Maggie Jochild.
- Ending months of lurking to announce Coozledad's comment made me PEE myself. Not the first time.
- My senior class trip was spent at a fish camp on the shores of Lake Texhoma because in my rural high school graduating class there were five boys vs three girls and the boys wanted to fish for crappie instead of go to museums in Dallas. (Four of us were practicing homosexuals, as they say, but that's another story.) At the camp, we found an adolescent crow who latched onto us gratefully, apparently having no world experience with crackers, teenaged or otherwise. We named him hot rod because the number one song on the radio right then was by Commander Cody and the Lost Planet Airmen. Hot Rod happily devoured anything we gave him, which was whatever we were eating. He lasted four days.
- I am now waiting for Tengrain to create a cartoon of Michele Bachmann singing "Kinko Kinko the Kid Loving Clown." Maybe wishing for it will make it so.
- Gay means lesbian to the same degree that mankind means women. My generation (feminist in particular) sees no reason to avoid precision or moan about political correctness except to maintain a certain comfort level and status quo -- as my Uncle Vern complains when we ask him not to use the term colored. (He points out it's still a step up from how his chosen Prez candidate David Duke refers to those people.) If you must use generic, go for queer. Except, ah, it's still a perjorative some places, right? Yes, and while some queers use tranny, it is likewise a perjorative in some circles. As is dyke (which I claim with pride) and fag (which gay men of my generation prefer). Some women (like me) utterly reject ladies with its faux class upgrade and some Cheneys don't want to be called dicks. What to do? Ask. With polite interest. A friendly person will tell you what label they claim and trust you more instantly. An asshole will reveal themselves instantly. A teenager will go red and awkward. There are no shortcuts in genuine human connection. There really is time and reason to exert care in how we refer to one another, as long as we are not on street corners shouting it at strangers. And just for the record, I never voted on or requested the alphabet soup for referring to anyone oppressed for genitals or sex acts. In particular, what I contend with as a lesbian is most similar to what straight women encounter, not gay men and certainly not vocal transsexuals who are hellbent on reinforcing a gender binary I find dehumanizing. The fact is, I don't know a single woman who isn't dumped on in some way for not being the right kind of woman; I have never talked with a honest man who wasn't terrified of (some) other men with regard to having his masculinity judged. We are fucking ALL in this together, and most acts of oppression cover more than one category, impossible to quantify. We each create our preferred identity and request respect for it, and should be accorded it as long as our rights do not trespass on the equal rights of others.
- In 2004 I went with Actual Lives (page-to-stage theater and writing troupe for disabled adults) to perform at the VSA Arts International conference. On a day off from the conference, four of us who were close (two crips, two AB) ventured the DC Metro to visit the Hirschhorn. On arrival, we discovered their lobby elevator would not accommodate my scooter, so I was led by a guard around the expanse of building to a rear freight elevator which turned out to be the size of a large room, two stories high, made to move massive sculpture. I sat in the middle of this creeping device, contemplating the reality of the ADA thus far. Once back in the museum, I could not find my friends. I eventually rolled into a sunny, large room filled with Calder mobiles, all of which were in motion and dancing in the light. I positioned my scooter beneath the largest of these, leaned back to watch it, and let myself cry at the absolute beauty of it. That's where my friends found me, in motion by proxy. I still use that memory to get through difficult physical experiences.
- All right, adding "Out Of Sight" to my watch ASAP list, and adding "You wanted to tussle" to my under-the-breath endurance mottoes beside The Bloggess's "Knock, knock, mofo". I first checked out Elmore Leonard when Bill Clinton said he was his favorite writer, back when Clinton was in office and still untainted by a Neocon smear job. I zoomed through his books in a reading ecstasy, then began re-reading them as a writer, trying to learn how he constructed dialogue and a never-intrusive plot arc. When I get stuck in writing a conversation, no matter the characters, I think about what Leonard would do with it. All too often, the answer is "Leave it out."
- Nihilistic lone white males have always existed, true. But when they hold the reins of power, we are all trying to living beneath the arc of their gunfire. And if they find easy validation on the airways, in the dogwhistles of our alleged leaders, they drive us into the sea to escape them. I live on $952 month disability plus the kindness of strangers, in Rick Perry's Texas (which was actually eviscerated by Dubya before him). This month I was informed my food stamps are being terminated because I earn too much "income". My Meals On Wheels caseworker was here yesterday trying to intervene on my behalf, but finally he said my best recourse is to wait a month and reapply. However, the march toward elimination of any social contract will have advanced toward the cliff edge a measurable amount by then. As far as I am concerned, Boehner, Ryan, Norquist, Perry -- they are the lone white males who believe g*d approves of my elimination. The good news is I have a voice, and I am much loved, much defended.
- I like "repoffers", Vince. My girlfriend yesterday tried to write slightest on her Android and it came to me as slugtest.
- A Dallas friend who lived in a second story apartment once reported to me on a hot day that she had earlier feared the demise of a friendly squirrel we liked to watch in his tree right outside her bedroom window. She could see his tail and legs drooping from his nest entrance, motionless, with what appeared to be some loss of his hoarded food stash. She put on her glasses for a closer look, wondering who to call for squirrel rescue, and when the tail twitched, she realized he was not only alive, he was airing his unexpectly large reproductive globules in hopes of a passing breeze.
- Want, want, want. Wonder if my apartment complex will modify my wheelchair ramp to fit this.
- I seem to have outraced Judybusy here to inform you that doubtless the kilt worn by Sir Ponyfumes was from Utilikilts http://www.utilikilts.com/ made famous among my crowd by Dykes to Watch Out For. Utilikilts seem to be making inroads. The real question about Alan's underwear now is: What clan tartan?
- One thing we lefties learned in the 80s: The recruitment potential for Klan and Nazi rallies is not in the few attendees, it's among the cops who are in close proximity to their speeches, acting as a barrier between these militarized white men and the DFH who want to kill them. Just as the FBI spends heavy dollars on booths at the BYU campus, the violent right knows where to draw fresh troops.
- My great-great grandfather David had a long ZZ-toppish beard in all his photos, even as a young man. He married Margaret when he was 20 and she 16, after sharing a wagon train from Arkansas to Texas, then died within a decade from TB contracted in the hellish Union Army Prison on a river island outside Alton, Illinois. Margaret raised their only child, who eventually also died of TB, and then her granddaughters, one of whom my grandmother Hettie likewise died of TB when my mama was a newborn. Margaret looms large in our family stories, a tiny tough woman who believed in educating girls and kept her love for David bright (perhaps because he wasn't there.) Apparently her opinion of his long whiskers was that it made her "want to strike a match".
- Judybusy, watching the Gaga video again stirred into flame my banked crush on Nancy Gershenfeld. Ya know, I asked to Friend her on FB but she never responded. All hail librarians, Girl Scout leaders, and the wimmin who work at Home Depot.
- I was intrigued to see how many of the Hurricane Lit books I had read -- who knew I had a proclivity for that kind of literature? I'd even add one to the line-up, "You Are The Rain" by R.R. Knudsen. It's one of those young adult novels which turns out to be a terrific read for adults, about a folboat expedition of teenaged girls in the Everglades that gets overrun by a hurricane which suddenly changed direction. It is excellent in showing girl-based heroism, geeks and poets as actually interesting, and the deep fears of "mean girls". It also makes one ravenous for the verse of Emily Dickinson and May Swenson, which you might think would be odd in an adventure story except not if you know how those women related to nature. It prompted me to buy a complete volume of Swenson in 1980, because the title comes from one of her poems. A decade later I found out R.R. Knudsen was her lifelong companion. What a tribute it turned out to be.
- I'm working on a more detailed account of that day in my life, but I do remember realizing what kind of trouble we were in when Congress assembled on outside marble steps and burst into patriotic song. They hadn't a clue what to do, and reached for the high of jingoism. I knew then they'd let Dubya do whatever he wanted, and his wants were always damaging.
- I didn't resent Dubya hiding. But he could have, from some bunker, taped a message indicating he was doing something besides hiding and given the country a sense of direction. Instead what was happening is that Cheney, et al, were gleefully putting together a plan to extract wealth and power from this tragedy. That is what Dubya's absence and silence signifies, which some of us suspected at the time and have (against my hopes) been proved right about. Dubya froze in terror when that aide whispered in his ear in the classroom. It was his standard expression when asked to actually DO something for which he had not been coached. Owning class children raised in a bubble are told over and over the reason why they cannot go out among the "real people" is because all the great unwashed out here "hate you for your advantages". It was Barbara Bush's voice we heard when Dubya paraphrased it to "they hate us for our freedoms". He was not capable of a more intelligent world-view. Of course, alcohol played an ongoing role as well. But America has a tradition of mythologizing ignorant drunken white men. Bush said often the best time of his life were the five or so months he got to attend a public grade school in Midland, Texas and play with "regular children". I went to that same grade school in Midland for a few months as well, only a few years after little George, and the class/race dynamics were utter hell. I was thrilled when we moved from there to Houma, Louisiana. But I believe him when he says it was better than the rest of his childhood. I'm just tired of the U.S. Presidency being a place where damaged boys work out their daddy issues.
- I also missed one. Apparently got my gender wrong.
- I was raised a mix of fundamentalist Bible Babtist (Daddy the Okie's side) and Hindu/Edgar Caycee/pre-New-Age yellow dog Democrat (Mama, and yes the latter qualifies as a religion in Texas.) I became an atheist at 13, thanks to Frank Yerby, and then at 21 found myself drawn to the secular judaism practiced by West Coast radical lesbians. I was a faux Jew until Quakers got hold of me at 40. Anyhow, when my beloved little brother Bill died in a horrific manner at age 42, because of poverty and a long history of being abused, I was too undone by grief to deal with the funeral. Until I found out that Daddy and Brother Dee has asked one of the folks who had molested Bill as a boy to speak at his funeral. I asked for air-time then, too, and figured out how to write a eulogy which named names and events without actually doing so. As it turns out, the pedophile went first and actually publically confessed to one of the things he'd repeatedly done to Bill, passing it off as a "funny story". Over a hundred of Bill's stoner, heavy metal friends were there, standing around the outside of the canopy in jeans and K-Mart shirts. Their rage was as strong as the smell of weed. When I stood, leaning on a walker, to speak they looked at me with faint hope. It was one of the best things I've ever done. I finished with the kaddish, which Brother Dee could not quite interrupt because of that sick Hebrew-worship fundies ascribe to. And it was in that recital when I finally understood the point of the kaddish: It's a way to keep us generically praising g*d when s/he has just shit on us and proved s/he is a comedian playing to an audience too terrified to laugh. (I think that's Voltaire, not sure.) Brother Dee responded by preaching a foam-flecked Jeezus threat literally a foot in front of me, but the damage to a cover-up job had been done. Afterward, every one of Bill's friends came to shake my hand and weep on my shoulder, refusing to acknowledge Daddy or the pedophile. And three months later, on 9/11, I kept repeating the kaddish, knowing if I did not keep open my line to g*d sometimes by rote, it would vanish altogether. Which might be a smart choice to make, but I'd rather wait until it isn't instigated by dumb rage and hurt. Being a grown-up and all. And not a Republican.
- Thanks, y'all. I'd give a hell of a lot to sit at a table with Cooz, but I'd want alla y'all in the bar. Which, actually, we have every day here, Nancy's bar. She makes what she does here look easy, but unlocking the voice of others is the mark of a brilliant writer.
- Pie rules. And that buttermilk blueberry set all my taste buds jangling. I learned most of Mama's recipes but was too impatient to absorb her trick for flaky, ethereal crusts, a lack I regret regularly. I too do not give a crap about the Grifter's marriage, family life, or sexual choices. It has nothing to do with why she is a disastrous choice as any kind of leader. However, part of her "platform" rests solidly on passing judgment about the sexual choices of others, enforcing her viewpoint by law. As such, she is asking to be outed in the same manner we would out a male in her position. A tricky distinction, and without having read the book, I doubt it's being cleanly done in this case. John McPhee could pull it off, but then, he'd never select that topic.
- MichaelG, I loved the Berkeley Co-ops so much I would sometimes drive across the bridge from SF to shop there in the early 1980s. I'm trying to remember the name of that little gelato place nearby, on Vine?, run by two lesbians. Aphrodisiacal.
- Statins cause those kinds of cramps in some people, and sure did for me. I eventually switched to a non-flushing niacin which worked just as well and the cramps went away. I find it fascinating that some folks (even these remoras) would equate treating MS with battling addiction. I guess all drugs are pharmaceutical solutions to some ailment, physical or social. And I am now gladly adding the new phrase of "touring with Journey". The things I learn here. Mighty Damn Gelato of you all!
- From "Miniature Earth", if you have a refrigerator in which to store food, you are among the 8% richest in the world. Owning land, a sailboat, a dwelling, a degree, medical insurance, yes, they are all signs of being among the economic elite. We need to place ourselves in the continuum of humanity, feel and express gratitude for how we have been privileged simply by accident of birth (which accounts for far more of it than any personal industry), and recognize that intelligent sharing IS in our long-term best interests. Which I have to say used to be a defining characteristic of the Middle Class in our country, and part of why that class is being diligently dismantled. Returning to the tax rates used during the "Golden Age" fundies want to drag us women, darkies and queers back to would restore properity for EVERYONE. Which is why they are agin it. But some of us recognize that at least from Reagan onwards, we have been the targets of a deliberate and unrelenting class war, and fighting back is the only rational response. Claiming we are starting the conflict is the battering husband's argument.
- I can't hear the words Blue Bell ice cream without also hearing in my head the falsetto of little boys or singing cows declaring "Best ice cream in the country..." Great commercials that for once ring true.
- Dubya was just as stupid and insulated as Perry -- he had better handlers, is all. Rats behind the scenes destroying records and covering up. Perry has existed in a Texas whiteboy bubble for too long, and I knew the national Kleig lights would catching him blinking blankly. What I'm really waiting for is the Larry Flynt $1 million bounty to come in, because then Perry will be toast in Tejas as well.
- Excellent article by DetroitJohn. Back when I could get out and around, I always gave what I could to streetcorner supplicants, even if it emptied my own pockets -- at least a dollar. One day I had my 4-year-old middle-class godson with me, and he was shocked when I pulled down my window and handed a woman three bucks. He whispered "Those are drug addicts, momma says." "Drug addicts are people who need to eat" I replied, thinking about his parents who drank far too much imported beer every night. His face registered comprehension, then excitement. After that, when we were out, he scanned the area for beggars and pointed them out, asking to be the one who handed over the money with a sunny "God bless you". Occasionally we bought extra sandwiches or taco and handed those out as well. Now I hear from my attendant (an African-American woman) that she always hands out money to any beggars she sees. Glad to hear my impression of who gives verified by DetroitJohn. My beloved little brother waas homeless for a year, when I lived in California. His terror of returning to it drove him the rest of his life and played a role in his eventual demise. And it scares me. We are all on the edge.
- Re what Alex said: "What you need is a crummy small room with no distractions and a student/teacher ratio of 10:1 or less. By the time you’re twelve years old you’ll be multilingual and proficient in physics and well ahead of any American high school graduate." Well, it's more complicated than that. I went to high school in exactly that environment, but ass-end rural North Texas, right on the Okie border. My graduating class was 8. I won first in state in essay-writing my senior year and got scholarship offers from all over the country based on my SATs and other scores. There were two excellent teachers in that high school and some abysmal ones. Of my graduating class, two others went on to college and one of those is now a teacher/coach, the other committed suicide. Yet another is dead from drugs. At least two more are living in the same poverty their parents did, plus deep alcoholism. One (the other out queer) survived the AIDS plague years and is successful without a degree. And I think our class did better than most out of that system. Yet when I look at the TAAS scores for the school online, it says they are doing well. I am not convinced. I think the difference between urban and rural schools is profound and not addressed in most reform theories. Plus: In the post-war decade or two, there was a strong belief in education as a route to embetterment. The lip service remains but is deliberately undermined by (a) the Christian Right, who does not want a free-thinking populace; (b) the general illogic of voters who do not want to pay for what they get; and (c) a working class which has stopped believing in the mythical "American dream" (not really theirs to have ever, except for anectodal exceptions) and instead uses ridicule and violence to ensure their children do not shine brightly enough to leave the community. Because their only safety net appears to be that community, and very often, they are right.
- No apps are free. You pay with datamining and surveillance. As a poet, I know you can make a metaphor about ANY two different items. Our brains are hard-wired to accept and be excited by metaphor, but that doesn't mean they are truthful or benign.
- Sue, thanks for the Krugman link, it's a great analysis.
- During Clinton's first year in office, in an interview he said his favourite writer was Elmore Leonard. I'd never heard of him (sacrilege, I know) and went off to the library. There followed a glorious half-year of reading the best damn character-setting dialogue in print. I channel Leonard when I edit what I've written. His 10 Rules are not to be argued with. I think of his "folks" first when I think of Detroit.
- I worked for five years at a cancer clinic where 50% of the patients who came in the door would die of their disease. One of the many doctors, most of whom are board-certified in internal medicine before specializing in oncology, explained to us often that if internists offered no treatment at all to their patients, 60% of them would still improve -- with cancer being an exception, which is why he was attracted to that field. He believed medicine was overfond of drawing conclusions about its own efficacy as opposed to self-healing on the part of the human body. He also refused to offer salvage therapy, referring the desperate to one of his colleagues. He was a genuine, hands on, silent philanthopist (as I and many others knew personally). and he believed part of his mission was to offer a good death. He was not scornful of non-Western remedies but insisted everything be tried, and results be countable. If I get cancer again, I will make a beeline for him.
- Oh, and the scuttlebutt among the staff was "Please g*d never give me pancreatic, oral or bone cancer." Ugly, painful, and unstoppable death most of the time.
- As much as I loved the book "A River Runs Through It", I loved his "Young Men and Fire" even more. I now have an enduring fixation on the Mann Gulch fire and on smokejumpers in general. And the example of Wag Dodge is one that my brain brings up and reminds me about at least weekly: In extremis, you will either remember or invent impossible solutions, if you believe in your own ability.
- For me, the 70s were the best decade ever. I graduated high school in an extremely rural and dangerously conservative North Texas county on the Red River in 1973, a sundowner county. But in 1968 was women's liberation, 1969 gay liberation, always fighting the war and racism, and my brain was constantly being blown and reformed. Never took drugs, didn't need to. Wore jeans and T-shirts, carried a gun in my pocket, ready for the revolution. Idealistic, yes, but in a way I work hard to keep. I believe(d) we can break it all down and clean it up. Met and loved the finest women on the planet, save for my current true love whom I had to grow up to appreciate, and lived communally, with total income sharing, serious cleaning up of race and class lies inside, and the gleeful chaos of existing outside the box. I'm too tired to do it again but I wouldn't trade a day of it -- it's why I am so happy now. Busted and all.
- 4dbirds, what a trip! I went to Mineral Wells once or twice for regional UIL competitions in ready-writing and one-act play -- it felt like a bustling metropolis to us. Our class motto was "Vodka, beer, and Texas Tea / We're the class of 73." Gold-Burd ISD, in Stoneburg, 10 miles north of Bowie. So sorry to hear about the kidneystones -- can they treat with meds or lithotripsy? I hate it that we are programmed to disintegrate once our breeding years are over.
- I started college pursuing a journalism degree right as Watergate hit, and I did learn a lot about writing. But I was painfully shy, not helpful in a reporter. I got assigned to cover the milquetoast "women's rights" campus group, heard the names of a couple of interesting professors, and next semester signed up for their classes. After that it was all sociology and cultural anthropology, with as much archaeology as I could cram in (that school didn't offer a major in it). It was women's studies before the rot of defending pet theories set in. Taught me how to question and observe, and I too use it daily. But I'm equally glad for that year with a hard-ass journalism editor who gleefuly tore my copy in half and told me to start over.
- I am a survivor of extended childhood sexual abuse at the hands of my brother, eight years older, who was a high school football hero, quarterback in the small Texas town where we lived (think "Friday Night Lights" and you've got it.) He was a bully, a vicious stalker and brutalizer of any kid of color, and got away with anything because of his football status. That was in the 60s. It is NOT coincidence. He also repeatedly raped my little brother, 11 years younger than him. He married and had three children, and I'm sure molested them. He volunteered in youth sports organizations, was always around kids. Pedophiles will always find a way to have access to children, and most of the time they won't be caught. It's not about gay or straight, though 98% of them identify as straight and the vast maority are married. It is its own sexual orientation, buried and only acted on if circumstances permit. It is deeply entertwined with our definitions of family, sexuality, and faith in American culture. Many of the beloved Biblical patriarchs fucked their daughters. Lot offered his up to a mob as safe passage out of Sodom and Gomorrah. In my 20s, I was part of the incest survivor movement which launched public awareness about child sexual abuse as the commonplace reality that it is. In fact, I may have been at ground zero for that movement. Here's my reaction: (1) A 28-year-old man who witnesses child rape and does not move to stop it was sexually abused himself. The inability to react with normal outrage is learned. (2) If a coach feels safe raping children in a locker room, he has previously established that as a safe zone of predation. Which means not only had he done that there before, OTHERS KNEW ABOUT IT. (3) The odds that other coaches and personnel were involved in a network of rape and child pornography around him are extremely high. It is pernicious. (4) The perception of children as acceptable sexual objects is not actually theoretically distinct from the sexual objectification of women: It is about use and power imbalance, not a meeting of equals for an exchange of sexual pleasure. It is a natural byproduct of heterosexuality as it is practiced in our culture, the inability to imagine sexual desire without power imbalance at the core. (I.e., a do-er and a do-ee.) Passed on to us from the Greeks, but not the only human expression of eroticism. (5) Child sexual abuse is always learned. Predators were once predated upon. And every child (not all boys, let me assure you) who was raped by this coach and his friends is now at risk for becoming predators themselves as adults. Especially if they are not identified and given good treatment. (6) Organizations built on hierarchies and male domination as expressed by masculinity will always leak into sexual abuse at some point. Female conditioning does not lend itself to this particular damage. We tend not to become perpetrators in these overwhelming numbers (and I do NOT want to hear anecdotes about how your mommy was mean, deal with the big picture) but we do cover up and keep children from being helped, which keeps this pattern going on for generations. If we have been abused ourselves, most of us will choose an abuser as a husband and father. (7) To address the core problems and actually clean it up will involve going against the church, organized sports, our obsession with the military, and the definition of family. But some of us have started. P.S. Both my brothers are dead. My beloved little brother Bill would have been 53 today. He died early because he tried to stay in family relationship with my older brother, Craig, and did not follow my example of therapy and confrontation. Craig died choking on his own vomit during a seizure.
- When I hear "orange and blue" I think Vincent Van Gogh. All colours go together if you know what you're doing.
- Brit girlfriend, who holds multiple degrees and has a dazzling vocabulary, has easily convinced me of the utility of loo and manky. She also brought a suitcase of English candies and confections on her recent visit, and I am slowly acquiring intercontinental addictions (Toffee Crisps and Jammy Dodgers remain at the top of my list). I still don't understand British currency, though, old or new.
- During the week Margot was recently here, I opted to match her intake of tea cup for cup, to see what it was like. Mornings began with a cuppa (with milk and sugar added for me) plus a single coffee for her, since her system is accustomed to the caffeine in tea. She brought Typhoo and Waitrose with her, and I learned right away to differentiate the taste, depending on my palate at that moment. The regular infusions greatly enhanced my mood and productivity, and I have really missed it since she left. (I am bedbound and my attendant care is only 4 hours a day, so I cannot continue the tea habit on my own.) The OWS movement is not clearly comparable to other progressive-led actions. It has only a weak interest in working with the current system, and its main success thus far has been to create functional relationships between subgroups who heretofore were effectively separated by the power elite. Its impact will emerge elsewhere, in areas which will catch the dull-witted status quo by great surprise.
- Kim, I am in the bluest neighborhood in Austin, Tejas -- I am sixth-generation Texian and determined to save my people from Republican racist woman-hating fuckwittery. One word at a time. When I don't have tea, I drink Mexican Cokey-Cola.
- Yes, LAMary. Icy cold in a glass bottle. The local grocery store sells it. I try to limit it to the morning caffeine launch, however.
- Coozledad, that video seems to be going viral and it is really fascinating. It will definitely radicalize those participating, and the brilliant phrasing of the young man "megaphoning" with repetition appears to have backed the cops down. I wonder what effect these heavy-handed confrontations are having on the cops at the front line -- will polarize some but radicalize others, if past experience holds true. As military planners well know, forcing a group of folks into danger together bonds them like nothing else. This IS the "next stage" of OWS, or one of them. And the power elite cannot help but do their stupid part, because the alternative is the dismantling being called for.
- BRILLIANT nonviolent organizing is occurring on the UC Davis campus. Enormously effective long-range and long-term. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmfIuKelOt4&
- Yeah, thanks to this post and Coozledad above, brining will never feel like an option again.
- I woke up to a cokey-cola and the annual listening of Alice's Restaurant. My morning attendant Tammy is due to arrive and we will get her outta here early so she can go be with family. My evening attendant won't be here until after 5, so I'll have a nice long chunk of the day alone, which is an actual treat for me. Never cared much for this holiday, and it is definitely better without my family. Am also not a major fan of Turkey (unless I make it) or pumpkin. I declined the Meals On Wheels dinner, and instead am having my fave of pot roast, mashed potatoes and gravy, spinach, and pecan pie. My GF, being English, finds this holiday bewildering and will skype me when she's done with a regular day at work. I AM looking forward to the National Dog Show. And I make it a daily practice to notice and give thanks for what I have -- rent paid until the 1st, a refrigerator, prescriptions all filled at the moment. And that pot roast ready to be heated up, hot damn. After an unusually bountiful meal when I was a child, my father would always say "Wonder that the po' folks are eatin' tonight." I didn't know it was irony until I was a teenager. It's a good way to live, being glad. I have a lot of love coming my way daily. And discovering this community here, with diverse and intelligent viewpoints, has been a blessing this year.
- I know this is OT, but I am clear-headed and have enough energy to write y'all today and thank you for the all the fine, fine love you aimed in my direction. Bless you, Judybusy, for hooking me up here. I am going to live and, I think, do much better as a result of my current health crisis. Because of poverty and Tejas's fucked social contract after Bush and Perry trashed the joint, I have not been able to get real medical care for two years. Consequently, treatable embers eventually burst into a conflagration despite my more ardent efforts to get help. I entered the hospital with a peach-sized abscess in my left butt cheek that, on I and D, turned out to contain MRSA which has colonized my bloodstream. In addition, my blood sugar was 600, and I am now diagnosed as a diabetic. As one doctor said, "You shoulda been in a coma." The sugars are now down to today's low of 262, all the fever/xeristomia/malaise is greatly reduced, and Infectious Disease has removed the plague warnings from my door because my butt cheek cavity is sealed with a Wound Vac. A PICC line pours vanco into me constantly, and I am learning to sleep when I can. More difficult than all these physical realities is that there is no social agency yet willing to pick up the cost of nursing care and necessary DME when I go home. I fall between some weird cracks. I have two excellent, radical case managers doing their best, and the hospital-based one is secretly conspiring with a malleable resident to simply keep me in the hospital for 2-3 weeks, to prevent me being dumped in a nursing home. Texas nursing homes for the indigent are death traps. No rehab or L-Tac will take me as a charity case until maybe January. In the meantime, I have a fantastic network of friends, especially over at Facebook where my daily dispatches are avidly awaited -- I am great at finding the humour in it all. Come April, I WILL finally get Medicare and this patchwork crap will end. And despite this being the county indigent teaching hospital, I am receiving excellent care, with daily kindness and human decency. And now I am well enough to resume being a regular nn.c reader, a reward ass well as an indicator of recovery. Thank you all for thinking of me. The feeling is mutual.
- Yesterday's good news is that Infectious Disease has requested I remain in the hospital for a full two-week run of IV vanco. This gets me excellent care for my Wound Vac, MRSA and diabetes, and buys us extra time to beg/borrow the necessary services for when I return home. The bad news is that PT is refusing to come assess me, much less treat me. They claim my current level of disability is baseline. Two docs and my case manager are battling them -- I'm sure it's about $, esp continuing PT once I leave -- but even if I win, I worry about the care PT will then provide. But PT and regaining mobility is the ONLY rational road to preventing future decline and repeated such admissions in the future. Nuts. I am apparently wildly popular in my ward because of my cooperation, my manners, my motivation, and my progress. Plus there are a LOT of gay brothers in the caregiver field. I've been forthright about having a woman partner, and Margot and I skype every chance we get, which apparently "they" out on the floor find adorable and are gosipping about. Margot's English accent has charmed them. People stream in and out my door several times an hour, doing or demanding a chaotic array of actions. Yesterday during lunch a short woman with long white hair but wearing street clothes and no hospital tag strode in, ignoring my obvious meal, and said "Oh, I remember you. Why are you in the hospital today?" It wasn't just that I didn't recall her, there was something about her which put me off. I said politely "I'm afraid I don't remember you. How are you?" "Oh, I'm the chaplain. So tell me, what all happened to make you land in the hospital?" When I was admitted, I specified on the form that I wanted no visit from a chaplain, a fact I remembered later. Now, I looked her in the eye and said firmly "I don't feel comfortable discussing my personal life with someone I don't know who is not a caregiver." She instantly pulled back and said "I'm sorry, I'll leave." She added "Thank you for telling me that directly" before scurrying out. I was livid. She never gave me her name. As a chaplain, she knows damned well how isolated and frightened folks can be in hospitals, and in this setting, the basics of introduction and consensual sharing should be more diligently observed. It has occurred to my cynical mind that she was an evangelical who could not resist the chance to preach at an out queer, or at lease dilute my toxic tolerance on this floor. Christians presume a right to intrude, to judge and prosetylize -- far more aggressive than any Muslim agenda.
- Dorothy, still here. Doing steadily better. Blood cultures are no longer growing MRSA, blood sugars down to the 240 range and still slowly dropping, constipation resolved to diarrhea (believe me, it's a step up). Big news is that my case manager got a physiatrist to consult, a buxom bronze-haired Valkyrie who crackled power with every gesture. She stopped to fix me with her eye and say "I don't know how you survived the last two years, but I want you to know, I can tell how hard you've worked and I'm very proud of you." I am living off those words. She gave me bed exercises, declared me prime for rehabilitation, and forced PT/OT to see me. Today I sat up on the side of the bed twice (with massive assist), a point of view I've not had in two years. I am exhausted and awash with emotion, but the corner has at last, at last turned. I will be here at least another week, longer if my case manager can extract me the time. I have years of hard work ahead of me, and at last somebody besides me and my online community are going to help me return to the outer world.
- My dad briefly owned a souped-up Dodge Dart while I was in high school, a purchase he made without my mother's consent. He let me drive it to town one day, and urged me to "Let it all go", reaching a speed of 135 mph on that rural two-lane blacktop. I was 15 years old. When Mama found out, the car was sold within the week. Mostly it scared me. Mostly.
- Thank you, Dorothy. I am thrilled to be home, with excellent home care now thanks to an innovative new program being tried locally, PT, a good hospital bed, and my blood sugar under excellent control. I have utterly embraced a complete change in my eating habits, with gratifying results. Still furious that it took nearly dying to get the services I needed -- I know I'm lucky, as well as being trailer-trash determined not to let the system ignore me out of existence. And there are still social workers out there who will do whatever it takes to help folks like me.
- Okay, okay, I finally gave in and added Sweet Juniper to the list of blogs I will check in on daily. Good thing I'm a cripple and have lots of time in between filling out intrusive social service forms.
- Yesterday I taught my morning attendant how to assemble my popular roasted winter veggie dish, and ate from it for two fine meals. It's all about adding the veggies to the roasting pan at the right time, so it all gets tender and caramelized at the same moment. Start with small slices of beets, quartered shallots, halved heads of garlic, baby carrots, and halved fingerling potatoes in a bowl, drizzled with olive oil, tamari, and either cracked black pepper or pepperoncino. Arrange in a single layer on a baking sheet and place in a 350 degree oven. After half an hour, add cherry tomatoes (also coated as above), and ten minutes later add either chard or kale leaves, also coated. The chard and kale goes crunchy and addictive after five minutes or so. This is a tremendous meal with maybe only the addition of some good cheese (I had Tillamook) and a rustic bread (none for me because I am on carb control now).
- I have to confess that despite a profound disinterest in all things fashion-related, when I watched the Golden Globes run-up last weekend, I found myself wondering what Tom & Lorenzo would have to say about it all -- strictly a result of Nancy's links to them here. And yes, I did go to their site later to see what they dished.
- Fifteen years ago I had to find a new gynecologist here, and had Diana Wiehs recommended as an ardent feminist as well as a damned good doctor (right on both counts). She read over my intake questionnaire and almost fell out of her chair laughing at my answer to the question "What form of birth control do you use?": "Lesbianism." She further endeared herself to me when, once I was in the stirrups and she was warming the speculum with her hands, she leaned in to me to ask "Can you explain one conundrum to me? Log Cabin REPUBLICANS?" My answer to her is the same as why any person of colour or self-respecting woman would vote for that party: Fear trumps logic. Racism, classism and woman-hating are all untreated mental illnesses based on fear. I think I read here (likely Coozledad) an explanation of why Rick Perry has not and will not drop out. (1) He's making shitloads of money, and (2) He means to get the Sarah Palin slot, the offer to be Vice President in order to seal the Teabagger/Christianist/die-hard racist vote for a Romney Presidency. He's their boy.
- As someone victimized at the same age by a small-town football hero, I feel intense relief at your stand, Nancy. Even after decades of therapy and movement and, yes, forgiveness, I still need the world to be definitive on this issue: No excuses. We are surrounded by children to whom it is occurring right now, children you would not suspect of being targets, and adults who are enabling it because they do not want to face the change it will make to stand up against the actual, real exploitation of children. Being done by men who in other ways are "good". It's complicated, and grown-ups can deal with that complexity. We don't have a choice, really.
- How do you get an avatar for yourself? I see no option in the comment form.
- Thanks, Deborah, trying it out.
- Andrew Breitbart is dead. I am sorry for those who loved him and hoped he would find peace in this life.
- I attended Friends Meeting the weekend after Matthew Shephard was murdered, and when one of the gay men in Meeting rose to speak, the hush was greater than usual. It was the only time I ever saw him rise to speak. In a choked voice, he said he had been struggling since the news of the murder, and finally had turned to reading the Midrash. He read an account of when the Hebrews fled Egypt, how the Red Sea parted to allow them through, but when Pharoah's army vengefully pursued them, the waters closed over them and destroyed them. All the angels were watching these events unfold, and as the Hebrews were saved, they burst into jubilation, dancing. But then one angel noticed Yahweh was not celebrating, and in fact was weeping, and asked in dismay "Why are you not dancing at saving of our people?" Yahweh replied "How can I dance when my people are drowning?" He reduced many of us to tears with this story, and it changed me permanently. I am not a christian and only an uncomfortable deist, but I know the only way badly damaged people have ever changed, in my personal experience, is through love and forgiveness. It's fine when I need to dance instead of forgive, I know that. Still, I reach for kindness when I can manage it, for my sake and that of those who love me. Tell them when they are wrong, clearly and forcefully. Let them know when they have injured you. And ask that their their ability to hurt others be interrupted, in a public forum. But do not celebrate their death or eventual degradation. I believe that for myself. (Except for Cheney and my older brother.)
- Excellent, Coozledad. Just excellent.
- Thanks, Nancy, for giving us your look. Elegantly and succinctly said, as usual, and I agree. One of the reasons I come here is because I can often find what I (from my deep South/Texan cultural upbringing) shorthand as "Midwestern values" -- the idea that fair play is courageous and worth the effort. We cannot win by playing the games of the Right. They are, inevitably, destroying their own souls. I wonder at what they can and cannot see in this devolution. Having been up close and personal to men who literally caused the deaths of people they claimed to love, who never once stop blaming their victims for dying, I know those who do evil have an endless capacity for not seeing that evil. That lack of self-examination is perhaps the crux of why they are so dangerous. But I especially appreciate hearing from those of us who proudly claim liberal as we honestly try to think about our own process, who want to alter our responses so they are genuinely effective politically as well as personally. Even a handful of us can make that difference.
- I am a pacifist and deeply opposed to war. If I were a christian, I could make a perfect scriptural case for declaring the killing of another human being is an abomination, and therefore I wish no part of my taxes to fund the healthcare of anyone in the military. I can make that case as a non-christian on pure ethical grounds. However, the cost for living in freedom includes paying for the well-being of my sister and brother citizens, whatever choices they make in the matter of faith and behavior. I cannot start making distinctions without codifying hate and oppression, OR enforcing religion through law. It's against the Constitution, which guarantees all of us the pursuit of happiness (within legal bounds). For some, that means having a dozen children who will certainly be educated and otherwise cared for at state expense at various points along the way. For some, it means not having children. Their choice, not mine. I am currently facing five months where I will have Medicare but the State of Texas will be taking its time deciding whether or not I deserve to receive assistance paying for premiums and deductibles. I filled out a 19-page detailed application for it two months ago and mailed it in with a waiver giving the state permanent access to all my bank, IRS and medical records (no privacy, no dignity, not for poor people under Republican rule). The feds easily found me below the poverty level and therefore eligible for prescription drug assistance, but Texas managed to "lose" my application and I had to reapply this week. Hence, the delay. If I need emergency care during that time, any hospital I am taken to will have to write off the 20% that a Medigap insurance would have covered. I will have to closely ration any other care I need because even a $20 copay may mean I eat bologna instead of salad, for instance. Is this penury in your best interest? Is this how anyone wants a free society to divide up its citizenry? I have never needed birth control once in my life. The years when I was raped, for instance, were pre-puberty. But I have used Planned Parenthood often for exams AND for the progestin pills I took monthly to induce periods (I have PCOS) to ward off endoemtrial cancer. I could afford their services and got no attitude from them about my choices. However, my right to such non-baby-killing care is likely negated because I don't allow penises in me at all, right? I have had over a dozen vaginal ultrasounds; they are uncomfortable, occasionally painful, and how gentle the tech is makes a world of difference. The demand for their use has nothing at all to do with health care. It is symbolic rape, and you better believe the lawmakers who happily voted for it understood they were getting a chance to stick it in any woman who dared to claim agency over her own body.
- I have always wondered if the phrase "women and children first" gained general cultural currency when it was the major headline after the Titanic went down. Was it an encapsulated idea before then -- more than just a value, but an actual ready-made phrase? The books I read as a child, urged on me by my bibliophile mother, leaned heavily on "children's literature" from earlier eras: Rebecca of Sunnybrook, Freckles, Pollyanna, Anne of Green Gables, The Five Little Peppers, all of Twain, Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch, Beautiful Joe, Wind in the Willows, Sherlock Holmes, plus Joan Aiken and L.M. Boston's work. It wasn't until decades later I noticed how many of these stories were about orphans -- beloved heroes of my mama who had been orphaned as a little girl during the Depression. When I was allowed to select books from my own era, I disdained Nancy Drew as too predictable (except that girl George, she really caught my interest) and even the Hardy Boys were so straight-arrow as to be boring. I preferred the adventures written by Troy Nesbitt, Trixie Belden (major role model for a lesbian child), Donna Parker, and above all else, the works of Marguerite Henry. Didn't have Judy Blume or Madeleine L'Engel yet. Lois Lenski and Eleanor Estes wrote about working class kids so accurately they made me weep. Now I'd recommend Philip Pullman over Harry Potter, and if they were a teenager I'd hand them the Chanur series by C.J. Cherryh and anything by Leguin over vampire crap.
- Re Coozledad's essay, I note his brother was an RA. So was my little brother. I was an ardent GA, back when I still believed in Jesus's divinity, and dreamed about traveling far afield to preach the word. Good prep for becoming a revolutionary. Let's see who else here was once a GA. When I graduated high school in 1973, that remote corner of Texas cozied up to the Red River still thought white lipstick and eyeliner was way cool. At the pre-commenncement awards ceremony (which I swept mostly because I read books and hadn't gotten pregnant yet), I had a strapless long white polyester dress made for me by my history teacher who was about to leave her husband for me. (I'd come a long way from GA's.) As I began getting dressed for the ceremony, I realized with horror that I could not wear a bra with the dress, and my wide maroon nipples showed clearly through the white double-knit fabric. The solution I hit upon was to paint my nipples with white eye-shadow, masking the colour. I was still young enough that my unsheathed breasts would hold up on their own, I thought. It was while I was in the midst of this paint process in front of my mirror that Mama walked in on me. I froze in horror and tried to think of what to say. She stared, waved her hand and said "I don't even want to know" and left the room. It worked. Two years later, feminism gave me permission to toss all my make-up, including the white stuff, and the only time I've bought more since was when I went as a Heterosexual to the Halloween costume party at my cancer clinic job. I won best costume that day. It wasn't just the sight of me in pantyhose and eyeshadow that blew away my coworkers, it was my nonstop bitching about my husband Junior and the kids, the recipe for green-bean casserole written in Sharpie on one forearm, and how I suddenly flirted with the old fart doctors.
- GA stood for Girls' Auxiliary -- because we were secondary to the boys, y'know. Ages 8-12, I think. Younger than that were Sunbeams, coed. GA's progressed in steps, with tests to ascend to the next level. Began as a Maiden, then Lady-In-Waiting, then Princess, then Queen. I do remember being required to read and report on the biblical book of Esther for one step, which I very much enjoyed, only later realizing it was very non-religious for a scripture text. It was my GA teacher, Mrs. Urban, I went to with a coded question about why I was being molested -- I framed it as "Why do some women get raped?", I think. She seized the opportunity to tell me that when bad (sexual) things happen to girls, it is because they have sinned and Jesus is punishing them directly, and they must try harder to get clean. But, she added, no woman can get truly clean because Eve made Adam eat the apple and we are all damned by her original sin. It shut me up tight, and I never told anyone anything until I had my first woman lover.
- Bitter Scribe FTW.
- When I had my first D&C, it was also my first surgery ever and I was so nervous, I read far too much in advance about What Could Go Wrong. I was especially nervous about the curet slipping and perforating my uterus. After it was over, I went to the house of my vegetarian herbalist girlfriend who had made me a special stew that she said was tonic for wimmin's parts. The next morning, she went off to work. I got up later, still weird from the general anesthesia, used the toilet where discovered large blood clots in my stool. I began dressing in a panic, and hurriedly called a friend to meet me at the ER. I was nearly hysterical: "No, I'm not in pain, but my bowel must be perforated, dammit!" She thought for a minute and asked "Were there, by chance, any beets in that stew you ate last night?" I still giggle when I think about what the ER staff's reaction would have been -- once I'd had a colonoscopy and who knows what else done to me.
- Almost everyone I know has posted the Hillary texts at FB. My favorite is still the sunglasses one. I find it interesting how much this has softened her image, this "coolifying" meme. In other news, for those of us addicted to genealogy, the 1940 census images are now online (for a fee at Ancestry). They are not indexed yet but if you know the Enumeration District, you can thumb through slightly blurry pages for a while, testing your orthography skills, and find the old folks you knew as a kid. And your parents, if you're old enough. This census asked folks (a) where they lived in 1935 and (b) what their income was last year. It will be an invaluable tool for portraying geographic displacement caused by the Depression, right before WWII rearranged the whole country from farm to not-farm. It also asks everyone exactly how many years of schooling they have had, and even I am be surprised by the answers. I knew in rural Texas girls' families had to pay for them to start school before age 8, but the shortage for boys seems high as well. An agriculture-based economy simply didn't encourage more than about 6 years of schooling. Our widely-educated public is a brief and recent historic event, and it's no wonder the Republicans feel confident about dismantling that status. Charter educations are their doorway to isolation and controlled ignorance.
- I went to Shiloh in 1985 with my then-partner and her sister, both of German ancestry from Oregon. I was so devastated by day's end that I couldn't bear to talk to either of them. My ancestors lived in McNairy County and heard the battle raging from their fields. Many of my people fought in the Confederacy there. One thing stood out for me: It was with this battle that, as the article states, Grant understood "total subjugation" would have to be his goal. Therefore, contrary to all custom prior to this, once the battle was over, local people were not allowed in to carry off wounded or bury the dead. Grant used his troops to bury the Union dead or tend to Union wounded. Confederates were left to die and rot. It was unconscionable then and now. (2) The "military" battlefield at the end of the tour holds no Southern dead. The mass graves mentioned in the article, buried in woods along the tour route, hold thousands of Confederates who were dumped with no attempt at identification. Hence, Shiloh became a void into which CSA soldiers disappeared and were never heard from again. Honoring the dead is a deeply held value among the rural south, and to have no headstones, no ID, is shocking. Despite my absolute antipathy to the Southern cause, to racism and all its cohort then and now, I felt personally humiliated by my people's treatment at Shiloh by the end of that day. I used my intellect and other tools to sort through it in the months to come, of course. I have resource, liberalism, community to assist me in sorting emotion from reality. But so many otherwise smart folks raised in the South are going to be flummoxed by Grant's decision to treat opposition soldiers as subhuman. It simply doesn't help anyone to change, that kind of hate, and change is what the South needed to do. The aftermath of the war gave citizenship to black men for a brief period, left black women disenfranchised, and addressed the economic shift for African-Americans not at all. Change on a basic level did NOT occur, still has not occurred, for too many of this battle's descendants wherever they lived. We spend no money or effort as a culture in learning how to recover from war and dehumanizing laws.
- But Coozledad, it didn't WORK. Short of killing them all, how do you actually transform such a culture? Racism is as imbedded in Northern history as Southern, it just took different forms, and the vast majority of Union soldiers were not fighting for the rights of African-Americans. I mean, before and during the war, so many Northern and Midwestern States were passing laws intended to keep freed blacks from moving there. Humiliating monsters and monstrous notions drives them underground, and long-term that is not enough. I'm speaking from an activist perspective -- yes, stop the abuse (racism, classism, woman-hating, child abuse), stop it immediately, but then what? It's not just that prisons don't work, it's that if we slammed into a cell every man who is sexually abusing children/treating women like shit/denying humanity to people of colour, the streets would empty. The fact that we find it so hard to imagine change not based on violence and submission IS the problem. The racism of America is woven into every thread of our history -- we stole the land, and then we stole labor to exploit it until it became more profitable to industrialize than to produce raw materials. We'd still much rather kill brown people than seriously alter our relationship to energy consumption. The American way of life declared by foam-flecked teabagger lips to be what they are willing to kill for means going on stealing more than our share, and those folks are just as likely to be Northern and Western as Southern. They are organized around fear and shame, so more fear and shame is not going to break the cycle. Written on one of my more practical-minded days, when I'm not humming "If I had a rocket launcher" under my breath.
- A will to end slavery does not mean someone was not viciously racist, and that equation is a big part of why emancipation did not equal human rights for African-Americans anywhere in this country post-war. Furthermore, the Union Army had to draft most of its troops, and aside from Ken Burns' selective euologizing, most of the actual journal entries/letters I've read written by ordinary Union soldiers demonstrate no desire to find a place for blacks in their own world. And the genocidal war we waged on Native folks post-war was gleefully, bloodily carried out by the same troops who fought the South. Racism is innately American, bedrock to every community, written into our Constitution, and mutates to fit the mythos of whatever region you are studying. If you think your people/your area wasn't just as racist in a different form than most of the South, you're kidding yourself (with rare exceptions -- W.E.B. Dubois, for example, had an almost modern comprehension of what racism really looks like.) But there's a high percentage of Americans who think we waged war on Iraq/Afghanistan/etc for democracy and freedom instead of race and class-based greed. Folks in Iraq know better.
- I am just plain angry about Moe dying. It sucks. Especially how she is dying. Such an unfair end for someone who always worked as hard as she could to see the good in things. She should not have it this hard.
- When I was four, my favorite song by a long yard was "Last Kiss" -- made me cry every time it came on the radio, which was often then. Later, in my 20s, I actually did some counseling work on undoing the messages in my head left by that song and others like it, the "romance" lies of the 50s. It has that appalling narcissism of a love definition throughout: She's dying because I had to hot rod and even then I force a last kiss on her so I'll have the memory. There's a solid reason my generation created feminism. Which brings me to the Sandusky hoo-ha. It won't be popular even here, but after having listened to the personal stories of HUNDREDS of women and men starting to work on having been sexually abused as children, certain things are extremely common: (1) You have a mostly-male environment, you have child sexual abuse. It has nothing (ZERO) to do with homosexuality: The safest families statistically are lesbian-run households. It has to do with how our current male conditioning imprints sexuality. Children are fair game when women are also prey in the power/sex distortion. (2) If you experienced sex abuse as a child, even "merely" as a witness to it in the environment, without intervention or treatment, your ability to then intervene as an adult will be severely compromised. You will be much more likely to either seek partmers and family dynamics with perpetrators (esp if female) or become a perpetrator yourself, or both. (3) Sandusky was not the only one. He was surrounded either by those unable to act against him (former affected children) or other perpetrators. He was only the most visible. These folks find each other and network; look at the Catholic Church. Going down the "it's queers after our liddul boys" rabbithole simply keeps the infrastructure in place.
- When I was a child, my mother created voices for all our myriad animals and their versions of ESL, and it became a way we worked out family tensions, having the dog or cat comment on our personal habits with a directness we dared not otherwise voice. I realized, with a jolt, we were not the only people who had done so once I encountered the phenomenon of LOLCats and recognized not only a common anthropomorphic style but a consistent, logical grammar. It still fascinates me, how universal and agreed-upon this "instant pidgin" is, and how consistently the community at I Can Haz Cheeseburgers uses the venue for humor about the general human condition rather than as a bully platform for hateful, partisan snark. The habit of conversation with and between family pets continues on among my tribe. My Abbyssian of 17 years, Rusk, turned out to have the aggrieved tone and vocabulary of a flaming queen -- although this possibly was a reaction to his long life as the only male animal in communal households of lesbian separatists. My Cat of Cats, Alice, was a brilliant Manx who unfortunately was unable to pronounce L's, substituting either Y or sometimes W for that consonant. Consequently, she pronounced and signed her name "Ayis". She particularly thrilled a roomful of my friends where she broke into song with that old Sinatra standard "Yuck be a yady tonight".
- Judybusy, I was only in DC once but still have life-altering memories of the Hirschhorn Museum -- Alexander Calder, et al. The docent tour was riveting. Don't miss the sculpture outside. Also, the Smithsonian has Julia Child's kitchen in it. On a completely different note, a day set aside for the Holocaust Memorial Museum will rearrange your soul. Worth it, worth all the grief.
- Excellent, excellent bloggage today. And thanks extra much for retelling the story, it warranted the effort. (My mind won't let go of the phrase "Cram it with walnuts, Ugly." Not charitable.)
- I loved how inclusive the Opening Ceremonies were, with Hunger Marchers, suffragists, a variety of working and union folk, multiple generations, and especially disabled people celebrated. The NBC narration was at best idiotic, at worst deliberately obfuscating or offensive, but I was on skype with my Brit girlfriend which helped me understand some of what I would have missed otherwise. Dame Evelyn Glennie, the wild percussionist with the long grey hair, is deaf, y'all, and she led all that constant drumming.
- I can't watch synchronized swimming without flashing back to that brilliant parody done by Christopher Guest with Martin Short and Harry Shearer -- I can't take the real thing seriously after that. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4122944961711350389 "I don't swim."
- I am certain what Deborah meant is what I likewise feel, that the folks being hurt by climate change SHOULD be those who have determinedly refused to accept its reality or agreed to allow action on it. Unfortunately, for the next decade or so, that will only partly be the Republicans in this country -- most of the dead and dying will live elsewhere and/or have brown skin, which is the real reason climate change has been ignored by the right wing. Since Reagan, the Republican Party has been in thrall to white supremacy, and draws its numbers from those who will fail to see their own common good being dismantled when they can satisfy a nativist fear of ensuring "Anglo-Saxon" domination.
- I recently discovered Mitchell and Webb, and am delighting in their work. My favourite so far is the SS officer wondering if they might be "the baddies". And Webb's remake of Flashdance.
- I have personally known two women who were raped and got pregnant from the rape. Both of them were lesbians, definitely not in situations where any ambiguity existed. One of them was my lover at the time. She had a miscarriage at about two months. The other friend had an abortion. I don't believe either of them are "over it", still. The trauma of unwanted pregnancy on top of rape was more than most folks quite can handle. I've read that 75-80% of rape-begun pregnancies produce male offspring. Interesting statistic. I am so angry about this, about the whole mainstreaming of rape and porn culture and women's bodies being pushed back into open ownership by the state, church, and whatever man is in the fucking vicinity. It is bedrock to the Republican platform, this pushback against the essential truth of feminism, that OUR bodies belong to and are defined by US, nobody else. Republican policies cannot be promulgated if women have full citizenship and agency, and the boys in power know it. And it's either just fine with the idiots who vote with them (as long as they keep that white supremacy at the top of the message, they'll having their base) or it's acceptable because to actually stop and reason out the connections would destroy right-wing mindsets, based on fear and avoidance rather than logic and the ability to live comfortably with more than one belief in the room.
- A new lover once made me an exquisite 7-layer chocolate cake for my birthday. We went out to eat before having cake, leaving it on the kitchen table which, up to that point, my short-legged little mutt had never been able to ascend. I guess the cake was a powerful motivator, because she somehow scooted chairs and got atop the table, ate every last crumb of the cake, then vomited it up in 17 different places in the house. (Yes, I counted.) Or maybe she ate and vomited, ate and vomited, in serial stages. My lover, an animal advocate, was very concerned the dog might die, but I refused to take her to the vet that night after a 17-stage clean-up. She survived and lived to be 16.
- I've found that playing "Rivers, Rails and Roads" can be extremely challenging among adults. And when playing with children, encouraging them to tell a story about each traveler, stretch of road, or create an ongoing narrative can keep the game more engrossing than you'd believe -- plus it won't matter who wins.
- Depends Quesadilla.
- Sue, I watched yr link yesterday and loved it. Sorry I didn't comment then, I guess I'm spoiled by that effin Like button you-know-elsewhere.
- In 1976 I attended a workshop led by Florence Rush at the National N.O.W. convention in Detroit, and for the first time had an inkling that my own history of sexual abuse might have seriously affected my approach to intimacy. A year later, I began counseling, and in 1980 I joined one of the first (ever) self-help/activism groups for incest survivors. We broke more ground than I can quite articulate; read Nancy Whittier's latest book "The Politics of Child Sexual Abuse: Emotion, Social Movements, and the State" for a thorough description of what we did. The therapeutic standard in 1976 was that girls who were molested as children somehow elicited or invited the adult male's sexual response to them. Therapy at that time meant accepting responsibility for your presumed complicity. I'm not surprised this distortion is still around, because the alternative is to recognize that the majority of sexual attention aimed at others by adult males is unsolicited and nonconsensual in onset. We raise boys to think this is their due and their drive in play, and raise girls to believe it is appreciation rather than a form of control. We get outraged now when it is aimed at children, but informed consent takes time and experience to acquire -- I would argue that most teenaged girls and young women don't have the skills or room to say no when that is what they actually prefer. Adult sexuality without predation and power imbalance as erotic deficition is going to look like nothing we know now. I for one am ready for liberation from the ancient Greek pathology.
- After 11 years with Dinah, a feral kitten rescue who is extremely attached to me but cannot abide contact, I have finally taken on a second cat -- another kitten rescue, found by a local woman writer when Scout (as she named her) was less than a month old. Scout is extremely affectionate and unusually bright. So I am sliding toward Crazy Cat Woman, short on sleep but deeply happy at this change in my daily circumstances. With regard to the election, my old leftie paranoia says the continued pretense on Mittens having ANY play in this race is cover for the fact that all apparatus is now in place for the election to be outright stolen. Via Diebold fraud. Polls are being doctored now to provide plausible cover for a Republican theft. The stuff they scream the loudest about are the illegalities and evils they do the most (or exclusively), and their insistence on fighting nonexistent "voter fraud" could be merely their bedrock white supremacy or could have a double intent. Does anyone else feel this way?
- The fact that the Right is circulating a fake "Obama is stealing the election" email means (if the past holds true) they, the Republicans, are in fact going to attempt just that. The best predictor of what is going on behind their doors is whatever they keep screeching the Dems are doing. I have no respect for Rahm Emmanuel. Having him anywhere his administration was a signal failure on Obama's part.
- Sue, great link. Brill run of comments.
- I was a medical transcriptionist for over two decades, and the racial identification of patients in reports was an increasingly contentious issue. On the face of it, of course race is associated with physical condition, and should be reported on the same as age, gender, occupational exposure, etc. However, racism is imbedded here as elsewhere, and especially in the older generation of physicians, manifested in two key ways: Language used and assumption about what was a default race. I got into trouble repeatedly for refusing to transcribe a dictated "Negro" or "Negroid", which passes as science in white supremacy world but is not. (And occasionally some old bastard would use the term "colored", yes he did just say that.) The vicious old trio of racial classification from the eugenics era centered on Negro, Caucasian, and Mongoloid. Nor would I transcribe Oriental. And, whenever possible, I replaced Caucasian with what everyone means when they use that term, white or of Northern European ancestry. Specificity is what matters in taking a medical history, and if the physician wasn't bright enough or too racist to get the details (Asian or do you mean Chinese, Vietnamese, Japanese, Filipino -- all of which are vastly different), I was not willing to play along with the pseudoscience of prejudice. Further, so many doctors never reported race for white people, only non-white. It was a glaring assumption that went unchallenged until I came along. If I had access to the record, I'd fill in the race on white people. If I didn't, I'd send notes saying "Dr. Stonewall only reports race on blacks and Asians, never for anyone else, please let him know this is incomplete reporting." Some of them blew up about this, of course, but my job as a transcriptionist is to verify the medical report I turn out will maximize that patient's care and will hold up to a legal challenge. I was usually backed up by the hospital or service I worked for. And, as doctors got younger, the problem decreased: New standards of professionalism included a better grasp of diversity and how to appreciate it.
- That clip brought tears to my eyes. I remember when that album came out, and all of us gathering in the bedroom of the one girl in town who'd gotten her hands on it first. Every new Beatles album brought our worlds to a halt, as we clustered to listen over and over, trying to understand meaning on meaning. And that piccolo bugle player -- ne brought the sound forward. Music kept cracking open the world, those years.
- Katharine is beautiful and has a deep history she can lean on. One of my treasured legacies are the old and solid names I was given, despite fuck-all else in the way of material posterity. Here's David Mitchell's rant about responsibly naming your child: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xblh12XgQ4o
- I was researching one line of ancestors (not especially literate) who had a girl in the mid 1800s they named Sarra Gorda. Even with illiteracy, the consistency of that mispelling was intriguing to me, handed on to her daughter and granddaughter. The mystery was eventually solved when I discovered her father had fought in the War with Mexico two years before she was born, and had served with distinction at the obscure battle of Cerro Gordo.
- I want their voices drowned out now and replaced by responsible, compassionate people who want government to work and things to actually get repaired. All the money and hate in the WORLD did not pull this off for them. Go. Away. And: Go compare Nate Silver's 5 November projection map to the final results. http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/06/live-blog-the-2012-presidential-election/
- All my Brit friends and esp my gf have been swift to say "We don't want your nutters!" They are proud of Europe's ongoing effort to forward socialism, multiculturalism, and secularism. Indeed, as my gf said last night, the best fit for our rigid ranting theocrats would be someplace with sharia law -- she suggested UAE.
- The glory days of Rome. When slaves knew their place and women weren't citizens. That's the Teabagger philosophy, in a nutshell.
- If fiscal issues actually motivated the Republican base, they wouldn't rally around/legislate anything but. Here's my suggestions for a return to fiscal health: (1) Stop all the wars. (2) Fund no other war unless we are actually attacked by that country. (Proven). (3) Close Gitmo. (4) Return upper level tax rates to where they were in the Eisenhower era. (5) Have a single-payer health insurance option; make Medicare available to all. (6) Double the minimum wage. (7) Pass the DREAM act, all wage parity legislation, all bills funding medical care for troops. (8) Pass billions of dollars in stimulus acts to rebuild bridges, roads, dams, and all the crumbling infrastructure. (9) End oil subsidies and instead pour all that money into renewables. (10) Subsidize free tuition at public colleges which are secular and meet accreditation standards. (11) Double foodstamps. This is just off the top of my head. 1-4 would more than pay for all the rest, and working people not drowning in hunger and medical bills would flood our economy with well-distributed income. But then, I don't characterize brown people as takers (undocumented aliens are pouring millions in Social Security they can never collect) and I don't aspire to be part of the privileged elite. I believe "Everyone does better when EVERYONE does better", to quote a rational man with Midwestern values.
- Deborah, me too. It's maddening when websites freeze up on loading and won't let go when I try to move on.
- John (not McCain) -- I loved the names you gave your new kittens! Did you know their namesakes were once lovers, long ago? If not, what serendipity. Judybusy, I am really hurting with you over the idea of losing Rachel. Let's hope the interim measures do the trick. You know how I struggle with my own non-eating misanthrope, Dinah. And now the new kitten, Scout, seems to be heading in the opposite direction, always pleading for a meal. Cats keep us humble, that's my conviction.
- I always heard (from California dykes the generation ahead of me) that Agnes had a fling with Tallulah as well as Barbara Stanwyck.
- In addition to the traditional listening of Alice's Restaurant (which bewildered my 20-something attendant), I partook of this BBC radio offering: "Ian McMillan goes in search of the people and places described in Arlo Guthrie's 1960's ballad, Alice's Restaurant and discovers how this eighteen minute song inspired a generation and still plays a unique part in American life today." Excellent, accessible to us non-Brits at http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01nwp2j I dare not doom this post with multiple URLs, but also obligatory viewing on this day (because I don't pollute it with sports) is the West Wing show (Shibboleth) where C.J. Cregg pardons the turkeys (Troy and Eric), and of course the WKRP episode containing the immortial line "As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly!" Both are easily found at Youtube. I had pot roast and coconut cream pie in lieu of more traditional meats and sweets, but also concocted a homemade cornbread and pecan stuffing that rocked, ATK-inspired sweet potatoes, and a simple no-sugar cranberry chutney from dried berries and orange juice that is, frankly, the best I ever had. I am leaving leftovers at the birdfeeding station outside my window (my window on the workd) for the family of possums which have recently decided my patio is the trendiest after-hours joint in Austin. They are enlivening the wee hours for me and my horrified kitten, Scout.
- "immortal"
- The Mayberry spin-off featured a lead actor who was well-known (among us queers) as a gay man himself. As I recall it, living in California circa 1980, the Jim Nabors-Rock Hudson wedding rumor was launched by some fabulous Hollywood gay party wherein, as a gag, two people dressed as the actors had a pretend nuptials. It spread like wildfire as allegedly the real thing. Rock Hudson supposedly totally freaked about it, as it hit right around the time he had his own tragic personal reasons for denying his sexuality -- he was convinced, rightly so, he'd never work again. Jim Nabors, on the other hand, is said to have laughed it off, except for the strain it put on Rock and subsequently their friendship. I myself have known more dykes and fags who come from towns like Mayberry than urban areas: Nothing breeds homosexuality like the traditional nuke-fam.
- Prospero -- isn't it "Nibble on they tiny feet?"
- Here in Dykeovia we have two cats for every human and vaginal powers which apparently cause Republican brains to come unmoored.
- Judybusy, I am so moved. I love you, sistah. If my survival and independence were not daily on the chopping block? Well, yes, lots of visiting England until my partner's commitment there is honoured. But mostly I'd write, I'd cook for the folks I love, I'd add a cat or two, and I'd give it away to all the projects which have no hope in hell of getting middle-class or governmental funding, as long as it was for the actual poor, it had no religious affiliation, and it accepted people as they are right now. I know first-hand how effed up too many of us are here and I don't want to save them any more. I want to feed them tonight, get children removed from bad parents for tonight, and trust in the people like Judybusy and Jeff who will do the lion's work up close and personal. I'd hand you baskets of money for your experimentation or best guess.
- A deer once hit me as I was driving by a very urban mall after midnight. I never saw it approach, was going only 30 mph but it banged in a quarter pamel and took off my side mirror. I got a glimpse of its antlers, came to an immediate stop and got out of my car, only to find it had vanished in that sea of concrete. All the damage was on my side. Did it panic and collide with me in a headlong run or what? Really spooked me.
- Coozledad, I just spewed Lady Grey tea everywhere. Best of the week.
- During one of the many knee surgeries I had, I was persuaded to try a spinal instead of general. They still give you stuff that is supposed to dissociate you and make you amnesic, but during that surgery I came to completely, feeling percussions in my left leg as they worked on removing bony spurs with hammer and chisel. It did not hurt, and a drape kept me from seeing what was going on, but I turned to the anesthetist and said conversationally "This is a little unpleasant." He said "Shit", lunged for the dials and I went back out. I later got to know him well enough to ask if this memory was accurate, and he verified it -- said it happens more often than folks realize. I spent most of my working life in the medical field, and considered myself an informed consumer, but at this point I am not convinced genuine informed consent is possible for most of us. During my knee replacement surgery, I had an episode of anoxia which went unreported to the surgeon and left me with a profound cognitive deficit (I could not sign my name, recognize numbers, hear bells, etc) for months afterward. Even now, fully recovered, I am absolutely terrified of general anesthesia and have directed my Living Will to allow me to die rather than keep me in a state where I am that mentally damaged again. It took two years for a full explanation to emerge; my dementia was passed off as a fairly mundane response to morphine. I won't let anyone give me morphine again, either, which they reach for first despite common nasty side effects because it is dirt cheap and has a hefty mark-up profit. Go over your bills with someone in the know, and have a medical advocate who is not terrified by doctors at your side during all procedures, that's my advice. And one more tip: Don't look with interest at the instruments used for either gynecological procedures or orthopedic surgery. Regarding the latter, gleaming stainless steel does not alert the clear intent of hammers and saws. Some memories take too long to expunge through therapy, if you can avoid them altogether.
- "Freedom something, something freedom" I can't get it outta my head, nor do I want to. Sums it all up.
- Referring to your weekend column, even the geek of geeks at XKCD have succumbed to GeoGessr: http://xkcd.com/1214/
- Re the wolf pack video, I was impressed with the reaction of my 11-month-old newcat, Scout. She leaped up from a nap and came to stand beside me with alacrity, wide-eyed and searching the room with her far vision. I think she was hearing echoes bounce back, from her tracking behavior. Way fun!
- Those who came out as lesbians in the early 70s and before owe a huge debt to the pulp fiction genre for giving us our own literature: even at its most self-hating (nobody ever found happiness in them), they were frequently written with knowledgeable authority by women in the life, as it were. We got a whiff of what was going on in other rooms. And every now and then, there was a hint of defiance to the "you aren't a real woman if you don't settle for men" rule. One was "The Price of Salt", published in 1952, with two women who scorned the stereotype. Mama, a serious mystery reader, spotted the title in my bag an said, quietly, "You know who that's by, don't you?" "Claire Morgan" I replied, terrified at her recognition. "Not her real name. That author is your cousin Patricia Highsmith, who also wrote "Strangers On A Train.'" Our eyes met for a long minute, and I was too immature but do anything except look away. I'd kill to have that conversation now. Later, in my 30s, I collected pulp fiction in the form of mystery mapbacks, mainly those of Nero Wolfe and the wonderful Lockridge series.
- Deborah, yes, a remote cousin via the alcoholic-Jehovah's Witness lineage. I never had an excuse to meet her. Mama handed me "The Talented Mr Ripley" when I was 12 and let me sort it out for myself. That one was a plus. Her letting me read Nevil Shute's books at the same age was NOT a good idea.
- DOMA is dead!
- In the mid 90s I was driving home from work on a quiet, tree-lined residential street here in Austin when I saw a snake stretched out in the road. It was raining, had been raining for two days, so as I stopped beside it to take a look, I only rolled down my window a little. The snake immediately launched itself at my door and window for several strikes, revealing a snowy mouth (hence the water moccasin's nickname of "cottonmouth") and extreme aggression. I rolled my window back up, and it turned and sped into a nearby front yard. On surveying that yard, I saw it was both overgrown and littered with toddler toys. Seized with dread, I turned into the driveway beside it and hurried to the front door, but repeated knocking drew no response and it was dark inside. Feeling exposed on the porch, I skipped back to my car and waited a while. When no one came home, I wrote a note on the back of an envelope saying "Water moccasin in your yard! It struck at my car. -- A concerned neighbor" With true courage, I forced myself back to the front door to leave it. I practically levitated back to my car.
- Thank you, Dorothy. I am able to draw in a full lung of air, a new development over the last couple of days, and wow does it feel good. I am still using the BiPAP 14+ hours a day, on 3 liters of oxygen, which really I don't mind except the mask precludes most reading, writing, or viewing. My dementia has entirely cleared and now all I have is the terror of it occurring again: I'd rather die than be permanently in that fog. Seriously. So trying to figure out what procedures to put into place, and processing with my partner what what may mean. In the meantime, Mercury has retrograded right up my ass, too, with daily hassles -- right now my phone simply Will Not Work, despite replacing every piece of equipment and my internet (on the same line) breezing along just fine. Have a call in to AT&T without true hope anything will function well again until the 22nd, when Mercury goes direct again.
- Interesting analysis of media coverage re Detroit's bankruptcy from the wonderful Michael Shaw: http://www.bagnewsnotes.com/2013/07/slamming-detroit-a-euro-thing/
- I first read an Elmore Leonard novel when Bill Clinton was President and named him as his favourite writer. I was instantly hooked, and began reading him as a writer does, not just for the fantastic stories but also trying to understand how he does it so well. His gift for characterization through elegantly pared-down colloquial dialogue is unparalleled, I think.
- Had to fire up the memory banks to count: 25 states, 7 other countries. But 37 different addresses, and when you factor in I've been at this one over 20 years, it reveals how many times my poor mother moved us to follow my father around in his crap job.
- Alex for the win.
- I scored 14 out of 20, which (embarrassingly) reflects my undue obsession with the Ikea catalogue.
- I got them all correct, Jeff. But I am willing to bet my fundie relatives would do very badly on anything not-Christian and not of the modern era.
- My morning routine: At 8 am my fabulous attendant Tammi arrives. I take off my BiPAP mask, read my sugar and down the morning meds as she drains my Foley bag. Neither of us are morning people, so a single "Hello" suffices. Next, of course, comes Feeding The Cats, who are fidgeting impatiently, one of them on my chest. Then Tammi starts breakfast while I take insulin, check for letters from my sweetheart (in England and already at work), turn on the vitamin D light for half an hour, and hit the internet. I have an A-list of sites that give me pleasure and/or substance to read. They are perused in this order: XKCD; ANIMALS TALKING ALL IN CAPS; BagNewsNotes; Hullaballoo; Brilliant At Breakfast; WTF Evolution; Clients From Hell; and final treat, NN. I get to raptly read Nancy's musings and links while enjoying breakfast, and digest it while reading the always interesting comments. By that time, I feel prepared to face the day, whether it's PT, nursing visits, begging for social services, or actually finding the energy to write. I try to live in daily gratitude. It's a necessary counterweight against the fury of poverty. I am deeply grateful for all those in my generation who have refused to succumb to cynicism, isolation, and shame, and who still find a life's meaning in Making Things Better For All Of Us, however we an manage it. I am grateful each month for making rent on time, having a phone line and electricity (I have often gone without those three), for enough to eat and it not being entirely processed crap, for the unpredictability of cats and the unbelievable competence of some social workers & caregivers. I am lucky beyond words for those who love me, who love me over time and across barriers, who accept my not-so-buried damage and make me laugh. I know to the average stranger, I look like a Lifetime movie gone horribly wrong, with the worst of endings, but most days, I am in fact happy. Pain and want can, for long minutes, be ignored. In my life, imagination has metabolized as endurance.
- I live in physical circumstances more difficult than I generally share, and isolation would be a killer except for my online community, most of which began as co-commenters at Alison Bechdel's blog. Several dozen of us transferred over to Facebook a few years ago, where we converse daily, and one of my friends from those connections recommend nn.c to me two years ago as a place where I would find my kind of folks. (Thanks, Judybusy!) She was right. The first time I checked in, however, I was bewildered by the posts of someone named Caliban, who could be brilliant and seemingly progressive, then devolve into frank gibberish at night. He was treated with kindness and interest, definitely not a troll as I'd experienced them (and we do have one or two here), and I was touched to see when his posts became like ASCII, someone would say the equivalent of "Go home, buddy, you're drunk." Soon thereafter he transformed into some woman from history, unmistakeably the same voice, and then he became Prospero. The first time I urged my partner Margot to come here and read something, she got back to me with the message "Explain Prospero, please." I didn't want to incur his wrath but was equally nervous when he waxed approval about something I'd said. I was jolted at the news of his death and have been genuinely mourning his death. There was so much to him. I hope it was an easy and good death, I very much hope that for him and his loved ones. I read Nancy Nall each morning as I eat breakfast, how I prepare for a morning routine that is always difficult and painful even on the good days. I mull over what I read here as I work my way through that routine. Y'all mean the world to me, a daily window into conversation between diverse folks who are, most of us, doing everything we can to make the world better for us having been in it. I know that was true for Prospero. He had a lion-sized heart, and he was very much in process. I hate it that he ran out of time.
- Scout, I am pulsating with empathy for you now. My beloved cat-of-cats is a ginger and white marvel also named Scout. I cannot bear to consider life without her. I'm glad for the 19 grand years you gave your darling.
- Sherri, was thrilled to see a mention of Duarte's in Pescadero. Best fish and chips in my life were had there. I discovered them because I was a zealous adherent to the Sterns' "Road Food Good Food" bible, back when it was a massive paperback and before the internet. They never steered me wrong: Samoa Cookhouse near Eureka, Buntyn's on Memphis, the Dinner Bell in McComb, Mississippi -- so many of the most memorable meals of my life were a Road Food Good Food recommendation. As for the Beatles on Ed Sullivan, I remember it vividly as it was my mother's birthday. I was 8, my older brother was a teenager, and the fit hit the shan when (after TV dinners, yes, and icebox chocolate cream pie that you defrosted in the box, remember those?) we saw the Fab Four come out and begin playing. My brother loved 'em, Mama went ballistic and began ranting about how it wasn't EVEN MUSIC, and I felt absolutely torn. I was a Mama's girl, but damn, those songs reached right into me. I finally just scooted closer to the screen and tuned her out.
- After my mother died at age 56 and my father’s next hasty remarriage failed, he lost his house and his job. He moved into a crappy apartment near my youngest brother and got a security officer job. He began giving full vent to all the racism he had been forced to keep in check living with Mama, and started buying guns. He finally married again, an alcoholic Baptist widow older than him who owned her home, and spent his days on his recliner in front of the TV watching Walker Texas Ranger and Bonanza reruns. He had caddies over each arm rest. In the right hand one was the remote, a large sportsdrink cup filled with iced tea and bourbon, and a loaded 9 mm with the safety off. In the left hand one was a men’s urinal bedpan jug so he didn’t have to keep running to the toilet. He warned me often that if I came to visit, I was to give him advance notice and a firm arrival time, and NEVER to let myself in without loud knocking and much calling out of my name. He’d say sorrowfully “I’d had to have to shoot you, honey.” I liken his unveiling of what must have been there all along, unchanged by my mother’s influence, as analogous to what has happened in this country since the Right made it publicly acceptable (again) to articulate open violence against niggers and bitches. People of colour and open-eyed women could have told you that the ugly reality of hate was there all along, and indeed is the foundation of American mythic superiority. Churches and the military tend to support this resurgence. It’s where the money and the troops are to be found. At his funeral, everybody talked about what a kind, generous old man he had been. Law-abiding and a pillar of the church. White men get every pass in the world, and we all ignore how scared we are of them.
- "hate to have to shoot you"
- "Barcalounger holster" now becomes part of the common vernacular. I love it. Let's make sure Nancy gets the credit.
- Thinking of you and your sweetheart, Alex.
- Re Grayson Perry, I had never heard of him until I became involved with Margot, who used to share a squat with him in Portsmouth when they were both impecunious, rebellious students at the uni there. The stories I have heard about him... I love his even-handed approach to accepting the CBE.
- Unreserved yes to "PrairyErth", "Blue Highways", and "River-Horse". And when I think of those, I am reminded of Stephen Ambrose's biography of Lewis and Clark, and then, perversely, Calvin Trillin's travelogues. If you haven't read through a Mapp & Lucia omnibus, you are in for a lifetime treat. Another series I can't recommend enough are the Chanur quartet by C.J. Cherryh -- I take it as a sci-fi allegory of what happened to North American indigenous peoples at the time of white contact, set in Far Space. I also enjoyed reading my way through some (but not all) of the Mitford sisters. And it may seem trendy at the moment, but I think everybody should try the collected short stories and novels about Sherlock Holmes, then move on the Laurie R. King's expansion on the character.
- P.S. Any ADA diet that advocates margarine is seriously out of date. Transfat is what clogs arteries, not healthy animal-based fat. And my experience with hospital dietitians, esp with regard to diabetes, has been abysmal. They will steadfastly maintain there is NO difference between whole grains and white flour, and beans are classed as a "carb" on the same order as rice or potatoes. Diabetics actually benefit from an emphasis on proteins and greens. If you eat adequate protein (and yes, that includes grassfed beef and milk products), you will want smaller portions and stop craving sugar. That's my experience, anyhow. I eat bacon and eggs (but the organic kind) every day for breakfast and my cholesterol is absolutely healthy, despite a strong family history otherwise.
- Whole grains, brown rice, and non-commercial potatoes release more slowly, reducing the glycemic peaks and valleys. You wind up without carb cravings. If I eat one item with white flour, the longing for more returns. It's a vicious cycle. Same with "sugar-free" desserts, which the local hospital menus literally load onto the platters of diabetic patients: It makes your body go on a sugar-hunt. If I eat cheese or plain (nothing but peanuts) peanut butter instead, I want no dessert. But I have to get that stuff brought in to me at the hospital. Even the fruit juices either have HFCS or chemicals added, instead of just plain juice blends.
- Today I, and almost everyone I know, are marking the passing of Pete Seeger. His music and activism are part of my generation's bedrock. Blogged about it, listening to his music, thanking him for 94 years of ethical living.
- What is enjoyable about the white-supremacists freaking out about the BLASPHEMY of our NATIONAL ANTHEM being sung in NON-ENGLISH by BROWN PEOPLE is (a) it is not, in fact, our national anthem, and (b) it was written by a lesbian.
- I watched the opening ceremonies via the BBC. Vastly more intelligent (and less intrusive) commentary not centered on mythic American exceptionalism, no use of the word "inspirational", great humour and background, no commercials, and best of all, NO CHANCE OF HAVING TO HEAR MICHAEL PHELPS' NAME GRATUITOUSLY TOSSED IN. The hard-on American men have for Phelps is baffling to me. I will stick with the BBC, where I am actually learning substantive things about other cultures and I can fast-forward or replay when necessary.
- Through a (very cheap) paid provider that creates an international VPN for you and thus you can watch via the BBC's own I-player. There are many available; one is MyExPat.net which costs £6 per month. Plus a large bandwitch, of course. Pam Spaulding this morning revealed that the following section of IOC chair Thomas Bach's speech that emphasized diversity and equal rights was deleted from the NBC broadcast in the U.S. There is no explanation for this aside from censorship. I got to hear it on the BBC: "Now you are living in an Olympic Region. I am sure you will enjoy the benefits for many, many years to come. Thousands of volunteers have welcomed us with the well-known warm Russian hospitality. Many thanks to all the wonderful volunteers. Bolshoi spasiba, valantyoram! Thank you very much to everyone. Russia and the Russians have set the stage for you, the best winter athletes on our planet. From this moment on you are not only the best athletes, you are Olympic Athletes. You will inspire us with your outstanding sports performances. You have come here for sports. You have come here with your Olympic dream. The International Olympic Committee wants your Olympic Dream to come true. This is why we are investing almost all of our revenues in the development of sports. The universal Olympic rules apply to each and every athlete- no matter where you come from or what your background is. You are living together in the Olympic Village. You will celebrate victory with dignity and accept defeat with dignity. You are bringing the Olympic Values to life. In this way, the Olympic Games, wherever they take place, set an example for a peaceful society. Olympic Sport unites people. This is the Olympic Message the athletes spread to the host country and to the whole world. Yes, it is possible to strive even for the greatest victory with respect for the dignity of your competitors. Yes, Yes, it is possible - even as competitors - to live together under one roof in harmony, with tolerance and without any form of discrimination for whatever reason. Yes, it is possible - even as competitors - to listen, to understand and to give an example for a peaceful society."
- I had a middle-aged guy living over me in San Fran who had sex every afternoon with his faking-it girlfriend while his elderly mother (with whom he lived) was out at bingo. Their music of choice was "Rainy Night in Georgia." I've loathed that song ever since. Here in Austin, I lived downstairs from a 20-something straight couple who had sex three times a week with much thumping but no soundtrack. It never lasted longer than 2 minutes; I and visiting friends often timed it. At the conclusion, someone got up and hurried off to the bathroom, where there was a flush followed by the shower running. And that, my friends, is why lesbians don't need to recruit.
- I read the Coates essay with delight and, for the first time in my life, clicked on a link that led me to Mitch Albom. I was dismayed at first glance: The very format of his "essay" was instantly revealing. A few years ago I wrote a short review of an online contest among lesbian bloggers, expounding on which blogs I'd recommend and which I thought were drek. The worst of the lot was a blog written by a 20-something who was determined to have learned no history and used her writing to complain about exes, mostly, in a generic sort of way. Every sentence had its own paragraph. She seemed to think blank lines added drama. I critiqued her as fairly as I could. To my astonishment, she read my post and felt compelled to defend herself -- in, yes, one-sentence paragraphs. I saw the same laziness and one-note literacy immediately in Albom's effort (to misuse the word) and did not read further than the first screen. Where have you gone, E.B. White?
- Back in the 1960s, when local talk radio wasn't entirely white-supremacist hate or full of Jeezus grifters, my mother kept the big radio on the dining room sideboard tuned in to a San Antonio station every waking minute. I learned a great deal from the array of speakers who came through. My favorite, though, was a linguist from some Texas university who could listen to a caller for a minute or so, then identify which county in Texas they had grown up in. (As long as they were a native Texan to begin with.) Accents were that distinct before television homogenized our language.
- Sherri, Borgen is on the list to try, thanks for the recommend. What I love about British and Scandi drama, especially crime drama, is that solutions do not inevitably involve guns and violence. No mandatory car chases. In my opinion, it's far more effective to have to outwit someone. The other huge plus is they will actually talk about and acknowledge the complicated effects of racism and class oppression on society, verboten topics in all but "special issue" American television. And yes, the people look like actual people. Plus the women are not forced to be anorectic and have long hair (talk about a uniform -- this has really changed since the 70s). I was delighted that the first partner of Jonathan Creek (Maddie) was played by Carolyn Quentin, plump and at least Jonathan's apparent age if not a few years older. But she was way hot, and it was a believable chemistry. Unfortunately, they have now replaced her with a skinny blonde who is always having to fiddle with her long hair.
- I had chickenpox as a kid, which was wretched and left me with facial scars. I also had both kinds of measles, what we called red measles (wherein I hallucinated wildly from the soaring fever) and then later the same year, 1964, what we called German measles (rubella). The day before I was sent home from school with rubella, my brother and I had been playing next door with twin boys named Lonnie and Monnie. When my diagnosis was made, Mama realized the twins' mother was six months pregnant. The colour drained from her face and she rushed next door to let the poor woman know about her exposure. We moved away before she gave birth, so I never found out if that baby was okay. Like others here, the memory of getting that first polio vaccine is vivid: the long lines at a local school cafeteria in Lafayette, Louisiana, the sugar cube, and then Mama breaking down outside once we were "safe": She had to sit down on the sidewalk, she was crying so hard in relief. Yes, I knew people who'd had polio -- a cousin who died after time in an iron lung, a little boy named David I played with who wore heavy metal braces on both legs, and a junior high teacher named Mrs. Housewright whose left arm hung emaciated and useless from the effects of polio. Years later, I was sharing that vaccination memory with a woman my age who went silent and then quietly asked me "Tell me, do you remember if there were any black folks in that waiting line?" She is African-American, from Delta Mississippi. I scanned my memory and admitted no, the people being given vaccines were all white. This despite the fact that Lafayette has a very high African-American population. She told me her parents were forced to wait, weeks or months; the blacks in many regions were told they could not get vaccinated until the second wave became available. This despite the fact that in those same regions, blacks were believed to be who spread polio in the first place, a belief which let to them being banned from public swimming pools. I had never been taught this history, but she was right.
- Speaking as a radical lesbian feminist, I don't want transgender folk to face possible violence or crappy attitude when they need to use the facilities. But I don't want that provided at the expense of women and girls having public penis-free environments in which they can be partially unclothed and vulnerable. Pitting one oppressed group against another is a beloved tactic of the patriarchy. Sex-neutral bathrooms (it's about sex, not gender -- the two terms are not interchangeable, one is immutable biology) are a fair fix as long as there remains a female-only safety zone for females who need that.
- Crinoidgirl, I cannot completely know the pain you must be feeling, but my heart is with you. Thanks for telling us.
- I attended MichFest from its inception for many years, and it was the making of me. For a few days each year, I saw what women are capable of when not subjected to male scrutiny: Amazing feats of technical skill, land stewardship, art, and community. And the nudity revealed what women actually look like sans all the feminizing claptrap designed to ensure we appear fuckable to men. I would come home energized for the year. Even more extraordinary was the effect an all-girl environment had on the daughter I was helping raise the years she attended. Girls there are absolutely safe and can be allowed to form their own girl-packs without adult supervision. All their needs are easily met -- comfortable group tents, great food three times a day, health care, and endless entertainment. And no boys to demand all the attention. Girls who were submissive, cutesy and/or fearful come into their confidence and use it to foster a cooperative community that we can only dream about. It changes them for life. There is no way to filter out males who seek to invade the private space of women and girls for sexual reasons from those who claim to be merely transgender. Indeed, overlap often occurs and the rights of sexual pervs tends to hotly defended by the trans cult without rational judgment. A very high percentage of the men in prison who, once there. claim to be transgender and seek reassignment, then access to trapped females, are in fact in prison for sexual violence, especially against children. As it turns out, the rates of sexual violence perpetrated by male to trans individuals is the same as the rate of sexual violence perpetrated by non-trans males. But this is never acknowledged by the likes of the Sylvia Rivera Project or poor dumb Laverne Cox, who last year decided to advocate female prison reassignment for a male to trans who turned out not to have just raped and murdered a girl, but helped cut up her body. Whether you believe males are inherently violent (I emphatically do not) or that masculine socialization creates this pathology in them, the reality is that over 90% of the assaults on females are done by males, including what we would call little boys. Seeking relief from this constant threat is tremendously empowering for females. MichFest did not ask trans folk not to attend -- many were there each year, working on crew, performing, and attending openly. But males with penises were asked to abstain. And that is why they (we) were relentlessly hounded and vilified. The years I attended, I often worked a shift on security. We had to guard the perimeter against stupid men who tried to sneak in with cameras. On the rare occasions when they succeeded, we had to protect them long enough to get them off the land before they were torn to pieces. I respected those idiots no more than the 40-something privilege white males who decide they must be women because they love to wear panties, make-up and long hair, and screech oppression because we lesbians actually do know the difference between male and female in close quarters. Human rights I staunchly defend; access to my body and my intimate circle is mine to define. Making fun of dykes and butches is an easy and cheap shot. Male supremacy will always reward it.
- Here's the best article about there about what MichFest means / meant. http://www.curvemag.com/News/Michigan-Womyns-Music-Festival-to-End-after-40-Years-447/#.VTozsY1raUM.facebook
- And thanks, Nancy. I will never scream at you about any privilege. It was MichFest, in fact, that taught me not to see straight women as somehow privileged over me, a dyke. Trans created a huge umbrella for a wide variety of folks to huddle under -- a variety that has turned out to be not so similar, in essential ways. Just as the gay male movement had to remove NAMBLA, trans advocates are going to have to excise the woman-haters from their ranks, esp the woman-haters who claim to be women.
- Thanks, Sherri. I have been critically ill for six weeks now with what was finally diagnosed as back-to-back pneumonias. I'm on my third major antibiotic and having to wear BiPAP 24 hours a day, which seriously affects my ability to communicate and even impedes typing. I am exhausted all the time. But I read Nancy Nall every day.
- As a lesbian but equally a feminist, I fall afoul of the "new rules" dictated by the transcult (which are really only a small minority of Male to Trans zealots). I believe sex is biologically immutable, gender is a construct that limits everybody who sticks to it rigidly, and Bruce was not a woman before he transitioned because otherwise what did he transition from? We have not always been at war with Oceania. The re-emphasis of Stepford Wife fembot appearance as "what a woman looks like" goes hand in hand with the backlash against women and the male supremacy of conservatism in current America. It is not liberating for anyone. Caitlyn is an autogynophile, a narcissist surrounded by narcissists, and cannot dictate our language, grammar, or perception unless we hand it over to her. I refuse. I was actually born female and I know what growing up in that identity entails. It ain't what these middle-age white men fantasize they are.
- I live in Austin, moved back here from the SF Bay Area and love it here. Racial diversity, strong wimmins, bleedmg heart liberals (as well as running dog types), and NO SNOW. Texas government went to shit after Dubya lied his way past Ann Richards, and our population was flooded by folks from California and the Rust Belt fleeing the results of Republican control in their own states, only to come vote Republican here. I am sixth generation Texas and every generation of us has fought for progressivism, some more successfully than others. I am proud to call Molly Ivins, Barbara Jordan, Tish Hinojosa, Ann Richards, and Sissy Farenthold my role models. And the upcoming 60th birthday bash is almost overwhelming to my bedbound, introverted self. But I am thrilled for this reunion of those of us who bonded at the DTWOF thread. I found the love of my life there, as well as serious friendships and community. I see similar community here at NN. I do read every day, even if I am too sick to fire up the keyboard. At the moment, knock wood, I am infection free and breathing as well as I ever do. Bless you for keeping the door open here.
- Julie Robinson: Tell 'em they are black.
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