The Triumph of Pity

Though not a dog-lover (I make exceptions, and have met many dogs of whom I have since become very fond), I am not, nor have I ever been, one of those people who is terrified of dogs. Many exist. You can tell who they are, especially if you have a dog, because they get wild-eyed with fear when a dog approaches. Then they act so odd and jittery that the dog can't help but notice and then--because that's what dogs do--take action. It's like watching someone who's high trying to talk to a police officer.

As is my custom, I took an evening walk through the neighborhood. I was listening to the iPod, of course, but I'd also brought my phone. Just in case. You know. I'd spent the whole day alone. In fact, the walk was my first step out of doors today. And I was thinking about how last night, I was walking and talking on the phone with S. Who Is Like A Sister, and while I was out walking and talking, I saw at least 3 others doing the same, and I'm not counting the several drivers who were on their phones and the two bicyclists.

A couple of years ago, when I was also in the habit of walking every day, I often observed other walkers on their cell phones, and I had some thoughts about it: How pathetic. People can't even be alone anymore. They have to talk on the phone wherever they go.

My thoughts on this matter have changed. I think of my own situation--I am alone quite a bit, and when I am at home, I am usually working or doing things with A. and B., or managing my household (i.e., doing chores). And I live with no other adult in the house and adult company is a great pleasure to me. And I am separated from most of my close friends (except Another L., who lives a block away and E. the Enigmatic, who lives an hour away) by hundreds or thousands of miles of plains and mountains and other terrain. Now when I see people on their cell phones, I think: How nice that we all have friends to talk with.

I just finished reading, for maybe the tenth or twelfth time, The Eustace Diamonds. There is poor Lucy Morris, who has been shoved off to live with that old termagant, Lady Linlithgow. She is there for months and months, waiting (far too patiently if you ask me, but Trollope does seem to like the sweet, patient girls) for her fiance to contact her. So the reader has this suspense--Is Frank Greystock going to step up and do the right thing and marry the girl he loves or is he going to be a bounder and a cad and instead go off with the beautiful lying sack Lizzie Eustace?

There is all this drama. And yet I couldn't help but think such a situation could never occur today. That's gone. Not only are women independent nowadays, but Lucy would get on the phone and give Frank what is known as the business. As he so richly deserves. Or, if we let Lucy stay true to character, she would sweetly call him just to say hello. Or maybe she would call him during that scene when Lizzie tries to persuade her that Frank loves Lizzie best and that Lucy would be nothing but an albatross to him. If I were Lucy and a Lizzie came to call with that message, you know I'd be blowing up someone's phone.

This is how my mind occupies itself on my walk. This, and by morosely wondering, as I pass all of the beautifully restored Victorians on Oceanview St., "What wrong turn in my life did I take that not only do I not own a house, but I do not own a beautifully restored Victorian with a rose garden and a wrought iron fence and a couple of hitchposts and a circular driveway large enough to accommodate the carriages full of callers?"

This "What wrong turn in my life" question is one that I have entertained far too frequently in the last few weeks. But I digress.

I returned home and was accosted by the golden lab that lives across the street. The lab has always seemed, like all labs do, friendly and not very intelligent, and its sudden and hostile appearance (raised hackles, bared teeth) was shocking to me, all the more so because I didn't hear her coming at me. I shouted at her (her name, coincidentally, as I know from having heard it called many a time, is Lucy--how pathetic is it that my shouting at the damn dog at nigh on 7 p.m. were my first words of the day?) to go away.

My neighbor, Not-So-Bright, heard the whole commotion, as did everyone within 20 miles. Did he call the dog off? No, he did not. Incensed, I went out into the street:

Me: Hey, your dog came at me!
Not-So-Bright (not even looking at me, but continuing to mess about in his car): It's not my dog. [It is his girlfriend's dog. Please note that the dog has lived at his house for the last 6 months.]
Me: Well, you need to talk to the owner of the dog, then.

So there!

When the dog suddenly appeared with all her teeth in evidence, I was really afraid. When Not-So-Bright failed to do anything at all to attempt to restrain her, I was livid. When I realized that he is a complete and absolute and irredeemable dumbass, I felt only pity.

P.S. Roy and Kia posted their workspaces. Here is mine. Note the empty wine glass, soon to be (re)filled with Storrs 2003 Central Coast zin.

Okay, I Did It.

Because I did find so much to write about concerning the Jena 6 (and then I would also like to revisit the Gnarlow Wilson matter and there will be more, I betcha) and because I had stopped writing about the insignificant matters that take up most of my life that I still need and want to write about, I started another blog. All the Jena 6 posts are reprinted there.

Lost, Various Items of a Personal Nature

1. Shaka has not come home in two days. We last saw him on Wednesday evening. I'm worried.
2. Can't find the iPod. The last I remember seeing it was last night. I brought it out to the car when I took the girls out for ice cream.
3. No more biker. Stopped calling.

Of these, the iPod is replaceable. The biker? I cannot put a value on that loss. Didn't know him well enough. Shaka? We love him. I hope my next post will be to tell you the worry was in vain.

UPDATE: Found the iPod after much panicked searching. How was I to drive to Oakland tomorrow without it? How was I to go for a walk this evening? It was as if I'd lost a limb. No Shaka yet, I am sad to say.

UPDATE 9/30/07: No Shaka yet. He's never been gone this long before. I went for a long walk through the neighborhood yesterday.

Prosecutorial Indiscretion

Stopped by Friends of Justice today to see if there is any news, and there I find a response from the Southern Poverty Law Center to Reed Walters' NYT op-ed piece (which was mentioned here earlier):

Walters states that the United States attorney "found no federal law against what was done." In actuality, the federal prosecutor told CNN that "the FBI believed that [the case had] the elements of a hate crime." But because of the boys' ages and backgrounds, he declined to bring charges that could have put them away for 10 years. This is prosecutorial discretion in action.

Walters also had discretion to prosecute the noose-hangers in state court. He claims that the noose incident "broke no law. I searched the Louisiana criminal code for a crime that I could prosecute. There is none." But, it just ain't so.

Louisiana Revised Statute 14:107.2 creates a hate crime for any institutional vandalism or criminal trespass motivated by race. Walters was creative enough to turn a schoolyard assault into an attempted murder case; he surely could have figured out how to make nooses into hate crimes.

But — and this is a crucial point — Walters and the Justice Department were right not to prosecute the noose-hangers. Prison terms for them would not have served Jena as well as a thoughtful, measured response that addressed the deep community concerns triggered by the nooses.

Unfortunately, that never happened. Instead, Walters and the school system tried to stifle debate. Black parents were ignored at school board meetings. After black students staged a sit-in under the contested tree, Walters came to the school and, according to numerous witnesses, ominously told the student body that if they did not settle down, "I can end your life with the stroke of my pen."

Reed Walters knows prosecutorial discretion.

Things did settle down somewhat, until an arsonist burned down much of Jena High on November 30, 2006. What happened the next day perfectly illustrates the racial disparity in Walters' decision-making.

On December 1, a black student, Robert Bailey, was attacked by a group of whites, beaten to the ground, and apparently hit with a beer bottle. He suffered a gash to his head.

Walters could have prosecuted the group of whites with felony charges that might have put them away for years, just as he is now prosecuting the Jena Six. Instead, Walters charged one white with a misdemeanor; that person served no prison time. The others walked.

FOJ also discusses a column by journalist Ruben Navarette, in which Navarette calls the Reverends Sharpton and Jackson "perennial grievance merchants" (now, really, was that necessary? My response to that is well, perhaps if there were no grievances, they would occupy themselves with other diversions, maybe take up needlepoint or knitting or backgammon--not that I am the great defender of the Reverends, but who can say that their involvement has been an unmitigated evil) and echoes Reed Walters in claiming victim rights for Justin Barker while professing bewilderment that Mychal Bell could be considered a victim.

Hold up there. If Navarette can say that Mychal Bell has not been victimized in this matter, Navarette has never, to his great good fortune, been in jail. To be imprisoned at all is a terrible experience, more terrible really than you can imagine. There is no comfort. Everything that you hold onto for your identity (except what you carry in your mind) is taken away from you. Prisoners have no rights. None. They have no freedom and no privacy. If they are not actually under constant threat, they certainly feel as if they are. Mychal Bell is only 17, and yet was housed with adult offenders for 9 months. His attorneys worked for his release, and, failing that, for moving him to a juvenile facility, but neither happened. Juvenile facilities are no picnic, either, but at least he would have been with inmates his own age and would have continued attending school. Keeping Mychal Bell in jail with adult offenders was wrong--it was an injustice, and anyone who has ever been in jail (in whatever capacity--I used to spend a lot of time in jail as a part of my work) understands how Mychal Bell must have suffered from this experience.

P.S. Navarette also gets his pants all in a twist because he, like Richard Thompson Ford, is also handicapped with a literal mind and is therefore incapable of interpreting symbols (here, baby, have a metaphor):

Students at Morehouse and Spellman – traditionally black colleges in Atlanta – held a rally and declared an affinity with the defendants. Some held up signs saying: “I am the Jena 6.”

Well, not if you've never been part of a mob-style beating you're not. Those college students obviously made good decisions to get where they are. The Jena 6 made a bad decision, and that's why they are in trouble with the law.

His breathtaking capacity for misunderstanding the symbolic language of the protesters (maybe he would understand a literal sign that read "Black defendants are treating unjustly in the courts and because I am a young Black person, I, too, could be treated as unjustly as Mychal Bell and the others of the Jena 6 if I were arrested for a criminal offense, and certainly I would probably receive sentencing more harsh than would a young white person arrested for a similar offense" but come on, that's an awful lot to fit onto a poster board) notwithstanding, Navarette also fails to understand that context is crucial. Which is why the law provides for mitigating and aggravating circumstances.

But really, I'm making one of the same mistakes Navarette does, by sifting through this level of detail and by acceding to his assumption that the Jena 6 are all guilty, because this has not yet been proven in a court of law. (And also? Is everyone aware that Mychal Bell's court-appointed defense attorney, Blane Williams, did not call any witnesses nor present evidence to defend his client?) If it is, then the Jena 6 defendants should receive sentences proportionate to the crime of which they have been convicted, sentences that are the same as white defendants would receive in a similar case.

P.P.S. I'm with the commenter at Too Sense, who fails to understand "the bug up everyone's ass over Jackson." It just seems like spin to me. One side can be as flamboyant and self-indulgent in their hyperbole and rhetoric as they wanna be, yet then accuse the other. Pot, kettle, pot, kettle, pot, kettle. And glass houses. Sure, it would probably be better if we all spoke reasonably in measured tones and used only the most objective, decorous, inoffensive language. But emotions have a way of heating up the words. So what. Maybe Jackson does run the risk of crying wolf too often? But that doesn't mean that there are no wolves.

One? Two?

So I'm having a little trouble writing about both the social justice issues and my personal life. The juxtaposition of my murmurings about the tiny events of my daily life and dating/not doing dating (heh) and mothering and friending and knitting and just all that stuff of my life with big issues seems so incongruous.

Maybe some readers are affected, too. . .I was telling Another L. that I've lost some readers since I've been writing so much about the Jena 6, and she said something like, "Oh, they just want to read about the sex?"

Maybe. No one has said anything to me, so I don't know. Maybe it is just that people get busy, they get distracted, they move on to other interests. Who knows.

I was thinking about maybe splitting off and continuing to write about my personal crap in another blog. I'm considering it. It might be too much to try to maintain two blogs and manage the demands of my life, too. I was listening to a podcast of a talk with Calvin Trillin, and he was asked if he would start a blog, and his reaction--you could feel it over the airwaves--was this kind of bafflement. Why would he ever do such a thing? He only wrote, he said, to make a living, and as far as he could tell, that wouldn't be the case if he wrote a blog.

I admired him for it, but I don't understand it. I write because I have to.

If you have any response to the splitting idea, I'd love to hear it.

He's Got the Whole World in His Hands

On September 20, when my new friend R. from Tennessee and I were heading to downtown Alexandria for the closing events, we passed a building with a mural. In the mural, a large hand reached down from the sky. It was, obviously, the hand of God, and it was, I am sure you would know without my telling you, white.

Me: I see something like that, I just want to sneak over there at night and paint that hand black.
R.: Don't say that too loud, people around here would probably do it.
Me: I wish they would.

You know this whole matter has driven Reed Walters into the white arms of his white God:

Walters also addressed the stress and notoriety the town has been subjected to, saying the only way he and other residents "have been able to endure the trauma that has been thrust upon us is through the prayers of the Christian people who have sent them up in this community."

If it is trauma, it is trauma you have brought upon yourself.

Soon after the district attorney spoke, a local reverend took issue with his comments. "Obviously, we are serving two different gods here," the Rev. Donald Sidley said. "My Bible says that we should do -- we should be loving, love your neighbor as yourself.

"For him to try and separate the community like he is and then using Christ Jesus to influence the people that Jesus is working on their side, well, that's -- that's absurd. ... God is god of the human race," said Sidley, of the New Evergreen Church.

Just before 4 o'clock this afternoon, I got a call from my new friend R. in Tennessee. She called to tell me Mychal Bell had been released:

"Let America know -- we are not fighting for the right to fight in school. We're not fighting for the right for kids to beat each other. We're fighting to say that there must be one level of justice for everybody. And you cannot have adult attempted murder for some, and a fine for others, and call that equal protection under the law. Two wrongs don't make one civil right."

Thus speaketh the Reverend Sharpton. You see, Richard Thompson Ford?


P.S. Big talk from Reed Walters, who said that "last week's march. . . did not influence his decision." No, but that call from the governor sure did.

UPDATE: Friends of Justice alerts us to this L.A. Times photo of Mychal Bell upon his release, a photo that is a "rare sympathetic image of a young black defendant."

O Brother Where Art Thou?

There is a Jena 6 backlash, and I'm not talking about the nooses nor the Confederate flag-waving nor the rabid yapping from the white supremacist minority (all dogs are big on a leash or from behind a fence-- the white supremacists sure did not show themselves in Jena on September 20, but once everybody went on home, they scrabbled viciously out of their kennels).

Now that we're all back home and thinking "What next?" and watching to see what happens for Mychal Bell and the others, there are, unfortunately, too many opportunities to look across the table and say, "Where were you?" Where were the white liberal bloggers, for example. (This question posed here and here and here and here and more places, I am sure.) Where was Clinton? Where was Obama?

I cannot help but note that Clinton brought it for a feel-good moment/camera op with the Little Rock 9, yet was--like Obama--conspicuously absent in re the Jena 6.

Injustice is not a racial issue. Racism is not a Black issue. Maybe we all need to do a little homework. Please take out your books and turn to page 179:

Just so does the white community, as a means of keeping itself white, elect, as they imagine, their political (!) representatives. No nation in the world, including England, is represented by so stunning a pantheon of the relentlessly mediocre. . . .

But this cowardice, this necessity of justifying a totally false identity and of justifying what may be called a genocidal history, has placed everyone now living into the hands of the most ignorant and powerful people the world has ever seen: And how did they get that way?

By deciding they were white. By opting for safety instead of life. By persuading themselves that a Black child's life meant nothing compared with a white child's life. By abandoning their children to the things white men could buy. By informing their children that Black women, Black men, and Black children had no human integrity that those who call themselves white were bound to respect. And in this debasement and definition of Black people, they debased and defamed themselves.

And have brought humanity to the edge of oblivion: because they think they are white. Because they think they are white, they do not dare confront the ravage and the lie of their history. Because they think they are white, they cannot allow themselves to be tormented by the suspicion that all men are brothers.

P.S. Since I am venting my spleen, may I just take a moment and state for the record that Michelle Malkin is a moron? And so, also for the record, is Heather MacDonald, upon whom Malkin lovingly slobbers.

Hog Heaven Deli: Get Your Baloney Here

Reed Walters, the prosecutor in the Jena 6 matter, will accept the ruling of the appeals court which overturned Mychal Bell's conviction as an adult. The appeals court appropriately returned Mychal Bell to the jurisdiction of juvenile court, as he was a juvenile at the time of the alleged offense.

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco said Wednesday that the prosecutor in one of the so-called "Jena 6" cases has decided not to challenge an appellate ruling that sends the case to juvenile court.

LaSalle Parish District Attorney Reed Walters had earlier said he would appeal the state appeals court's decision that 17-year-old Mychal Bell's second-degree battery conviction be set aside. The court ruled that Bell could not be tried as an adult.

Blanco said she had spoken with Walters and asked him to reconsider pushing to keep the case in the adult courts system. She said Walters contacted her Wednesday to say he had decided not to appeal the ruling.

"I want to thank him for this decision he has made," Blanco said.

Well, finally. Although this does not guarantee that Mychal Bell will get a fair trial as juvenile. It may not be possible for him to get a fair trial anywhere in Louisiana. Or maybe the whole of the South. Or maybe in the United States. More about that to follow.

It is interesting that Walters changed his mind, given his statement in the New York Times today:

The victim in this crime, who has been all but forgotten amid the focus on the defendants, was a young man named Justin Barker, who was not involved in the nooses incident three months earlier. . . .

. . . There was serious bodily harm inflicted with a dangerous weapon — the definition of aggravated second-degree battery. Mr. Bell’s conviction on that charge as an adult has been overturned, but I considered adult status appropriate because of his role as the instigator of the attack, the seriousness of the charge and his prior criminal record.

People can say anything. Here Walters gets to lay out his own platter of baloney, and it sounds almost reasonable (except for the obviously biased tone) until you remember that the "dangerous weapon" was a pair of tennis shoes; the victim was well enough to attend a social function at the school that evening; and if Walters is so concerned about enforcing the laws that exist, why wasn't the white student who used a weapon to threaten several black teen-agers prosecuted?

A white student brandished a shotgun in a confrontation with three black students. (He claims self-defense; they claim he was unprovoked.) The black students then wrestled the gun away from him and were later charged with theft, while the white student was not charged with a crime.

Richard Thompson Ford, who criticizes the protest and its purpose and focus in Slate, only lightly brushes past the real foundation of the protest on his way to make little digs at Reverend Sharpton:

So, the demonstrators have plenty to be upset about: racial segregation; racially disproportionate arrest, prosecution, and incarceration rates; and a pervasive societal racism that is passed from generation to generation. But because none of these sadly common racial injustices have a discrete cause, none are likely to respond to the type of quick and specific reform that a demonstration can demand. As a result, the march on Jena was a bit unfocused.

(By the way? What condescension: "plenty to be upset about." No one I spoke with or marched next to or rode with seemed "upset." They did, however, seem to believe strongly that what was happening in Jena was not justice.) From this description, I can only assume that Ford was not there. The protest at which I was present was calm and highly focused and purposeful. (The crowd was not, as reported by the Washington Post, "raucous." Jesus. How do reporters get away with it.)

Ford implies that the progression of the march from the courthouse to the high school proves that the crowd was milling about and didn't know what to do:

It's telling that the demonstrators moved between the courthouse where Bell was tried for an offense no one denies he committed and the site of the "white tree" that, with all-too-fitting symbolism, has since been cut down.

"Telling" how, exactly? What the progression actually tells is that people purposefully and with determination made a point of visiting the place where it all began, where the white tree had stood and had been mowed down because that place has symbolic value and meaning:

Oh, wait! The tree! It started with that tree on the school grounds whose shade zone was deemed a “Whites Only” area. Yeah! The tree! We nearly forgot about it.

Well...you can forget about it. Because rather than let the tree stand as an example of the potential flowering of race relations in the “New South”—America, really...

The school superintendent had the damn thing cut down.

And then of course, the speakers were in front of the courthouse, so we all had to gather there. There was no milling. No "telling" unfocused wandering.

Unlike Ford's thoughts in the article, which hop about in such a disconnected fashion that at first I accused myself of being too tired to read it; after a second read, I reminded myself that, you know, not to blow my own horn or anything, but I am sort of an expert on reading comprehension, I mean, studying it has been part of how I've earned my living for lo, this many years, and this gave me the confidence to say: O, my, what a bunch of baloney.

Let me count the cold cuts:
1. "The Wrong Poster Children: Why the Jena 6 Protests Have Gone Awry": Um. Have they really? It does seem that the protests have gotten significant results, including but not limited to forcing state and federal legislators to wake up and smell the racism. Kind of lazy writing, too, in that I think Ford should describe how he thinks the protests have gone awry, instead of just assuming everyone will take his word for it. And to take the long view, at the very least, the protests show that people will show up in great numbers to protest what they perceive as injustice. That is a great thing, particularly as we near elections.
2. "When more than 10,000 people converged on the small town of Jena, La. . . .": I am heartily sick unto death of the underreporting of the numbers because it seems to be an attempt to erode the credibility and the show of strength of the demonstrators. Most of the sources I have seen report there were at least 20,000 people:
USA Today: "tens of thousands"
L.A. Times: "Organizers said the crowd swelled to 50,000; state police said it was too spread out to count. "
Washington Post: "Police declined to estimate the size of the throng at the rally, other than to say it numbered in the "tens of thousands."
2theAdvocate: "By the State Police’s estimate, 15,000-20,000 demonstrators poured into this town"

As I said before, the organizers estimated 50-60,000. Even if you control for optimism and enthusiasm, certainly 30,000 would be a conservative estimate. Brother, please. You could check your facts. (Unless the "more than 10,000" was a sneaky way to be letter-of-the-law truthful and cut the legs off the protest at the same time?)

3. "Rev. Al Sharpton called their march the beginning of the 21^st-century civil rights movement. He may be right. And that's just what's worrisome.": Worrisome? Worrisome? I'll give you worrisome. Worrisome is that Black defendants are more likely to receive the death penalty, and even more if the victim was white than if the defendant was not Black. Worrisome is that "the rate of increase in black offenders imprisoned for drug offenses was more than four times greater than the rate of increase for white offenders." Worrisome is that Black defendants are locked up 7.66 times more than whites. And that's just the overstuffed backpack of criminal injustice worries. In the education disparity backpack, we find that Black students are suspended far more frequently than white students ("No other ethnic group is disciplined at such a high rate, the federal data show. . . Yet black students are no more likely to misbehave than other students from the same social and economic environments, research studies have found") even though they do not misbehave more frequently. No wonder the drop out rate is almost twice as high for Black students as it is for white students. Or we could take on healthcare, as Blacks receive lower quality care and are more likely to die from heart disease and strokes.

4. "The marchers gathered to protest criminal charges brought against six African-American high-school students, the "Jena 6." But the racial problems facing this town—and many others—are more complex than simple prejudice, and finding solutions will necessarily require more nuance than a mass protest can offer. The mismatch between the complex and layered racial tensions in Jena and the one-issue rallying cry of "Free the Jena 6" suggest that the tactics of last century's civil rights movement may be an anachronism for today's racial conflicts." Here, you see, Ford thinks he is the only person in the world to understand the complexities of racism in America today. Huh. The other rallying cry, the one that Ford didn't notice, was just as common as "Free Mychal Bell", and that cry was "Enough is enough." It was on T shirts and posters, and was the real underlying motivation for the rally.

5. Ford says, "The injustice here is not that they are being prosecuted for their crime. . . " That's a given. And everyone I spoke with at Jena would agree. The injustice is the disparity between whether and how Black and white defendants are prosecuted.

6. "When you think about it, the logic that underlies the demand to free the Jena 6 comes down to this: These six young men were justified in kicking their lone victim senseless because other people who shared his race committed offenses against other black students." He accuses the demonstrators of launching a "racial vendetta." Not once did I hear such a thing from anyone. No one! Again, every single person I talked with believed that the young men should receive punishment if convicted (in a fair trial). (And that the charge should accurately reflect the actual offense, not no trumped-up tennis shoe murder weapon crap charge.)

(There's more baloney, but counting the cold slimy slices is a task that quickly loses its charm.)

Can it be that Ford is so simple-minded (or that his mind is of such a literal turn, is perhaps a more charitable way to frame it) that he does not see that, in the immortal but out of context words of the Spinners, sparks turn into flames? The fire has got to start somewhere, and any kind of change always, always, always starts with a symbol.

There was injustice in the Jena 6 cases, particularly in the case of Mychal Bell, injustice that continues, as he remains in jail even though his conviction has been overturned. But the chain of events that led up to Mychal Bell's prosecution gave this particular instance of injustice even more meaning. What happened in Jena is symbolic of the injustice endured by Black defendants, by Black students, by Black job applicants or hospital patients or apartment-hunters, and the thing to do is to lift that symbol, write about it, talk about it, analyze it, figure it out, press all of the meaning out of it so we understand what is happening so we can use the symbols to light our way to the truth, and the truth will set us free.

"This is much bigger than Jena," said M.K. Asante Jr., an English professor at Morgan State University. . . .

That the young men may not have been pillars of the community doesn't matter. That they may not be perfect poster children for civil rights doesn't matter. What matters is that it appears that their civil rights may have been violated. What matters is that there was injustice, and, in the immortal words of Dr. King, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

Not Just One

At the Atlanta airport, I had nearly three hours to while away. As I had had an uncharacteristically abstemious week, I decided that my life would not be complete until I'd had a beer. I went to one of those airport sporty brewing company bars and paced in front of it a couple of times before I actually committed myself to the line. It was very, very crowded and very, very loud with voices and the sound of three televisions attuned to whatever big football game was playing at the moment.

I asked the people in front of me how long the wait was. They sighed and rolled their eyes. Then they said maybe it would be shorter for me, because I was just one. Then they had some conversation about the great misfortune of waiting in line and they picked up all their bags and left.

A tall tough looking woman appeared at my side, talking to me before she was even in line. Although she was wearing jeans, a man's T shirt, and athletic shoes, it took no imagination to picture her in leather chaps and a vest over a lace-up tank top. Her voice gave evidence of many, many hours spent in smoky bars, where she both contributed to the smoke and consumed much alcohol. She was grumbling about the challenge of finding a g-d bar in this g-d airport, and how she'd gone to every g-d terminal and if you couldn't get a drink in an airport, what the freakin hell was wrong with the world. Listening to her made me think that maybe I did not really want to have a beer, after all, and just as I was considering stepping out of line, she spotted a gentleman drinking alone at a table and left to ask if he would mind if she joined him. (To my relief, he welcomed her.)

I took a seat at the bar, ordered a beer and a salad, and took out my knitting. The bartender (a beautiful sister) brought my beer and admired my knitting. It was the orange fishnetty scarf, which I have since finished.

Beautiful Bartender: That is my favorite color. I love orange. I just painted my living room orange.
Me (lost in admiration): Oh my God. I would love that.
Beautiful Bartender: I called my sister and she said, "Ew." But it looks great. The walls are orange, and I have this gray couch.
Me: That sounds great!
Beautiful Bartender: I love color!
Me: Me, too! I have yellow leather furniture and pink satin curtains in my living room.
Beautiful Bartender: See? That's what I mean.
Me: I know, when I come home and see all that color, I'm so happy.
Beautiful Bartender: That's it. That's it. And I'm going on a cruise and I bought this orange dress. I'm going to wear this pumpkin-colored lipstick--
Me: You'll look fabulous. What about the shoes?
Beautiful Bartender: I thought about the shoes for a while, and then decided gold sandals. Not metallic gold. A kind of dull gold.

Then a guy wearing a beret sat next to me. He was from L.A. and had that L.A. way of talking that, on a man, has always struck me as a little effeminate. Not criticizing, just observing. (Earlier, I'd overheard this heavily tatted white 80s throwback in tight jeans and a tight white T shirt with curly blond hair talking on the phone in a pronounced southern accent and saying, "Well, yuh ask me, he's got more'n a little sugar in his tank," and if the throwback had met this dude from L.A., I bet that is exactly what he'd have said about him later). The L.A. guy was a mine of information, though, about fun things to do in L.A. He likes to dress up in tourist clothes once a year and carry a camera and a pitcher of Mai Tais and take one of those bus tours of movie stars' pads.

He left, and his place was taken by a generic white guy of Republican appearance whose demeanor made it clear that little interested him less than conversation (I was going to add "with me," but I am fairly certain his disinclination to chat was not personal), and I left and found my gate, and that is when I taught the soldier how to knit.

It was a good time.

And the flight attendant on the plane liked the fishnet scarf, too. Once again, I will say it: if you want the love, knit a fishnet scarf.

Here again is the oh-so-complicated pattern:

Materials
1 skein mohair yarn
circular needles (very large, like 13, if you are a tight knitter; if you are a freakishly loose knitter like me, use smaller needles, like a 6 or even 5)
beer (I like a pale ale, myself, but pick your own poison)

Cast on 80 stitches. Join the circle. Knit until you can't knit no mo. Cast off.

Here is a close-up of the finished product:

P.S. So many have asked that I feel compelled to report that my back is doing great, and I had absolutely no back problems the entire trip, despite all the long treks up and down terminals while heavily laden. A miracle! I been healed!

What Next?

The road to Jena was not all highmindedness and noble admiration and awe and purity of intention.

There is a lot of other about which I am longing to write, all the personal crap, you know, because doing something important doesn't stop the rest of our life, doesn't keep us from having our experience on all the different levels of living. But I was hesitant, because I felt foolish to be concerned with these things from my life when there are such important things to write about.

I wanted to write about how the two days I spent with my friend C. the Charming were so very pleasant, like the best vacation ever, not only because she and her husband ministered to my every whim and fed me the best food (e.g., garlicky salmon and rosemary focaccia and apple walnut muffins) , but mostly due to the joy of companionship--we just sat and knitted and talked about everything, and took a field trip to the yarn store, and stopped and had coffee and did some public knitting. What made our time together so satisfying is that C. and I share sensibilities and many experiences and impulses, so our conversations wind and curve through familiar landscape, which is a great gift, that sense of pure recognition when another is speaking of her own experience. There is that, and there is, of course, the affection. I am an affectionate person.

I wanted to write about meeting the biker brother, what a thrill it was to tour Baton Rouge at night, the city all lit up as we rode across the bridge over the Mississippi River, what it was like to spend time with him, how even the great attraction could not erase the sense that he is a man who sees women as being sort of a different and unfathomable species, and so once we got past the initial getting-to-know-you Q & A, there wasn't much conversation (nor, as K. put it in a later discussion, companionship) to be had (I tried, you know I did, and I found him very interesting indeed, but me asking questions does not a conversation make) and also how even though he was very insistent that I call him the moment my plane touched down, no matter how late the hour and he was very, very eager about continuing to speak with each other by phone once I got home and he even named a time when he might come out to California to see me, he has not called, which I confess does hurt my feelings a tiny bit even though I understand why someone would, upon reflection, think better of getting involved with another someone who lives thousands of miles away.

I wanted to write about how, at the Jackson airport, I overheard a woman, a soldier, complaining to her fellow soldiers that her iPod had given up the ghost, and so I could not help but offer my condolences. She did not take my sympathy amiss, and we waxed rhapsodic as to the virtues of the iPod. She noticed I was knitting, and said she'd always wanted to learn, and so I pulled out a spare pair of needles and ball of pink wool and taught her to knit while we were waiting to board the plane to Atlanta.

I wanted to write about the crush of loneliness I've felt since coming home, that there was no one here to tell about my trip. A. and B. patiently looked at pictures, but they mostly wanted to tell me what they've done since I was away. (Which I also wanted to hear.) And the contrast between my normal solitary life and all that marvelous companionship (spending all day and evening with R., because once the day was over, we could not bear to tear ourselves away from one another and had a little pajama party in my room and ate pizza and drank pinot grigio and watched the CNN coverage, and there were the lovely times with C. the Charming and even the biker) was a lot to bear. I am, as you know, someone who requires a great deal of interaction, so it was kind of like eating all this wonderful rich food at a party and then going home to find bare cupboards and an empty refrigerator.

I wanted to write about what a cranky malcontent I have been, too, how I have this dissatisfaction, that feeling of "What next?" What next, indeed. My life is next. Being a mother is next. Meeting today's deadline is next, and so is the conference call I have on Friday for a research study I am proposing to present at next year's big wahoo industry conference, and then there is the racial achievement gap conference in November (Tavis Smiley will be there!). Next week I have a call with a new client, and more deadlines, and then I was thinking maybe I would attend the local NAACP meeting. Just to start looking around to see what I can see. How can I help, you know.

Reading is next, and thinking, and writing, and knitting, and walking every day, and keeping in touch with my friends, and making plans for the holidays, and considering what I might do to keep working out my own salvation, keep walking in the light, lend a hand when I am able and to open my heart to the possibilities that might at any moment alight in front of me. Just like Jena did.

UPDATE: Oh, she of little faith. He called me. (See paragraph 4.) That is one thing I feel a little bettah about.

Quacker

If you can stomach it, listen to this interview with Richard Barrett, someone who shies away from the label "white supremacist," but I always say that if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck. . . .

More Jena Pictures

R. from Tennessee sent me some pictures. Here is the march to and from the high school.


See all those people? And that was not the only street that was filled; all the streets were that crowded, and so was the park in the center of town.

On the way to the high school, we saw the mounted police behind a building.

Everyone wanted to see the place where the tree used to be.

This morning K. the Brilliant sent me this story from the Chicago Trib, which is also posted at Friends of Justice. I'm worried about the Jena 6 and their families.

UPDATE 9/26/07: Governor Kathleen Blanco "ordered state police to investigate and protect the families of the Jena Six after a neo-Nazi website posted their names, addresses and phone numbers . . . . The FBI is investigating the posting."

The One to Watch

This is a video of the march I found on YouTube, posted by TDOGGINYA. Watch it! This is the closest you can get to having been there.

Spread the word, everyone. America needs to talk about what's happening. On the way to Jena and on the way home, I told everyone I met what I was doing. You wouldn't believe how many people--black and white (the security screener at the Jackson airport, my seatmates on the various planes, the cashier at Starbucks, and more)-- did not know about the Jena 6 or the rally.

Less than Half of One Percent, Or Jena: Part 2

We got off the bus and started walking. Even though no one knew exactly where to go, we all went in the same direction. People were moving from the side streets and the highway outside of Jena into the center of town.
Even though we passed many empty parking lots, we could not park there. Brand-new no parking signs were posted everywhere (some misspelled, heh), and lots were protected by makeshift fences of orange construction netting. Yards were festooned with yellow and black police tape. The fear of the white residents was palpable.

The highmindedness of the crowd overwhelmed that ugliness, though. The sheer determination and sense of purpose and justice--oh! I wish you could feel it.

These young men were selling T shirts:

There were stations set up here and there along the route, with people speaking into microphones ("Atlanta in the house! Detroit, Michigan represents!" "Stand up for Jena!" "No justice, no peace!"), and some played music. Almost everyone wore black; the ones who did not were wearing T shirts of their own design that showed support for the Jena 6.

Of the thousands and thousands of people, my estimate is that less than half of one percent were white. Most of the white folk there were journalists, or part of the Red Cross team that was distributing water (it was very, very hot, and there was very little shade).


Here is a picture of my new friend R. from Tennessee and me:That is R.'s sign, but I carried it part of the way--she was toting a hefty backpack.

We flowed with the crowd through the town, chanting occasionally ("Free Mychal Bell!" "No justice, no peace!"), past the courthouse, to the high school, and back around to the courthouse to hear the speakers. We were there for hours and hours, and yet time slowed or sped up, or just seemed nonexistent, as if there were no such thing as time, there was just all the excitement and the fervor and the goodness and what was happening at that time.

The Black Panthers had a strong presence. Mothers brought up their sons for pictures. I saw a Black Panther stoop for a picture with a boy who looked to be about 4. He patted the boy and said, "Go out, young warrior." Beautiful.

There were families and groups of students and elderly people and revolutionaries and very formally dressed, very dignified solid citizens, and dreadlocked rastas. I did not see any extreme saggy pants. Everyone, even the revolutionaries, had a respectable appearance. Every time we stopped, we got into a conversation with people about where they were from and how they'd gotten there and with whom they'd come. There was this sense of unity, of everyone holding hands for the cause.

At the closing ceremony at the convention center, we did all hold hands while Reverend Al Sharpton gave a benediction.

There is so much more to say, but it's almost as if I don't know what to write any more. If you have any questions, feel free to comment or send an email. Next to the day my daughters were born, this was the most spiritual, most beautiful day of my life. I feel like my heart is so full that everything inessential has been moved out to make room for this. This is truly what really matters.

More to see:
pre-protest pictures from NPR
slideshow of the rally from msnbc
Chicago Trib video
Jesse Jackson speaking
Al Sharpton speaking
slideshow of photos from 9/20/07 in Jena
photo essay and story from Michael David Murphy

Intermission

In Jena, at the high school, where R. from Tennessee and I wanted to go look at where the white tree had been (they bulldozed it down before the protest--as if that would solve the problem?), I met a big brother, a biker from Baton Rouge. I told him I was going to be in Baton Rouge on Friday and Saturday, and he requested the pleasure of my company Friday night.

People. You have not lived until you've had a late night tour of Baton Rouge on the back of a motorcycle. Seriously. I had the best, best, best time.

Jena: Part 1

I arrived at Jackson about 10:30 p.m. Wednesday night, got my car, and found the hotel with no trouble (thank you, GPS). After showering and calling The Favorite Child, I reviewed all my little papers I printed out from various websites and realized that I needed to be in Alexandria at 5 a.m., 2 hours earlier than I had thought. This meant no sleep. I lay in the bed for an hour, then got up, got dressed, and got on the road at 1 a.m.

I was scared. I can't remember if I've told you this before, but I am greatly handicapped in terms of finding my way about in the world (only geographically speaking). I can't find my way out of a freaking paper bag. If you give me perfect directions, I will follow them and arrive on time. If the directions are not perfect, woe betide.

Here I was, in a foreign country (Mississippi is a foreign country if you are, as I am, a native Californian), driving in the dark to a location I knew not of. Good God. In fear I programmed the GPS and with trepidation I followed its guidance, but God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb, and two hours in, I happened upon a rest stop and thought I would rest. Four buses were parked out front. The bathroom was full of beautiful sisters, all wearing black. I asked if they were going to Jena. They were. I said I was, too, and one woman asked why. "You've got to stand up for what's right," I said. "You know that's right," said one woman, and I believe an "Amen" followed.

Seeing those buses and encountering all those women in the bathroom gave me this sense of anticipation and happiness, which got me to the Coliseum in Alexandria, where the troops were gathering.

I met so many people. Everyone was so friendly. They asked where I came from. Ali, a muscular young man from Miami, said, "You from California? You came all that way? That's deep." He promised that if I couldn't get a ride to Jena, they would make room on the Miami bus.

When the bikers rolled in, it was so exciting.
And then Al Sharpton arrived. I got a picture of the madness.
The people flowed to the Reverend as if they were the tide. They showed their love, and the Reverend was so gracious. Everyone wanted to touch him, to shake his hand, or give him a hug, or have a picture taken with him. I heard later that his limo went empty to Jena, and the Reverend rode on one of the buses. God bless him, I say. He is a man of the people.

Right around that time, I met R. from Tennessee. R. is super glamorous and very animated, and you can tell she is very comfortable being in charge. To my good fortune, she asked with whom I'd come to Louisiana. When I told her I was by myself, she said she would stick with me. Tell me, who has better luck than I do? For R. got us a ride on a bus while many others waited in the dirt parking lot, walking here and there, not sure what to do. It was chaotic. The atmosphere was peaceful and happy and purposeful, but the logistics were kind of crazy. When you think of all those people coming together and how everything just worked out, you do believe in miracles.

Most of the buses were big charter buses. The bus we got on was a little battered. Tasseled fringe was strung across the windshield. The driver's name was Red, which everyone pronounced as if it had two syllables ("Rai-ed"). Inside, there were couches instead of bus seats, and upon the couches were sprawled many bodies. The woman across from me was wearing shorts and her scarred, thin, muscular legs made me think of a race horse that had seen better days. The large woman next to me, in a turquoise outfit that stood out against all the black T shirts, had sleep apnea. I spoke to her, and she didn't respond, and I thought, "Dang, she is all bent out of shape we on this bus." Later I realized she was just asleep. Every once in a while she'd wake up and say something like, "Duchess, give me a banana," or "What about the blood song?" and they would all sing a song about the blood of Jesus. For we had gotten on the Bus of the Saved Souls from New Orleans. They had driven through the night to get to Alexandria, and were apparently the sinners Jesus loved so much. They loved Him right back. We heard a song I had not heard since my Southern Baptist days, "I've Been Redeemed" (which K. the Brilliant observed is kind of like the gospel version of "99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall"). One woman sang a version of "Amazing Grace" with so much vibrato my ears were ringing and the whole bus shook. The Lost Souls were so generous, offering us food from their stash of bananas, cold cereal, candy bars, and sandwiches. So kind.

It took a long time to get to Jena. There were all the buses, and we kept stopping. Red the Driver let everyone off the bus ("I know y'all need to smoke your cigarettes"), and the recovering addicts trooped off the bus, all the ones I'd seen, with names like Lil Bit and the aforementioned Duchess, and all the ones I hadn't, who had been tucked way back in the dark recesses. The demographics on this bus were unusual, as there were a third as many white people as black people. However, they were all very thin, in baggy clothes, and in desperate need of nicotine.

I took pictures. It was about 5:30 by this time.
To see the buses stretched out as far as you could see brought tears to the eyes, a sentiment shared by all of us who were outside. I met the president of the New Orleans chapter of the NAACP and I met some gentlemen from Los Angeles, and we all marveled at the buses.

Traffic was stopped for a long time. When cars could proceed (very slowly and much hampered by the crowds from the buses milling in the road), you could see all the black people in cars taking pictures and videotaping the buses and the crowds, throwing signs and smiling. The white people mostly looked straight ahead, gripping the steering wheel as if it were a life preserver. On the side of the road, a group of young white people cheered and held up a sign: "Not All White People Are Crazy."

UPDATE: Go to Che Sing the Cool for more pictures. There is a great one that gives you an idea of what it was like to be in the crowd.

The Day After

This morning I was starting to write this post in my head, and it went something like this:

The protest in support of the Jena 6 will likely come to be known as the most important civil rights event of three decades. To be a part of the peaceful gathering of so many people* as a show of strength and support against such injustice was a powerful, intensely moving experience. (To be welcomed--as I was by many--was grace.)

And then I was going to go on and on. And there is so much to go on about -- the excitement and anticipation, the people gathering in the darkness at 4 o'clock in the morning at the Coliseum in Alexandria, the masses of cars and buses, the sense of marshalling the forces, the reigning sensibilities of the day, which were not anger and outrage, as might be expected; instead, everyone unified in this implacable, quiet, powerful strength and a solid sense of resting in truth and justice against persecution** -- and once I get home, I will write a post that simply describes the day from o-dark thirty to the celebration at the convention center, led by radio host Michael Baisden. (I saw the Reverend Al Sharpton arrive in his limo, only to be surrounded immediately by reporters and photographers and loving supporters who wanted to shake his hand or give him a hug or have a picture taken with him. I was only a few feet away. I got a picture of people taking pictures of him. Heh. I've got other pictures, too, of the lines of buses on the highway, a sight that was so moving, of the crowds, of my new friend R. from Tennessee, of these two Big Brothas selling T shirts. All of which I will post when I get home. I was also only a few feet away from the Reverend Jesse Jackson, who was flanked by bodyguards and police officers and moved through the crowd at Jena as if he were royalty, while a few lone voices cried out that Jesse Jackson was "the tool of the Democratic party" and that he betrayed his people.)

But I went to have coffee this morning in downtown Alexandria, and a woman came in and told the barista about a story reported this morning on CNN, that a couple of teen-agers were driving around downtown last night -- near the convention center, through where the crowds were gathering -- with nooses dangling from the tailgate of their truck. This woman (who, by the way, was wearing a bright forest green T shirt with bright orange sweatpants and looked so fabulous her appearance defies description) was the one who made the call to a friend of hers who is a sheriff, and the sheriffs apparently handled the matter.

Me: I can't believe that. They coulda been killed.
Beautiful Woman (expressively): Mmmm-hmmm. You got that right.
Me: And they woulda deserved it.
Beautiful Woman (expressively): Mmmm-hmmm.
Me: They're just stupid. There should a stupid law, and
they shoulda been arrested.
Beautiful Woman: Oh yeah, I'll be the first one to vote in
a stupid law. And I know a bunch of folks who'll get arrested.

As someone told me yesterday, some folks is so foolish, you can't even contemplate their foolishness. You just got to keep moving and do your own thing. And that pretty much summed up the feelings of everyone who talked to me about their feelings about what was happening, that this mess in Jena is foolishness, a foolishness indicative of a sickness, because racism is a sickness, and in a way, you only feel sorry for people who are sick like that, but when they hurt you, and especially when they hurt your children, you've got to step up and make them stop.

* The media are underreporting the numbers. I saw articles with headlines like "Hundreds Overwhelm Jena." Tens of thousands. Tens of thousands. I am not experienced in estimating crowds, but all of the streets were full of people. The organizers were estimating 50,000 to 60,000, and there may well have been more. The city of Alexandria, where many of us stayed at least one night, got a sudden, unexpected, and--I am sure--much-needed influx of cash. No wonder the mayor of Alexandria stood on the platform with Michael Baisden to welcome the crowd, express his support of the cause, saying, "Alexandria is not Jena." (That sounds so cynical. Forgive me. He seemed like a good guy. Talked about how reading W. E. B. Dubois in college opened his eyes.)

**It was beautiful. I wish my description could give you a sense of the overwhelming tone of the day. It was the feeling of justice and rightness. Imagine all of your better impulses and everything about you that is good and beautiful uniting and going to war against evil. It was like that, but multiplied thousands of times in this vast crowd. Like all of what is good in human nature all in one place at one time.

UPDATE: More about the noose incident at Blackperspective.net.

Burnt Toast

. . . is what my house smells like, as I came into my office to do a couple of last-minute work-type tasks, and forgot about the toaster, and the next thing I knew, it was a conflagration. Smoke filled the air and all 4 smoke alarms sounded. Did you know smoke alarms go off even if they don't have batteries in them?

Leaving my smelly house behind, I think I am ready. I've got my marching music, courtesy of K. the Brilliant, camera, notebook (Ima blog it all when I can), work to do on the plane (even though that is always a challenge for me, I find it so difficult to concentrate surrounded by so many people and confined to such a small space, not that my work requires any physical movement whatsoever beyond pen scratches--yes, I prefer editing hard copy, I do, I do, and I love editing marks). Knitting for all the waiting around time in airports, as I am leaving in 40 minutes, and yet will not arrive at my final destination of Jackson, MS until after 10 p.m., which inconvenience is the real cost of cheap ($300 RT) tickets purchased online.

Protesters are coming to Jena from all over the country. There are buses from many major cities, including D.C., Chicago, and Los Angeles. What times we live in. What opportunities do we have to do, say, think what is right in the face of what is so clearly wrong.

Off I go.

UPDATE: Crap. Pants. You are not going to believe this, but I put two more slices of toast in the toaster and went to iron my shirt. Reeeee! Reeeeeee! Reeeeeeee!

What to Do on Thursday, September 20

. . . if you can't make it to Jena.

Wear *black.
Join the virtual march.
Check to see if there is a local march in support of the Jena 6.
Tell everyone what is going on. There are still people who don't know.

"The battle didn't start with the Jena 6, it won't end with the Jena 6."


*Just a little anecdote in re my own laminosity (lameness). I bought a Jena 6 T shirt on ebay. First of all, it was white with black print. All right, I thought, I'll just wear it on the plane. But it had a really high crew neck that was uncomfortable and also? Not flattering. So I got out the scissors to do a little trimming on the neckline but one slip of the blade rent the garment nearly in two, and now I have a big white rag emblazoned with "Free the Jena 6."

Failure to Appear

Noted by D. Yobachi Boswell at Blackperspective.net:

The black teen at the center of a furor over legal racism remained behind bars - though charges against him were thrown out Friday - because the judge and prosecutor didn't come to a bail hearing yesterday, his lawyer said.

"We showed up. There was nobody there," said Bob Noel, lawyer for 17-year-old Mychal Bell of Jena, La. "No DA, no judge."

A woman who answered the phone at District Attorney Reed Walters' office said he had no bail procedure on his calendar.

Another Mechanic's Special?

I don't think I'll have the chance to find out.

A gentleman man told me he would call and he did not. Perhaps I should say that he has not yet, as we last talked on Thursday, but you know? I just have that feeling. He's not going to call. I wish I could say that I never feel the sting of rejection anymore, that I always take it in stride, heeding my own advice that if someone doesn't dig you, it's more about him than it is about you. Or, in this case, than it is about me.

What would make it funny if I were looking for the levity is that even if he did call and we did go out, the odds are not in his favor. Like K. says:

You don't think that the problem will actually turn out to be that the object of your crush will turn out to be -- well, to put it kindly, a mechanic's special.

No, we always imagine that he’s the combination of Mr. Darcy, Alexander Pushkin, Pete Postlethwaite, and Morgan Freeman, and he’s going to reject us as soon as he finds out we like him. He’s going to reject us because we like him. Just like in high school, you know.

My Crazy wants to convince me that my liking him means inevitable heartache and pain. This would mean that first I would like him, and frankly, I don't know him well enough to form that favorable of an opinion. There was enough to make me willing to take another of his calls, is about all I can say. Really, his not calling is just like a stranger passing me by on the street. That happens many times a day. Doesn't bother me a bit.

Maybe I was hoping This He would distract me from my You Know Who reveries, which hikes up and down that steep and rocky memory lane cause me to ache for days. Maybe I was hoping I would like This He well enough that You Know Who might eventually fade away.

It doesn't matter why. What I wanted doesn't matter. How I feel doesn't even matter, not in the long run. What matters is which way I decide to go, how I choose to think about it, and the meaning I give it. Every step carves the path a little deeper.

I will take the best advice about men I've ever heard (Never run after men or buses), say to myself what I always find comforting whenever I do not get exactly what I think I wanted when I wanted it (If not this, then something better), remind myself I have important things to do (leaving for Jena the day after tomorrow), and important things to think about (A. and B., my work), and just keep on going.

It's dogged as does it.

It's On

Today I hit my limit with the principal at A.'s and B.'s school. On Friday, pink notes went home with a handful of kids, excluding A. and B. and lots of others. The pink note was notification of selection for the gifted program.

Before we get all grandiose in our thinking, it is not the gifted program the likes of which probably still exist in school districts with money, the likes of which we all attended back in the 70s, with separate classes for what were then called MGMs (mentally gifted minors) that offered a different, more advanced and more intensive curriculum. No, it's just an afterschool program, one day a week, and these few kids get to go on field trips and maybe mess a little with science and art.

I don't like the way this school handles kids of greater ability. All day, the more able kids sit, bored, while teachers go over the basics again and again, and then the administrators think a hour or two a week of "enrichment activities" is going to add significantly to their educational progress? If any acceleration in progress does occur, it will owe more to increased attention (I read of a study that suggested that kids who received 30 minutes of extra one-on-one attention by a kindly adult showed big gains in reading) and a shift in self-perception.

A. and B. were upset, the kids who got in were bragging, and I was dumbfounded (so to speak). I mean, A. and B. are in the 4th grade and they are reading near the eighth grade level--which I know because I often pilot reading assessments of various grade levels on them.

So this morning I asked the principal what the criteria were. She mentioned the state test.

Me (unable to contain myself): That's a misuse of that assessment. The state test is a test of content knowledge and certain skills, not an assessment of intelligence, aptitude, or ability.
Principal (smiling): That's one of the criteria.
Me (unable to let go): It's a misuse of that assessment.

A. and B. did not perform quite as well on the state test last year as they had the year before. (Still scores to be proud of, 100% in several math reporting categories and one reading reporting category, and certainly still in the top 3% at their school). I chalk it up to poor classroom instruction. The principal probably thinks they just got a little bit stupider than they were in 2nd grade.

I ran into A.'s teacher on my way out. She noticed I was a bit heated and asked me what was going on. I told her. She was aghast.

A.'s teacher: There must be a mistake. If anyone belongs in that program, it is A. I can understand why you're upset.
Me: You know, I'm hitting my limit. I've been concerned about A. and B. being here since the first grade, but now I'm definitely feeling like my girls are the tent poles holding up this school's sagging test scores, and then--
A.'s teacher: I'll talk to the principal.

Now I'm thinking about what to do next. I made the mistake of showing my hand to the principal by asking her for information about transferring to another school. That's a last resort, one I've been considering for the last year or so. It's difficult to know what is best for A. and B. This summer, they came home from their day camp a little abashed, saying that the other kids seemed a lot smarter and seemed to know a lot more than they do. All of those kids attend one of the best schools in the district, close to the university, with few if any second language learners and no bilingual instruction.

I imagine I need to do some research before I open my mouth again.

P.S. Also? What about the gifted second language learners? I don't think any of the kids identified for the program are Latino, even though Latino kids make up at least 75 % of the student population.

UPDATE: Got a little note from the principal on 9/24/07. After all the little hell I raised, she gonna let my girls into the g-d GATE program. Damn straight. I still want to kick her ass, though.

More Pants!

Pants! Pants! Pants!

If you're tired of social justice, my stupid heart, and my yard, let's talk about my favorite thing, naked bodies. Well, not quite all the way naked. In fact, not even a little naked. All skin completely covered in fact. (Damn it. Now that takes all the fun out of it, don't it? So what is there to talk about?)

The sagging pants thing. Of course it probably drives parents crazy. It is supposed to:

"For young people, it's a form of rebellion and identity," Adrian "Easy A.D." Harris, 43, a founding member of the Bronx's legendary rap group Cold Crush Brothers.

But it's been going on for so many years that I'm surprised to hear that various communities are just now expressing their outrage at seeing pants (in the British sense):

In Atlanta, a law has been introduced to ban sagging and punishment could include small fines or community work -- but no jail time, Martin said.

The penalty is stiffer in Delcambre, La., where in June the town council passed an ordinance that carries a fine of up to $500 or six months in jail for exposing underwear in public. Several other municipalities and parish governments in Louisiana have enacted similar laws in recent months.

Louisiana. Of course. Makes me want to sling'em low next week. I won't, though. Promised the kids I won't get arrested. I think maybe this, along with other recent events, show that some folk in Louisiana need to brush up on the Constitution? Maybe?

Paul Baier, a law professor at Louisiana State University, said the ordinance is too vague and therefore unconstitutional.

Jesus Christ.

What is indecent is poverty in a country as wealthy as this one. And unemployment. What is indecent is that greed and shortsightedness seem to be running this country.

P.S. Besides, I have to say that I am in complete agreement with Antonio Simmons, a young sagger in Atlanta, who says, "If you ask me, some of these people wear their pants too tight."

P.P.S. Oh, forgot to mention, but of course you thought of it already: is it coincidence that the style is most popular with the already-endangered young Black males?

The Weakness of Devotion

For months now, I've been feeling that it had been wrong of me to use You Know Who's real name here and there. I did so mostly because the mean nicknames I bestowed upon him had outlived their purpose--at one time, I felt so degraded by his treatment of me that all I could see when I thought of him was a monstrous villain. That feeling faded once forgiveness moved in. No reason to call him names. So calling him by his own name seemed better. But then recently I felt that wasn't right, either, as I've written of so much that is so private. Now I have no desire to expose him to public shame or censure. (Of course I did then, when my wounds were fresh.)

Today I went back through all the old posts and made him anonymous--in name, anyway. That's done.

I've already written I have been thinking of him lately. Even more since I figured out my traveling plans for next week. The way to Jena takes me through the small town in Louisiana where You Know Who grew up. His mother lives there, as do many of his other relatives. Aunts, uncles, and cousins. He had told me so many stories about growing up there. I wish I could meet his mother. He always said he knew she and I would love each other, but he also said that the only way we would meet would be if his mother came to us, as he would never take me to Louisiana. For a second, I wanted to call him and tell him I was going there. It makes me sad that I can't.

First of all, if I called him, he would suspect my motives. And then if I called him, of course I could not help but indicate, if not by my words, then by my expression and manner, how I still feel about him. He would interpret my feelings as weakness:

He would condemn me because I have forgiven him. He would condemn me because I had borne what he had done to me and had still loved him -- loved him through it all. He would feel and know the weakness; -- and there is weakness. I have been weak in not being able to rid myself of him altogether. He would recognize this after a while, and would despise me for it.

And this is why I can't call him, not ever, no matter how much I want to, no matter how I still love him. If I called him, of course we would reconcile, as we did every time I called him each time after I broke up with him. I can't allow myself to think about how lovely those first moments of being together would be.

But he would not see what there is of devotion to him in my being able to bear the taunts of the world in going back to him, and your taunts, and my own taunts. I should have to bear his also -- not spoken aloud, but to be seen in his face and heard in his voice, -- and that I could not endure.

My Yard Smells Like Hot Chocolate

After I got home from kayaking, I worked in the yard. I don't have much of a yard, but it was a mess. I started Friday before the Double E.s came over. I was just clearing shrubbery then. I was out there today for three hours.

On one of our walks, I'd complained to Another L. about the soil in the flowerbed being all clay. Nothing grows there. When I moved in, the bed was filled with bright little impatiens. So cheerful! They died within a month. Since then, it's been a graveyard for all sorts of nice little plants. Lobelia. Jasmine. Alyssum is about the only thing that will grow there, but in a kind of straggly, half-dead fashion.

Another L. told me about the glorious wonder of cocoa husks, and we went and purchased them yesterday (at the nursery, where I got a compliment about my shoes), along with some plants to put in the pots to replace the corpses (mea culpa--apparently watering plants is just too much responsibility for me, it's really a miracle A. and B. have lasted 9 years).

When I finished my work, I looked and saw that it was good. I gave a happy sigh. The cocoa husks are a rich brown color and have a rich texture, and fill the air with a cocoa smell. Such a wonderful thing.

To everyone else in the world, it would have just been an afternoon of working in the yard. To me, it is a triumph over my Appalachia of the West Coast childhood. I called Another L.:

Me: I just called to tell you that having you in my life makes my life so much better. Not only do I enjoy your sparkling wit and charming company every time I see you, but my yard looks great and it's all because of you!
Another L.: You are my best boyfriend ever!
Me: I'm raising the bar, baby!

Morning on Moss Landing

This little head in the water is a harbor seal. There were lots more. I went kayaking this morning with Sporty T. and her brother's girlfriend.

Back when A.'s and B.'s father and I had been married a few years, we went to Kauai. We had the best time. Then again, we always did have a good time together. We like to have a good time, and we're both of us companionable, and in those days, it did not take much to make us happy. Every morning, he would get up and go for coffee (he is one of those men who likes to go for things), and we would sit on the balcony and look at the palm trees and drink coffee and spin daydreams about living in Hawaii.

One day, we got up very early and went on a kayaking trip around the Napali coast. It was so early that there was nowhere to get coffee, and we did not have time to stop for breakfast. We went to this shack on the beach and were stuck into kayaks and shoved out to sea. We paddled until 2 o'clock, only stopping once inside the coastal caves. We didn't bring any food or water, and it got hot, and we got tired and irritable and said things like, "Stop splashing" and "How come I am the only one paddling?" I believe I might have even brought up the possibility of divorce (but it was just irritation and low blood sugar talking, as we were still very much in love then).

But we saw many sights of beauty, including a massive sea turtle, and dolphins, and the insides of the caves, and lots of fish, and really, it was a wonderful day, and once we ate lunch, we forgave each other all the splashing and shirking.

I haven't been kayaking since.

Sporty T. had planned a raucous evening birthday celebration with a group of ladies, including me, but apparently there is some little drama happening with some of Sporty T.'s friends, and one said she wouldn't come if So-and-so were coming, and So-and-so said she wouldn't come if the other were coming, and finally, Sporty T. threw her hands in the air and gave up and said all she wanted to do was celebrate her birthday, let's go kayaking.

We saw lots and lots and lots of pelicans. Some were on the shore and some were flying overhead. We saw them dive into the water. We also saw cormorants diving, and we saw a million plovers and other tiny little sand birds. We saw many otters, but I didn't get a good picture. (Here are the same otters at the same place by a real photographer.) We saw, as the guide said, all 5 otter behaviors: eating (big clams and crabs), grooming, playing, resting, and mating.

The guide said that California otter mating is not pleasant for the female. The male swims up, bites her nose, and then "has his way with her":

mating tends to be prolonged and aggressive. In sea otters, mating is always aquatic and often involves violent and prolonged copulations during which the male approaches the female from behind and grasps her face and nose with his teeth, sometimes pulling her head underwater while attempting to subdue her.

It's a good thing they are mating, though, as there are only about 3,000 California sea otters. At the turn of the century, they were thought to be extinct, but a small group of 50 or so survived. The population has never quite come back.

Northern otters are, said the guide, more refined in their mating rituals. He did not say how. (These river otters on Youtube bear that out. Not, however, the observer, who says sleazily by way of encouragement, "Go on, stick it in her, boy." Ew.)

The guide said that sometimes the California otters cross paths with the larger Northern otters, and speculated that a Northern female might react unfavorably to a male California otter's mating manners.

Anyway, we had a great time. It was so beautiful out on the water.

Good

Props to San Francisco. Doing the right thing with

a new program that offers free or subsidized health care to all 82,000 San Francisco adults without insurance.

The initiative, known as Healthy San Francisco, is the first effort by a locality to guarantee care to all of its uninsured, and it represents the latest attempt by state and local governments to patch a inadequate federal system.

It is financed mostly by the city, which is gambling that it can provide universal and sensibly managed care to the uninsured for about the amount being spent on their treatment now, often in emergency rooms.

People Get Ready

Pack your bags. Get on the train.

Jena Countdown

4 more days until I leave for Jena. This is all I can think about.

What happened in Jena, as big as it is, is even bigger than what it is. What happened represents all that must change in this country, what we none of us can get away from, what forms our lives and our thoughts and our ways of being, whether we are Black or white or Latino or Hispanic or Asian, this founding concept of justice for all against a reality of white status and privilege so deeply embedded that most white people will not, cannot afford to admit that it is there and that the accident of birth confers freedom from having to ever deal with the complexities of interactions tainted by perceptions of race.

Recently I read "The White Anti-Racist Is an Oxymoron: An Open Letter to White Anti-Racists" by Kil Ja Kim. She makes points that need to be heard, in particular that whites who wish to engage in the struggle cannot expect--although it seems they do--to lead the charge, but

. . . must be committed to either picking up arms for other people (and only firing when the people tell them so), dying for other people, or just getting out of the way. In short, they must be willing to do what the people most affected and marginalized by a situation tell them to do.

All of us are so very self-centered. It is the human condition. But salvation is not to be found in looking at ourselves, and especially not in looking at other people look at us, which is probably even more tempting.

Without constant vigilance to keep our monstrous egos in check, we are always demanding center stage and demanding to be heard. Without close supervision, of course the thoughts come running back to Me and All of Me and the Greatness of Me and How I Am Affected and How Good I Am and Look at Me, I Am a Good Person Doing a Good Thing. In this place, how can those who truly are affected not feel rage when faced with the effrontery of a white person even daring to say that he or she has been affected in any way by the plague of racism? Even worse, white people want to go to the Black people around whom they feel safe, and complain. Or confess. When you are heavily burdened and another complains of carrying a feather, you are justified in having some feelings about it.

I can imagine the questions:
Have you ever seen someone's face close up when you spoke because of your race?
Have you ever been denied a job, a home, hell, even a ride because of your race?
Have you ever been followed in a store because the color of your skin makes the employees assume you are a thief?
Has anyone ever made assumptions about you and your manner of living and your education level and your family because of your race?

The only proper thing to do, in the immortal words of my friend K., is shut up and listen. Shut up and listen. Shut up and listen.

Then, when it seems right, the only proper thing to say is, "How can I help?"

A Change Is Gonna Come - A Black History Tribute

It's time, people.

P.S. Found this on YouTube. Don't want anyone to think I am trying to hog the credit for creating it. And that's Sam Cooke singing. But you probably knew that.

It Doesn't End

Oh, God, it just doesn't end. I learned of this from Does Race Matter?:

Carmen Williams doesn’t understand why her 20-year-old daughter was tortured, raped and tied up in a shed.

Police tell her that what happened was probably a hate crime, that it happened because Megan Williams is black.

“Every time they stabbed her, they called her ‘n*****,’” her mother said.

Williams was kept by her attackers for a week. In addition to assaulting her, her attackers forced her to eat rat and dog feces and to drink from a toilet.

While they were stabbing her, the attackers said, "That's what we do to n*****s." However, the defendants will not be charged with a hate crime.

UPDATE: K. the Brilliant proposes that the attackers are batshit crazy, maybe meth addicts, too, rather than hardcore racist. That is, that there is not enough brain activity going on to initiate or sustain the thought processes that would lead to racist conclusions. I see her point. And so will you, if you look at the mug shots, which all but scream "trailer by the river." Oh, wait, there actually is a trailer. Surprise.

I'm Going to Jackson

. . .in the immortal words of Johnny Cash.

Actually, I am going to Jena. By way of Jackson, MS. (Priceline, you know. You takes what you gets.)

Got me my tickets. Got me my rental car. Got me my iPod and a buncha new music. All I need now is my hotel room.

UPDATE: Hotel, airport parking reservations, self-issued invite to stay with a friend. All set, baby.

UPDATE: So I went to get Google directions to the airport parking facility. Imagine my surprise when the directions indicated a distance of 2,910 miles. I'd forgotten to type in the city, so Google assumed I meant Park Avenue in NYC. Heheheh.

My Name is L. and I Am an iPodholic

Last month, I paid off my little credit card. It was, to me, not so little, and was part of my tuition from last year. Today I opened my big credit card bill and was exceedingly pleased to note that although it is still quite obese, we are making significant progress toward its reduction. For the last 6 months or so, I have been on a debt eradication program. Again, the cost of last year's tuition.

I repeat that phrase over and over because student loans excepting, I have never had any debt. I have a deep and abiding horror of debt. That is partly why I do not purchase new cars. (That, and because I cannot bear the depreciation stats. The price of a new car just seems illogical to me. And then I have my own prejudices around cars, as I would rather drive what seems to me a higher quality used car than a flimsy new car. But I digress.)

The debt did not so much sneak up on me as it did march right up and hit me on the haid. The largest portion came from an unexpected tax bill, and then that portion was increased when the gummint reassessed my taxes from the previous year and handed me another bill--to which the gummint added penalties to the taxes that I never knew I owed. I believe this situation is best described as financial BOHICA.

Then there is a medium-sized amount that came from using my credit card to pay living expenses when my sadness and snottification rendered me less productive than I usually am, and in the world of self-employment, less productive=less dough + same living expenses = debt.

There is also a smaller amount that is the result of plain and simple poor people thinking, thinking that goes kinda like this, "My debt is too much for me to deal with and I don't know if I'll ever get it paid off and that really bites and makes me feel like crap, let's go shopping!"

That is the story of the three bears of my debt. At one time, I considered taking the money out of my retirement fund, paying the tax penalties for early withdrawal (heheh). Then I thought that I would be paying too high a price for my peace of mind, and decided to soldier on, throwing 4 or 5 times the minimum payment at the debt until I satisfied its voracious appetite.

This plan has been efficacious beyond my dreams. At first, the progress was hardly noticeable. I felt like I was emptying the ocean one teaspoon at a time. But perseverance! Take heart! Carry on! Carry on I did, and I calculate that if I continue on this path of righteousness, I will have eliminated my debt by the end of next year--maybe even earlier, if I work more than usual.

Enter Satan's little minions, the handmaids of hell, who created iTunes and delivered that temptation to my door. Because last month I spent all the money I saved from not having cable on iTunes.

This month, I will have spent even more. I know because I spent hours yesterday purchasing sounds.

I've got a problem with the iPod. The love is so great that it is not even love anymore. I cannot fathom life without it. And so I will plan on working extra hours this weekend to make up for my extravagance. Another teaspoon.

(Are you wondering how the shoes fit in? They are part of the budget. I have been pretty parsimonious around new clothes and shoes lately, yet allowed myself a certain amount of money for such purchases, understanding that for me, to be overly frugal would be like banning chocolate or wine from the house. A set-up.)

P.S. I wanted to mention that I read Single Ma's Fabulous Financials every day for inspiration. She is a role model indeed.

UPDATE: I had an unexpected trip to the dentist with an unexpected high cost. Although I would like to blame it on a caramel apple pop, the blame rests squarely with stupidity, of which there is an endless source in the world. The caramel pulled a crown out. I put it back, planning to remove it before I ate or slept. Then I forgot all about it. The next morning, I swallowed it with my toast. Why oh why did I not just go to the bank and withdraw $1300 and chew up and swallow the bills? For that is what this episode of stupid is going to cost. Dang. A minor setback. That's what I will tell myself.

May I also point out that the high cost is because that I, being self-employed, have very poor dental insurance? But I bet you could have guessed as much.

Black People to Be Free

. . . in the immortal words of Mos Def.

I like to stop by Che Sing the Cool for the sounds. Eyez posted a clip with Mos Def and Cornel West on that stupid show. I love Mos Def, you know, so I watched that. But keep scrolling down to the video about the Jena 6.

Probably everyone in the whole world knows this story by now. I'd read a bit here and there, and found all I'd read horrifying. It's worse than I knew.

If you are also, like me, someone who lives under a rock and knows nothing of current events but find yourself horrified and would like to help, you can sign an online petition. You can also donate to the defense fund. (Super easy, you can even use Paypal.) Some of the parents have mortgaged their houses to raise money for attorney fees.

More information here, there, and everywhere:
Blackperspective.net
elle, phd
Free the Jena 6
Jena 6 Petition. (In case you didn't do it yet.)
While Seated
Why we should donate. (In case you didn't do it yet.)

UPDATE: Several of you have sent me emails telling me you've taken action. Thank you. Fight the good fight.

A Miracle in Ventura

The arts commission here in my little town did this amazing thing a few years ago and invited artists to paint the utility boxes. You know the ugly utility boxes that are the dull green or putty colored?

So the utility boxes are now art. Some are landscapes.



















Some are modern abstracts in black and white or bright colors. Others are dreamy and surreal.



















One of our favorites is a wide-eyed girl in a red dress.



















I told B. the Beautiful about it and encouraged her to make a similar proposal to the arts commission in Ventura. She did, and now it be happening. Art on the utility boxes in Ventura.

Shoes and Hats

It was an accident. I went to this store looking for shoes like E.'s new shoes. The store didn't carry them, but offered to order them for me. I was on board with that, but wanted to try on a similar pair, as I'd read that this shoe runs a little big.

While the clerk was off in the back, I saw these. On sale. (Thank God. I would never have paid full price. As much as I love them.) Do you not agree that these are the cutest shoes in the world?



And then, for your amusement, here is a note from B. She wrote it when she was mad at me. But even though she was mad, it was a joke, referring to the time she was 5 or 6 and wrote a note that I found later. That one said I hat Mom. And I hat [A.] to.

My Secret Fantasy

If I don't marshal all my forces and lead them in a concentrated fashion in a specified direction, everyone kind of goes off on his own and does his own thing, which means there are often various activities going on inside my head at any one time. There's always someone saying, "Oooh, did you see that?" and someone else asking about coffee or, if it's nigh on 5 o'clock, for the love of God, can I get a glass of wine and a piece of cheese. The pessimist mostly hunkers down in the corner, glowering, only to pipe up once in a while about the awfulness of it all and you should have known better.

So there's this one that likes to fast-forward through all the work and the difficulty, and bask in the fantasy of what she sees as the end result. Skipping through the flowers in the meadow without having ever climbed a mountain. The end result in this case could be anything or nothing at all--I was expecting an email from someone of the male persuasion. It is not even the getting-to-know-you, getting-to-know-all-about-you phase--you might say it is the precursor even to that--but I knew enough to find something about him rather charming.

Would you like to know what the fantasy consisted of? Not sex. No, nothing so interesting. Not a wild night of dirty dancing. Not holding hands walking on the beach, no romance of any kind. It was a sappy little episode of me packing lunch for this man I don't even know as he went off to work. Apparently I have lived thus far in my life without realizing I have an inner Mrs. BeaverCleaver.

I am a little horrified. What lies beneath. Peel back this veneer and--eek! I locked that one in her room and told her to be quiet. Gave her some remedial reading.

UPDATE: Got the email. A long'un. Still not letting that one out, though. Who knows the mischief she might cause.

The Doctrine of Hope

I was telling K. the Brilliant the story of how I got into the College of Creative Studies. She said that it seemed fitting. That it was grace. And it was.

When Mr. Mudrick (I never got the habit of calling him "Marvin") read my story and told me to enroll in the College and wrote down the classes I needed to take, he saved my life. What happened still surprises me--all I had wanted to do was to see if I could take his writing class, and he took over. Once in the College, I found myself fitting in for what seemed like the first time in my life.

It gave me hope. Until then, I had resigned myself to feeling like an alien. Also, I'd had that crappy childhood and just as crappy adolescence, so I really had no hope that the future would be any improvement. And here it was, this great gift, and life only got better and better.

I loved that man.

Accommodations

In the assessment business, the special arrangements made for special children for testing (e.g., additional time for test-taking, a quiet atmosphere to allow for greater concentration, an aide to read questions aloud) are called accommodations.

I am making accommodations for the little village idiot of my parts, my short-bus-riding heart. We had a little come-to-Jesus in which we agreed that indeed, although there was so very much to love about You Know Who (literally and figuratively), the union had become impossible as my soul had become as despondent as if we'd dressed her up in a velvet halter top and hot pants and abandoned her at the 7-11.

The agreement today is that the village idiot may press his photo to her bosom forever, releasing it occasionally only long enough to kiss the glass, but that the rest of us are going to go about our business. She is welcome in whatever we do, of course.

When a Body

On Saturday I went to the Capitola Bad Art & Wine Festival. I went with my friend Sporty T. She likes art festivals but is not much of a dranker. I, on the other hand, like art and drankin' but hate art festivals unless I am with someone with whom I can make fun of people. (Just being honest. That is how I do. It has been driven home to me so many times this week what a misanthrope I am. Truly. I hate people. I make exceptions. Lots and lots of exceptions. I pretty much like everyone lots of people once I get to know them. But until then--Oh, God!)

Sporty T., on the other hand, is genial and accepting. I keep my inner bitch on a tight leash around her. And muzzle. Especially muzzle, but at one point, I took my muzzle off because I could not help but point out the high number of glamour gym ladies, ladies of our age who look as if they spend 5 hours a day on some kind of cardio machine and the rest of the time getting highlights and putting on makeup, and when they are not doing that, they are undergoing liposuction or botox injections or "enhancements." (I know, I know, I do love me my makeup. But it takes 10 minutes to put on. And until I discovered this particular makeup last year, I only wore makeup on special occasions. Weddings. Except lipstick, which I always wore. Because the rest of that makeup stuff made me feel like I was in drag.) Sporty T., who does not wear makeup and whose wardrobe as far as I can tell consists of jeans, T shirts, and athletic outfits, agreed wholeheartedly with the glamour gym ladies comment, and my inner bitch wagged her tail.

Then Sporty T. and I ran into a friend of hers, Delicious D. Meeting D. was a big eye-opener for me. If I were a man, I would be all over her like a cheap suit. I woulda stormed the castle, y'all. I know how to do it. She would have already received at least one telephone call, a flirty text message or two, and maybe even a mix CD.

Delicious D. is--oh, how shall I put it?--well, in the immortal words of Beyonce, she is bootylicious. And boobylicious. Curvy to a degree that must stop traffic and cause trainwrecks. There is a lot of there there to command your attention.

She seems nice, too. She admired my big huge green ring, which means a compliment, which means I offered her a blowjob (just kidding! [Unless you're gonna do it in the immortal words of Nelly]).

But the reason I am focusing on D.'s beautiful appearance and particularly her body is not to encourage the viewing of women as things. (Although to be honest, I have to say that I don't so much mind being viewed with decorous appreciation. Even indecorous works for me if I am having a bad day. I appreciate being appreciated. As much as I hated a street holla when I was young, I do not mind it now in my inexorable march to withered hagification. There. And I do believe I am a feminist. Oh, it is so confusing!) It is to say that as smart as I think I am and as much as I like to think I am my own person and have not completely succumbed to brainwashing about womanly beauty, I do believe I have been infected.

Especially when it comes to my own womanly curvaceousness. At various times in my life, there has been a lot of me to love. On the day I waddled to the hospital to deliver A. and B., I weighed almost a hundred pounds more than I weigh today. (I gained 80 pounds during gestation.) You probably know without my saying that I did not give birth to two 50-pound babies.

I did not like being such a big girl. I already felt bad about myself before I got pregnant, as I was tipping the scale harder than I usually did. But one of the things I've always loved about A.'s and B.'s father is that he was constant in his appreciation of my body. In fact, all but one (yes, the one who thought I should drop a few pounds was white, even though I was at the lowest end of my range when I was with him) of the men I've been with have been constant and expressive of their appreciation, even though I do not and have never fit in the glamour gym lady category. But I guess I usually discounted the appreciation, as I did not feel that way myself.

It doesn't matter how much external validation you get, as the shrinks say, if you don't buy it. As B. the Beautiful says, it's an inside job.

P.S. In another conversation, B. and I were talking about art:

B.: I respond more to modern art.
Me: I mostly like looking at naked bodies.
B.: Me, too!

P.P.S. I really didn't want to write about this.

Love Will Take You Down

Still reading Cecilia. It's a big ass book, y'all. 919 pages.

As you know, I had my reservations for the first 300 pages. At least. Cecilia is so perfectly perfect. Rich. Smart. Beautiful. Elegant. Admired by all. I'm not a hater. I can appreciate the perfection of others. But perfect people just are not very interesting.

So Cecilia falls in love and starts experiencing emotions. Up until then, her lower range was set at indignation (at the impertinence of louts), dismay (at the decadence of urban living), and worry for her friend, whose clueless extravagance combined with her husband's profligacy was merrily carting the little family to hell in a beribboned handbasket. At the upper range, it was all high-minded generosity and compassion for the poor. All very good and proper, but--and I am betraying my shallows here--boring.

As emotions often do, Cecilia's emotions lead her hither and yon. She makes mistakes. She lies to others (mostly by omission--she has very high standards for her own conduct, God bless her, which makes this state even more difficult for her to bear) and herself. She becomes confused, doesn't know what to do, violates her intuition, retracts a promise. She is beautifully human. (In the immortal words of Jill Scott.)

And the plot ramps up. There is a tragedy that results in death for one and ruin for all connected with him. And then Cecilia and her beloved have all those misunderstandings that lovers do--He loves me, he loves me not--and get all tangled up in trying to hide their feelings for each other, which are plainly read by onlookers, and then they finally--finally!--open their hearts to one another, only to admit the insurmountable obstacles to their match.

I won't spoil it. It's good, though. A lesson to persevere.

P.S. Plus you get to use words like "impertinence" and "effrontery," and really, what is more fun than that? Probably sex, but I don't do that anymore. Maybe one day in the distant future, God willing and the creeks don't rise.

I Heart Oakland

Oakland is still my happy place. I did not visit all my usual haunts; I got a late start this morning. Spent too much time sitting in the big purple chair and peering into my coffee and sighing, "Ah, me."

I did visit the swap meet, but was crushed with disappointment after checking all three entrances. My friend the big security guard was nowhere to be found. He is always there. I am a little worried about him. His absence did mar the pleasure a bit.

Then I walked around the lake. A movie was being made. Assistants carrying clipboards shooed pedestrians off the sidewalk and down to the water's edge, and a van loaded with cameras and equipment sped down Lakeshore. That's all I saw.

It was a beautiful day. Lots of mussel shells on the path. And goose poo. And geese. And people, all kinds of people, short and tall and thin and round and young and old and of all races and temperaments, all circling the lake, some strolling and some running and some using canes and others pushing strollers and some obviously maintaining a rigorous fitness regimen and others just savoring the day. It is a wonderful place.


P.S. I called E. the Enigmatic when I was leaving. For reassurance. I was concerned that perhaps I have embraced too warmly the get-started-eyes. I was wearing way more eyeliner than usual. An Amy Winehouse amount of eyeliner.

E.: They'll think you're easy, like a Sunday morning!
Me: Hahahahahahahahahaha! I am, too!

Imaginary Dogs

Some people have imaginary friends. In our family, we have imaginary dogs.

We are prohibited by our rental agreement from keeping dogs on the premises. The rental agreement clearly states that we are allowed 1 cat and 2 hamsters. (The hamsters, Nippy and Pearl Honey Honey Jar have gone the way of all flesh, may they rest in rodent peace. Though sorely tempted, I have declined to bring more hamsters into the fold, as I had become the Keeper of the Hamsters and Mistress of All Matters Rodentia, responsible for cage cleaning, a task for which I never acquired enthusiasm, feeding, and purchasing food and bedding and chew sticks. Also, I refuse to be an accessory to the carnage, as I am certain the hamsters would be murdered in the night by our bloodthirsty cat.)

We can spend the whole of an hour debating the merits of various dogs and arguing about what kind of dog we're not going to get. And we often do. This is how we while away the time on our daily walks.

A. and B. love dogs. They pore over the pages of a dog encyclopedia. They squeal whenever a dog wags into view. They stop to ask if they can pet almost every dog they see. They know the traits, dispositions, and appearances of most dogs. They are especially fond of pugs. The pug is the dog for which they consistently lobby. Chihuahuas are their second choice for a dog.

I will grudgingly agree that pugs and even chihuahuas are rather appealing. However, as I am the person who will get stuck with an aged decrepit senile dog long after the girls have gone to college and left me to rot alone in my empty nest with a damn dog, I maintain that I get to pick the dog.

A. and B. are both astounded and appalled by my taste in dogs. Because I have fond memories for a dog that once belonged to The Favorite Child, I say that I like Dobermans. I don't know if I do, really; all I know is that I very much liked that particular Doberman.

The only dog on which we all agree is the German shepherd. My family had a German shepherd for a time, a large, beautiful, fierce dog that was the best watch-dog in the world. Over-protective, if anything. He once cleared a 4-foot fence in order to bite a hippified hitch-hiker whose presence on the highway in front of our house maddened him beyond endurance. That was a good dog. While he lived with us, I had a reprieve from my nighttime terrors. I was the most scaredy child who ever lived. I would lie awake at night quaking. Every sound terrified me. A leaf against the window was as bad as a gunshot. But that dog made me feel safe. I like German shepherds.

But they are very hairy, I will say to A. and B. when we are having our imaginary dogs discussion. I don't want such a hairy dog. Apropos of nothing, I will say, And no dogs in the bed. I don't want a big dog in the bed. I say that knowing that all 3 of us will let a dog into the bed.

My Heart Belongs on the Short Bus

Last night I drank a little overmuch, or maybe the problem was that I did not eat all day before I drank moderately, depending on what your definitions of "overmuch" and "moderately" are. My definitions are as flexible as need be so that I do not have to call myself a lush. (I did not drink alone; I was at the Double E.s', though only E. the Enigmatic and I were a-drankin' (Cline viognier, since you ask).

E. told me of her foiled attempt to procure me a date with the father of a friend of hers, a former NBA player and a big hunk of a man. He is a lot older than I am. Over 20 years older. But you know what? I didn't care. I would have happily (happily) explored the possibility. Why not? What do I have to lose? A couple of hours? Nothing ventured, nothing gained. I appreciated her effort.

I myself was to have had a date this evening, a date about which I had very mixed feelings. It was with My Former Gentleman Caller. Last week he telephoned and said something nice to me, and you know how I be about that.

I should say that the date would have been with My Former Gentleman Caller. However, he sent me a text message nigh on 2 o'clock in the afternoon. (Too late, really, to make other plans, which seems a little inconsiderate to me. Also? Texting instead of telephoning such a message?)

The message was slightly presumptuous, in that it informed me he would reschedule, as he found himself with a commitment this evening. The commitment was with his children, and his priorities are certainly as they should be, although I suspect he must have known of his commitment to be with his children prior to mid-afternoon today. I mean, I generally know when I am going to be with my children ahead of time. The message offered no expression of regret, nor any apology for the inconvenience, nor, indeed any indication of disappointment, all of which I would have thought would have been requirements for such a message.

I confess that I took not only the timing but the tone and the content amiss. Oh, there will be no rescheduling this date, my friend. And I use the term "friend" loosely, looser than a pair of sagging pants on a scrawny 15-year-old accustomed to defiantly exposing his underpants on a daily basis.

Unfortunately, my relief from being released from a commitment to which I was not sure I was looking forward did not mitigate my gall at having been set aside in what I perceive as a cavalier manner. Repeat, repeat, repeat. Did I not already learn this same lesson at the hands of this same instructor? And yet, here I come, back again, tuition in hand.

But the "my-heart-belongs-on-short-bus" part? I confess. I have been entertaining such fondness for You Know Who, who came up in several conversations recently (I was not always the one who brought him up, by the way.) It has been a year since the last go-round. (A week more than a year, to be exact.) I love him. I do. How can I love someone who treated me as he did? It is a mystery to me. I think of all my parts, my heart is the one we would shake our heads at and just say kindly that it is not the sharpest knife in the drawer. Don't expect too much of that one is the subtext.

In my affectionate tipsiness (again, you know how I be), I decided it would be a fantastic idea to send a text message expressing my love. I refrained after an internal struggle, but told myself I could do it if I still felt the same way today. When I was sober. I do feel the same way. I haven't sent the message. I feel like I deserve a medal for my restraint. My slow, dull-witted, affectionate, easy, forgetful, forgiving heart is a curse. A curse. A curse. A burden. You have no idea what this one puts me through. Sometimes I wish I could cut it out of my chest and throw it into the ocean.

Slow Ride

. . . in the immortal words of Foghat. The anthem of my adolescence.

The weather: It is the second fogged-over day in a row. It stayed gray all day yesterday. Winter weather. Which is unusual for this time of year. It would have seemed normal a few weeks ago. But now is usually hot and bright until October, when the air starts to feel a little crisp and the sky looks bluer and the clouds whiter. And people say there are no seasons in California.

The wardrobe: I believe it is the perfect day for orange corduroy pants. And lime green boots ("high strung lime"). Whenever I change out of my sweatpants (not pajamas--been walking A. and B. to school in the mornings).

What I'm reading: In addition to the serious books, I'm reading Cecilia by Fanny Burney. I thought I had read it before, but apparently not. I'm not sure what I think about it. I like it well enough to keep reading after 300 pages. I greatly appreciate the length. I like a big hunk of a man book. I am not quite as in love with Cecilia as the author intends. I get the feeling Burney's journals may be more interesting. (One source says that Burney "enlivened the later years of Samuel Johnson," which is a funny way to describe a friendship. Gives her the appearance of a pole dancer or a monkey banging a pair of cymbals. Neither of which seems likely.) Burney married at what was then considered an advanced age for such a venture:

it took immense courage for a woman of forty-one, with few resources of her own, to defy prejudice and opposition in this way. The match proved extremely happy: Frances had previously encountered admirers who were unsuitable, like the hapless Thomas Barlow, or irresolute, like George Cambridge. Now she had found a mature man, who had experienced an adventurous past, and who possessed an outlook broader than that of the weak-kneed socialites who had courted Frances previously. Cultivated, widely travelled, and experienced, D'Arblay must have impressed her with his military prowess and his refined bearing.

The newly married couple settled at Phoenice, a farmhouse near Bookham to the west of Norbury Park. In November 1793 they moved into an adjoining property known as The Hermitage. The D'Arblays read and wrote together: Frances sewed while her husband gardened or studied English. A happy start to the marriage was confirmed when their son, Alexander Charles Louis Pichard, was born on 18 December 1794.

I like it when people fall in love, and I like happy endings.

What I'm knitting: still working on that second baby blanket. I'm in the Nowhere Land of between 1/3 and 1/2 done. It's taking forever. Then it's back to fishnetty scarves. Always looking for love in public, you know.

What I'm listening to: Johnny Cash. The Isley Brothers (click on it, there's this acapella bit that I love--and am I the only one who finds the Rod Stewart cover a travesty?). Diana Ross and the Supremes. Dionne Warwick. Gladys Knight. (I know, where's the beat? But sometimes you got to get out of your usual groove.)

What I'm doing: Big plans this weekend. I'll keep you posted.

Slightly Disgruntled

Today when we were out walking, A. announced her throat hurts. Like she has strep throat.

Oh my God. Kids always do that, when you are out somewhere, the more public the place the better, and then they say something completely outrageous or something that confirms what everyone else already suspected, that you are the worst mother in the world.

Me: You don't have a fever, your appetite is fine, you've been sleeping, you aren't sick, and YOU DON'T HAVE STREP THROAT. Jesus Christ.
A. (getting a little wound up): I didn't say I had strep throat! I said IT FELT LIKE strep throat!
Me: Well, it's not. And you're going to school tomorrow.
A. : I know! I know!

I don't know why her throat hurt. Maybe it's allergies. Maybe she yelled too much at recess (I doubt it, though, she's pretty quiet.) Maybe it is just one of those odd little things. Bodies ache sometimes. We all have little pains. Carry on, soldier! I would be a terrible nurse. The worst in the world. Are you bleeding? Do you have broken bones? Severe internal injuries? No? Then move along!

When we got home, I offered to make her tea, but she declined. I gave her a throat lozenge. She seems fine now.

And tonight was that special little hell on earth, Back to School Night. I confess that although I love individuals to pieces, probably in excess, and certainly more than anyone even wants to be loved, I hate people in groups. Groups of parents especially. I also hate group boosterism.

And I especially hate baloney, like what the principal was trying to feed us. Enrollment at this school has dropped by more than 50 students in the last two years, and it is because there was a sudden, massive influx of kids who are, in ed-speak, "second-language-learners," when another elementary school closed. White flight. But the school has not quite gotten back on its feet, as the administrators have not figured out how to support the second-language-learners and the lower-performing kids (whatever language they speak) while still adequately instructing the higher-performing kids (again, whatever language they speak), and, frankly, sometimes it just is one big . . . mess. (I was going to say something else.) Certainly, it is not a good place for kids like mine, who let us just say are not challenged by anything they encounter at school except the social complexities (that's a euphemism for bullies and shitheads).

Some of us don't know what to do. We can't quit our jobs and volunteer fulltime at school--Jesus, the school asks quite enough of us as it is, what with parents having to drive kids on the four or more field trips a year because our school does not have access to school buses, the $400 required "donation" for arts programs that aren't funded by taxes, the lists taped to the classroom doors of the teacher's wish lists (Kleenex, hand sanitizer, pencils, markers, erasers, crayons). And yet, I know that at least 2 hours of instruction are lost each day while the teachers repeat themselves in Spanish, or round up the second-language learners and send them off to ELD classes or herd them back in, while the English-speakers sit around and poke each other and giggle.

I hate the idea of pulling my kids out of this school and putting them into a school where all the other kids are exactly the same. That seems wrong, and it seems like it will put them at a disadvantage--how can you learn to communicate with people who are different from you if all you ever see are people exactly like you? On the other hand, am I sacrificing my children's education to my ideals? So I try to do a lot of eddicatin' at home. And we recite the multiplication table (what do the math people call it now? multiplication facts?) as we walk to and from school because I am horrified they did not thoroughly learn the multiplication tables as they should have and as required by CA state standards, in the third grade:

2.o Students calculate and solve problems involving addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division: 2.2 Memorize to automaticity the multiplication table for numbers between 1 and 10.

(Nor did any of their peers, the fourth grade teachers informed us tonight, much to our chagrin, although I confess my chagrin started at the end of last year when I realized that the multiplication table did not seem to have been taught at all.) My children are going to grow up bitter and angry, recounting tales of horror to a wide-eyed therapist: My mom used to march us to school, making us chant, "6 times 6 is 36! 6 times 7 is 42! 6 times 8 is 48!"

At Back to School Night, A.'s and B.'s father went to B.'s class for half the time while I went to A.'s class, then we switched, so we could each get to spend a little time with both teachers. There was one of those parents in each class. There's always one, isn't there? No matter where you are. On the train. At a conference. Wherever.

In A.'s class, it was a green-eyed woman in a Santa Cruzy uniform of gauzy pants and tank top who had a tribal tattoo around her left bicep. She interrupted the teacher:

Real Piece of Work #1: Um, excuse me? There's a baby crying? When the baby cries [smile], I can't hear you because you have such a soft, delicate voice. It would work so much better for me if the parents [smile] would take the baby outside when it cries.

I was sitting right next to her. I could hear the teacher just fine. What was much more distracting than the baby was the simultaneous Spanish translation, but I understand and appreciate the need for it, and if that is the price to have these parents involved, then it is a price I am willing to pay. But the soft cry of a tiny baby? It was a newborn. A newborn sounds like a kitten (unless you are the mother, then it sounds like a police siren going off inside your head). What indeed makes people think that they are the only ones in the world who matter?

Then in B.'s class, there was one mother, a tall, very thin, very pale woman with her masses of orange hair gathered in a scrunchy at the top so she looked like a pineapple, who DID NOT STOP TALKING. Not only did she talk, but she made very dramatic gestures, put her face in her hands, rolled her eyes, shrugged her shoulders, and made grimaces. It was quite a show. Someone obviously never got enough attention as a child and has spent her whole life trying to recoup the loss.

When the teacher demonstrated how he uses little plastic figures and a scale to help the kids learn algebraic equations (I know! 4th grade!), this one wanted to make sure the rest of us idiots comprehended this sophisticated stuff:

Real Piece of Work #2 (talking to the teacher but gesturing at the rest of us parents): Everyone has blank looks on their faces. I don't think they understand.

Later, Real Piece of Work #2 was complaining that her daughter said that all of the other kids had AAA road maps and that her map wasn't the same as all the other kids' maps (a CA road map was on the list of required school supplies):

Real Piece of Work #2 (to the teacher): So can you tell me where to get a AAA map?

People, I do regret this. I could not help it. Once again, my mouth did not check with my brain before proceeding:

Me: At AAA!

Down with Jesus

Sometimes people mistake my antipathy for hypocrisy and for the War on Poor People as a hatred of all conservatives, and especially Christians. I don't hate real ones. But it does seem that there is something about Christianity that leads so many into temptation. So many are superglued to the judgment seat. Where their hearts should be are dried up little peas, just rolling around in all that empty space.

Maybe the real problem is that the people making such a big show of carrying all them fancy Bibles ain't reading them:

. . . we believe the historical, Biblically documented teachings of Jesus Christ clearly show that Jesus is a Liberal. His philosophy, based in compassion, equality,
inclusion, forgiveness, tolerance, peace and - most importantly - love, is 100% Liberal.

Not only was Jesus a liberal, he was, in the immortal words of Steve Gilliard, a fighting liberal!

You know, I've studied history, I've read about America and you know something, if it weren't for liberals, we'd be living in a dark, evil country, far worse than anything Bush could conjure up. A world where children were told to piss on the side of the road because they weren't fit to pee in a white outhouse, where women had to get back alley abortions and where rape was a joke, unless the alleged criminal was black, whereupon he was hung from a tree and castrated.

What has conservatism given America? A stable social order? A peaceful homelife? Respect for law and order? No. Hell, no. It hasn't given us anything we didn't have and it wants to take away our freedoms.

The Founding Fathers, as flawed as they were, slaveowners and pornographers, smugglers and terrorists, understood one thing, a man's path to God needed no help from the state. Is the religion of these conservatives so fragile that they need the state to prop it up, to tell us how to pray and think? Is that what they stand for? Is that their America?

Conservatism plays on fear and thrives on lies and dishonesty. I grew up with honest, decent conservatives and those people have been replaced by the party of greed.

But Jesus hated hypocrisy, dishonesty, and greed:

And they come to Jerusalem: and Jesus went into the temple, and began to cast out them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves;

And would not suffer that any man should carry any vessel through the temple.

And he taught, saying unto them, Is it not written, My house shall be called of all nations the house of prayer? but ye have made it a den of thieves.

And the scribes and chief priests heard it, and sought how they might destroy him: for they feared him, because all the people was astonished at his doctrine.

And Jesus loved poor people:

Hearken, my beloved brethren, Hath not God chosen the poor of this world rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom which he hath promised to them that love him?

Jesus wanted his followers to take care of poor people:

Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me.

The followers aren't listening:

Research shows that less than 10 percent of the money Americans give to charity addresses basic human needs, like sheltering the homeless, feeding the hungry and caring for the indigent sick, and that the wealthiest typically devote an even smaller portion of their giving to such causes than everyone else.

If nothing else, maybe they should pay attention when Jesus God-the-Father (I guess you could still say "Jesus" because the whole notion of the Trinity is that they are all 3 the same, right?) makes a case for compassion based on self-interest:

Blessed is he that considereth the poor: the LORD will deliver him in time of trouble.

Let's call it the Divine Fire Insurance Policy.

The View from There

There is something more than a little creepy about Google Earth. I downloaded it, and then of course went straight to my street. There is my house. There is my car, parked on the street. I felt sneaky and awful, even though I was only spying on myself.

(And my neighbor. I confess, I've always been intensely curious about my across-the-street neighbor's backyard, as it is completely fenced off and it seems really big. This is backyard envy; if you go look at my house from Google Earth, you will see that I have no backyard. Anyway, Not-So-Bright has a very large backyard and a lot of patio furniture. Now I feel kinda dirty. Again. Geez.)

DIY and TCB!

While I was married, I relied on A.'s and B.'s father to manage all matters computer- and automobile-related. Whenever I had any kind of car or computer trouble, as troublesome as such trouble might be, I rested easy in the knowledge that he would fix it. And he always did.

After we went our separate ways, I was tossed in the choppy waters for a while and had no one to help me with either cars or computers until You Know Who, who did help me, very much, with both, though it was clear there were points past which he would not go (unlike A.'s and B.'s father, who cheerfully went to the ends of the earth to find solutions to such problems). Thus was born my understanding that I was completely alone in the world, at least when it comes to maintaining and repairing my car and my computer.

I've tested this understanding many times. Yep, still true, even though every gentleman in my adult life has left his imprint on either my car or my computer or both. Which I had not realized until yesterday, when I was talking with a Computer Genius and as we discussed my computer's medical history, I described the various problems encountered over the years and the solutions the various men in my life have employed.

By the end of the conversation, I felt more than a little annoyed with myself that I had never bothered my little head about any of it. The Computer Genius offered possible solutions for me to try to remedy the current state of emergency. After I hung up and wasted a little time wringing my hands and sighing "Woe is me," I followed his recommendations.

The recommendations were time- and labor-intensive, but I persevered, and now my computer is cleansed of whatever was causing the ailments, and it appears that all is back to normal.

Get a Job

One thing I don't miss about working at Great Big Huge Company is the politics. I don't care where you work or at what level, there are on-the-job intrigues and coups and power struggles. When I was at Great Big Huge Company, I fell into habits that helped me survive. In 9 years, I was promoted 5 times. I started as a temporary, part-time worker, and left a position in middle management (where you are get squeezed from both ends--truly, middle management is ringed by the licking flames of hell).

My upward trajectory at Great Big Huge Company owed no small debt to simple lack of competition. The most able of my peers was a part-time student with many talents and pursuits far more interesting than what we did at Great Big Huge Company, and she had no enthusiasm for a career there. Another of my peers, who was super, super smart, always made sure everyone--especially those to whom she reported--knew that she was a lot smarter than they were. She was once described as being someone who sharpened her tongue each morning upon awakening. Tell the truth and shame the devil. Obviously, being constantly reminded that you are a NotSoBright is a galling disincentive to promoting the person who is telling you that. Also, this co-worker would have preferred a more leisurely lifestyle than that of working for a living; she could often be found playing computer games on her office computer, or sparkling in conversation, or playing word games, or creating trivia quizzes, all pursuits at which she excelled. In short, she could be counted upon to provide a diversion, but not to shoulder her share of the labor. And I say all that as someone who really liked her. How I met her was that, when I was a temp, I noticed that she was sitting in a corner reading fashion magazines while the rest of us were working. Every once in a while, someone would interrupt her to ask a question, which she would answer before returning to flipping pages. I thought to myself, "Dang. That looks like a pretty good job. I wonder what she does." So I started talking with her, asking her questions, and we became friends, and when she took an assignment in another department, she recommended that I be hired as well.

Another co-worker was a packrat of very disheveled appearance, a former librarian whose cubicle was barricaded with 4 feet tall stacks of books, magazines, and newspapers. Her cubicle was also home to so many lush houseplants that it was a miniature jungle. This co-worker had a compassionate, tender heart, but it was married to a bitter, complaining nature, kind of like a couple who are clearly each other's bright and shadow side. In times of natural disaster, she would solicit donations for charities to which she gave freely herself, to the point of jeopardizing her own financial stability. Once she told me that she had become a vegetarian because she could not bear the idea of killing and eating animals (she LOVED animals), and yet even vegetarianism was a struggle, because she knew that plants were alive and could communicate, and it was just as horrible to kill and eat them. She spent most of her work day distributing books (those of the Jewish persuasion got books about the Holocaust and famous Jews; feminists got books like Princess Smartypants; I got a mixed bag), discussing charitable causes, and, mostly, complaining about work (especially complaining about management, whom she saw as the Mean and Heartless Committee of Great Satans). Truth be told, she seemed to accomplish very little in the way of work. But we were all very fond of her, and accommodations were often made to keep her employed when one manager or another became exasperated beyond endurance and wanted to fire her. (A few years ago, she did become a casualty of a RIF. I don't know where she is now, or what she is doing. We were all very worried when it happened, and then time went on, and I am very sorry to say that I forgot all about her until recently.)

My little successes were particular wormwood to these two former co-workers, whom I had counted as friends until my promotion to supervisor. They spoke of their feelings often, and to many other co-workers. O, Lord, did people talk there!--and so I eventually heard how they believed that my rise in status (window office, mo money) was directly related to my propensity and talent for ass-kissing. At first my feelings were hurt, but of course they had to create some narrative to explain why I got promoted and they didn't. Besides, it was only fair that I was the target of gossip. I certainly did far more than my share of talking during my sojourn there. Certainly much more than was necessary, prudent, or kind. Live and learn. I hope I wouldn't do it now. (While I think regrets are a waste of time, I cannot help sometimes but look back and blush at my own bad behavior. Ah, well. That's how I learn. Too bad my lessons often come at the expense of others.)

What my co-workers didn't understand was that in my own way I was just as inept at navigating office politics as they were, my greatest failings being the tendency to overreact with great emotion and to reveal all my thoughts without pausing to weigh the probably effects and consequences. What I finally learned was that the best way to get along was to keep my mouth shut as much as I could manage without exploding from the containment. I also learned to adopt a posture of neutral civility, that the absence of active dislike did not mean I was a hypocrite, and that was a worthwhile lesson indeed, one that serves me well in every arena.

In any case, I was thinking about all this because last week I wondered whether I might ever consider getting a real job again. In some respects, it seems like it would be a good thing: the increased financial security, the medical benefits, of course, and the retirement funds, and having a community, and maybe having a little more structure in my life. Then I think about everything I didn't like, and especially the meetings, and having to wear grown-up lady clothes every day, and mostly, the feeling of being owned by Great Big Huge Company. Eek.

Snap Out of It

When You Know Who had an all-access pass, he once interrogated me as to the sources of what he called my insecurities. It was a painful experience. I loved him; I wanted to be truthful; I longed for both of us to bare our souls to one another and run around happy and free in our birfday suits as if in our own little emotional nudist colony. With little daisy-chain crowns.

What happened, though, was that my shivering little soul stood naked and chilled, while his sat cozily fully clothed at the judgment seat.

That's no way to do. First of all? Imbalance of power. And all relationships--I'm just trying this out here, bear with me--are about power. There are some relationships that are like power sources. Rechargers. Others are drainers. Run away! Most do a little of both. But no relationship works if one person is perfect, if one person has all the power. If you have a friend who is always advising you, who clearly sees you as the pitiful one in need of bounty and assistance, you will eventually walk away from that friendship. Friendship occurs between equals. Both have to contribute; both have to receive.

So I made the huge mistake of telling You Know Who that I was afraid that if he really knew me, he would despise me. [Hence my policy of never denigrating myself to a man. Ladies! Don't do it!]

This weekend I was talking to one of the angelic committee [I think I am paraphrasing her part of the dialogue. But not mine. Mine I remember very clearly.]:

Me: Are you tired of me calling you and crying?
She: [laughs] No. I feel a little weepy, too.
Me: Why?
She: I'm afraid that if anyone ever really gets to know the hideous real me, they will run screaming in horror.
Me: Well. I can tell you that is ridiculous, because I've known you for at least 20 years and the more I know you, the more I love you. In fact, you are known for your lovableness. In fact, I just spent ten minutes talking to [a mutual friend] about how very lovable you are in every way. [It was true. That conversation had taken place about a week or two ago. We waxed rhapsodic about the virtues of She.]

I think some of us have this default switch of feeling bad about ourselves when something goes wrong in our lives or if everything is not perfect or if we feel some shudder of uncertainty about pretty much anything: You are horrible and hideous and despicable in every way and no one will ever love you again because you are horrible and hideous and despicable in every way.

It is ridiculous:

O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!

. . . in the immortal words of Robert Burns.

If you do occasionally fall into a puddle of self-loathing (you probably don't, in which case I am talking, as I often do, to myself), call a friend, someone who really knows you, and ask him or her to hold up a mirror. Sometimes we need to see ourselves as we really are. Interestingly enough, the people who genuinely are kinda despicable and hideous and horrible are not people to whom these thoughts would ever occur in a million years. Go figure. Another one of the gods' hilarious little jokes.

Party at My Place

According to my cell phone call log, yesterday I spent 6 hours on the phone. Not with one person, but with 3 different members of the committee. Much there-there-ing ensued.

Every once in a while, one of the angelic committee will tell me something I said that stuck in her mind. Usually I have no recollection of having said it. Usually it sounds way smarter than anything I think I could come up with. A million monkeys on a million typewriters, you know.

B. the Beautiful said that I once told her that emotions don't mean anything. The most that can be said of emotions is that they can indicate whether one is heading in the right direction or not. You know that bad, bad feeling that comes from deep deep inside and churns your stomach when you make a stupid decision? And, the positive corollary, that most excellent feeling of lightness and relief when you make a wise one? (Of course this is too smart for me to have made up. I got it from one of those writers I am always reading. Which, I don't remember. But a lot of them say the same things. The truth is the truth.)

A few years ago, I established the habit of morning and evening reflections. It started out, as things always did around my way, as a grandiose plan. A few years before this, I had been attending a meditation group once a week. About fifteen of us sat in a big, beautiful, light-filled (in the summer) room furnished only with cushions. The polished wood floors gleamed. Sheer white curtains fluttered in the breeze. On the far wall, between two windows, was a shelf with a statue of the Buddha. On the shelf were always a few fresh flowers or oranges. The leader would read, usually from the writings of Thich Nhat Hanh, and then we would silently meditate for 45 minutes, at which point a bell would be rung (gently), and we would do walking meditation (it could have been 15 minutes, it could have been 45, I don't remember), and then another long session of sitting meditation. The session concluded with a brief discussion and sharing time. (I distinguished myself by NEVER sharing.)

I stopped going because I realized that although it may have been beneficial to my mind and spirit, more sitting was exactly the last thing my body needed. That's when I began the rigorous yoga practice (which has by now evolved into a very gentle practice).

Still, I recognized my need for regular reflection. That's when I started with this elaborate morning and evening ritual suggested by one of my favorite spiritual writers. Well. That was impossible to keep up. It involved asking oneself a series of questions having to do with every area of one's life. It was like giving your soul a root canal twice a day. Even I, with my seemingly infinite capacity for self-absorption, became heartily sick of reflecting upon myself and my actions and my feelings. I replaced the elaborate ritual with a simple one.

Part of the current ritual (which I have maintained consistently for the last few years) is to observe how I feel, in general and about specifics. I do this right before I fall asleep and right when I wake up. It is very helpful. Sometimes I don't know how I feel until I ask myself, I just know that something is wrong. So I did my little evening inventory and reflections last night. Then I had the best dream I have ever had. It was like a song. (Or maybe this one. Or this one.) It was like the best party you could ever imagine.

Dirge of Myself, Part Eleventy-Million and One

(This may sound familiar.)

You might think that I didn't write yesterday because I was feeling sulky and defensive, but no, it was because I had big busy important things to do. Such as clean my house, which has not been cleaned since that one time after Don't Ask Part II when, flush with the giddiness of my back starting to feel better, I re-injured myself by standing on a stool and reaching up to dust the ceiling fan (you know how sometimes you have an idea, and even at that very moment of birthing this idea, you think to yourself, "O my God, this is a terrible idea, this is the Queen Mother of All Bad Ideas," and yet you persist?). B. helped me clean. I paid her. We did an excellent job and you would think I would be happy now in my shining little nest but I am not.

Briefly, the things that are contributing to my misery:

1. my own miserable company ("The mind is its own place, and in it self Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n." In the immortal words of Milton.)
2. See above.
3. See above.
4. See above.

Oh, I could manufacture a buncha reasons. Blame is so very easy. I could blame my computer's bad behavior and my putting off calling a technician, even though I have two names of people I can call.

I could blame my client whom I love so much for presenting me with an unrealistically optimistic schedule that cries out for expectations management.

I could blame this morning's exchange of unpleasantry with A.'s and B.'s father (not really an exchange, as most of the unpleasantness came from this side, and I have to say that it irritates me no end to express myself and to have my expressions dismissed, or--even worse, really--agreed with and then ignored), the like of which has not occurred for a really long time. But unpleasantries occur occasionally between people, and it is a testament to our commitment to the welfare of the children that we have so few, as sharing parenting responsibilities with someone who is no longer one's mate and for whom one does not have that kind of love is challenging indeed. There are so many opportunities to disagree and find fault. If you looked for them, you could easily find such opportunities. As many as you want. Daily. Shooting fish in a barrel, really.

I could blame the pile-up of everything from the last month or so--the Don't Ask Part II; the subsequent dealing with insurance companies and all the estimates and errands; the back pain; the curtailing of my usual activities; the unfortunate forgetting to submit invoices for a month of work to that client I love so much which means not getting a paycheck until the end of September at the earliest; the ongoing work with another client who used to be a client I love so much but then my primary contact person left that agency and now I am dealing with someone who does not know and trust me in the same way, which is understandable but which creates so much extra work for me that I can hardly believe it, to the point that I am wondering whether it is worth the effort to maintain the relationship; A.'s and B.'s return to school and the changes to our schedule and their emotional reactions to same. . .I'll stop here, although I bet I could find more sources of disgruntlement if I kept looking. That I am sometimes overwhelmed by the responsibilities of parenting, for example. And I could try to say with a straight face that I am unhappy because I am not in a relationship with someone I adore, but even I, with my breath-taking capacity for delusion--know that that dog don't hunt. A relationship is not a vaccine against unhappiness.

The only thing to do is to shift the focus. So I will find something to distract myself with, and I will try, try, try to remember that nothing lasts forever, even a mood as foul as this one and even the disagreeable experience of being shackled to oneself.