hey, who could argue with them?

Regarding this election, though, I am talking about a very different kind of intuition. It is the kind that comes from clear observation. This intuition too kicks in, as I say, randomly. I do not get these absolute convictions all that often. In the late 80's I was in Seattle and had some coffee at a tiny kiosk. I had never had anything so great. I told myself that when this company went public I wanted in; it was going to be huge. There was no doubt in my mind that it would happen. Of course Starbucks did, but alas I had no money to invest, so I am still in debt up to my ears.

I have been a strong supporter of Senator Obama since he began his US Senate run here in Illinois in the winter of '03/'04. In a crowd of political hacks and wannabe's, he was something clearly different. He stood out for his honesty, for his message, for his clarity of vision, and for, among other things, the simple fact that he refused to talk down to the voters. Back then I was unsure he had a chance: he was a "skinny black guy with a funny name" fighting against a whole lot of more connected and better financed candidates (including a millionaire or two trying to buy their way into office). But there were a couple of scandals to eliminate a couple of the better known names, and suddenly he was more viable. And when he won the primary, it was not a great shock: he had earned it.

After Kerry's "defeat" by Diebold, it seemed a foregone conclusion to everyone that Senator Clinton would be the next Democratic candidate. But I was watching the skinny kid with the funny name. I note in recent "historical" diaries that I was not alone: Kos on DailyKos apparently had an eye on him too: evidence that this kind of "intuition" is the product of observation and imagination.

I began telling all of my friends in mid-2005 that the next President of the United States would be Barack Obama. The pundits, as Jon Stewart made abundantly clear on the day after Obama clinched the nomination, were saying something rather different. See this blog by kos as DailyKos to witness the fun.)

My friends thought I was nuts. Though there was always speculation that he might run, absolutely nothing pointed at the time to an '08 run by the freshman Senator. But he was hungry; that was clear. And he was smart; that was clear. And his ideas and enthusiasm and honesty and, quite simply, his freshness, would make him a very appealing candidate. I knew this, and (obviously) so did he. So I kept telling them he would win: Hillary, I said, would suffer the problem of the oversell: she is too familiar, she is too much associated with the past, she is too disliked by the GOP and even by some Democrats. Though she could be a potentially strong President, no one would ever allow her the chance to be. A new voice in the mix, a strong, idealistic new voice, would energize the base and would be exactly what this moment in time needs.

And Obama is smart enough, I said, to know one other fact: Senators historically don't win the White House. The longer he stays there, the more of an Insider he becomes. He will no longer be able to run, as he can right now, as someone who is out to change Washington. He will be too much a part of Washington.

So, I said, he'll run. And he'll win. When I saw his 50-state strategy, an extension of Dean's brilliant Democratic strategy that was at least as responsible for regaining control of the congress as anything Rahm Emmanuel did (though somehow Emmanuel managed to get all the credit), and I saw how he was using the internet, there was no doubt in my mind.

"Intuition comes very close to clairvoyance; it appears to be the extrasensory perception of reality --Alexis Carrell

Which brings us to now: why will he win in a landslide when all of the pundits keep telling us how tight this is?

Look at the trendlines. Not just now, in the polls, though the latest ones, and every new one every single day, continue to be pro-Obama. I'm talking about trendlines over a much longer period of time. We have an economy that is so deeply in the mire that you couldn't drag it out with a fleet of haulers, and even the staunchest Bushies have begun to worry out loud about it. We have an ongoing war that is costing America trillions of dollars and thousands of lives, a war that is nose-diving in support and threatens to rival Viet Nam in more than merely the waste and ineptitude, but the anger of the masses as well. We have an Administration that lies and obfuscates so readily that they cannot even see anymore that they are doing it, and how transparent their lies have become. We have congressmen openly talking about impeachment and novelists advocating for murder trials and generals accusing the President of war crimes. A President who once boasted of the highest approval rating in history now possesses the lowest one, and he has managed to drag international respect for America from its highest point to its lowest as well.

Look at the trendlines.

This is not the time for any Republican, let alone one who cannot seem to make up his mind whether he is or is not Bush III, to be elected President. But then examine Senator McCain, whose popularity peaked, apparently, eight years ago. In 2000, heck, I might have considered voting for the guy. In 2000, he was what he still claims to be: a true maverick. Since then, he has sold his soul. I don't need to sit here and list all of the ways he has done that; this diary is getting long already and we all know the many ways Senator McCain has pandered to the right wing in order to secure this nomination.

(BTW: his nomination itself was another example of my crazy random intuition. During a debate before Iowa, listening to the GOP idiots beating up on each other, I started wondering which of them could actually manage to win this thing and oppose Obama. I knew it couldn't be Giuliani with his stupid Florida strategy. Huckabee played well in the Bible Belt but even the GOP is more than the Bible Belt. Romney is too slick and too smarmy even for the GOP. And I started looking at how they were beating each other up and who was eliminating whom and I suddenly realized: no one was hitting McCain! They were just letting him play the statesman! His campaign had been deemed dead for so long that they had utterly forgotten about him. It was at that point that I knew he was going to win, and I have to say it shocked me to realize it. I told my husband, and he agreed with my reasoning, which was nice: he never agreed with me about Obama beating Clinton.)

Anyway...

McCain continues to make foolish mistake after foolish mistake, and I am reminded of Bush at this stage of the 2000 campaign. If you will recall, he sounded like a complete idiot at times as well. But there is a difference: Bush was a neophyte in the national and international spotlight. He had a long learning curve, and--though we often deride him as being stupid--he did at least know enough to know that he needed to learn a thing or two and listen to those folks who could teach him. Senator McCain, who never seems to be able to open his mouth without saying something that is either completely false, completely ridiculous, or completely contradictory to something he said a year ago, a month ago, or yesterday, is no neophyte. He does not learn. (Note that he repeated his "Al Qaeda in Iran" error only moments after Leiberman corrected him.) And something in his formerly maverick nature still exists: the part that makes him go his own way and do and say his own thing, which, given his decreasing ability to keep his thoughts straight, is a recipe for disaster.

I have no doubt that Senator McCain will have some excellent moments between now and November, but I cannot see him cutting into Senator Obama's base. Nor can I see him slowing Obama's momentum as the Illinoisan edges deeper and deeper into what has recently been "safe" GOP territory. So do not worry when you see Obama spending time and money in states he "cannot" win. I am not certain that there are any states he cannot win. (Yep, that includes Arizona.) And even if he loses a bunch of them, his presence will aid down-ticket candidates.

I take all of these early polls for what they are: early polls. They could say Obama by 25 or McCain by 25, and I'd say the same thing: it's June. Remember what the polls and pundits said about how hard it would be to unite the Democrats a scant two weeks ago? Uh huh. It's June. Nothing means anything. But...

Put this in the bank: Barack Obama will be our next President. And it is not even going to be close.

“The only real valuable thing is intuition.” --Albert Einstein

this time i know why i'm crying

2008-06-04T10:28:00.000-05:00

Two weeks ago, on a night when Keith Olbermann read his second "Special Comment" about Senator Clinton and the Democratic primary race was, to be frank, at its absolute nadir, I wrote a diary called "Why Am I Crying?" Though one commenter (erroneously) believed that my tears were a metaphor, I apparently touched a nerve: there were a lot of us that night who felt that things had simply gone too far, had sunk too deeply into the mire, and that a very, very special campaign had been, perhaps irredeemable, tainted by darkness.

This morning, on my way to work, listening to radio excerpts (again) of Senator Obama's victory speech, the Speech Heard Round the World, and thinking of how far all of this has come as the news folks talked about it, the tears came again. (And, as before, I am not being metaphorical here.) I felt, as Michelle Obama said months ago, "proud to be an American," perhaps moreso than I have ever been in my life. I felt, as she did, proud to be a part of a country that could put its history of racial divide behind it and, despite an occasionally rancorous campaign, nominate an African-American (and for that matter one for whom that appellation actually means something very literal) for President.

And after the last seven years of lies and deceit and evil in our nation's capital, I listened to the beautiful words of hope coming from this nam...and the tears came.

All of you chose to support a candidate you believe in deeply. But at the end of the day, we aren’t the reason you came out and waited in lines that stretched block after block to make your voice heard. You didn’t do that because of me or Senator Clinton or anyone else. You did it because you know in your hearts that at this moment – a moment that will define a generation – we cannot afford to keep doing what we’ve been doing. We owe our children a better future. We owe our country a better future. And for all those who dream of that future tonight, I say – let us begin the work together. Let us unite in common effort to chart a new course for America

This is the culmination of a year and a half of brilliant campaigning. I am willing to bet that, in the future, pilitical science students will study Barack Obama's 2008 campaign vs. Hillary Clinton as one of the most perfectly devised of all time. How anyone--especially the Senator from New York or the Senator from Arizona who, presented with a gift of a bunch of knuckleheads to run against in the first place and then in the second place months of bitter infighting within the opposition practically designed so that he could gift-wrap himself as an elder statesman--could claim this guy is too raw to succeed is surely a sign of their own inability to grasp reality.

But it is the beginning of a new battle, one that goes on not only for the next several months against Senator McCain but for the next several years: the battle to undo all of the damage that Buch/Cheney have done to the United States of America within our own borders and in the eyes of the world community.

On WXRT Chicago this morning (home of "the best political team in rock radio"), Mike Flannery of CBS Chicago News, sleepy after a long night in St. Paul, spoke of sitting next to a Brazilian reporter last night during Obama's speech. The Brazilian woman told him of a friend of hers--back home--a woman who was so taken by Senator Obama and what he stand for that she had plastered pictures and articles about him all over her room. In Sao Paulo! Look at the incredible array of international headline posted on Huffington's front page (while they are still there), a mere sampling of what is out there. What we fail to appreciate sometimes is the sheer magnitude of this race: this is not merely about the United States Presidency (and I use the word "merely" advisedly). It is about nothing less than the revival of faith and hope in the entire world. Despite Bush/Cheney, the world still believes in what this country has always stood for. The world wants us back again.

In our country, I have found that this cooperation happens not because we agree on everything, but because behind all the labels and false divisions and categories that define us; beyond all the petty bickering and point-scoring in Washington, Americans are a decent, generous, compassionate people, united by common challenges and common hopes. And every so often, there are moments which call on that fundamental goodness to make this country great again.

It is indeed time for this country to become great again. The world wnats it and we all want it. Somewhere deep inside, even those 27% of us who, for some reason only they can come close to explaining, believe that Bush/Cheney are doing a good job probably want it. And when they see an America once again respected by the world instead of reviled, when they witness what might have been after 9/11 when almost the entire community of world nations was behind us and our leaders thumbed their collective noses at it and tossed its support aside, they will know then that they wanted it all along.

It will be a fight. It will be a battle. We will not, of course, get everything we want, nor will we get anything easily. There are entrenched powers that do not wish to be unseated so easily. But this battle has been waged before, as Barack Obama intoned, and under much more severe circumstances.

So it was for that band of patriots who declared in a Philadelphia hall the formation of a more perfect union; and for all those who gave on the fields of Gettysburg and Antietam their last full measure of devotion to save that same union.

So it was for the Greatest Generation that conquered fear itself, and liberated a continent from tyranny, and made this country home to untold opportunity and prosperity.

So it was for the workers who stood out on the picket lines; the women who shattered glass ceilings; the children who braved a Selma bridge for freedom’s cause.

So it has been for every generation that faced down the greatest challenges and the most improbable odds to leave their children a world that’s better, and kinder, and more just.

And so it must be for us.

So I was driving to school this morning to grade my exams and pack my boxes so my classroom can be moved over the summer and I found myself crying. But unlike the tears of two weeks ago, these were not inexplicable tears, tears I would have to spend hours wondering about, poring over, analyzing in order to understand. No, these were much, much simpler.

These were tears of joy.

America, this is our moment. This is our time. Our time to turn the page on the policies of the past. Our time to bring new energy and new ideas to the challenges we face. Our time to offer a new direction for the country we love.

The journey will be difficult. The road will be long. I face this challenge with profound humility, and knowledge of my own limitations. But I also face it with limitless faith in the capacity of the American people. Because if we are willing to work for it, and fight for it, and believe in it, then I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on Earth. This was the moment – this was the time – when we came together to remake this great nation so that it may always reflect our very best selves, and our highest ideals. Thank you, God Bless you, and may God Bless the United States of America.

visiting dickens: PRISON SHIPS?

2008-06-01T23:06:00.002-05:00

I feel as if I have stepped into the pages of Great Expectations and everyone has become Magwitch, transported to Australia in shackles aboard some vessel designed for the purpose of housing and transporting criminals at sea. But of course that was the 19th Century...and earlier. That's not now. Right? And then, along comes today's Guardian report. And I am left with one reaction:

We have bloody prison ships? Prison ships?

Actually, the truth--the very, very sad truth, is this: I am not at all surprised.

Nothing that W and his Constitution-shredding cronies could do or conceive of doing would surprise me. This is a man whose Presidency began with a concerted vote-stealing effort orchestrated by his brother and ratified by the allegedly apolitical Supreme Court.

It is a man who coldly and callously used bigotry and hate in a successful tactic to mobilize Christian Right voters after the Massachusetts Supreme Court decision authorizing gay marriage in 2004. BTW: Have you noticed how the institution of marriage in that state has completely broken down?

It is a man who, halfway through his first term of office, bought the 2004 electoral votes of the state of Ohio through his connections to Diebold Corporation, whose CEO pledged to do whatever it took to get him re-elected and then managed to get his paperless machines installed in key precincts throughout a key state.

It is a man who, having utterly wasted his first nine months in office (most people seem to forget that he had already been consigned to the historical scrap-heap by pundits after his--what? five hundred or so?--excessive vacations that year), ignored the direct warnings of his intelligence community that (what was that memo called again, Secretary Rice?) Osama Bin Laden was planning to attack inside the US and then, after he did so, managed to squander worldwide sympathy for our country in an amazingly short period of time.

It is a man whose response to such a catastrophe as 9/11 was to become emboldened to break down Constitutionally guaranteed freedoms and international accords.

It is a man whose appointees to important positions have been almost uniformly incompetent or just plain bad, starting with his string of "Bush first, country and law a distant second" Attorney General appointees. (And the image of Ashcroft covering up that pornographic Lady Liberty remains one of the distilling images of the Bush years in my mind.)

It is a man whose first actions in office were to allow his Vice-President to hold secret meetings with oil executives to set energy policies, policies that have worked so well for America that gas prices have tripled at the pump since he took office while oil company profits have soared.

It is a man who has ordered his cronies to ignore direct subpoenaes from Congress.

It is a man...

Oh I'm making myself ill.

G. W. Bush is a man guilty of criminal activity, large and small, national and international, from staging two non-violent coups to take over and retain the Presidency of the US to the absolutely impeachable offenses that led us into Iraq, which had done nothing to us, while ignoring the enemy who bombed our country.

No, I am not surprised at prison ships. I would not be surprised if he had secret prisons on the moon, built and maintained by Haliburton.

I am all in favor of trying to reconcile the political enmity that has permeated American culture for the last two decades, but I pray that President Obama finds a way to bring this treasonous and vulgar man and all of his cronies to justice for what they have done to our country and to the world for the last eight years.

Whew.

Sorry. Next time I won't hold back so much. :-)