as opposed to

the dark side

Watched Taxi to the Dark Side this evening. Found myself crying a little (yes, Erica, again), frightened and saddened and frustrated and thinking too much about the banality of evil. Hannah Arendt, who first coined the phrase in 1963's Eichmann in Jerusalem, argued that what was so shocking about Eichmann was his very normality. He came across, to her at least, as being little more than a high-level bureaucrat who happened to have the task of streamlining the Jews' deportation to the death camps, and who performed the task, without independent thought, without any introspection on morality, exceedingly well.

There have been various studies over the years on the human capacity for cruelty, including Stanley Milgrom's shock experiments at Yale and Philip Zimbardo's infamous Prison Experiment at Stanford (re-enacted pop-culturally speaking in LeGuin's The Dispossessed and TV's Veronica Mars, but also apparently recently re-enacted for real). These two in particular, along with Arendt's theories, have in some ways come to dominate the field, at least in so far as almost everyone has heard of them. Two psychology professors writing for The Psychologist earlier this year argue that this dominance has actually been a detriment to the field by limiting further study.

But the banality of evil exists, whether it is manifested in powerful figures like Eichmann (or Cheney and Rumsfeld and their defense of torture) or in the individuals actually charged with carrying out relatively mundane acts (German civilians building the railroads that brought the Jews to the concentration camps; American soldiers charged with prepping a prisoner for questioning) that culminate in horrifying brutality, or, most likely, somewhere in the interactions between these two groups. The above-mentioned professors point out the quite obvious (but also sometimes ignored) notion that "brutality occurs when people identify strongly with groups that have a brutal ideology." Our leaders equivocate and dodge and set up legal justifications for brutality (Cheney minimizing waterboarding, the so-called 'ticking time-bomb scenario', it's only torture if your organs fail) and then blame a few 'bad apples' when scandals like Abu Ghraib go public.

No matter whether this evil comes down from the higher echelons of power or rises up from the masses, it remains a horrifying thing, this seeming ease with which people can sink into cruelty, can so easily fall into committing inhumane acts, and can be convinced that these acts are normal, even acceptable.*

But also this evening I've been listening to some Jose Gonzalez, who apparently has been around for awhile, but whom I only recently discovered: heartbeats, crosses, teardrop.

Which in turn got me to pulling out a couple old and much beloved Massive Attack songs: teardrop, risingson, unfinished sympathy, safe from harm.

Which made me feel a whole lot better.

*A couple other interesting articles on this stuff are here, here, here and here.

portland, snowbound, 12/20 - 12/23

"And I'm heading west
Without a sad goodbye
And I'm heading west
I'm like a letter with no address
Just like a book I read
I'm heading west..."
(Cyndi Lauper)

tall dave

feeling toxic, or, the disquietude of bodies and the trails they leave behind

I've had a sore throat, on and off, for a few days, and have been sneezing every now and again. Nothing particularly onerous, but I was supposed to have dinner with a friend tonight and even these small complaints were enough to make me cancel our plans.

This friend, you see, has been undergoing treatment over the last two years for multiple myeloma. A cancer of a particularly nasty sort, from what I can tell, and one that most often attacks people decades older than he and I.

He has been home for awhile now, recovering nicely from the latest bone marrow transplant. But he cannot yet go back to work, cannot eat in restaurants or go to the movies or go out for a drink or walk around in crowds or take public transportation.

And he most definitely cannot be around anyone who is sick, even someone just sick with a cold.

This got me to remembering a particular discussion from a queer theory course I took in college. The topic was, uncomfortably enough, seepage. Fluids. Ooze. Excretions. Specifically the seepage of bodies; the breakdown, the breaching, of boundaries and the contamination, real or imagined, that ensues.

We sometimes think of our bodies (or at least we are sometimes told that we should think of our bodies) as temples, to be honed and toned and shaped into some idealistic mold of what it is to be human, impenetrable to age, disease, danger. But eventually this gets turned on its head, ripped out from the inside, and our bodies betray us and become, in themselves, dangerous. Usually we think of this in terms of danger to ourselves. Congestive heart failure. Stroke. Cancer. But every once in awhile we are reminded that we can be, that we sometimes are, a danger to others, however unintentionally or unwittingly.

A woman I once knew was misdiagnosed as having Hepatitis C, an infectious disease transmitted by blood. She carried this (mis)information around with her for weeks. I remember her telling me about a dinner at some fancy restaurant where she somehow cut her finger. Not a bad cut, little more than a paper cut, but it bled a bit, as fingers do. Not thinking, she staunched it with her napkin (a cloth napkin, this being a fancy restaurant). But then awareness came crashing back into her and she snatched the napkin off the table and crammed it into her pocket, guilt-stricken, not wanting to leave any of her malignant self, any of her personal danger, behind.

I've been thinking about this napkin and the need for containment, and the mingling and unmingling of bodies, and the spaces around bodies, and the traces bodies leave behind.

I've been anxious about seeing this friend of mine for months, for almost two years, truth be told. I avoided visiting him for a long time, despite feeling horrible about it, both during his hospital stays and later when he was back home. Never because I didn't want to see him, because I did, but rather because I could never quite trust my generally healthy body to not somehow contaminate his oh so fragile body.

Sometimes when bodies collide, even if it's just the air around them, even if it's just a shared moment of in- and exhalation, bad things can happen. Sometimes the best thing we can do for people we love is stay well away from them.

confession

I've been smoking lately.

These past few weeks I've slipped back in to it again, though I couldn't tell you exactly why.

It started with a sudden compulsion, on my way home one day in mid November, the day before going to a friend's mother's memorial service. The day before being confronted, again, with the ex-boyfriend.

He was never fond of it, this unpleasant little habit of mine, and I quit periodically during the years we were together, to greater or lesser effect.

I would quit, and then there would be a fight, and then in a fit of rage and defiance I would run out, slamming doors behind me, to the closest open news stand or bodega. And I would stand outside, sometimes in rain, sometimes in snow, on a corner under a streetlight or overlooking the river, and puff away until I was calm enough to return to the scene of our most recent crimes against each other.

The rage and defiance aren't so much an issue these days, so I'm not sure where this need for some small sense of self-destruction comes from.

It's not something I feel good about.

I remember the first cigarette I ever smoked, one late spring night back in 1993, a few weeks after my father's death, up on the bleachers overlooking my high school's football field.

I remember getting home late, night after night, and dashing in to the bathroom to rub my teeth with toothpaste before going in to kiss my mother goodnight, to let her know that her girl was home safe, that she could sleep soundly.

I thought then that I would stop before I was twenty, call an end to adolescent acting out, but that was half a lifetime ago now.

The other night Nick and I were out for one of our dinners and I was talking to him about the breast lump, and about how, when I found it, my first instinct was to call the ex-boyfriend, looking for something. Comfort, I suppose, or salvation. Nick said his guess was that it wasn't so much about the ex-boyfriend per se, but about the habits, the learned behaviors, we all fall back on in times of crisis.

We left the bar then and I pulled a cigarette and a book of matches out of my coat pocket. Nick glanced over, chuckled, and said, "Well, or there's that."

So yeah, there's that. But there's also the hope - no, the knowledge - that I will move through this too, and come out again on the other side. You know, grow up a little bit more and take responsibility for my actions and all that scary adult stuff.

Man, I think I need a smoke.

logic

I was thinking on Saturday, over the course of an evening spent making ebelskivers and helping Chris and Andrew decorate their first Christmas tree, about Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and his band of merry misfits.

This got me to feeling a bit nostalgic for all those old Christmas movies I adored so much as a child, Rudolph and Frosty the Snowman and March of the Wooden Soldiers (aka Babes in Toyland), and how excited I would get about watching them every December.

Except that they inevitably caused a bit of conflict in our household, because they inevitably conflicted with the nightly news. My Dad was an avid watcher of the nightly news and, as with so many things, he and I shared a certain propensity for extreme stubbornness.

My argument, of course, was the indisputable stance that these movies only came on once a year and he got to watch the news every other night. His argument, of course, was that the movies were the same damned thing every year and the news was different every single night.

He generally had the good grace to let me win.

manhattan christmas

sad sad sign

'preface to a twenty volume suicide note'

Lately, I've become accustomed to the way
The ground opens up and envelopes me
Each time I go out to walk the dog.
Or the broad edged silly music the wind
Makes when I run for a bus...

Things have come to that.

And now, each night I count the stars.
And each night I get the same number.
And when they will not come to be counted,
I count the holes they leave.

Nobody sings anymore.

And then last night I tiptoed up
To my daughter's room and heard her
Talking to someone, and when I opened
The door, there was no one there...
Only she on her knees, peeking into

Her own clasped hands.

(Amiri Baraka)

ode to miss pig

It's been a bad year for the McNeil cats, beginning and now also ending with their loss.

Miss Pig, presumably, is dead. There is no physical evidence, only her unprecedented failure to appear at my mother's kitchen door last Wednesday morning, mewling her ridiculous little mew in the hopes of obtaining foodish delights.

There are coyotes in Anacortes and, on occasion, they have been known to nab unwary felines. My mother fears the worst.

Miss Pig (also known affectionately as just Pig, as in, "Where's the Pig? It's breakfast time!" or, "Oh Pig, what have you got into now?") was a homeless cat, a raggedy muffin stray of a cat, who adopted Mom and Paul five or six years back. She quickly squiggled her way into their hearts through her furriness and funniness and sweetness. She earned her name not by her size, as one might imagine (she was big, no doubt, but much of that was mere fluff), but by her propensity for rolling around in the dirt. Literally. No one was happier during Mom and Paul's house renovations than Miss Pig, who rapturously took advantage of the dirt piles scattered over the lawn. Rumor has it that cats are fastidious in nature, but Pig put that rumor to bed.

She was a funny cat, and made the oddest little chirpy noises, and had the softest (if also the knottiest) fur of any cat I ever knew, and we'll miss her. And for all the horribleness of being eaten, presumably, by a coyote (or perhaps more mundanely, if less colorfully, hit by a car), I am glad that she got to run around in the sunshine, and roll around in the dirt (even if Mom and Paul's comforter sometimes bore the brunt of this slovenliness), and live a life she loved, even a life cut short.

lounging llama

playground, amsterdam avenue

received

Two mysterious text messages of unknown origin arrived this morning. My hope is that the sender figures out why the recipient may not be replying in a timely fashion. And I am reminded, in trying to decipher their meaning (a diminutive Rosetta stone to the next generation), that I am in some ways too old for such things. I find it difficult, even within the confines of texting, to eschew the grammatically required apostrophes, and am loath to disembowel words of their lovely vowels or silent consonants. One might argue, I suppose, that they embody a certain innate poetry, a quickness of thought, of key stroke, that captures an undulating vocal linguistic style to which we are not often exposed in print. But one also might not.

Itz jess y u at da hospital bri told me

Ima hit u up when i get home do nt txt dis num ite ma 1

a shout out to my fellow whedonites

Venice Diaries, fantasizing about Our First Geek President, postulates that Obama may secretly have been joking on the campaign trail about McCain being a 'wee puppet man.'

In other geek news, a team of Columbia Libraries student employees took this year's grand prize at, yes, the one and only Pimp My Bookcart Contest

loyalties

As all you loyal readers know, I tend to drink a cup of coffee of a morning. And as you also know, I've developed a bit of a camaraderie with my coffee suppliers, those sweet men who work at the various places from which I purchase said coffee.

Which is a lovely thing, and something that I truly adore about this great, seething, teeming city of mine. But it also leads to divided loyalties.

I've been going to the stand on 116th & Broadway for awhile now, though I couldn't really tell you why. I think it's because he remembers to put only one sugar in my coffee, instead of the three heaping spoonfuls that generally equals a 'regular' in this town.

But this morning I decided to go to Hamilton Deli instead, though again I couldn't really tell you why. And when I got up to the counter, my deli man glanced up, did a double-take, rubbed his eyes, looked at me again, and crowed, "Emily! Where have you been??"

Needless to say, it was with more than a little guilt that I handed over my dollar bill and a quarter before heading back up the stairs into the winter cold.

the birds and the bees, or, just one of the differences between the girls and the boys

Lauren and I were sharing an evening last Friday of lounging around my living room, eating pizza, talking, having a couple drinks. Our wide-ranging discussion jumped from marriages to gay rights to biracial presidents to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints to identity politics to felony-convicted congressmen to our desire to have or to not have children.

Suddenly she turned to me and said, "How old would it be now?"

It took me a moment to understand what she was asking, and then it took me a moment to absorb her question, to appreciate her awareness of my life and the role she's played in it. She was one of the first people I told about the pregnancy and sat with me on the lawn outside of work one afternoon, our hands curled around cups of coffee, listening patiently as I talked myself in circles about how best to proceed.

It, that boy or girl child that I chose not to have back in June of 2002, would be going on six years old now. I do not often wonder about this boy or girl child, this wholly unknown creature, and I do not regret the decision that we made. But I do wonder, sometimes, about motherhood, especially as I watch more and more of my friends starting families. I wonder what we might have been like as parents together. Not back then, which would have been a tragedy, but now, as I find myself grounded in the world in a way that was hard to imagine six years ago. I wonder because I never wanted children, from the time I was a small girl myself, until I met this man and fell in love and suddenly, shockingly, found myself wanting it all. Marriage, babies, intermingled family Christmases, an entire life I had never wanted, never even dreamed of wanting, before.

I was trying to explain some of this to Lauren, this ongoing struggle to figure out how much of what this man and I shared was mine, is mine, to bring forward into a future without him. I got tangled up in words, a blizzard of words, until finally Lauren brought me back to earth again, laughingly saying, "Well, thank God, because I deal with enough first graders at school every day!"

The next evening I was having dinner with two couples, four men who are dear to me, warm and wonderful and kind. But tension crept in when one of them, in the framework of a "You won't believe what so-and-so said!" story, told us how his grandmother had recently asked his stepmother if she had ever considered aborting her child. It was supposed to be a gotcha kind of moment (to steal another phrase from the recent media), and I suppose it was, at least to the guys around the dinner table.

But to me, it felt like a revelation, a moment of openness and connection between two grown women wondering about each other's histories and feeling close enough, intimate enough, to ask.

bridge, 11.13.08

lost, one shoe, 120th & broadway

nick

'human skin can be hard to live in...'

I've been pre-occupied with yet another Icelandic band lately, by the odd name of Seabear (at least odd if you're from Anacortes and are more familiar with this other Seabear).

arms
singing arc
i sing i swim

and just for good measure, a little more mum

letters

Erica teases me on a regular basis about letters. In that I write a lot of them. And then I go to work and complain or regale her with stories about whatever politician or celebrity or newspaper article or friend or relative most recently inspired or aggravated me into writing another letter. At which point she rolls her eyes and says, "Oh, McNeil, of course you did." Chuckling good-naturedly, thank God.

John McCain's campaign, for example, received a rather irate missive earlier this fall about McCain's claims that his campaign website had proof that Obama actually wanted kindergarten children to learn about sex. (I never found it and I never heard back).

Governor Paterson received a heartfelt thank you last summer for being as supportive of gay rights as he is (generic response posted here) and a more recent plea to push through same-sex marriage rights here in New York now that California, Arkansas, Florida, and Arizona have, for the moment at least, fallen by the wayside when it comes to equality.

Last Monday almost-President-elect Barack Obama received a somewhat grumbly email in response to his less than full-throated opposition to California's Proposition 8. In an interview with MTV, Obama was brave enough to admit that he opposed the notion of amending a state constitution to remove rights from a select group of American citizens. But he also clarified that he believes marriage should be between a man and a woman and that he is in fact opposed to gay marriage. I asked why he couldn't have stopped after the first part. (I got an automated response from the Obama-Biden Transition Team on Thursday thanking me for my support. In all fairness to the team, they have the most inclusive non-discriminatory hiring policy I've ever seen. But still, this was disappointing.)

Not quite in the same vein, but I recently stumbled across a letter from one Democratic Candidate for U.S. Senate, published in the Windy City Times, and dated February 11th, 2004. It's quite a letter ("As a state Senator, I have taken on the issue of civil rights for the LGBT community as if they were my own struggle because I believe strongly that the infringement of rights for any one group eventually endangers the rights enjoyed under law by the entire population.") and I can only hope that this former senate candidate, after his January Presidential inauguration, lives up to his earlier self.

Lastly, feeling both inspired and demoralized after finally reaching the end of a long, long campaign season, I sent my 91-year-old grandmother a letter yesterday morning:

Dear Grandma,
I've been thinking about you a lot this week, in the wake of Barack Obama's election Tuesday night, but also in the wake of gay rights being so soundly defeated. It's a heartbreaking thing, that America is so ready to move forward in some ways and yet still so ready to oppress in other ways. But what I've been thinking is how very lucky Nathan and I, and all of your grandchildren, are to have had you all these years as a role model. I know that, were you in California, you would have been among the tragically small number of older people to vote against Proposition 8, to see the immorality of taking away human rights and human dignity. And so I wanted to write to you, to tell you how grateful I've always felt to have you as my grandmother, a woman so committed to common sense and simple human decency that in some ways you're a woman generations ahead of your time. I love you, Grandma Mac. Thank you for being you.
Love,
Emily

when 'wife' just won't suffice...

"Mr. President-elect, congratulations to you. What an awesome night for you, your family and your supporters. Laura and I called to congratulate you and your good bride."
-Bush to Obama, 11.4.08

quote of the day

I hereby order that "mandate" immediately be stricken from all the dictionaries and vocabularies of every Democrat in the country. That dirty word has no place in a democracy. That said, feel free to use
the phrase, "Wow, we kicked some ass."
-Sherman Alexie

random thoughts on the election

I was very happy and lucky to be in a room full of people I love last night, with other people I love a mere phone call away, to share the joy of the day's presidential election results.

Chris and Andrew called from Harlem to report rejoicing in the streets, as evidenced by the wild shouting and laughing of thousands of Obama supporters in the back ground.

Omar, newly arrived to New York City from Puerto Rico, declared complete satisfaction with his decision to choose to vote here in New York for this historic presidential campaign, despite forfeiting his right to vote in Puerto Rico.

Other Andrew, somewhat less newly arrived to New York City from Wichita, Kansas via the United States Army, seemed thrilled to find himself surrounded for once by bleeding heart liberals (and elated bleeding heart liberals at that) on election night.

Mom, when we got through to each other on the phone, said that she'd left the living room, daring to step away from the television for a moment, only to hear Paul start shouting (which, if you know Paul, is cause for alarm). Much to her relief, it quickly became clear that this was a shout of joy.

But then there are the heartbreakers. Arizona apparently couldn't get it right two years ago, but this time around managed to adopt legislation banning same-sex marriage. Floridians and Californians*, in their open-mindedness and commitment to the notion of all people being created equal, actually voted to amend their Constitutions to take away the rights of gays to marry. Arkansas went beyond gay marriage and decided that unmarried couples (of any sort) don't have the right to adopt or foster children. (Because, you know, it's better for kids to be stuck in orphanages or abusive homes than to be placed in the care of loving, supportive families.) Alaska decided to send a convicted felon back to Washington, where he will get to cast votes in the Senate, even though Alaskan felons are not permitted to vote until after having served their time.

But on the other hand, Connecticut voters soundly rejected a plan to convene a state convention with the intention of overturning gay marriage rights there, so same-sex weddings can commence next week. South Dakota voters rejected draconian anti-abortion legislation again. And Colorado, bless its little heart, not only broke for Obama but also defeated a ballot measure redefining the legal term "person" to include all fertilized (human) eggs.

And did I mention that the Democrats won a majority in the New York State Legislature for the first time since 1964??

Oh yeah.

*Can someone explain to me how, exactly, it's fair or just for a mere straight-up majority to decide to take away a minority group's rights? Isn't it the Constitution's job to protect minorities from the tyranny of the majority? And does anyone else find it odd that the Mormon Church is so obsessed with defining marriage between a man and a woman, anyway? I mean sure, they outlawed "plural marriage" back in 1890, but only to gain statehood, and yet somehow they've got the moral highground on this one??

first family

the coffee stand man & me, or, oh how i love this town

Him: Hello, miss! Your usual?
Me: Yes, please.
Him: Have you voted yet?
Me: Gah, I spent over an hour on line this morning!
Him: Me, I cannot vote. But can I ask... who did you vote for?
Me: Obama.
Him: You New Yorkers, you are all the same!
Me (slightly taken aback): Oh... who would you have voted for?
Him: Mr. Obama, of course!

third party politics (also quote of the day)

You probably haven't heard of the Working Families Party, a small third party outfit here in the great state of New York. I've barely heard of it, and I'm not only practically a native New Yorker, but a New Yorker with at least a passing interest in most things political.

Back in those heady days of late October 2004, family friend Bill McAllister sent out a mass email to his NY friends & cohorts asking us to vote for John Kerry on the Working Families Party ballot line. So I did. And then promptly forgot about it.

But there was an article in the Times last week that I found intriguing, so I've been doing a little research.

The WFP came into existence only ten years ago, as a kind of coalition of local labor unions and progressive community organizations here in New York City, and has slowly been growing into a force to be reckoned with. The party has not only thrown its weight behind various Democrats (Charles Schumer pulled in over 150,000 votes back in 2004 on the WFP line) and even some Republicans (State Senator Nicholas Spano won the WFP's support in 2004 due to his strong stance on increasing the state minimum wage, defeating Andrea Stewart-Cousins by about 18 votes*), but also has one of its own members, Letitia James, on the New York City Council.

The WFP is committed to progressive advocacy: fighting for universal health care; standing up for gay rights, women's rights, immigrant rights; protecting the environment; improving education; overturning the draconian Rockefeller drug laws; calling a moratorium on the death penalty.

So, in two days' time, I'll be voting for Barack Obama on the Working Families line, and I would encourage all you New Yorkers to do the same. A vote for Obama is a vote for Obama, but a a vote for Obama on the WFP line shows support for a broad range of progressive policies and practices we would all do well to applaud (and helps to keep the WFP on the ballot at all).

(For a much more eloquent, studied take on all this, take a look at Katrina Vanden Heuvel's editorial in The Nation.)

Quote of the Day:
"Yesterday, Dick Cheney came out of his undisclosed location. He said that he is, and I quote, 'Delighted to support John McCain.' He's delighted. You've never seen Dick Cheney delighted before. But he is. That's kind of hard to picture."
(Barack Obama, I can only imagine, delightedly)

*Oddly enough, Spano was defeated in 2006 by Andrea Stewart-Cousins, who had the backing of Act Now NY, my friend Andrew's political action group. Unfortunately for Spano, in the cut-throat world that is politics, he had not only not won the support of Act Now NY, but had also lost the support of the WFP -- not because he "had stopped being a loyal ally" but rather because he was "no longer viewed as an effective one."* And so it goes. Poor bastard.

out of the mouths of babes

7th graders at the Ron Clark Academy, Atlanta, Georgia

'what are you thinking of?'

"'What are you thinking of?' she whispers.
I am staring into the garden.
I am watching the moon
wind its trail of golden slime around the oak,
over the stone basin of the fountain.
How can I tell her
I am thinking that transformations are not forever?"
(Susan Mitchell, From the Journals of the Frog Prince)

Other read of the day: Listen, better angel (just one of many, perhaps hundreds, of bloggers writing in opposition to California's Proposition 8, brought together for your perusing and reading pleasure via Write to Marry Day)

pictures

So I dragged myself out of my apartment Saturday night, made my way to the train station through rain and wind strong enough to make an umbrella useless, and rode the A-train (going local, of course) all the way down through Manhattan and out to Fort Green, Brooklyn, to a friend's birthday party.

I'm not much of one for socializing, generally, and certainly not with an apartment full of folks I don't really know. But I'm glad I went, in the end, because I actually met some pretty interesting people.

Sunday afternoon, after stumbling home at 2am, sleeping in until nearly 10, and frittering away much of the day, I went online in search of a particular New York Times article from last summer. This article, in fact, and not only because I had just the night before met both the photographer about whom the piece was written and the person who wrote it, but because the pictures sounded so damn cool.

Chris keeps telling me that I should hang stuff on my walls, keeps asking me what I might want there, seems almost flustered by these blank spaces in my apartment and even offered at one point to buy me a poster. But I've put off hanging things, investing in things, I think because I worry that the beauty I imagine hanging there cannot be matched by anything I'd actually find. (Also, of course, because of a chronic and unfortunate combination of laziness and cheapness.)

I think, though, that if I had my choice of anything, I might hang a couple of Nathan's photographs, clustered on my living room wall, framed somehow in driftwood and catching the last of the evening light.

endorsements

John McCain lost an endorsement from the Anchorage Daily News this weekend, but won an endorsement from Al Qaeda.

Kinda like good old George W. winning Iran's endorsement back in '04.

Way to go, John!

going home, 10.24.08

125th & Broadway

down under the overpass

'I always wanted a son named Zamboni,' she said (and other semi-newsworthy stories)

This in from Erik yesterday: Palin Says She Considers Herself Intellectual

Also in the news, this rather heartbreaking (and totally unfair - how was it unethical to promote his daughter's book when no one was profiting from it, I ask you?) story: A Brooklyn Librarian Is Fined For Promoting Daughter's Book

And this, the tale of a growing new genre in the literary world: Urban Fiction Makes Its Way From Streets to Libraries

Then there was this fun little article about a new book I want to read called The City’s End: Two Centuries of Fantasies, Fears and Premonitions of New York’s Destruction. Because I've been kind of fascinated with my city's demise for awhile now. Clearly I'm not remotely the only one.

Who woulda thunk it? Turns out, my employer is one of those mysterious anti-American entities we've all been hearing so much about recently!

But my employer is also one of the highest-ranked schools in the country (as far as going green at least) according to The College Sustainability Report Card. Alas, my beloved alma mater is not.

Surprise, surprise: the New York Times today officially endorsed Obama

Not to get anyone's hopes up too much, but give this video about McCain & Palin's 'negative intensity' a watch.

And last, McCain's love for Pennsylvania knows no bounds. I do almost feel sorry for the man, given the utter exhaustion anyone on the trail this long must be feeling (let alone someone of his rather advanced years) and the realization that he's running his campaign into the ground.

Well, really for last, and for a laugh, from the Onion: John McCain Accidentally Left On Campaign Bus Overnight

going home, 10.19.08

quiz of the day

Are you a real American?

another thing that made a girl cry

Well, folks, yours truly managed to work herself up into a bit of a tizzy last night over the not entirely unfounded fear that California is on the verge of enshrining discrimination and homophobia into its Constitution.

It was the weather that did it, to tell you the truth. I was thinking about how glad I was that it's getting cooler here in New York, for many reasons (soup season! hot chocolate season! rustling leaf piles! knitted scarf weather! Thanksgiving!), not least of which was that it's just about cold enough for Dave and Josh to pull out my wedding gift, and curl up beneath it together and have a good snuggle. The thought of this was immeasurably pleasing to me.

But then I got to wondering what will happen on November 5th if, on November 4th, Californians do decide to amend their constitution. Josh and Dave traveled all the way to California in July just to get married, and came home to New York under the promise that their own state would fully recognize their marriage. And these two men are two of the kindest, gentlest, most wonderful people in the world, and it breaks my heart to think that their love for each other might soon be relegated once again, legally speaking, to a second-class kind of love.

It's heartbreaking enough to have to constantly fight discrimination in the first place, but to have finally won equality, only to have it snatched away again, is just something that no one should have to endure.

I gave $100 to Equality California last week, on the recommendation of an old friend of mine whose law firm did some pro bono work on S14799. I wish that I could give more, thousands upon thousands more, but was at least gratified to see yesterday that Ellen DeGeneres (whom I don't know much about, but whom I kind of adore) finally put her money where her mouth is, so to speak, with a donation of $100,000. And my own mother called today to say that she and her husband are giving $100 too, if only to not be outdone by her mostly straight, if bald-headed, daughter.

terminating

Sarah and I have been talking termination lately. A somewhat silly, overblown word for a natural, if somewhat scary, process. We've decided on January.

Back in April, after having spent a year on anti-depressants and two months going off of them, I was trying to figure out what my real self felt like. And I found myself whining to Sarah, one afternoon, about wanting to be back on the Prozac, or on some other (any other) drug, if only to not be the type of person who cries so damned much. And she kind of looked at me funny and said something about there being so very many different ways of crying.

I have always been someone whose emotions hover pretty close to the surface. Sometimes this is good and sometimes this is bad, but part of what I've learned over these last few years of working with Sarah is that, in the end, it is what it is.

I am a person who cries a lot. I cry from sadness and I sob with glee and I tear up over being confronted with things as simple and as beautiful as a spectacularly blue sky just before dusk, forming a window to the heavens, framed by concrete and glass and metal in these urban Manhattan oases.

This is by all means embarrassing, and sometimes even mortifying, but it isn't going to change any time soon, and I'm realizing that I wouldn't really even want to change it anymore, even if I could. I like this emotionality in me, when it's not bogging me down in frustration or anger, or drowning me in sorrow, and I find I'm kind of running out of things to say to Sarah. Though the quiet, too, is comfortable in its way, it's getting on towards being time to say good bye.

These are some of the things that, in the last few days, have gotten me at least a little bit teary-eyed:

Listening to Colin Powell's endorsement of Obama (specifically from 4:27 to the end).

A row of trees at the NYS Sheep & Wool Festival.

Staring out at the Hudson River and listening to this horribly cheesy pop song while coming back to the city on the train this morning.

The closing credits music from The Wire.

conquering the 2008 NYS Sheep & Wool Festival

quote of the day

"If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence."
-George Eliot, Middlemarch, on the A-train, 10.15.08

miscellaneous musics

Some o' the stuff I've been listening to lately:

sigur ros: saeglopur, gobbledigook
holden: ce que je suis, c'est plus pareil
the go find: new year
mum: green grass of tunnel, we have a map of the piano
cloud cult: medicine, pretty voice, breakfast
t-pain vs. cloud cult: collide you a drink

quote of the day, or, 'my god is bigger than your god' and the embarrassment of playground politics

"I'd also add, Lord, that your reputation is involved in all that happens between now and November, because there are billions of people around this world praying to their god, whether it's Hindu, Buddha, Allah, that his opponent wins, for a variety of reasons. And Lord, I pray that you would guard your own reputation, because they're gonna think that their god is bigger than you if that happens. And so I pray that you would step forward and honor your own name in all that happens between now and Election Day."

(Convocation at McCain rally)

what the world revolves around (in which i try to come to terms with the fact it isn't me)

The mother of whom I wrote a few weeks ago passed away last Thursday, of complications from breast cancer. I have not seen her son, my friend, yet, though I am hoping to meet up with him tomorrow. He's set a date for a memorial service, with a reception to follow, and then a walk around a reservoir on a nature preserve in her honor.

The woman in charge of organizing the reception sent out a mass email asking if anyone might be willing to contribute snacks. I offered to bring a batch of cookies. Probably the meringues. Someone else offered to bring an 'elaborate trail mix,' for the walk, I suppose.

I saw, on this mass email list, my ex-boyfriend. And his not-so-new girlfriend. And my gut reaction was to feel pissed off. Annoyed. Angry. Maybe even a little bit jealous (He was my friend first! You never even met his mother!) and more than a little bit insecure (The not-so-new girlfriend is really nice! And really smart! And really pretty! Way nicer and smarter and prettier than the likes of me!).

Ever since the August wedding at which I had to make nice with them, there's been a huge sense of relief: for the first time in forever, he has not been much of a presence. There were no upcoming social events at which we would both be in attendance. No weddings, no birthdays, no funerals. And it was so very good.

Now here he is, lurking yet again on the horizon.

And of course the guilt kicked in immediately, along with the knowledge that I was being more petty and more selfish than even I could possibly imagine. A dear friend's mother is dead and I was upset about having to see an ex-boyfriend and my replacement at her memorial service.

I want to be a better woman, a better friend, even a better ex-girlfriend, than this.

Unrelated, mostly, but I thought I would mention here, given the lump post in September, that also last Thursday I finally made my way to my doctor's office and was given a clean bill of health.

chuckle of the day

Palin, derailed

what i want for christmas

What I want for Christmas (other than, you know, world peace, Obama in the White House, and a winning lottery ticket) is this new ebelskiver pan.

My family has been making ebelskivers since time immemorial, traditionally for birthday or company breakfasts. Quite a few years ago I gave Nate an ebelskiver pan of his very own for Christmas and he began carrying on the family tradition in fantastic fashion, even upping the ante by adding blackberries or bits of banana to the ebelskivers (unheard of in my parents' purist ebelskiver interpretation, involving nothing more than simple 'skivers, powdered sugar, and preferably Mom's home-made raspberry jam).

But now, what with Nate far away on the West Coast, I'm thinking perhaps it's about time I indulge in purchasing one for my own kitchen. I'm not quite sold, though, on this Williams-Sonoma version. The one I bought for Nate was, I think, solid cast-iron and heavy enough to brain a moose with. This one looks a little lightweight, bantam-esque even.

On the other hand, it only costs half the price of that cast-iron monster, so maybe it's worth a go.

blog of the day

Jesus' General

ken blackwell & voter fraud

Kenneth Blackwell, a former secretary of state of Ohio, had a little rant this week about the horrors of ACORN and the looming possibility of voter fraud. Now, it is true that ACORN has had its run-ins with, you know, maybe falsifying a voter registration form now and again. And it stands to reason that with increased numbers of people registering to vote (though who in America would, at least publicly, say this is a bad thing?) come increased chances of voter fraud.

But what the Ken Blackwells of the world refuse to cop to is the fact that voter fraud often comes in the form of Republicans trying to suppress the vote. Maybe he doesn't remember his own role in attempted voter suppression in the form of the 2004 Paper Stock Standoff of Ohio. And maybe he's forgotten the story about the fairly standard practice of purging voter rolls and how horribly wrong it went in Florida in 2000. Or the story of Republican congressional candidate Tan Nguyen and the infamous letter. And I can't help wondering what Jesus would think about the notion of using people's housing misfortunes to prevent them from voting, as is apparently being attempted by the Republican party in several states.

So yeah, voter fraud might be a problem. But it seems to be a problem of denying people their right to vote rather than, as Blackwell would have us believe, a problem of "extremist" groups like ACORN pushing people to vote. (Oddly enough, Blackwell doesn't provide any examples of individual voter fraud. He simply seems to think that increasing the number of voters is itself somehow indicative of fraud. And he uses Florida as an example, but individual voter fraud was not the issue in that election. Quite the contrary, the problems there predominantly concerned eligible voters not having their votes counted, whether due to hanging chads, the butterfly ballot, or the purging of eligible voters from the voter rolls. Correct me if I'm missing something here.)

Blackwell himself writes, "Voter fraud is a crime against democracy itself, because voting is the only means by which the people choose those who govern them - and hold them accountable."

In this, he is absolutely correct. So we should all take advantage of our right to vote, and fight anyone who tries to take that right away from people.

And as an aside, Ohio? Way to go in showing this blowhard the door in his race for governor in 2006. And I mean that seriously.

quote of the day

"Biden knows that he has to avoid being arrogant about his hard-won knowledge of world affairs without reducing everything about foreign policy to the level of 'Dr. Seuss Does Geopolitics.'"
-Walter Shapiro, The Big Veep Showdown

'sweat is my sanity' and other bon mots from palin

She's a feminist (:20) because she believes in equal rights (except when it comes to equal pay for equal work, at least if she agrees with her running mate) and because she had the opportunity to fill her freezer with good wild Alaskan game to feed her family.

She mocks Joe Biden for being so damned old (2:27), being a mere six years younger than her running mate.

She reads all the news (3:00)! But can't name a single news source, and turns the question into an attack on Alaska when pushed on the matter.

She's willing to discuss her personal views on abortion (4:50) but somehow just can't seem to answer in the role of an elected official -- would she or would she not work to ban all abortions? It seems a simple question, and if she's as unapologetically pro-life as she claims, she should have no qualms about answering it. I mean, we don't care how she would "counsel" people, we want to know if she's gonna force women back to the coathangers (or knitting needles or broken soda bottles) of yore.

She has a lesbian friend! Whom she loves! Though she disagrees with the woman's life choices (8:00), and chose, herself, to be not gay!

Lastly (Palin-wise, at least), an interesting comparison between Palin and Biden answering similar questions on Supreme Court decisions with which they disagree.

And really lastly, McCain spent almost an hour with reporters from the Des Moines Register yesterday and got a little testy. Shockingly enough.

'awakening mocha espresso,' or, why its best to avoid the drink & shop

I went to Duane Reade this evening with the intention of buying one of my typical utilitarian bottles of cheap shampoo. You know, something along the lines of Suave or Johnson's Baby Shampoo. With a 'do like mine, after all, there's really no need for the fancy stuff. In fact I not infrequently end up just using bar soap.

But what did I end up with tonight? Some ridiculous concoction called "Awakening Mocha Espresso Shampoo." And why, you might ask? Because it smelled good. This is what happens when you set me loose in a drug store after a margarita or two.

It was only when I got home and bothered to read the not-so-fine print on the back of this undersized (and overpriced) bottle that I fully realized perhaps this was not the way to go.

"Create rich sable tones with this exclusive blend of espresso bean extracts and cocoa bean oils for full-bodied, multi-dimensional color, along with sheer silk proteins to add a glowing luminescent shine."

walls

My boss, a couple months ago, asked me somewhat randomly if I had ever read any Ursula K. LeGuin. Little did she know that Shevek was one of the greatest heroes I had as a teenager; that when Cindy and I made up (or started to make up) an entire language, I called myself Shevek-am, or Little Shevek; that I realized Dave and I would be lifelong friends the first night we met and somehow randomly bonded over The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas; that The Eye of the Heron made me cry; that Julie used to tease me about skimming through The Wind's Twelve Quarters at the drop of a hat; that Orsinian Tales has been on my favorite books list since the summer of '89 when I unearthed a worn-out, dogeared copy in the used bookstore in Pullman, WA; that I've been meaning to re-read The Farthest Shore (having read it at the tender age of 10) ever since first coming up against death, but have never quite gotten around to it.

Needless to say, while I acknowledged that indeed I have been known to read a bit of LeGuin, I thankfully managed to leave it at that.

There is a sign on 125th Street, just east of Amsterdam Avenue, that I walk by every so often on my way to the train. I smile every time I see this sign because it makes me think of The Dispossessed. I was walking along 125th Street with Nick not too long ago, after one of our weekly dinners, and I finally stopped and took a picture. And I laughed because of all the people I could be walking with, it was Nick, and he got it.

"There was a wall. It did not look important. It was built of uncut rocks roughly mortared. An adult could look right over it, and even a child could climb it. Where it crossed the roadway, instead of having a gate it degenerated into mere geometry, a line, an idea of a boundary. But the idea was real. It was important. For seven generations there had been nothing in the world more important than that wall.

Like all walls it was ambiguous, two-faced. What was inside it and what was outside it depended upon which side of it you were on.

Looked at from one side, the wall enclosed a barren sixty-acre field called the port of Anarres. On the field there were a couple large gantry cranes, a rocket pad, three warehouses, a truck garage, and a dormitory. The dormitory looked durable, grimy, and mournful; it had no gardens, no children; plainly nobody lived there or was even meant to stay there long. It was in fact a quarantine. The wall shut in not only the landing field but also the ships that came down out of space, and the men that came on the ships, and the worlds they came from, and the rest of the universe. It enclosed the universe, leaving Anarres outside, free.

Looked at from the other side, the wall enclosed Anarres: the whole planet was inside it, a great prison camp, cut off from other worlds and other men, in quarantine."














If a thing can be neither inside nor outside the wall, where can it be?