rage is good

New home!

2010-05-14T13:55:00.014-05:00

I've been quiet here these past few months, but only because I've been busy giving myself an online facelift. Happy to announce the new home for Rage is Good:

rageisgood.com

The site is still undergoing some tweaks, but it's close enough to finished to finally share. Old Rage is Good posts will remain archived here on Blogger for the time being, as I pull the "best of" over to the new site. But all new posts will happen at rageisgood.com -- so come on over, and check back often! (Or, easier yet, subscribe to the Rage Is Good feed.)

Thanks for reading!

hands in the dirt

2010-02-17T01:42:00.002-06:00

I've been thinking about our garden lately. Last fall, on our final day before the end of the season, I planted eight rows of garlic and shallot bulbs. Now, with two or more feet of snow packed against the dirt, the day we'll pull them up feels pretty far away.

Last weekend Joe went down to the basement to get some potatoes left over from last fall. We thought we'd stored them in a dark and dry enough spot, but when he pulled the paper bag from its hiding place, we found all but a handful had sprouted. Useless. It wasn't just that, but a combination of things, including lack of time and the fact the garden is a 20-minute drive from our house, that inspired Joe to raise the question of not gardening this year. It was his idea in the first place, but I'm the one who's fallen in love with the process. Joe loves the results, and the theory behind learning to grow your own food, but he sees it mostly as an enjoyable chore.

Last winter I might've agreed -- we'd had the garden for less than a season, and it was hard work on a very short learning curve. But last weekend, it wasn't up for discussion. I can't wait to have the house overflowing with vegetables in their bulging reds and shiny greens and the way the kitchen smells like fresh, wet dirt after bringing in the first big bag of tomatoes or lettuce or corn. I'm starting to know what I'm doing.

Last spring, this was our garden plan:

This year I want to do things differently. I want to grow fewer things and space them more appropriately; I want to learn a new way of preserving what we grow. I want to learn more about composting, which we do, but certainly not as well as we could.

The past two years, we were lucky to get seeds in the ground to grow, and we moved blindly from sprout to table, no safety net of prior experience to guide our way. I never thought I'd get excited over seed catalogs.

Now here we are, moving an inch or two away from being true beginners, toward a slightly more certain center. And when I look outside my window and see a frozen lake and a dull gray sky, nothing makes me happier to imagine than green fields at mid-day and hot sun on your neck and an ache in your muscles that says you've done something good and real.

happy 2010

2010-02-11T11:32:00.000-06:00

It's been a while. Longer, in fact, than what honestly might qualify as "a while." In blog-time, it's been eons.

But I've been busy. There was juggling two jobs, quitting them both, and starting a new one. There were several bouts of out-of-town company, nursing a sick dog, and helping a once-out-of-town friend get settled here in Madison. There were Thanksgiving travels and baby showers and recommitting to our old routine of regularly going to the Y. There was the month of December -- including Christmas and New Year's -- spent in South Africa.

Then there was readjusting to the return home. I landed at Chicago O'Hare wearing shorts and a t-shirt; the ground was carpeted with two feet of snow. As I got back into the swing of things -- buying a much-needed winter coat; sifting through mountains of email; reacquainting myself with the electric coffee maker -- the daily rituals of home and work suddenly seemed rote and dull, in comparison to the shining, bursting wave of experience that defined my brief time abroad.

Before I left for my trip, I set up a blog, with the intention of linking it here and using it as the repository for travel-inspired musing. I didn't post once. Part of the time, it was because electricity outages or downed Internet connections or being in a rondavel in the middle of nowhere kept me from going online. But mostly, it was because I felt absolutely no need to share my experiences with anyone outside of the people who were, in real life, sharing those experiences with me.

I know myself well enough to know when I've skirted close to accidentally believing, "I blog, therefore I am." After all, I am a writer. It's practically part of my cellular makeup to believe something is only as valuable as how well it's documented. There were moments in South Africa when I was disappointed I couldn't capture in real time all I was seeing and doing, so friends and family could travel vicariously alongside me. But a deeper, larger part of that disappointment came from the worry that without writing about them in a way that was publicly and immediately consumable, those experiences -- my experiences -- would somehow become more fleeting and less significant, something that could be put away, set aside, forgotten.

So really, it was about me, and my own fears.

And with that realization, the pressure evaporated. I traded my traveling companion's sleek MacBook for the solid, hard-bound journal a good friend gave me the day before I left. I was my only audience, the keeper of stories for the sake of memory, with no obligation to enlighten or entertain. A month without the ephemeral highs of Facebook-induced uber-sharing, and I remembered what it meant to experience for experience's sake the real things in real life that bring joy, challenge and provocation.

"Writing this down is enough," I wrote, from the deck of a stifling hot chalet in Botswana, overlooking the Limpopo River. "I don't miss Facebook or email or my iPhone. Actually, I want to chuck my phone in the river, or at least trade it in for a land line. I don't need the world to move so fast. I would rather experience and appreciate the small slice of the world in front of me -- the parts I can see and touch and breathe in -- than attempt (and fail) to focus on a thousand things at once. 24-hour news and Twitter feeds and Sudoku apps don't make life better or easier or more content. They just make life more cluttered."

When I got home, I wasn't sure I wanted to blog again. I contemplated getting rid of my Flickr account, ditching the iPhone, and not replacing the recently departed laptop, to which I'd developed an increasingly unhealthy attachment. Imagine life without Facebook or that damned new Google Buzz. Imagine all the extra time we'd have to think or talk or hell, just be.

The Zen of Weeding

2009-08-26T23:04:00.032-05:00

Joe and I took down part of our garden tonight -- we dug up the potatoes, pulled the rest of the carrots, yanked out two zucchini plants destined for the towering compost pile. We plucked baskets of heirloom tomatoes and okra and tomatillos popping at the seams of their paper-thin cases. I'm not sure how or when the end of August arrived, but here it is, and here we are on autumn's threshold, days shorter and nights cooler and smelling of fireplaces.

I spent a good 30 minutes tonight weeding the spinach patch. We've been gone the past few days, and the weeds had reached that do-or-die stage where they threatened to choke the baby plants. The best thing about gardens at the start of fall is squeezing out that last round of food, so I crawled between the rows and pulled the weeds by hand, feeling each root system resist, then the release as it finally popped free.

Joe tries telling me the hoe would be faster and more efficient, but I prefer weeding the tool-free way: In the doing so, I acquainted myself with each plant, thrusting itself up through cracked earth in a way that must, from the plant's perspective, feel shockingly brave and remarkable. The last time I paid this spinach any mind, they were seeds, with the look and feel of Grape-Nuts, or all-natural cat litter. And now here they were, very obviously spinach, spreading their waxy leaves in welcome to the wide, blue sky.

I know my vegetables. I know each of them. I know which okra plants need trimming; which tomato plants likes extra water; which leek stems, for some reason, attract more weeds than others. You spend hours of every week alone in a garden with nothing but plants for company, on your hands and knees so you can inspect each leaf and flower, aware of their existence from the moment they were seeds falling through your fingers, and you will know what it's like to commune with vegetables.

Our garden isn't huge, but it isn't tiny, either -- 800 square feet, a double plot at a community garden some 6 miles north of our neighborhood. We drive (or, for Joe, bike) up a few nights each week, and at least once every weekend. It's not as often as I'd like; this summer, even busier than last year, I've felt the urge to buy a house simply for the yard, for the ability to step out of my back door in bare feet and be there, in the thick of green things growing.

This is what I love about the garden -- the chance to feel what it means to be. To exist in a way that doesn't happen in shopping malls, at the grocery store, in your cubicle, in your car while you are driving 45 miles an hour in a 30 mph zone just to get where you are going a few minutes faster. Being in the garden makes me forget about cell phones. Being there helps me appreciate the world around me in a way that is active and immediate and steeped in an almost cellular attachment to other living things. Being there awakens my own awareness of that necessary connection wrapping itself from person to person like invisible Christmas tree lights, shining bright with hope that better things can happen if we all just dig in a little--and I mean all of us, even people we don't think we like very much or understand, even people who think urban farming is a waste of time, even Republicans.

I think of gardening the way some friends describe running. You reach a place where the world falls away, and all that's left are you and the tangy smell of ripening and the hard sting of dirt packed tight under your fingernails. The highs and lows of your day melt into an evened being, and your breathing does, too, as if your emotional self has been pounded down in a mortar and pestle and all that's left is the essence of you--the essence of what you care about and how you wish to live in the world and all that you find beautiful. All of that exists in every tug of weed, every leaf examined. All of that exists, and multiplies and grows, every time we tend to the well-being of something greater than ourselves.

Joe came with me to the garden tonight. As I tended the spinach, he aimed the watering hose at the opposite end of our long tract. This is our routine: I weed, he waters. We each bury ourselves in our own brains, our own motions, and we rarely talk in the garden, except to say things like, "Look! We have lettuce!" or, "Can you bring me the trowel, please?"

I thought tonight about all the things I think about here, in this small slice of silence where time stills until the sky darkens, and how grateful I am for this regular pause. I happened to look up at that moment, and there was Joe, watering the nearby okra. I recognized the look on his face, the one that says, I am here, but I am elsewhere, too.

And so I broke the silence.

"What do you think about while you're watering?" I asked him.

He looked down at me, still on my knees in the dirt. And he smiled.

"Music," he said. "I think about music."

photo credit: Carrie Kilman

Awe

2009-05-28T00:36:00.003-05:00

I am kind of in awe right now.

I just got home from watching a domestic violence survivor share her very personal story with a television news crew. I can't begin to describe her bravery, her grit, her indefatigable poise. She was a rock star.

She did this, exposing her life and her pain and her hopes for the future, as a result of a humble request from me. She had nothing to gain but the knowledge that maybe, possibly, there would be another victim watching. And maybe, possibly, what she had to say might help that person feel not quite so alone and powerless.

But she had some things to lose. Like her sense of control over her own story and who knows about it. And now, if she chooses, late at night on a weekday after her kids are asleep, she might watch the news story that blurs her face and only shows her hands and the back of her head, in which she discloses very personal and painful and private details about her past. And as she watches this, she may feel alone and also sad, possibly reliving some of the memories of what happened to her children.

Yet she did this because she hoped it would help. She did this because she hoped it would catch people's attention and get them to listen. And she did this because I asked.

I hope nothing goes wrong. I hope she is happy with the final result, that she feels it represents her truth, and that she feels it can help change lives. I hope she feels proud of what she accomplished. I hope she doesn't regret it.

I believe each of us is a survivor of something. Something traumatic, on some large or small scale. There comes a time for many of us when we realize we have begun to think of that trauma not only in terms of its impact on our lives, but also as a tool, something we can use to help others. Reaching that point is a powerful moment. When we realize, "I am more than the very bad thing that happened to me."

I write, in part, for a living. The importance of collecting and honoring other people's stories is central to the lens through which I see the world. I have been a part of other people's moments like the one described above. But I don't remember ever being as humbled in witnessing someone's story as I was tonight. Her courage filled the room. It spilled into the parking lot. And I left there feeling lucky.

Anger

2009-05-21T11:05:00.013-05:00

I have been thinking about her this week.

It was the first headline I read Monday morning, over the day's first cup of coffee. A local man shot and killed his ex-wife. She was found in her apartment, in a suburb south of Madison, with two fatal gunshots to her head.

They were married 23 years. They had two teenage children. Their divorce was newly final.

She did everything she was supposed to do. In the face of physical assaults and death threats, she managed to keep her job. She managed to save money and move out and settle herself in a new apartment. She managed to get a restraining order. She managed to file for divorce.

This is all hard, brave work, when the force you are managing against is a man who wants to kill you.

She did everything she was supposed to do.

On Saturday, May 16, he showed up at her door carrying a gun. This is the moment that catches me, the moment that happened next. Did he push his way in? Did she try to talk him down from his rage, thinking it was like all the other times and he would stop right before he crossed that line? When did she realize that he wouldn't? When did she think, "I will not see my daughters again"? Was it fear or terror she felt at the end, in the final seconds before he pulled the trigger? Or was it something closer to a desperate relief, that finally it was over, and he wouldn't be able to hurt her anymore?

This story is more than the headlines, more than the manhunt, more than the ex-husband's body found two later in a nearby park, death by self-inflicted gunshot. The story is more than the newspaper accounts of their turbulent, violence-ridden marriage. It's more than the measly $500 bail the ex-husband received after he tried to strangle his wife and attacked his daughter with a fireplace poker the day after Christmas.

The heart of the story is the moment that matters -- the moment Francie Weber realized she was going to die, at the hands of someone who claimed to love her and then exerted every effort to inflict harm. The look in her eyes. The thoughts in her head. The panic. This is the moment her terror becomes real.

I read the newspaper account to Joe that night. "That makes me so mad," he said. He stood up from the couch where he had been sitting. He paced the room. "How could any human being do that to someone else?" he asked. "Doesn't it make you angry?"

I paused and sighed and looked away.

Because anger isn't the word for it. To be perfectly honest, I told him, it makes me feel a little defeated. It's a reminder that sometimes it will never be enough. Restraining orders and divorces and new apartments and fresh starts sometimes don't help if an abuser is hell-bent on killing you. Prison helps. But most domestic violence cases are never reported to the police. And often, prison only happens once something horrible has occurred, something like murder.

What does make me angry is that despite this crime, and despite the fact that the most recent murder in that same suburb was yet another domestic violence homicide, and despite the fact that the news these days from all parts of the country (like here and here and here ) seems to be fraught with headlines of husbands killing their families, we as a society still don't seem to think of domestic violence as a real problem.

Yes, we pay it lip service. But we still appease ourselves with the false reassurance that domestic violence doesn't happen to "people like us."

What makes me angry is that more people don't consider this a public health emergency. How can we fight for economic justice -- of any kind, for anyone -- or lobby for health care reform, or demand an end to torture, yet ignore the fact that one out of every three women in this country is terrified of the person in their own home?

These issues are related. Economic justice for women fleeing abusers is critical -- not having financial resources of her own can be one of the main obstacles preventing victims from leaving their abusers. Health care is critical -- consider how many costly emergency room visits are the result of intimate partner violence.

And if the torture of detainees at Abu Ghraib captures our attention and inspires nationwide calls for investigations and policy reversal, then the torture of women and children (and to call systematic physical, emotional, psychological and sexual abuse "torture" is not an exaggeration) in every community in our country should rally a similar and related cacophony of outrage.

And yet it doesn't.

It isn't seen as political. It isn't seen as important. It isn't something that happens "to people like me."

Until it does. And now another woman is dead, and two kids are parentless, and the community is left to ask, once again, "why would someone do such a thing", and then we forget until it happens again.

Because it will keep happening until we demand that it stops.

One More Note

2009-05-20T14:54:00.007-05:00

There is a woman who wanders our neighborhood. I don't know her name. But we see her often. She stops to give us gardening tips when we're potting our tomato plants on the front porch. She pauses to say "hello there!" and "cold night, isn't it?"

She is sort of like a fairy godmother. She pulls the heavy trash bins up from the curb after garbage pick-up, tucking them in their out-of-sight spaces between our house and the one next door. She carries a broom wherever she goes, sweeping leaves and fallen flower petals from the sidewalks. She does this up and down the streets. Everybody knows her.

She never wears shoes. Never. Not in the summer, when the asphalt burns. Not in the winter, in four feet of snow. She wears her long, gray hair tucked inside two bandannas tied around her head. She is missing her front teeth.

I don't know where she lives. I don't know how she gets by. I do know she gets her meals from a nearby soup kitchen. I've seen her walking back from there in the evening, with a Tupperware container in her hands. She looks up at me, on my porch, sipping my Shiraz. "Peas tonight!" she smiles and says.

The soup kitchen is around the corner, on a side street. I see the people lined up there in the late afternoons, waiting for the doors to open. The line, lately, has been growing longer.

I thought of the woman who sweeps our sidewalks when I read a news report the other day about the startling increase in homelessness in our community. Across Dane County, the number of people experiencing homelessness jumped 17% last year. Homeless shelters were forced to turn away 3,600 people in 2008 -- a 22% increase in the number of people denied shelter for lack of space and resources.

This is not a unique story. It's happening everywhere, from Baton Rouge to New York City.

But it is one example. One more important example. One more note in a sour chorus of "What am I going to do?" that can be heard in every corner of every community in every state in our country.

Sometimes economic hardship can strengthen a community. Sometimes it can inspire us to look beyond our own immediate needs and act in impressively selfless ways -- or realize the extent to which our needs are wrapped up with the needs of others. Suddenly the walls that separate "us" from "them" seem paper-thin, rubbed down to nothing in places. There is little difference between a college-educated CEO and a truck driver, when both are unemployed with bills piling in the basket by the door.

But hardship doesn't always do that. It can make us act in irrationally protective ways, cause us to fence off our property and stock up on guns. It can make us look upon our neighbors with suspicion. It can harden us, so we can more comfortably hold our purses to our chest and say, "This is mine. Fend for yourself. You are not my problem."

I don't want to be that kind of person. But I look around, or read the newspaper, or eavesdrop on conversations at the bus stop, or look into the faces of other shoppers at the grocery store, and I wonder, What will be enough? There isn't enough.

Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle announced budget cuts and employee furloughs to address a rising budget deficit (similar to the deficits plaguing 46 other states). Our County budget is stretched beyond thin. Nonprofits that provide emergency services for domestic violence survivors, abused children, and families on the brink of homelessness are worried their budgets will continue to shrink. Charitable giving across almost every sector has plummeted.

There isn't enough.

I keep reading the papers and watching the bulletin boards at the college campus near my office, looking for signs of revolution. Isn't it in times like these that revolutions get their start? I keep waiting for a sign that we, our community and our nation, are tired of allowing our neighbors to suffer. How long is too long, when we're talking about a soup kitchen line? At what point does the comfortably employed person say, "A homeless family is my problem"?

New Year

2009-01-02T13:22:00.003-06:00

The other day, I told someone who knows me well that my New Year's resolution was to learn to be more serene.

She looked at me and laughed. She practically guffawed. "Good luck with that," she said, after she composed herself.

I am not a still person. I am a chronic list-maker, advance-planner, seasoned worrier, and hapless time-manager who tries, regularly, to pack more into an hour or day than can reasonably fit.

My grandparents are consummate planners. They don't simply make a plan and hope it works. They make a Plan B. And C. And D. And so on. Road construction? No problem. Cell phone batteries died? Got it covered. Chance of bear attack while driving to the McDonald's? Don't worry--there's a back-up plan for everything.

But here's the deal. Consummate planners tend to be consummate worriers.

And so it's in my genes.

"You never relax, do you?" JK asked the other day.

Not easily, but I'm determined to learn. And I have a new project to help me. Proximity, a collaboration with two other writers, Towles Kintz and Maggie Messitt, launched yesterday.

Each week, we choose a different location--like an emergency room, a tavern or a bus stop--that exists in our three corners of the globe (Madison, WI; Atlanta, GA; rural South Africa), then we write around that theme. It's an opportunity to slow down, practice being settled in our surroundings. Over time, we hope it will illustrate not only how varied the world can be, but also how small and connected.

Our first installment explores the notion of home. I hope you'll have time to visit us there, and lend your voice to the conversation.

Missing autumn

2008-11-03T21:06:00.000-06:00

October was a nutty month. For all but five days, JK and I were either hosting out-of-town company, or one or both of us were out of town ourselves. Add to that two weeks of being pathetically, disgustingly sick, a dog with a sprained ankle, a cat that tried her best to run away, a crippling addiction to online presidential news, and a garden in need of putting up for the winter.

Somewhere in the middle of all of that, I blinked. And I missed fall.

During the past couple of weeks, the situation outside has transitioned decidedly, from cool and crisp with crunchy leaves under foot, to downright cold. Scarf weather. Last weekend I broke out the mittens. A week ago, the forecast called for snow, and Mother Nature delivered. I glanced out the window in the middle of a writing workshop and gasped, surprised by the thick clumps of snow lazily drifting through the tree branches.

This didn't bode well. I need fall. With the cool mornings and the first hint of that fireplace smell and the newness of long sleeves, I've come to associate a kind of birth, a delicate beginning, cemented back in the days when September meant the start of a new school year. Fall means renewal, clean slates, looking forward. The prospect of missing out on this--of moving from the lazy, hot summer to the hibernation of winter without time to dwell in the in-between--left me feeling a bit upside down and out of sorts. Like showing up for class for the first time, just to realize the semester's over.

Until today.

"What's the temperature outside?" JK asked this morning. It's his typical refrain, starting around the end of September and lasting through May. Yesterday was rainy, gray; the week before, cold and dismal.

I logged onto the Weather Channel. Once again, and in the most literal sense, I blinked.

"Seventy-two!" I shouted back, a little too eagerly.

Sunny, breezy, 72 at the peak of mid-day. Outside, the wind blew through the trees, still adorned with bright yellow leaves. "This won't last long," JK cautioned. I didn't care. For one day, in what the calendar suddenly called November (when did that happen??), early fall was upon us.

The dog and I walked around the neighborhood. We took the scenic route. We drove to the store with the windows down. We meandered.

In our daily lives, we all need space to meander. Every now and then, we should afford ourselves a left turn when the map says turn right, just to see where it'll take us. We need to follow our instincts and our hunches, not just our to-do lists. We need time to wonder.

These are the things I've been missing lately. But today gave me sweet reprieve. And as the day fades into evening, shedding minutes by the, well, minute, I have reason not to mourn my evanescent second chance. Because tomorrow's high is 73.

Dusting off

2008-11-03T10:53:00.004-06:00

Look at all this dust.

One of the nifty features of Blogspot (and other blog hosts) is that you can write part of a post, then save it to finish later. Once, in the distant past, this feature came in handy. I started a post in the morning, finished it in the afternoon, then proofed it one last time in the evening before publishing.

But, over the past two months, things have turned ugly, and what once was my efficient friend has morphed into my blogging downfall.

I start. I type. I peter. Then I hit the "save" button, never to return. And so Rage Is Good sits forlorn, covered in virtual cobwebs.

Part exhaustion, part distraction, part ennui--these have been my enemies all autumn. I am too busy with things that don't seem to matter; an hour doesn't go by without me obsessively checking Politico, DailyKos and the New York Times; I suddenly lack the head space for coherent, sustained thought--it's as if my thought processes have begun to mimic the rapid click-and-scan of web surfing. The minute my brain alights on an insight or idea, it's off and running to the next. I start writing something, silly or profound or somewhere in between, and by the third paragraph I'm bored, fighting off the urge to open a new tab and see what's hoppin' over on Slate.

A friend of mine, whose writing inspires me with its insight and wisdom, recently published a post on her blog about the need to mentally de-clutter. I know I am not the only person who succumbs to occasional bouts of restlessness, nor am I alone in spending the bulk of my waking hours pouring over the latest poll numbers and the endless (and endlessly repetitive) commentary they inspire. But my friend's story--unrelated to political obsessions, yet familiar all the same--eased my worry that this state of distraction might be permanent.

Thank goodness the election is almost over. Thank goodness the season is changing. Thank goodness for other people who so willingly lay bare their own tribulations.

I lied.

2008-09-06T23:57:00.004-05:00

I allowed myself one, tiny peek at email tonight and there found a message from a Republican relative describing all the ways she loves Sarah Palin. And so crumbled my resolve to shirk all political news and views for the weekend.

As Palin, in her speech Wednesday, gave no mention of women's rights, the one line I found personally most offensive was the strange zinger about Obama being a community organizer. Looking online tonight, I was ecstatic to see the growing backlash against what had started to become a theme on right-wing radio. Like this short essay by Jim Wallis. And even this story in the mainstream press.

But my favorite was the selection of T-shirts like this one that hit Internet shelves almost immediately after Palin uttered those unfortunate words. If I still lived in the south, I would actually wear one.

(A note to email readers: You may or may not be able to see the links embedded in this post. If not, go to www.rageisgood.blogspot.com and it'll make more sense.) :-)

Cold

2008-09-05T05:53:00.003-05:00

Just to say. I'm sitting by the window, before sunrise, wrapped in the heaviest wool sweater I own (smartly saved from winter-clothes storage). Outside it smells like fireplace. The dog and cat have started sleeping with their bodies smacked up against us, so as to siphon off our body heat.

Over the next 10 days, we'll be lucky when our high cracks 70. Where my brother lives, several states south of us, the temperature right now, in the early morning, is 81. They'll see 104 degrees before the day is done.

Yesterday it rained on my way to work, and the roads were sloshy with water that hadn't yet seeped into the ground. For the first time in four months, another kind of precipitation came to mind. Driving in snow still terrifies the Texan in me.

I keep telling myself we have a while yet before we'll need to worry about that. Last year, autumn barely managed to slip through the small crack between the end of our hotter-than-usual summer and the Thanksgiving snowstorm that marked the start of our sudden, severe winter. We tried to go apple-picking exactly once (they didn't let you actually pick from the trees, though), but it happened to be tank-top weather that day. Otherwise, my favorite season snuffed itself out without much fanfare.

I can easily let go of the hot summer days. But this year I'm determined to relish this in-between, orange-tree'd, wool-sock weather. This year, we have good cause--sort of an autumn alarm clock, in the form of our vegetable garden. You can't accidentally miss the fall with a dozen pumpkins bulging on the vines, or rows of a last-minute, fall crop of greens anxious to be eaten, or earth to ready for its winter hibernation.

Head-shaking

2008-09-04T22:06:00.006-05:00

We just finished watching the creepy, Republican chest-thumping for a second night in a row, which involved a lot of cringing and disbelief and feels like it should qualify us for some kind of award.

We watched as the people jumped to their feet and clapped like maniacs and broke out into pseudo-impromptu (and disturbing) chants of "USA! USA!" and "Drill, baby, drill!" Yet again, I realized I really, really didn't get these people. When McCain mischaracterized Obama's health care plan (if only it were so liberal!) and supposed opposition to off-shore drilling (if only he were so smart), I shouted at the screen, despite JK reminding me that no one there could hear me. But I clapped hard for the protesters.

I don't know whether to take heart in the fact that conservatives shake their heads with the same degree of disbelief when they encounter large groups of Democrats. I only wish the Democratic ticket were as radically left as McCain's new pal Palin is radically right. Republicans already characterize Democrats as a bunch of hippie leftists, so why not actually BE hippie leftists? If they're going to label what Democrats want as single-payer health care, why not actually support single-payer health care?

That's the biggest sting for me--the Democratic leaders who the GOP accuse of being so far to the left are, in reality, in the dead center of the page.

Thank goodness JK's parents are coming to town tomorrow. I'm giving myself a three-day reprieve from Googling "Sarah Palin" or "RNC arrests" every 10 minutes. Also, I'm so glad we don't live in Alabama right now. I think I might implode.

Last night (or, Why Are Those People So ANGRY?)

2008-09-04T07:20:00.003-05:00

JK and I gathered around our computer monitor last night to watch the streaming video of the Republican convention. Three things that struck me:

1. The way the crowd failed to clap for Abel Maldonado, a California state senator, son of a migrant worker, and one of the very few Latinos who've spoken at the convention so far. At the end of his six-minute talk, Maldonado raised a fist in the air and shouted into the microphone, "Que viva the immigrant story! Que viva immigrants like my father! Que viva John McCain!"

These obviously were meant to be applause lines, and in between each one, Maldonado paused for audience response. But the crowd sat there silently and looked to be squirming uncomfortably in their chairs. It wasn't until Maldonado, with his fist frozen in the air, finally ended with, "God Bless America," that the audience started clapping.

If you're going to the trouble of trotting out a handful of People Who Are Not White to prove that you aren't The Party Of Scared, Racist White People, at least go through the motions of pretending like you give a damn when they take the stage. Either the crowd was unhappy with so much praise for immigrants (this is the party that wanted to make it illegal for undocumented immigrants to bring their kids to the emergency room), or their English-Only brains were befuddled by all that Spanish talk.

Either way, they came off looking like the kind of people who like "diversity" as long as it doesn't move in next door or try to date their daughter.

2. The strange lampooning of community organizing. I was really glad to see the people at Daily Kos started talking about this almost before Sarah Palin left the stage. At least three speakers, including Palin, ridiculed community organizing and made it sound about as challenging as playing with a declawed kitten, apparently in an effort to paint Obama as the radical black man who worked with (gasp and shudder!) poor black people.

I've worked with community organizers in Texas, D.C., and Maine. It's not all games and street fairs. It's long hours and low pay and requires a deep commitment to actually making the world a slightly better, more equitable place. Unfortunately for Republicans, it often means talking with poor people about social issues and registering people of color to vote--two things the Republican Party probably would like to outlaw.

3. The bloodthirsty anger. When Rudy Giuliani whipped the crowd into a frenzy, chanting, "Drill, baby, drill!", I thought to myself, "These people could be convinced to kill their own mothers." There was so much anger in that room. Strange, desperate anger. Their guy's been in the White House for eight years. In that time, the country's been jerked even farther to the right. What do they have to be so angry about?

I wonder whether it's part of their strategy to appear so publicly nasty, or if it's just part of who they are.

Ugh

2008-08-27T19:07:00.002-05:00

I'm watching the Democratic convention right now (thanks to msnbc's streaming video). When Melissa Etheridge came onstage, I thought, "great! some hippie-rock to temporarily save us from another speech!"

But then she started singing "Born in the USA."

Seriously??

Is this a way to appeal to two bases at the same time, the more conservative folk who think Obama's just a little too "foreign" and the more progressive folk who worry he's too centrist, by using a lesbian folk-rocker to sing a middle-America anthem?

It rubbed me the wrong way. And all the delegates, holding hands and swaying back and forth while singing along, just looked ridiculous.

After dark

2008-08-21T09:15:00.000-05:00

April 2008

The dog hadn't been on a walk in days. The forecast predicted rain later in the week, and he looked really pathetic, the way dogs do when they're particularly adept at human mind control.

So I grabbed his leash and pulled a fleece over my T-shirt. The sun had set and the moon shone like a big, white fingerprint against the dark blue sky. I could hear the waves crashing against the lake shore two blocks away.

C'mon, I said to the dog. We trotted down the front steps to the sidewalk below and headed, like always, toward the water. But I paused at the corner. Left or right? After dark, which would feel safer?

Two weeks earlier, a 21-year-old college student was stabbed to death in her downtown apartment in the middle of the day. A couple of months before that and a few blocks away, a 31-year-old man was stabbed to death inside his home on his lunch hour.

Yet, in the wake of these mid-day crimes, both of which were still unsolved, I felt most on edge when the sun went down.

We decided to turn left, cutting past the park, heading deep into the neighborhood toward the towering old homes that overlooked the water. The streets were narrower there. Our part of the neighborhood, one block off the main road and on a major bus route, has more foot traffic and cars, and there's no telling who you'll see or where they'll be going. But here, the only people on the sidewalk were people like me, neighborhood folk walking their dogs.

Every morning, JK walks by the murdered woman's apartment on his way from the bus stop to his office. Hers was one of two apartments in a big, old house.

Horrendous, gut-wrenching crimes that challenge the goodness of humanity happen every day. I am insulated from this, and for that I feel a mixture of guilt and gratitude and a desire to spread the privilege of living an existence relatively free from harm. News of genocide and domestic violence and police brutality give me intellectual and emotional pause. But they don't literally stop me in my tracks, not like two unsolved, seemingly random, rather brutal murders a mile or so away.

And so I walked down the sidewalk, by now a good six or seven blocks from my house, alert to every sound. A couple of houses ahead of me, a woman stepped outside into her small yard, with one dog in her arms and another running at her feet. Go on now, she told them, plopping the one dog in the grass. Then she looked up in my direction, quickly bent to scoop up both dogs, and hurried back inside.

I'm not that scary, I thought. Then I realized I was wearing a cap over a pony tail. Maybe she thinks I'm a man. As I passed her house, I saw her through the window in the door, an anxious face framed and backlit and peering toward the street. A few houses later, I glanced over my shoulder. The woman and her dogs had come back outside.

We all assumed the murderers--or murderer, if the two killings were related--were men. This reminded me of a conversation I'd had, just a few days before the young woman was killed. We were at a going-away dinner for a friend who was moving across the country. She had just returned from a six-week trip across Costa Rica and Mexico. Another friend at the table had traveled across India and Guatemala. They were swapping travel stories.

Specifically, they were swapping stories of traveling alone, in foreign countries, as women. And in the talking, what emerged was the fact that their biggest measure of feeling "safe" was how free they had felt from sexual harm. They weren't worried about pick-pockets or getting their traveler's check stolen or accidentally stepping into the cross hairs of other people's crimes. They were worried, most of all, about the predatory behaviors of men, directed at them because they were women.

We have to worry about this in our own country.

But it's just one more reminder that when we, collectively, consider issues of safety and harm and violence and the perpetration of Very Bad Things, we're mostly talking about the actions of men. And yet we still let them run the world. We assume they are the better, more natural leaders, the gender best equipped to make wise, respectable decisions. While, at the same time, half the population has good reason to live in fear of them. And I don't get that.

I was thinking about all of this as the dog and I made our way down to the water line. The waves crashed against the rocks, and the water was an endless, ominous blue. A couple of months ago the lake was still frozen, and from this very spot, the dog and JK and I could run out over the ice, all the way to the center and back. Kids built snowpeople in the middle of the lake. The snowpeople became a totem, proof to me that the ice would hold and we wouldn't fall through.

Tonight, the waves erupted, angry and foaming. I could smell the fish and the water and the sand, and even amidst those comforting smells, the angry water felt like an omen.

Finally, we turned around and started for home. A figure appeared on the sidewalk about a block ahead of us. As we grew closer, I could tell he didn't have a leash in his hand or a dog at his feet. But he was holding something long and shiny that glinted in the street light. It was probably a garden hose or a hub cap. But I tugged on the dog's leash and made a hard right, taking a detour, walking as fast as I could until we reached the end of our own block, where we finally slowed down.

According to the newspaper reports and the people we know who live and work downtown and have attended the emergency neighborhood meetings, both murders for a long time seemed to have few leads. Even though the person who killed the young woman broke into her locked apartment before stabbing her, the police are encouraging people to be vigilant about locking their doors.

We only locked our door when we remembered, which wasn't often. I guess it's a Southern thing, I told a friend here. I don't want this to change our routine, JK said, sounding a little defensive when I mentioned we should keep the doors locked at all times. I get that. I don't believe in unnecessary fear, even if I sometimes succumb to it.

But still, every night for the past two weeks, I made sure to lock the door. And I stood at the window, gazing out into the darkness with a guarded look on my face, wondering who was out there.

Food

2008-06-28T20:40:00.005-05:00

All the signs point in the same direction. "Dark times," my brother called it. "The end of civilization as we know it," JK said.

The rising gas prices, the salmonella-flavored tomatoes, the roller coaster of a stock market, the global rice shortage, the global banana shortage, the torrential floods, the crazy-eyed look of desperation on the faces of people who'd rather numb themselves on Survivor re-runs so they can pretend they don't hear that whistling sound as the wind rustles the fraying edges of the tattered fabric that has become our country.

And now this.

I spent an hour at the grocery store this afternoon. Let's leave aside the fact that today was maybe the third or fourth day since last September that one could actually call "hot," what with the strange weather we've been having here, with record amounts of snow, rain and cold. And let's leave aside the fact that the vast majority of my fellow shoppers dejectedly shuffled behind carts filled more than usual with foodstuffs like canned meat and cellophane-wrapped hydrogenated sugar (i.e. cheap stuff that isn't rice or bananas or tomatoes).

Let me dwell on this. Today was the third grocery trip in a row when I couldn't find a basic staple on my list because the store was out of stock. I mean truly basic things, like fruits and vegetables. The time has come when Americans (gasp, shock) can go to our grocery stores and actually not find waiting neatly packaged on clearly labeled, evenly spaced shelves all the food a person could want, because, well, it seems we're on the cusp of joining the majority of the world which happens to be dealing with a food shortage, and has been in fits and starts for quite a long time (i.e. always).

I'm not complaining, necessarily (although I really really wanted that squash today). The U.S. food system sucks, for us as eaters and workers, for people in other countries, for small- and mid-scale farmers, and for the planet. So we go to the store for peaches and the store is out of peaches because the trucks couldn't come in last night because fuel is too expensive and the truckers are on strike, and by the way, so are the farmers in some other country whose name you can't pronounce correctly, so how about an apple instead? Oh wait. We're out of those, too.

So we come face to face with our privilege, which is fine by me. Even if it means I suddenly need to start learning 101 ways to cook chard and nettles, because we have a lot of those growing around here and a girl can probably stay pretty full as long as she uses enough olive oil.

We were at a dinner party the other day. Another guest, it turned out, routinely dines at restaurants that serve caviar. She didn't understand all the silly protest over foie gras. She lives near one of the Great Lakes yet didn't quite get the "big fuss" about water conservation. She appeared to believe that if a resource of any kind was in her sight, it was hers for the using. Which means she was American.

Which is, I realize, what really made me a little angry at the grocery store today. It wasn't the fact that they suddenly didn't have squash. It was that, instead of rushing to the streets or at least to the farmers' market, almost everyone I saw was elbowing each other out of the way to cram as much cheap, high-calorie "food" into their carts as they could. These weren't caviar people. But they had options beyond, "if it's in front of me, I'm taking it, consequences (to myself, to my children, to the economy, to the planet, to people who are even poorer than me) be damned."

"Pro-life is anti-woman"

2008-06-23T20:08:00.005-05:00

In honor of George Carlin, r.i.p. My favorite part: "How come when it's us, it's an abortion, and when it's a chicken, it's an omelet? Are we so much better than chickens all of a sudden? ... When's the last chicken you heard about who came home and beat the shit out of his hen? Doesn't happen, because chickens are decent people."

(p.s. Lovely people who get this via email, you may need to scoot over to the Rage is Good blog to see the embedded video.)

Bookish

2008-05-05T15:34:00.020-05:00

We have, in our home, no fewer than 437 books, not including cookbooks, song books and poetry chapbooks, which would inch us pretty close to 500.

We have books crammed two-deep into bookshelves, lined neatly in cupboards, and stacked haphazardly on the surfaces of furniture in every room in our apartment.

Last weekend, Spring inspired us to join the collective airing and cleaning out of things, so as to breathe more easily with the windows open. Green buds suddenly and defiantly erupted into leaves all over our Midwestern town. We’d grown so accustomed to winter that we barely recognized the sound of songbirds.

JK and I looked around and determined to de-clutter. Away went the heaping basket of winter blankets, the drawerfuls of wool sweaters, and the synthetic-down coats suitable for hiking the tundra. We dusted and swept and sorted, until the sun turned afternoon-orange. We opened the windows and sipped iced tea through straws.

But something wasn't right.

An excess of 400 books isn't an excess at all for two people who'd rather read than sleep--plus, we're too broke for cable. But we live in an apartment slightly larger than a milk carton, and the books were taking over. They had settled down and started families. Book suburbs had sprung up in the bathroom, on the shelf below the toilet paper.

"I'll go through the books and figure out which ones to give away," JK offered.

"What are you talking about?" I said with dismay. "We can't give away books."

Giving away books with the intention of never seeing them again sounds as right and normal to me as deciding one day to give the dog to the neighbors. Since graduating from college, I have moved exactly 10 times, and each time the only thing I've insisted on carting with me were the increasing number of boxes labeled "Important -- BOOKS".

I’ve read most of them. Some I keep because I want to read them again (The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood; all seven volumes of Harry Potter). Some I keep because someday I’ll read them for the first time (like Alice Walker’s The Temple of My Familiar, or Don DeLillo’s Underworld). Many of them (the biography of Virginia Woolf; Wallace Stegner’s Crossing to Safety; Quilting by Lucille Clifton) I keep because having them nearby feels as important as oxygen.

I love them, but I don't hoard them -- I've pushed books into the hands of friends more times than I can count. "Here," I'll say. "You must take this. You'll love it."

But always the assumption is that eventually the books will find their way back. This doesn't happen when you push your books into the hands of the guy taking donations at the thrift store.

JK nodded sympathetically. He loves books almost as much as I do. He has been known to excitedly call me into the room, just to recite a sentence or two from whatever he's reading. "Isn't that beautiful," he'll say.

So we compromised: He would go through his own books, leaving mine off-limits.

But then I guess I got a little carried away with myself. This afternoon, after bagging the last of the clothes destined for the thrift store, I glanced towards the wall of books in the living room. I had an empty paper grocery bag in my hand. "What the hell," I said to the dog. "It wouldn't hurt to try."

What criteria do you use when deciding which pieces of yourself to discard? I like book people. Book people think of their books as repositories for pieces of their souls, or mirrors that shine truths, or vacationlands filled with solace and adventure. I like book people because they see books as the closest thing to living beings that inanimate objects can become.

And so I scoured the shelves rather fruitlessly. I might want to read this someday... If I ever decide to write a book about criminals, this book would come in handy... But what if I want to go to Alaska and need to read this first?

A few times, I mustered the nerve to think, Well, maybe I don’t need this one. From the couch, the dog watched me with soulful, reproving eyes.

Seven bookshelves and countless pained sighs later, I had marked six books for the give-away pile (one short-fiction anthology; one novel I never could finish; one nonfiction book about race relations that, 11 years later, felt pretty dated; two memoirs that never moved past just the facts to the emotional messiness of real life; and one coffee table book of shamefully cute kid-with-pet photographs).

Then, because I couldn't help myself and also mostly because of the guilt, I looked through the six books again, willing myself to change my mind.

Books add contour to the landscape of a life. They make a home feel warm and inviting, all the people in their pages waving hello, waiting to talk to you. Books diminish reasons to feel bored or lonely. Books rescue and fulfill. When I finish a good book, I sometimes need to mourn—finishing a particularly good book can feel like losing a particularly close friend.

But I didn't love these six books. So I stuffed them inside the give-away bags and ferried them to my car. The thrift store around the corner—from which I purchased at least one of these six cast-aways—happens to be well-known for its vast book selection. It's like the neighborhood Barnes and Noble, except without the espresso bar.

And so I realized the silver lining here was even bigger than the cloud: Someone, most likely, would find these books and be delighted.

"A ha!" they would say. "I must take this home. I will love it."

Talk to me

2008-04-18T15:41:00.000-05:00

I must have an invisible sign taped to my forehead, or some code encrypted in my voice, that says, "Hey! If you want to talk about abortion, come talk to me!"

Some back story. A couple of weeks ago, I developed a weird, very painful sensation in my neck, near where I'd had a surgery several years ago. Being mildly obsessed with my own medical history, and also prone to worry, I called my old doctor many states away, who had presided over that surgery. I left a message. No one called back.

Until today. The phone rang. It was the doctor's nurse, returning my call. The pain disappeared a few days after it started, but I explained the situation anyway and asked a few questions. She said she'd consult with the doctor and call me back. Then, as we were saying goodbye, she said, "Where do you live now, by the way?"

"Madison, Wisconsin," I said.

She grew up in nearby Chicago. "I remember Wisconsin being a very free-thinking state," she said. I tried to ramble something about how yes, it's free-thinking, anything-goes, not Alabama, very refreshing, yadda yadda yadda.

But she kept talking.

"This was back in the 1970s," she said. "You know, there was a time before abortion was legal across the country. It was left up to each state, and some states had laws that outlawed abortion, and other states had laws making it legal."

"Mmhmm, I know," I said.

"But Wisconsin didn't have a law either way. And this was really important to a lot of the women I went to school with. We were college students then, and we talked to our mothers, and none of them had had access to laws that allowed them to control how many kids they had. And if you looked at how many children they thought they wanted before they started a family, and compared that to the actual number, you'd see a big difference."

I asked her whether the lack of a law in Wisconsin had made abortion either more or less available.

"What it did," she said, "was it made it less shameful. And it made the women who needed it feel less like it was the disgraceful thing to do. The state said, 'We're not going to make a statement about this.' So it wasn't political. It was just a fact. If a doctor wanted to provide abortions, they could; and if they didn't, they didn't."

I don't know anything about the history of abortion law in Wisconsin, but I thought this woman's take on things was really interesting. It really was unlike any other conversation I've had with a health care provider. Most fascinating of all was how close to the surface this was for her. I mention I live in Wisconsin, and she launches into a five-minute monologue on how Wisconsin's approach to reproductive laws affected her 30 years ago. She could have simply made a joke about cheese.

So I told her a little about the clinic in Alabama; and the women who called there all the time, asking whether abortion was actually legal; and the men who smoked cigarettes in the parking lot while their daughters went inside, who nodded at the volunteer escorts and told us things like, "I think this is wrong, but my kid's situation is different. She's not a welfare queen or a whore," expecting us to understand their point.

"I know," she said, "I know." I could almost hear her shaking her head. Then she said she'd call me back.

Freaky!

2008-04-17T00:21:00.003-05:00

For people who read this online and not via email, can somebody tell me how long those weird "Alabama" and "Feminism on Trial" webrings have been on here? I just discovered them tonight. Maybe JK thought he'd play a bad joke, but I doubt it. I have no idea where they came from.

I deleted the code, problem solved. But seriously. If you ever see any creepy we-hate-women links here at Rage Is Good, lemme know. I doubt we've been infiltrated by the far-right (they have way bigger things to worry about), but I would be kinda sad if Rage got hijacked.

As my old friend Dr. J says, thank you for letting me share. And good night!

Ladies' Night

2008-04-16T22:22:00.004-05:00

You know that feeling when you've encountered something that very well may be a Very Good Idea? Sort of hopeful and excited and buzzy? Yeah. That's me right now. Tentatively jazzed even, which doesn't happen easily.

I just got back from a brainstorming meeting of people interested in starting a women's theater in Madison. About 25 of us crowded into the meeting space at a local coffee shop. Most of the people in the room (not me) had fairly extensive theater backgrounds. Many had years of organizing and activism experience. All were artists in some way. One was a judge. And almost all of us, save three or four men, were women.

There were black women, lesbian women, straight women, butch women, old women, white women, young women, Wisconsin-born women and transplants. It was one of the more diverse groups I've been in since landing in Madison. And it felt SO GOOD to be in their midst, with so many different voices and experiences and backgrounds coalescing around one very cool idea.

This was the first meeting. The mood in the room was electric. Some of the women came from more traditional theater backgrounds and simply wanted a space to showcase their work. But most of the people there, it seemed to me, came to the meeting because they saw something that felt transformative. The organizer -- a woman I met through a writing group last fall -- shared with us the statistic that less than 20% of all plays staged in the U.S. by either professional or community theaters are directed or written by women.

I was in a couple of stage productions in high school and really got interested in technical theater for a while, but I was never serious about it. Then, in 2004, I saw a staging of The Laramie Project. I was in documentary journalism school at the time, and the play -- based on interviews with real people in Laramie, Wyoming, in the wake of Matthew Shepard's murder -- opened my eyes to the power and beauty of extrapolating the notion of "documentary" to the stage. It wasn't a new idea, but I hadn't seen anything like it before. And I thought, I could do this. But then I didn't. And now I can.

The thing I miss most about Alabama is the feeling of connection in those small groups of people working to change the system. The feminists and the LGBTQ community and the racial reconciliation workshops happening in living rooms. The urgency in those circles is something I hadn't found in Madison.

I had looked here for something like the reproductive justice work I did in Alabama -- the clinic defense and Christian Coalition protests. But so much of that work has been done in this town. The pro-choice leafleting at the farmer's market doesn't really cut it. But tonight I realized that by living for a few years in a place like Alabama, where activism happens so close to the quick and in the dirty trenches, I had forgotten that things like art and theater can be revolutionary. Some might say the only true art is revolutionary.

And so maybe I have found a circle where I can help push a transformative agenda and have fun at the same time. And maybe I'll get to learn how to work the light board. That would be cool, too.

Boob Toob

2008-04-15T08:26:00.008-05:00

On Sunday, JK and I became quasi-Americans.

American, in that we broke down and bought a television.

Quasi, in that a) we got it used and on the cheap, and b) it's attached solely to the DVD player -- no cable, no rabbit ears, no Law & Order SVU.

It's my fault. If I hadn't been working late last Friday -- and, therefore, running late to fetch JK from his office -- this wouldn't have happened. Because JK wouldn't have had the time, twiddling his thumbs, waiting for me, to wander around Craigslist looking at the used television ads.

"Check this out," he emailed, with a link for an RCA SDTV TruFlat. "It's only 27 inches."

It looked so shiny in the picture.

And, it came with its very own TV stand, complete with a smoked-glass door for hiding stereo components and cords. I hate cords.

"It's pretty," I emailed back absent-mindedly. Those were the wrong two words. I should have said, "No way," or "Whatever, man," or, "Ha! Right."

The Great TV Debate started almost the minute we decided to combine our lives and possessions. I'd always said I never wanted a television to be the focal point of any room in my house. Especially not my living room, which is for lounging and talking and reading and drinking wine. Not brainlessly staring into the giant, gaping screen taking up half the wall.

My 13" Sony, which I'd owned for years, fit the bill perfectly.

Then JK came around. With, apparently, less than stellar eyesight and an aversion to watching action movies on a screen slightly bigger than a milk carton. The conversation usually went something like this: "I hate your TV." "I love my TV!" "You can't see anything on it." "I can see it fine! Maybe you need new glasses." "Arrrrrgh."

And so we compromised. Someday, we said, we'd live in a house big enough for a room dedicated solely to a giant television set, with a door I could shut so I could pretend it wasn't there.

The back of my car sports a bumper sticker that says, "Kill your TV". I suspect it's probably more offensive to the average American than the peace sign decal and the other bumper sticker next to it that says, "Well-behaved woman rarely make history." More than one person has raised an eyebrow and given me an odd look, to which I respond with defiance. Last year, before we'd finished unpacking boxes, we happily joined our local coffee shop in celebrating Turn Off Your TV Week.

But I had said, "It's pretty," the wrong two words, which inspired an email to the guy selling the RCA TruFlat. He emailed back. It was still available. And, he added, he'd give us a discount, since we'd have to drive 30 miles outside of town to get to his house.

It was sitting in the guy's garage when we arrived, plugged in, turned on, showing an Adam Sandler movie. In person it was shiny, too. And huge.

"Only 27 inches?" I whispered to JK, shooting him a narrow-eyed look. He gave me a sheepish, apologetic smile and shrugged.

An hour later, my small Sony looked forlorn, waiting in the corner to be dragged down to the basement. "I feel bad for it," I told JK as I handed him a speaker cord.

Later that afternoon, he called me into the room. "Look!" he said. He'd popped in a DVD of The Matrix Reloaded. It was beautiful. "Law & Order would look great on this," I said.

"For someone who hates televisions," JK told me, "you sure love to watch TV."

"Hmmph," I scowled. But he's right. I hate television sets the way some people hate drug dealers. I could flip through the channels until my mind turned to pudding. Law & Order all day long? The only thing that would make me happier is a room full of puppies. TV is like McDonald's French fries or chocolate martinis or Chapstick. A little just makes me think I need more.

JK hit play on the DVD remote.

"It's a beautiful Sunday afternoon," I protested. "Let's do this later! It's gorgeous outside! We could take the dog to the--"

The highway scene came on. A car blew up in slow motion. "What did you say?" JK asked.

I spoke without taking my eyes from the screen. "Close the windows. I'll make the popcorn."

Finish line (sort of)

2008-03-31T15:08:00.003-05:00

Huh. Well. So much for the once-a-day thing. But we were close. We certainly had our hands full, what with the being out of town multiple times and the getting sick with something that kept us on the couch watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer on DVD. But at least we tried. (And, fingers crossed, we will be slightly more successful next time.) And I suppose that's okay.

In honor of the close of the Month o' Lists, a list of random thoughts...

1. I am purple, and Lysmank is green, at least that's what our lovely friend BMJ says. I've never tried to think of friends in color before, but if I did, I'd say BMJ is a smoky, cornflower blue, the color the sky turns right before dusk happens.

2. I don't think there's anything wrong with liking Dan Seals in the 5th grade. Not that I did. And not that I still remember all the lyrics to "They Rage On" and "Bop." And not that I resent being teased about this by the very music-loving-in-a-slightly-snobby-way JK. (Hmmph.)

3. Little green sprouts pushed their way up through the dirt yesterday, even though half the yard is still covered in snow. Our neighbor calls them ditch lilies because when they're grown, they'll be common, orange flowers that grow alongside the highways and are hard as nails to kill. But I don't care because, hello! Green things. Growing. In the ground. This is a sign of progress after 100 inches of snow (not that I'm talking about the weather again).

4. Things I have found frustrating this week: doctors who don't actually tell you anything, soy milk pancakes, the font Comic Sans.

5. Things I have found not frustrating this week: road trips, late-night card games, coffee beans brought back to me straight from their Costa Rican plantation.

Maxed Out

2008-03-23T20:39:00.002-05:00

Go rent this. Ask that your local high school show it to all high school seniors. Send a copy to your senator and another to your presidential candidate of choice.

Maxed Out

Wild

2008-03-20T13:17:00.007-05:00

I suspect the dog may be wild. Not wild at heart, but really wild, a feral animal lurking just beneath the domesticated surface.

A few times a week, we drive up to a dog park that borders a lake on the north side of town. Most of the park is cleared -- muddy half the year, ice-packed the rest. But the slice of park that hugs the lake is wooded, with thick underbrush. Small trails, like tributaries, branch off the main walking path and cut deep into tangled branches.

I let him lead the way. He stays about 20 yards ahead but pauses every now and then to look back, watching me, making sure I'm following. We head down a narrow trail toward a frozen stream that feeds the lake. All along its edge, the ice has turned from opaque white to a blueish clear. If I stepped on it, it would break. But the dog, tracking some scent, runs safely out onto the ice, oblivious to the line between land and water.

Most of the people and the other dogs stay in the big, muddy center. We are alone. Something catches the dog's attention, and he bounds over a rise, toward the lake shore. He runs, nose to ground, pauses, looks up with ears perked, then runs again, not in a straight line, but weaving around like a bumblebee. This is the closest to real wilderness he'll see this month, away from our city apartment and cramped backyard. He could not be happier.

He ignores the other dogs in favor of sniffing and tracking and burrowing through the reeds. Part spaniel, part fox. JK likes to say this dog could never survive on his own, that if we dropped him off in the middle of a field, he'd get eaten by a hawk. But at the dog park, I think him less domesticated, more able to fend for himself in the wild.

He runs ahead and through some trees, and for a few moments, I lose sight of him. I can hear him, though, the sound of breaking twigs and the plod of his footfalls on the ice-encrusted snow. Then, I hear a crash, something breaking, the sound of cracking ice, and I walk a little faster, calling his name. There, in a small clearing, he stands chest-deep in a puddle that, until a few seconds ago, had been frozen over with a thin sheet of ice.

I shake my head. "You deserved that," I say. He just looks at me, wagging his tail, then takes off running.

Finding Darcy, Part Two

2008-03-17T23:13:00.004-05:00

You can find the first half of this story here.

Ten minutes later, we were standing in front of a house on the edge of town, knocking on the door that ostensibly belonged to Darcy Benton's aunt. A woman in a white apron over a blue-and-white-checked blouse came to the door. She smiled when Sarah mentioned we were students. And even though she didn't invite us in, she did explain where we could find Darcy's mother.

"It's up around a bend and over the hill, kind of in the country," she warned us.

And so it was. Around the bend and over the hill, we shared a sigh of relief. There it was. A big, white farmhouse.

We knocked on the front door. "I think I hear a TV," Sarah said. But no one answered. So we peeked in a couple of windows. Nothing.

After loitering in the yard for several minutes, it was decided by unanimous vote (the dog didn't get a say) that we would drive up the road to the next house and inquire as to the Benton family's whereabouts.

"People in small towns know everything about their neighbors," I told Sarah. "They'll know what to do."

Up the road was an attractive, two-story house with a circular drive. After we rang the doorbell, movement in an upstairs window caught our eye. Framed in the open window was an older man in an undershirt, with wet hair and a towel around his neck. A woman standing behind him held a pair of shears.

"We'll be right down!" the man shouted almost merrily, as if getting his Sunday haircut interrupted by a couple of scraggly-looking strangers was exactly what he'd planned.

A minute later, the woman opened the door. Sarah gave her the spiel about being a student and looking for Darcy and wondering if by any chance this lovely woman happened to have any idea where her neighbors might be.

Just then, a car drove by on the road behind us.

The woman smiled. "That's them right there," she said. "But you better hurry. They're meeting us at the community picnic in half an hour."

Enter the car chase. After a hasty thank you, Sarah and I jumped into the Volkswagen and peeled after the Bentons, barreling down the two-lane at a pretty fast clip, slowing down only after we realized for certain they were pulling into their driveway.

Sarah parked the car along the roadside. As soon as the Bentons were inside, we headed for their door. A man answered.

"We're looking for Darcy Benton," Sarah began.

"Ah, then," said the man, "you need to talk to my wife."

He invited us to follow him. Here we were, in Darcy Benton's living room.

The man's wife – Darcy's mother – came in from the kitchen. Sure, she said, she'd be happy to tell us about Darcy. She showed us a few pictures. Darcy had never intended to do pageants, but a man who ran the pageant happened to see her – where, I forget now, but it was somewhere mundane, like a bowling alley or the mall – and he cajoled her into getting involved.

"She's not crazy about that sign at the edge of town still being there," Darcy's mom said.

Of course, Darcy didn't still live in Elwood. She lived in St. Louis, with her husband and kids. "Here," her mom said, "let me give you her cell number. I'm sure she wouldn't mind."

Before we left, they invited us to join them at the picnic. We could tell they meant it, too. If we didn't need to be to Indianapolis that night, we probably would have gone. ("That would make great tape," Sarah, the budding radio documentarian, said later.)

We headed toward Illinois brimming with ideas for how Sarah could turn this into a radio piece worthy of submitting at the conference. But by the time we made it to our eventual destination halfway across the country, time had run out. We never called Darcy. We didn't so much talk about her again until last week, when Darcy found us, after a Google search of her own name turned up this blog.

And so, in honor of finding Darcy, coupled with March, the Month of Lists, this is what I learned...

People are generally friendlier than we give them credit for.
There is something beautiful about a way of life where it's still okay to talk to strangers (and hand out your relatives' phone numbers).
It never hurts to ask.
Inspiration can come from anywhere—even from a 20-year-old billboard in the middle of an Iowan cornfield.
The journey is always more interesting than the getting there.

True 'nough

2008-03-16T21:45:00.004-05:00

I will finish the Darcy saga, but first...

Me to JK, while discussing Larry Byrd during today's UNC basketball game: Wasn't Larry Byrd from Texas?

JK: Nope. Indiana.

Me: But didn't he play college ball in Texas?

JK: Ah, no. Indiana State.

Me: But didn't he play pro ball in Texas?

JK: Still no. Boston.

Me, looking puzzled: Huh. He had nothing at all to do with Texas?

JK, shaking head: Nothing at all.

Me, still puzzled: How come, when anything significant happens, I think it has something to do with Texas?

JK: That's easy. That just means you're a Texan.

Finding Darcy, Part One

2008-03-14T23:36:00.005-05:00

And now for the finale.

We had planned to hit Elwood right after church let out. We figured we'd find a neighborhood diner with plenty of Buicks out front, mosey in, and ask the friendly woman behind the counter whether she could tell us where we might find Darcy Benton.

"They're going to wonder why we're asking," Sarah said. "We need a cover story."

"Simple," I said. "We tell them you're a student, and this is for a class project. People always want to help students. Always."

The problem, once we arrived in Elwood, is that Elwood doesn't have neighborhoods, much less neighborhood diners. Elwood doesn't have gas stations or grocery stores or bars. Elwood has a smattering of houses, a church, and what looked like an abandoned schoolhouse.

Plus, absolutely nobody was anywhere to be seen.

We parked in front of the church and tried the door. It was locked. Across the street, a dog barked at the sight of us. His owner came outside and gave us a curious look, just as we dashed back to the car.

"Let's go ask that guy," I said.

But Sarah looked skeptical. The magic seemed to be waning. Or maybe we were really hot and hungry and not looking forward to six more hours in an un-air-conditioned car.

"Your project, your choice," I told her.

Sarah turned on the ignition, threw the car in drive and swung back toward the highway.

Ten minutes later, at the intersection of some small highway and the larger highway that would take us to the Interstate, she banged her hand on the steering wheel. "We should go back – I need to learn how to do this."

And so we went back. The man with the dog was still in his yard, and this time a woman was with him. We parked the car on the street and walked towards the driveway. "Hello?" we called. The woman came around front.

"Hi, um, we're students? Doing a project? On, uh, beauty queens in Iowa? And we were wondering if you, ah, might know where we could find Darcy Benton," one of us said, without stopping to breathe.

The woman, wearing denim jean-shorts and permed hair, glanced at Sarah's red Volkswagen, its bumper covered in gay pride stickers, the windows rolled down and her dog's big head panting in our direction. Then she looked back at us. Without speaking. Not a great sign.

"Well," she finally said. "I don't know about Darcy. But her aunt lives over there." At this, she waved her hand in the air, motioning somewhere behind us.

She gave us directions, with the implicit promise that we would then leave. Ten minutes later, we were standing in front of a house on the edge of town, knocking on the door.

Darcy, revisited

2008-03-13T23:01:00.004-05:00

Me, on Sarah's voice mail earlier today: "You'll never believe who emailed me this morning! Two words. Darcy Benton. Call me back."

Sarah, on my voice mail half an hour later: "I have Darcy Benton's phone number practically framed on my wall. Call me back."

We never found Darcy Benton last summer; but this morning, Darcy Benton found us.

The saga begins here and continues here.

Thing is, it didn't end the way we'd hoped. It actually felt highly anticlimactic at the time (although it did almost involve a car chase, except the car we were "chasing" wasn't trying to outrun us, as much as it was heading for its driveway), and so I never bothered to finish the story. Even though more than one of you asked to hear how it ended.

So I hope very late is better than never. Come back tomorrow, and all will be revealed... (!)

Moving

2008-03-12T21:30:00.003-05:00

We are not moving.

For the past 11 months, I've salivated at the thought of moving -- not to a new town (we like this one just fine, thanks, and besides, it's still new and shiny and ridiculously, fabulously progressive, what with moving here from Alabama), or to a new state (we would miss the cheese and beer), but to a new apartment.

This one's fine, mind you. It meets our basic needs. It's even got nice little extras like hardwood floors and built-in bookcases. But it's oh-so-small. And kind of dumpy. And completely impossible to keep clean, considering the fact the walls are insulated with cobwebs and the basement is a breeding ground for god knows what.

When I am bored or in need of a quick procrastination fix, I wander over to the classifieds and devour the apartment listings. And last month, when we realized we'd soon need to give 30-days' notice, I started looking in earnest. But then.

Then we realized it made no sense to move. Any way you look at it. It just doesn't. We love our 'hood, and we're nonprofit-poor, and there's no way we're finding a pseudo-two-bedroom in the same zip code for close to the same price (did I mention the foundation's crumbling?).

And so I'm letting go of the daydream. Last night we devised a redecorating plan to squeeze some semblance of a dining area into the living room, so we don't spend the next year continuing to balance dinner plates on our laps. That's how low my standards have fallen. All I need is a table to eat at, and I'm happy.

But tonight, while walking the dog, we passed a couple of "for rent" signs.

"Should I take down the number?" I asked JK. "Just to cover our bases?"

I obviously am having a hard time letting go.

Last weekend we visited my brother and sister-in-law in Phoenix and stayed in their lovely, relatively expansive home that boasts not one, but two dining areas. My brother converted the third bedroom into a home movie theatre, complete with a projector, huge screen mounted to the wall, and two rows of movie theatre seats he found on Craigslist.

My radical-leaning sister-in-law lamented the fact that she didn't feel comfortable hosting CopWatch meetings or anarchist reading groups in their living room.

"I almost need to hide where I live," she said. "A home theatre is so not anti-establishment."

And so I find my silver lining. The feminist radio collective will feel right at home here. Of this, I am positive.

Moratorium

2008-03-10T23:34:00.000-05:00

After returning from a three-day respite to the relatively hot weather of Arizona, I hereby place a moratorium on all weather-related waxing.

I won't complain that we still have many feet of snow on the ground almost halfway through March, nor will I lament the fact that I had to re-box all of the short-sleeve shirts I had unpacked for our trip south. I won't even mention the fact that the reports of more snow this week had me so wracked with disappointment earlier today that I almost accidentally drove my car into a ditch.

Because I'm getting tired of hearing my own self talk about the temperature. I'm tired of the anxious, depressed looks that cross the faces of shoppers when they see the bathing suits and sandals in the window displays of chain stores. I need to reclaim the me that sees this as one big, fun, ice-covered adventure.

Maybe the act of embracing our never-ending winter will increase my fortitude in the face of future adversity. Maybe it's a gift from the gods, allowing me a last-ditch chance to learn to snow-shoe. Maybe it will force me to fill my time reading things other than the updates from the National Weather Service, which, in turn, will make me a more interesting person at dinner parties. Maybe it means my out-of-town friends will stop secretly rolling their eyes whenever we talk on the phone.

Maybe. But if I talk about weather one more time before June, please, somebody start spamming me.

Not another list

2008-03-09T22:36:00.002-05:00

I'm getting tired of such a literal interpretation of this month's theme and will my do best, for the sake of you lovely people, to vary things a bit.

But not tonight. Tonight I got home late from a long day of schlepping around airports, and sitting next to too-big men who take up all the arm rest, and getting confused by the hour-slow clock on the terminal tram. So, no freshly reinvented riff about lists for you today.

Good night!!

Resolutions for the next week

2008-03-08T22:52:00.002-06:00

1. sleep
2. refrain from drinking excessive amounts of wine
3. go to bed before 2 a.m.
4. avoid fried things and cheese and any sauce for which a main ingredient is ranch dressing

That's it. Fun though it was, after this weekend my standards are pretty low.

Things I keep

2008-03-07T17:52:00.000-06:00

Last Friday, I went with our upstairs neighbor to a Naked Lady Party.

Fifteen or so women gathered at one woman's house, with the husbands and children banished, carting large bags of unwanted clothes and shoes and household things. We spread them all over the living room and dining room, organizing them into categories (i.e., shoes by the window, pants on the love seat).

Then, after an hour or so of wine and food, someone shouted, "Swap!" Wine glasses and forks clattering to the table, we swarmed through the stacks of clothing, trying things on, examining ourselves in the full-length mirrors propped against the walls, and passing things that didn't fit to other people.

By the end of the night, we each had filled our bags with other people's unwanted things. Everything was free. The only rule was that you leave with about the same amount of stuff you brought with you. (It's the hostess's job to pack up all the leftovers and donate them to a local thrift store.)

Earlier that day, I was surveying my closet, deciding what to bring. And I thought about all the stuff I don't part with, all the stuff I keep and move from apartment to apartment, or never or rarely use.

So, for today's list... a list of things I keep.

Things I keep:

1. Navy pumps that I've worn exactly twice
2. An old corduroy blazer, which, despite my waiting, has never come back in style
3. Everything that was ever owned by my great-grandmother, regardless of whether I use it or if it's even usable (many decorative vases, a makeup bag, a cracked turkey baster)
4. Old candle stubs
5. 10 years' worth of journals, diaries and spiral notebooks
6. My dog's baby teeth
7. Extra buttons
8. Mostly empty bottles of fingernail polish
9. Exactly one pair of pants a size too small, just in case

Things I may do for my father's birthday

2008-03-06T00:42:00.001-06:00

The parents are meeting JK and me at The Brother and Sister-in-Law's house in Phoenix tomorrow (technically, later today). My father turns 57 later this month, so we're planning a few early-birthday festivities during the visit. By a "few," I really mean an all-day extravaganza. For example...

Some things I may do for my father's birthday:

1. Grudgingly agree to miniature golf.
2. Lose at bowling.
3. Buy dinner.
4. Insist that everyone wear party hats.
5. Eat vegan carrot birthday cake.
6. Sing "Manic Monday" and "Cecilia" and "Here Comes the Rain Again" in front of a drunken crowd of strangers at the neighborhood karaoke bar.
7. Drink more wine than is responsible.
8. Create a ridiculously complicated, impressively creative, last-minute gift with The Brother and Sister-in-Law.
9. Feel a little guilty for not doing more.
10. Eat left-over vegan carrot birthday cake for breakfast, while sneaking globs of icing under the table to the dog.

Alabama

2008-03-05T10:54:00.003-06:00

A couple of close friends are heading back to Alabama next week for a visit. It got me thinking of all the good things about Alabama, all the things I miss. And so, for today's installment...

The things I miss about 'Bammy:

1. The fried food
2. The way you can walk down the street, or go to dinner, or go to Target, and invariably run into at least five people you know
3. Bitching with friends about how drippingly religious everything is
4. The ho-cakes (they're like greasy pancakes made with cornmeal and then fried)
5. The looks on people's faces in other parts of the country when I tell them I live in Alabama
6. The world's most passionate women's rights activists
7. The way it rains for 30 minutes every afternoon in August, cooling things off and making the pavement steam
8. Sitting on porches with beer and friends and dogs
9. The immediate friendships that come from a small circle of like-minded people
10. Breaking into JK's backyard before we were dating, and having impromptu midnight pool parties

Filler

2008-03-04T22:08:00.003-06:00

It's late. I'm tired. The computer's acting funny, and I still have so much to do, and it's 10:30 and I'm tired.

And so I apologize for this filler. This every-day thing can stink when you're over-worked and under-fed. Sigh.

So, a silly list. Send me yours. I want to know.

A few of my favorite things:
in no particular order

1. homemade spaghetti
2. a good book and a pillowy couch and open windows
3. wood-burning fireplaces
4. pancakes for dinner
5. the first warm day of the year, when you suddenly realize you can strip to your t-shirt and not get goose flesh
6. cold cereal
7. the sweet, solid feel of my dog, plopping his chin on my knee or in my hand
8. the smell of coffee in the morning, especially when JK makes it
9. the way JK always tucks the blankets around my shoulders when he gets up first in the morning
10. roller-skating

10x10

2008-03-03T21:42:00.003-06:00

A few months ago, I read on someone else's blog that a common and nifty way to introduce one's self to the Blogland is to publish a "100 things about me" list, in 10 installments of 10. This seems like an appropriate task for the Month of Lists.

So, here goes.

100 things, 1-10
(in no particular order)

1. I've lived at 20 different addresses (in 32 years).
2. Cold cereal is my all-time favorite food.
3. I hate malls. A handful of years ago, congested shopping areas inspired in me a sense of dread that bordered on panic attack. Now, it simmers at resentment.
4. The two things I love shopping for are books and shoes.
5. Tags make me nervous (on sheets, pillows, dog toys -- strangely not the tags on clothes).
6. If I could be anyone for a day, I'd be the guest host on Saturday Night Live.
7. For several months when I was seven or eight, I knocked every piece of cake I attempted to eat into my lap (this included cake for my birthday, my brother's birthday, my grandmother's birthday and my father's birthday). I have since overcome any lingering cake anxiety and prefer those in the family of chocolate.
8. My dream vacation consists of a remote cabin, a body of water nearby, a stack of books, bottles of wine, my dog, and maybe one or two carefully vetted human beings.
9. I resent being asked a lot of questions.
10. The most commonly heard phrase coming from my mouth is, "so, I have a question...".

Today

2008-03-02T20:57:00.003-06:00

Today I:

1. Jumped in puddles with a three-year-old
2. Whispered to my dog
3. Walked outside without a winter coat for the first time since November
4. Used my own bags at two stores, one of them Target
5. Got strange looks for using my own bags at one of them (guess which)
6. Was told I knew too much about conjoined and parasitic twins
7. Ate two bowls of cold cereal
8. Wrote a new prologue
9. Cried over a National Geographic article
10. Wondered why our brains like things in groups of 10.

Lists: A List

2008-03-02T20:35:00.005-06:00

Before I jump in with my own list-mania, I wanted to share the queen bee of list-writing (if there were such a genre), written by my very own friend, Cake Leslie. This is good stuff worth savoring:

Lists: A List

Lists

2008-03-01T18:14:00.003-06:00

I love lists. I love drawing in the check-mark box to the left of each entry. I love how a well-made list can make you feel like a more productive person than you really are. I'm one of those people who adds things to her list that she's already done, just so she can check them off.

NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month -- where you post one blog entry per day, for the month of November) has gone year-round, starting today. And the topic for the inaugural month? Lists. I have a busy March ahead, but I couldn't resist, when the theme was one of my favorite (albeit kind of geeky) things.

I'm not exactly sure how I'll wring 31-days' worth of posts out of this, but I'll try. And if you have any suggestions, give us a holler.

Happy list-making!

Heat wave

2008-02-25T14:43:00.010-06:00

JK and I are going to Arizona in a few days to visit The Brother and Sister-In-Law. I can't wait. The temperature in Phoenix will hit 80 degrees this week. So far this winter, we've had 80 inches of snow.

I'm becoming one of those people obsessed with the weather. For example, our high this Saturday was 26. I've never before so eagerly anticipated 26 degrees, not even when I hated 7. Twenty-six means taking the dog for a walk without your nose hairs freezing. It means mittens are optional. It means the ice on the road turns to mush, and you no longer need to be terrified of driving to the grocery store.

To put it in perspective, 26 degrees is 38 degrees warmer than the temperature one morning last week when we woke up to -12.

We drove to the store Saturday afternoon with the windows partially rolled down. Passing by the lake, I could almost mistake the glare of sun on snow for the reflective glint of white-blue water, and I convinced myself the people skiing on the lake were surfers. "Isn't this great?!" I said, to no one in particular.

At the store, people walked around with stupid grins on their faces, liberated from scarves and balaclavas and practically jumping out of their long underwear. "Can you believe this weather?" they asked each other. Indeed, weather is almost all anyone here ever talks about anymore.

"Come on," one surly store clerk was overheard saying at Trader Joe's. "It's not that warm," to which a long line of customers responded with a collective gasp. If the relative heat wave hadn't instilled such euphoria, the crowd might've pelted her with their mini-muffins and packages of frozen edamame before kicking her out onto the freshly de-iced sidewalk.

The truth, though, is that 26 is cruel. Because tonight we're expecting another 4-6 inches of snow and freezing rain. And honestly, it's not like 26 degrees is anywhere close to warm. One might even say it's decidedly cold. We haven't seen grass since November, and we're not on the verge of seeing it again anytime soon.

The shine of 26 will wear off in a couple of days: We'll realize we really do need those mittens, the roads will freeze again, and we'll all continue going a little crazy as we wait impatiently for the end of April, when the three feet of snow outside will melt into dirty water and flood our basements.

But hey -- at least we'll get to wear T-shirts as we mop it all up.

Older

2008-02-11T22:17:00.001-06:00

Instead of New Year's Resolutions, I've decided to make Birthday Resolutions. The passing of one year of my own life seems much more meaningful than the random turning of the calendar.

Earlier this month, I turned 32. In the two weeks preceding my birthday, the following things happened:

1. I received a letter from my doctor, informing me of alarmingly high cholesterol.
2. I found my first gray hair.
3. I had a conversation with a friend, in which one of us said to the other, "You know, we're rapidly approaching the age when it's strange that we don't have children."

I've been thinking a lot about the passing of time lately and also the imperative to make moments count. Maybe not every moment -- I don't need to fondly recall the 30 minutes I spent in line at the airport ticket counter, for example -- but more of them than not.

They say 30 is the new 20. I hope 32 isn't the new 22. I don't want to be wandering aimlessly through the doorway of adulthood for the next 12 months. There comes a time probably for most of us, when we realize we know who we want to be. And we realize we have all the tools and powers to make that happen. And to not make that happen results primarily from our own laziness.

I want to be the kind of person who writes thank-you notes and sends tea bags home to sick co-workers and would rather take a walk with the dog -- under the sun, with wind on my face -- than watch old TV shows on DVD with the shades drawn. And lately, when I find myself hitting the "play" button on the remote control, with the blinds closed on a fine Sunday afternoon, I know I'm making a choice. The thank-you notes won't go out tomorrow. The dog remains unwalked. My world remains confined inside the walls of my living room.

JK and I were talking last night about the relationships we have, as adults, with our friends. When you live far away and lead busy lives and barely have time for your own family, friendships become valuable real estate. Sometimes ties become strained, and sometimes they snap altogether, for reasons of distance or time or inconvenience. The people who make your world a bigger, more enriched place tend to stick around. The others fade.

I'm thinking about this as a guiding principle for how to be the person I want to be: Does this decision or action or person expand my understanding of -- or impact in -- the world around me?

So this year, my Birthday Resolution (well, in addition to not eating as much cheese - check - and also to start exercising every day - check) is to live more deliberately, to make moments matter, and to choose paths that force me to live in the larger world, instead of staying tucked in my living room, with the television for company.

Yeeeee-Hawwwww

2008-02-05T11:02:00.000-06:00

(This post includes pics, so you lovely email subscribers may want to pop over to the web version. Four words to make it worth your time: fun with hula hoops.)

Last weekend, some friends and I pulled off a huge feat -- a surprise graduation party for JK, who finished his grad program right before the holidays. Because he didn't go back to Alabama for the graduation ceremony, we decided we'd bring a little 'bama to him, in the form of fried chicken, okra, collards and cheap beer:

Our friend Adam is a semi-professional hula hooper (such things do exist, yes). He makes his own hoops and brought his nifty light-up one to the party -- the first pic is his wife, Stef; the second pic is Adam:

JK's parents came up from North Carolina for the festivities, as did friends from Chicago and Alabama. The best part was seeing JK's face when we arrived at Katy's house (ostensibly to "help move a dresser" at 7 p.m. on a Saturday), and his good friend Brian from Alabama answered the door.

I couldn't have pulled it off without the help of some very dear and patient friends (especially this one). Not to mention I now have enough left-over mac and cheese to last the rest of the year.

Squirrel

2008-01-31T13:18:00.001-06:00

You know it's cold when you need to scrape the ice off the inside of your car windows. That's how cold it's been this week. And last week. And the week before that.

This afternoon I got home from the gym to find a squirrel dying in our front yard. It had managed to climb most of the way up a wooden trellis that stands between our house and the house next door, on its way to some tall tree branches. The squirrel was gray with dark brown speckles on its back, and a thin, droopy tail. It held a light-colored shell of something between its teeth, but its back legs kept giving way, and it lost its balance. To hold onto the trellis, it had to let go of the shell, which meant turning around and climbing back toward the ground. No use climbing all the way up the tree without food.

The squirrel was either injured or partially frozen. I checked the temperature when I later went inside -- it was 14 degrees with a wind chill of 3. At what temperature do squirrels start to suffer?

As soon as it reached the ice-covered ground, it paused, looking defeated, and then it fell over. From the front porch, I gasped. I think I actually clutched at my throat. Since winter started, the squirrels have been acting funny. They've been bolder and braver and a touch desperate, coming within a foot or two of a person, just to get a seed or something. Just after Thanksgiving, a fat one chased me down the sidewalk. I didn't think I could handle finding an actually dead squirrel in the yard, especially not one I had seen in pain while alive.

"Get the shell!" I said out loud. "You can do it!"

The squirrel righted itself and scampered around the base of the trellis, searching for something it could take back up the tree. Its back legs kept buckling and slipping to the side, which, as it walked, made it look sort of like a drunk person trying unsuccessfully to walk in a straight line. It trembled, its front paws especially shaky, and again it tumbled over.

I almost ran inside to tear up the last of the bread that was slowly going stale in our kitchen, but then I gave myself a silent lecture on the dangers of human intervention. "This is what happens in nature in the winter," I told myself, "this is what's supposed to happen."

The squirrel failed to find the shell. Instead it turned to look at the street.

"No!" I shouted. "Don't do it! You won't make it!"

The squirrel didn't listen. Luckily the roads were still bad from two days of winter storms, and the traffic on our street was thin. You know how squirrels leap and scamper? Imagine that, but in excruciatingly slow motion. Each time it landed on its way across the road, I could almost see it wince. This squirrel was making its last stand.

I watched as it reached the driveway across the street, then it paused under a parked car. As I waited to see what it would do next, I thought about all of the dramas that play out in this urban wilderness -- where people and cars and domesticated animals aren't the main players, but the backdrop, a few unnatural predators to avoid. Even here, in the middle of a small city, where concrete, bricks and asphalt far outnumber trees and grass, nature finds ways to take hold.

Our house is in a densely populated neighborhood, with yards the size of postage stamps and only a few feet between buildings. Before we moved in, our house had been vacant for several months. And we soon discovered that nature had started taking over, as if the natural parts (wood beams, wood floors) of this human-made building were being called home. Things -- who knows what -- were living in the walls. Centipedes and spiders had started colonies. Part of me felt bad about cleaning it all out -- the part that liked the idea of nature fighting back and reclaiming what is hers.

The squirrel emerged from under the car and made its way up the driveway. I watched until I could only see the tip of its tail. It was gone. And then I went inside.

Yippee!

2008-01-03T18:14:00.000-06:00

Have you ever had the experience of really needing to do something, but then you lollygag a little, and suddenly time has passed, and you haven't done that thing you really needed to do? And the more that time passes, the more you need to do it, but for some reason you just can't?

And you look at the clock or the calendar and think to yourself, Gosh, I really need to do that; but with every passing hour or day, the task becomes increasingly impossible. So you feel guilty and possibly ashamed, and you silently berate yourself and lose sleep over that thing you need to do but haven't, and you tell yourself, Other people don't have this problem, other people are responsible.

Or maybe that's just me.

I approach procrastination as if it were a contact sport -- one that requires years of practice and knee pads and is rewarded in the end with trophies and cash endorsements. I usually procrastinate over the rather mundane, like doing the laundry or writing thank you notes. But every now and then, I play in the big league and partake in the kind of procrastination that can lead to night sweats -- the kind connected to something important, something big, something that involves other people or big future dreams.

I have neglected finishing a Very Important Document (read: book proposal) for three months. I often would wake up sometime before 2 a.m. and silently fret, then promise myself that tomorrow I would finish it. I am very happy to report (not that this means anything to anyone but me) that just a few minutes ago, I finally -- yes indeedy -- finished the stinkin' Very Important Document and sent it off to The Agent. It needs more work, but at least it's no longer sitting on my desk, giving me the evil eye.

This is reason to celebrate. I think I'll put off starting on my taxes and instead relax with a little Law & Order that just arrived from Netflix...

Daughters

2007-12-20T08:23:00.001-06:00

For a variety of reasons that aren't important to this post, I'm not a fan of Hillary Clinton for President. I find her pretty uninspiring, and I don't think political dynasties so overtly displayed are in the best interest of our country.

But last night I was reading JK's Newsweek, and a little blurb caught my attention. It was part of an odd feature Newsweek recently added, called "Soundbytes", where, in an apparent attempt by to seem more multimedia, the magazine displays freeze-frame photographs and quotes from three commercials and Internet videos.

The last of the three, there on the bottom-right corner of page 27, was a still-shot from a Hillary for President ad, showing Hillary and her mother leaning in together behind a small table donned with cups of tea. Below the picture were these words:

"I think she ought to be elected, even if she weren't my daughter."
Would-be First Mother Dorothy Rodham, in a new Clinton campaign ad in which she explains why her daughter, Hillary, should be president.

The last 10 or so words caught me. Yes, Hillary Clinton is a woman. And yes, Hillary Clinton has a mother. Neither of these facts ought to garner Clinton any votes purely on their own. But here is another fact: Generations of little girl children have known that only little boys grow up to be president.

Now, thanks to Hillary Clinton (and the fact that Americans are beginning to realize that the possession of ovaries doesn't immediately negate one's ability to lead), we've suddenly been ushered into an age where someone can speak in the national media about why their daughter should be president, and that person is taken seriously. I think that's pretty damn cool.

The Office

2007-12-12T13:44:00.000-06:00

JK and I indulged in an evening-long marathon of the British version of The Office last night. After the third episode, I started feeling a little funny. I began almost dreading the next one.

The show is well-written and smartly acted. The humor -- much of which involves male characters making off-color remarks and gestures directed at female co-workers -- makes us cringe and squirm so much that we almost have to laugh. I laughed. But after a while, I realized I was doing more cringing than laughing.

The writers' portrayal of workplace sexual harassment supposedly illuminates the absurdity of this behavior. That's why we think it's funny. The show doesn't require us to accept the idea that sexual harassment is acceptable in order to laugh at it -- quite the opposite, really. We're not exactly encouraged to identify with the guys tossing around the off-color jokes and ogling their female co-workers.

But we also laugh because workplace harassment (of women) is familiar. It's expected. The show draws its humor, in part, on our collective understanding that this kind of environment is a regular -- although theoretically unacceptable -- occurrence in the lives of many women.

I usually think smart, ironic humor is a good way to shed light on -- and even educate about -- social issues (Margaret Cho and Chris Rock are sometimes good examples of this; Sarah Silverman, in my opinion, is not). But every now and then, I wonder whether the "smart, ironic" part is just a cover that allows people who are usually male to get away with stupid, sexist jokes that otherwise might be considered tasteless.

I don't blame all individual men for the existence of sexism. But I do think that adults with Y chromosomes tend to be a little more comfortable laughing outright at an expression of sexism without any pause to consider its real-life origins or implications.

After six episodes of The Office last night, I suggested we call it quits. "Are you getting bored?" JK asked.

"No," I said, "honestly, I'm just kind of tired of the harassment humor. It's getting a little old."

He had no idea what I was talking about. Sure, he noticed the jokes, but he was able to watch them purely through the lens of humor. He didn't cringe every time a new character who shared his gender walked onto the screen, knowing full well they were about to experience a barrage of behavior meant to humiliate them.

Sexism -- and sexual harassment in workplaces and schools -- is still a real problem. And I think humor can play a part in addressing it. But at the end of the day, there are countless other things I'd rather be laughing at.

7.

2007-12-06T10:58:00.000-06:00

The first winter I lived in Maine, my roommate and I didn't own a car. So KL and I walked everywhere -- up the hill to the laundromat, up the hill to work, up the hill to the coffee shop or the diner or the bar.

In the middle of the town where we lived was a very tall bank. On top of the bank was a giant digital sign that alternately flashed the current time and temperature and could be seen for miles around.

One morning in mid-January, KL and I were trudging across a recently plowed sidewalk on our way to Marcy's Diner, where we liked to get egg sandwiches and coffee on Sunday mornings, and because the booths were smacked up against the open kitchen, so it was about the warmest place in town.

On our way, one of us glanced up. "It's SEVEN degrees!" we said.

We had never knowingly experienced seven before. One of us is from Texas (me), and the other is from Maryland.

"No wonder we're freezing," we said.

Ever since then, seven degrees has marked a dividing line for me. Warmer than seven=fine. Colder than seven, and I can no longer distinguish between one temperature and another, so it might as well be -15.

So I grew a little uneasy when Joe woke me up this morning with the following announcement, delivered with a mix of awe and alarm: "It's negative-eight out there!"

I recalled my friend BJ, who grew up in North Dakota and once said it could get so cold that your eyeballs were at risk of freezing. I thought about calling her, and asking if she'd been speaking in hyperbole, or if I should consider purchasing goggles.

But when we went outside, it didn't feel so bad. "This doesn't feel any colder than yesterday," I said, pulling my scarf a little tighter.

And so now I'm reconsidering seven's bad reputation. It wasn't seven's fault that my first Maine winter was borderline miserable. It was the fact that I hadn't yet developed a full appreciation for wool.

I grew to love the constant presence of snow, and the ritual of donning ten layers of clothing just to run to the grocery store, and the sound of ice under my boots. I loved that when it reached 35 degrees, it felt too hot for a winter coat. And I loved the first day of the year when the Time & Temp building flashed 50 degrees: All of sudden, people stripped off their jackets and outer layers to expose their flesh to the elements for the first time in five months. Total liberation.

I think I should call KL and tell her I might be changing my mind. "Seven's not so bad," I'll say. "It's just misunderstood."

Sigh.

2007-12-05T14:37:00.000-06:00

I am about to become the kind of person who does this to their animal. And I am sorry. If you see us walking down the street, please don't point your finger, or snicker, or say to the person walking next to you, "Oh my god, can you believe that?! Some people are so ridiculous."

Because that's what I say. And if I do this, I won't be able to say it anymore. And I will want you to refrain out of sympathy.

It's not that I care about what other people think. I care about what I think. And these violate my sense of what is right and wrong. Buying them -- and then admitting that I bought them, through the act of using them -- will mean I'm no longer privy to the jokes I once made about People Like That.

Admittedly, this is a far cry from a diamond-encrusted water bowl, or a facial at the doggie day spa. But it's a little more than I feel comfortable with, in the let's-personify-our-pets department. It means I'm contributing even more towards the $40 billion a year that Americans spend on their pets (seriously, people, we could feed a small nation with that).

This almost crossed the line for me --

-- but not quite. It's not like my dog wears his Christmas outfit (which is more of a plaid collar ringed with jingle bells) in public, or anything. Or for more than one day out of the year.

These are different. These are about as public as it gets.

But dude, the dog's feet are frozen. We can't walk the two blocks to the video store without him crying in the middle of the sidewalk. So I figure this is better than that.

Addendum. I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings. If you, dear friend, put boots on your dog in the winter, whether you live in Alaska or Alabama, I still love you. And no, I've never pointed at you and laughed. Honest. Oh, that time? No, I wasn't laughing at you. I was laughing at, um, that mime, you know, the mime who lives across the street and happened to be practicing his Britney Spears impersonation in his front yard. Seriously!

The Gross Post

2007-12-04T23:06:00.000-06:00

I have something to say; and frankly, I'm going to be a little graphic.

We got adopted by a cat last month:

Being a two-pet family has its perks: In the winter, it keeps the bed a few degrees warmer. And plus, cats don't beg for walks or table scraps, so it's twice the animal-fun without double the guilt-trips.

And yet, despite the domesticated bliss, we've been having a problem lately. And to be honest with you, it's growing a bit untenable.

The worst thing about having a cat is the cat shit. And the worst thing about the cat shit is that the dog loves to eat it.

So far, our solution has been to block the entrance to the hallway with a baby gate, leaving enough space for the cat to slither through to reach her cat box.

This means that every time one of us needs to get to the bedroom or the front door or the linen cabinet, we're forced to hurdle, straddle or trip over the damn gate. And at least once an hour, I stop whatever I'm doing, stricken with panic that one of us forgot to replace the gate just so.

One afternoon, I realize I haven't seen the dog in a while. I find him in the hallway, with his face coated in litter-crumbs, eating away like it was an all-you-can-eat buffet. Before I can open my mouth to holler, "you dirty-mouthed sack of bones!", his eyes widen and he primly sits down. Then he glances around, as if to see who on earth could have caused such a mess.

The cat poop thing would merely be disgusting, if it also didn't come sprinkled with hearty amounts of litter, which, apparently, can harden into clumps in a dog's intestines and require surgery to remove. So, after dragging him into the kitchen while repeatedly shouting "bad dog!", I call the vet's office.

"My dog ate a bunch of cat litter," I say.

"How much," asks the receptionist.

"I don't know," I say. "He wasn't just eating it like a little appetizer. It was definitely more bottomless bowl, if you know what I mean."

To this, there is silence.

"So, um, maybe a few cups," I guess.

"Lemme get the doctor," she says.

A few seconds later, the doctor comes on the phone. She sounds alarmed and asks me to bring him in immediately, so they can pump his stomach. Can't I do that at home, I ask, to which she sounds a little disappointed. Yes, she says, just give him some hydrogen peroxide. It should do the trick in about 15 minutes.

"This is your own fault," I tell the dog, a few minutes later. "But I'm still sorry for what I'm about to do."

Pinning him to the linoleum floor, I force-feed him 50 milliliters of hydrogen peroxide with Joe's stainless steel turkey baster. He gurgles a lot of it up in a spray of white foam, and then looks at me as if I just stepped on his tail on purpose. Poor guy. I will only say that what happened next was truly, insanely gross, and that now I feel a few steps closer to being ready for human parenthood, if ever that should happen.

In a non-icky-bodily-fluids kind of way, the two-animal family seems to share yet another similarity to parenthood. Every time I play with the cat, I feel guilty. I worry I'm hurting the dog's feelings. I worry he's keeping track of who gets what attention.

After all, he was here first.

Is this how parents feel when they bring home a second kid? Is this how my parents felt? Did they overcompensate somehow, and that's why I'm a little screwed up? Am I screwing up my dog, in a vicious, never-ending cycle?

So far, we have yet to repeat the turkey baster episode. And the dog has only managed a small swipe or two at the cat box. I'm hoping he's learned his lesson. But if he really is keeping score, I suspect I know how he'll act out.

Snow

2007-12-03T19:12:00.000-06:00

It snowed here over the weekend. Bucketfuls. Three days earlier, Joe emailed me the forecast: "Up to five inches! The high tonight is 14!! 32 on Saturday!!"

I've been getting a lot of emails like this from Joe lately. Until a few months ago, the northernmost place he ever lived was North Carolina. He checks the weather report every hour; the first thing he says to me in the morning is, "What's the temperature outside?"

So we knew well in advance of the storm that we needed to prepare. For example, we bought a shovel. Being Southerners, we also thought we should head to the grocery store with a U-Haul and stock up on necessities, like bread and bottled water and batteries and those weird vegetarian versions of Vienna Sausages.

The store was surprisingly not busy. We must have beat the rush, we said. We smirked as we drove away, pitying the poor people who waited until the last minute. Ha! We could handle this northern-living stuff, no problem.

A couple of days before the snow came, Joe asked his co-workers if they were ready.

"Ready for what?" they said.

"The snow," Joe said.

"What do you mean?" they said. Now they were looking at him as if he'd forgotten to wear pants that morning.

Hmmm, we said to each other later than night, eyeing the bags of candles and canned goods in the corrner.

On Sunday, we woke to find the car and the house and mostly everything else buried under several inches of snow and ice. Joe immediately grabbed the shovel and ran out the front door, while I shouldered the burden and made coffee in my pajamas. When I stepped outside to ferry him a cup of coffee, I found him banging the edge of the shovel into the top of the concrete porch steps. The sound ricocheted off the porch and filled the block with a very annoying clanking. A couple of dogs started howling nearby.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"Getting rid of this ice," Joe said.

"I think we should have bought salt for that," I said.

He paused for a second and looked up, with that look on his face that usually precedes a Very Good Idea.

"I have a very good idea!" he exclaimed. "Listen. There's a box of canning salt in the kitchen, on the bottom shelf. I need you to bring it to me."

Now, canning salt doesn't look a whole lot different than table salt. It's a hint grainier, but still not as coarse as, say, sea salt. And it's definitely not the same thing that the city trucks spread all over the roads to make them drivable.

But I just shrugged, glanced at him suspiciously and then retrieved the box from the kitchen (wondering, on the way, why on earth we owned canning salt in the first place).

Back outside, I handed the box to Joe and then looked around. Across the street, a man with an industrial snow-blower was clearing his driveway. The guys in the street digging out their cars weren't even wearing coats. And now, in front of the whole neighborhood, we were about to use a puny box of kitchen salt to try to remove a 2-inch sheet of ice from our front steps. And everyone would laugh at us, and realize that we have no idea what we're doing.

So, instead of being a Very Good Girlfriend, I went inside and watched from behind the mini blinds.

But, it turned out the canning salt kind of worked.

"Wasn't that a great idea?" Joe asked, when I tentatively stepped back outside. "Now," he said, "let's go do your car."

My car was at the curb, under a big snowdrift. Joe shoveled, and I steered. Or, I sat in the driver's seat and moved the steering wheel, but nothing happened.

"Hit the gas!" he yelled.

"I am!" I yelled back. "I don't think you shoveled it right!" A big mountain of snow was blocking my left tire. Eventually, I got the car to back up at an angle, with its butt smacked against the curb and its front dangling into traffic. But then it wouldn't budge.

"Need some help?" The sound of the voice made me wince, because it belonged to our next-door neighbor. The guy I don't like. The one who oozes smarm and smells like stale cigarettes and stole our parking space when we moved here. Great.

But Joe said, "yes, please!" because, unlike me, Joe is the kind of person who values people for their strengths.

So the guy pushed. And then his wife came out, and she pushed. And then, suddenly, like giving birth, my car popped out of the ice and into the road.

As I drove off in search of a cleared parking space, I almost didn't look back, but then I did. And our neighbors were standing on the sidewalk, waving.

Wow. They must've gotten lots of emails.

2007-09-27T14:48:00.000-05:00

This just in from The New York Times. Good job, Verizon. Now, if we can just get the government to stop spying us...

SHAME on Verizon

2007-09-27T09:19:00.000-05:00

In a brainless move, Verizon Wireless has taken up the mantle of Big Brother, deciding to police the political actions of its customers.

When NARAL Pro-Choice America, a national pro-choice advocacy group, asked Verizon to let its customers participate in the group's texting program, Verizon refused, claiming NARAL was too "controversial" and "unsavory" for its business. (NARAL's program allows cell phone users to sign up for legislative updates via text message, by sending a message to a five-digit number known as a "short code".) All other major wireless carriers have signed on.

Apparently, if Verizon doesn't approve of the content of a text message, company policy allows them not to send it.

“No company should be allowed to censor the message we want to send to people who have asked us to send it to them,” said Nancy Keenan,NARAL's president, in today's New York Times. “Regardless of people’s political views, Verizon customers should decide what action to take on their phones. Why does Verizon get to make that choice for them?”

If you find this at all disturbing, you can do something about it. NARAL's website provides this nifty form you can use to send Verizon an email, telling them exactly what you think.

Day Two

2007-08-18T10:53:00.000-05:00

What do you wear when you're about to meet a retired beauty queen?

In the living room of our friend JM's house, I dug through my duffel bag. My wrinkled road-trip clothes seemed hardly worthy of meeting someone who almost became Miss America. I couldn't wear anything too old, or anything mismatched, or anything with holes in it. Because she might not talk to us. She might look out her peephole and think we were a couple of hitchhikers looking for a place to use the bathroom.

It had to be over 90 degrees outside, so I needed to balance looking somewhat adult with not being miserably hot on the way there. I finally settled on a pair of not-too-stained khakis and a yellow tank top. This would have to do.

Sarah and I left Des Moines around noon. This would put us in Elwood by 2:30, solidly after church hour, when Darcy Benton and her family were sure to be home.

We had a list of questions to answer: How had winning Miss Iowa changed Darcy's life? What did she do now? How did she feel about being the most famous person in town? How did she fit -- or break -- the stereotypes of being a beauty queen?

About halfway there, I turned to Sarah with a start.

"What if she doesn't live there anymore!" I said.

Somehow, this idea hadn't occurred to us.

We looked at the digital picture of the town's welcome sign that we had taken the day before: "'Home of Darcy Benton, Miss Iowa 1986,'" I read aloud. "So either she lives there now, or she was just born there."

We recalled how paint-peeled the sign had been, and how old-looking, and kept driving.

Just west of Davenport, we exited I-80 onto a small country road heading north. We drove through Dixon and Wheatland and Toronto, and past miles and miles of corn. The road narrowed and curved, and in a town called Lost Nation, we turned right, onto county road 136. We had been here before, the road that led to Elwood.

Day One

2007-08-12T09:06:00.002-05:00

We are about to eat greasy biscuits and eggs at a diner in Des Moines before we hit the highway, curling east from this city through miles of cornfields and big blue sky.

Yesterday, my friend Sarah and I drove west from Madison, WI, to Des Moines to see an old friend. Today we backtrack, heading east for a three-day drive to Vermont. But before we leave Iowa, we have a beauty queen to track down.

Some back story: Sarah wants to go to a radio conference in Chicago later this year. They're paying the airfare and waiving the conference fees for the person who submits the best three-minute audio piece inspired by one of the following subjects: a package of mouse traps, a bike horn, or the quote, "Well-behaved women rarely make history."

We were brainstorming ideas while we drove yesterday, somewhere in eastern Iowa, when we missed a turn. We didn't realizing it right away, so we had to navigate some very small roads that cut through even smaller towns, to get back to the highway.

One of those small towns was a town called Elwood. And at the entrance to Elwood stood a sign facing the main road that said, "Welcome to Elwood! Home of Darcy Benton, Miss Iowa 1986."

And we thought, well, Darcy Benton apparently made history (at least in Elwood) -- wonder if she's well-behaved?

So today, we're retracing our steps to find Darcy Benton.

Vacation

2007-07-19T11:54:00.000-05:00

Rage Is Good is taking a vacation.

We are heading south, to the desert, and yes we know it's summer, but we have a dear friend who's in need of a little rage right now. And also we are packing plenty of sunscreen.

We'll be back next week, although we may be a little distracted by the book that will be waiting for us when we return, and finding out whether Harry will, in fact, die. (She wouldn't do that, she wouldn't, she couldn't...)

In the meantime, check out the Top 20 Protest Songs that Mattered, over at Spinner.com. (You can listen to them for free, which is groovy.)

p.s. Michael Moore announced this morning that Sicko hits 500 new theaters this weekend, so if you haven't seen it yet, go! (SM, it's even coming to Waco. Now I know there must be a god.)

The Post I'm Not Going to Write

2007-07-19T11:14:00.000-05:00

I can't even talk about the Michael Vick thing. I can't talk about dog fighting. I can't even make myself go to the CNN website and link to the story. So you'll have to Google it, if you don't know about it already.

I got this email from J yesterday:

"C, I love you. And because I love you, I need to ask a favor--"

(at this point I'm thinking, what?! did I leave wet towels on the floor? But very quickly, my defensiveness gave way to devoted relief.)

"--You probably don't know about this news story yet, but it has the legs to catapult from the Sports page to the Front page. The particulars concern one of the best pro football players in the game today, Michael Vick, and charges brought against him for dog fighting. You may be tempted to know the details. Please don't read anything about it. I love you."

This is the nicest thing anyone has done for me all month.

I avoided every news website for the rest of the day and was very thankful that we don't have a television that works. And so, because I didn't actually read any of the coverage, I can't tell you exactly what I think about this story, except that I think Vick is less than human.

Because hurting a person at least involves emotion (rage, anger, passion, whatever), which suggests that the person doing the hurting at least retains some resemblance to an actual human being.

But this -- using all of one's spare time to set up a company that specializes in training dogs to tear each other apart, and then charging people to watch them kill each other in the name of entertainment -- isn't fueled by emotion. It's not like Vick hates dogs. He's not angry at them. He simply doesn't care.

Maybe I am a wimp. Maybe I am old-fashioned. Maybe I am a prude. I don't think violence is entertaining. I don't think watching animals pull each other's limbs off in a big concrete pit is fun.

This isn't surprising, though. We live in a world where rape is legal in many countries, and only marginally illegal in our own. We live in a country that started a war in which hundreds of thousands of civilians have died, and yet our president still doesn't seem to care. We know global warming will be one of the biggest crises in the next 50 years, yet we still buy SUVs.

We are taught from the highest levels that we don't need to care about the consequences of our actions. So we can't be surprised that some depraved football player didn't realize why it was wrong to torture a few hundred animals. It's not like he hurt anyone, after all.

Solidarity

2007-07-18T12:32:00.001-05:00

I want to be in Alabama right now.

I want to be in Birmingham, to be exact. I woke up this morning with a knot in my stomach, the kind that means regret and unease and anxiety, and it's there because I should be in Alabama right now, but instead I'm hundreds of miles away.

Because Operation Save America has descended upon Alabama this week, in an attempt to shut down one of the last abortion clinics in the state -- "storming the gates," in their words, to "push what is left of the abortion industry into a deep grave."

I want to be with my Alabama sisters and brothers, as they fight back.

I live in a state now with a pro-choice governor and a pro-choice state senate, and my member of congress is openly gay. I live in a town where the "Christian Coalition" is considered quaint and anachronistic. I live in a town where most women my age wouldn't understand why they'd need an escort to help them get from the clinic parking lot to the front door.

The greatest gift from living in Alabama is that I no longer take any of this for granted. The stakes are clear now. The battle (and it is a battle) is no longer theoretical. People die because of this.

The anti-abortion crowd tries to distance itself from the doctor-killers, but their "mainstream" smokescreen doesn't fool us. They are willing to murder doctors, nurses, women and anyone else who gets in their way, to prove their point that abortion is murder. Somehow, in their twisted sense of logic, this makes sense.

Last year, Operation Save America tried to shut down Mississippi's last remaining abortion clinic. Yes, just one, in the entire state. But they failed. When more pro-choice supporters showed up for a counter-protest, anti-choicers responded with a bomb threat.

Obviously, they are very selective about which lives they want to save.

In 1998, a man named Eric Robert Rudolph detonated a bomb made of dynamite and nails in the doorway of the same Birmingham abortion clinic targeted this week by OSA. Rudolph's bomb killed a police officer and maimed a nurse. The OSA siege in Birmingham this week happens to coincide with the anniversary of Rudolph's court sentencing. This is not an accident.

Chances are, pro-choice demonstrators will outnumber OSA's "army" in Birmingham, just like they did last summer in Mississippi. But I don't want to be there because I think the movement needs me.

I want to be in Alabama right now, standing silent, arms linked, forming a human-chain safe zone around the clinic to keep it open during the so-called "siege", because that's the only sane response to OSA's insanity.

(87% of all US counties do not have an abortion provider. If you have the resources to do so, please consider helping to make sure Birmingham/Jefferson County isn't one of them.)

Oh. My. God. Your single-payer health care is HOT.

2007-07-14T18:58:00.003-05:00

So, I'm sitting at this community forum about the movie "Sicko" the other night -- in the cramped and kind of hot backroom of a hippie coffee shop down the street -- and I'm listening to a bunch of people go on and on and on about the horrible problems with our health care system (yes, it's horrible!), and how medical bills account for half of all bankruptcies and are the #1 cause of homelessness (yes - outrageous!), and how the whole industry is set up solely to deny care and make tons of money (ditto, and ditto!).

And the whole time I'm sitting there, I'm thinking, "Yes, yes, and yes. But how can we make health care reform sexy?"

Because that, to me, is the real question.

Because real Americans vote when something gets them excited enough to turn off American Idol and get down to the polls. And real Americans like sex appeal.

Because we would totally have affordable, accessible health care by now if, say, Paris Hilton or Brad Pitt refused to take their clothes off on camera until congress passed it. The U.S., it seems, is tired of hearing the same ol' shtick -- it's like one big, collective, "Yes! We know already! Some people have to choose between buying food and buying medicine -- we get it!" (And the silent second half of that response: "And we don't really care!")

Because if we did care, god (or goddess) knows, we'd've taken notice of all the poor people and homeless people and skyrocketing medical bills crippling the middle class.

But we didn't.

Instead, Larry King dumped Michael Moore for Paris Hilton, because Larry knows that more people wanted to listen to her attempt to speak in complete sentences than be forced to listen to something depressing and boring like the problems with health insurance companies (even though the movie was riotously funny in parts, but maybe didn't Larry have time to watch).

But what Larry didn't know is that health care reform can totally be sexy. We can have national slogans like, "Nobody comes between me and my low-cost prescriptions," or, "Is that a national insurance card in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?" or, "Single-payer health care is for lovers."

I think this could work.

Somebody call Paris. I have a proposition to make.

aura-tastic

2007-07-12T11:10:00.000-05:00

TK: "we worked on our auras today. i feel like a million bucks."

me: "great! i mean, not that i think your aura needed a face lift. i thought it was perfectly attractive as-is."

TK: "heh."

me: "out of curiosity, how exactly does one 'work on' one's aura?"

TK: "i'm not telling. it's a secret for the yoga sisterhood. you have to join the club first."

me: "alack! now i need to know."

TK: "no really, i'm not telling."

never mind that

2007-07-10T21:57:00.000-05:00

i'm deleting the poll question. it's a waste of time. (if you're burning to know what the poll was about, ya'll can read the comments below, at the end of this very long post -- sorry for the length, btw. it's really hard to write about a moral dilemma in 50 words or less. )

so, here's what happened the other day. j and i, and two of our friends, were leaving our house saturday night to head to the bar around the corner. our friend TK was the first to walk down our front steps, and when she did, she met a woman on the sidewalk. the woman was crying.

i came down to see what the problem was. the woman told us she was trying to get home and asked if we had 50 cents. she was crying and looking afraid. it was well after dark, on a residential street, and she was wandering the streets crying.

"are you okay?" i asked.

"yeah," she said, "i'm just a little shaken up after what happened."

she was young, maybe in her early-to-mid 20s, tall and somewhat overweight, and spoke in a breathy, high-pitched, baby-doll voice.

"what happened?" TK said.

"well," she said, "i was in a car with this man, and he had sex with me, and then he pushed me out."

i asked if we should call the police. i asked if we could call a friend. she said no, that all she wanted was money to get home.

"how much does it cost to get home?" i asked. if she was asking for only 50 cents, she must mean the bus, i thought.

she paused for a second.

"thirteen dollars and 74 cents," she said.

and that's when i knew we were being scammed. because it seems to me, it just feels to me, what with me being a woman and all, and having known quite a few, that if a woman had just been sexually assaulted, she wouldn't necessarily come right out and offer this information (what with it being sensitive, alarming, and still stigmatized), but she probably would be a little more direct in her needs.

she probably would have said something like, "something really bad just happened. i need to get home. it costs 14 bucks. can you help me?"

but she didn't. she asked for 50 cents.

i am a sucker, and i also don't find it inherently wrong to be asked for money on the street, so i gave her two dollars. i also was fighting the voice in my head that said this woman was lying.

i don't want to think any woman with a story of being raped is lying. i want to help her. i want to bring her in and wrap her in a blanket and give her some tea, then i want to track the bastard down and hurt him.

TK asked the woman for her name. after a very, very long pause, the woman said, "Misty?". she said it with a question mark at the end. then TK introduced herself, and our other friend did the same.

by now we were all walking in the direction of the bar, with the woman walking along with us, and j and i were walking a little ahead. i didn't want her to know my name and my address and the fact that i was sucker. the address and the sucker parts were bad enough. and i still wasn't sure she wasn't lying.

so we parted ways with her at the corner and wished her good luck, and then we went inside and sat down, and the first thing TK said was, "that was a total scam."

"really? are you sure??" i said.

they all looked at me for the sweet, naive thing that i am.

"i can't believe you gave her money," j said.

"anyone walking around at 10:30 at night asking for 50 cents probably needs it," i said back.

we left the bar two or three hours later.

and there, across the street, was the same woman, standing under an awning, chatting away on a cell phone.

i think it's perfectly fine to ask strangers for money. there are programs for homeless people, but they are stretched thin and don't always work, and there are so many cracks for people to fall through. so i don't mind. i live a very comfortable life. giving two bucks to the lady who lives outside the coffee shop is the very, very, very least thing i can do, if it means she gets to eat that day. i have never known what it means to survive solely on the mercy of strangers.

but, to lie about why you're asking for the money -- and to lie about something that no woman should lie about, because it calls all the legitimate claims into question -- just seems unnecessary. once, a guy j knows was walking down the street when a homeless man approached him. the man said to j's friend, "hey, buddy, i'll be honest. i really want a beer. can you spare a couple of bucks?" and j's friend handed over the money. everyone should be able to enjoy a good beer every now and then, he figured.

a couple of nights after our encounter with the woman, j and i were running to the store down the street. it was early evening, and the sun was beginning to wane. and we saw the woman again.

i really, really wanted to talk to her. i was waiting outside the store for j to come out, because i had the dog with me. i saw her coming from down the block. she looked up and seemed to pause, and i thought for a second that she recognized me. but she wasn't looking at me, she was looking at something on her hand. and i thought, oh great, the money i gave her went to a manicure.

she looked away and began walking towards me, and as she passed me, she looked up and we locked eyes.

"it was a lightening bug!" she said in a joyous, though slightly muffled voice.

"what?" i said.

"i said it was a lightening bug!" she said. no manicure, just a lightening bug that had landed on her hand.

she smiled like a child and kept walking down the street.

an open letter

2007-07-08T03:21:00.000-05:00

dear friends, family and strangers,

j and i saw michael moore's new movie, "sicko," last night, and i have a request.

Please See This Movie. (it's enough to make me write in capital letters.)

There are few things in this country that can unite us as much as this film's topic: the abysmal, unreliable quality of our nation's health care system.

this is issue is personal for me.

when i was sick with cancer, i had to muster the energy i didn't have -- not to get better, but to fight to get enough specialist referrals from the health insurance company to cover my care. a couple of years ago, a friend of mine declared bankruptcy because of out-of-pocket medical expenses, even though he had health insurance. and, when a close relative died earlier this year, his wife received a bill for thousands of dollars -- because, while the hospital was covered by their health insurance company (and, in fact, was the only hospital in town that was), the team of doctors inside that hospital who treated him were not.

this issue is is personal for all of us.

in "sicko," a handful of americans with major health problems who were denied care in the states travel with moore to cuba. there, they are treated for free. many of them cry afterwards from relief, but also disbelief -- how can something that is so difficult to obtain in the united states be so easy in cuba?

nothing against cuba, but it's a question worth asking.

we cling to the notion in our country that because This Is The Way It Is, it's also The Way It Should Be. we've collectively bought into the idea that universal health care is somehow asking for too much, being too greedy, inviting too much risk -- that we don't have the right to enjoy a health care system that is both humane and patient-centered, instead of what we have today -- a system controlled by companies that employ people whose sole job is to figure out how to pay you, the patient, as little as possible.

so i'm asking this: in case you haven't seen the movie, please do.

the action step afterwards is easy. just think. thinking is the easiest action step of all. it requires no special talent or ability. it's something each of us was born already equipped to do.

so please, just think.

think about what it would feel like to live in a country where the basic health of its people is considered a national priority. think about what it would be like to live in a country where no child is denied a life-saving operation because someone in an office in another city in another state decided it wasn't "medically necessary."

what kind of country allows so many of its citizens to die of curable disease? what kind of people are we? what kind of person are you?

farming is hard

2007-07-05T23:13:00.000-05:00

i could never be a farmer.

i learned this last week, when i spent a few days in beautiful north dakota, with my lovely friend BJ and her very wonderful husband, NK.

farming is hard. you don't get to sleep a lot or watch law and order marathons (much to my alarm) or futz around online for hours at a stretch, because there are animals to feed and water to tote and fields to clear and crops to harvest and barns to sweep and books to balance and food to make from scratch ("oh, it's 10 p.m.? sure, i think i'll just bake some bread and knit a scarf before turning in.")

this is not in the cards for me, because i am lazy.

on one hand, it makes me feel guilty and a little bad about myself, because i think, "well, hey! i should be willing to make bread at 10 p.m. and know how to saddle a horse and be able to work a solid 15-hour day!"

and on the other hand, following BJ and NK around on their land (which isn't even a real farm, but a pasture and several horses and a gigantic garden and a few acres of land), i felt very, deeply alarmed for the future of our country. because most of us have no idea what it takes to produce any of the things we eat, use, watch, touch, or otherwise consume in the daily course of living.

and this is a problem.

because it means we're all lazy.

so, at least i'm in some kind of company, if not entirely good, educated company.

they say there are more buffalo in north dakota than people. cows have the right of way there. ("if you hit one," BJ warned me during my drive up, "it's automatically your fault. so be careful.") the biggest cities would be small towns in a lot of states. and it's also eyeball-freezing cold for half of the year, and the people are rather reserved and suspicious of outsiders.

i drove around with BJ for a work function, and everywhere we turned, she seemed to meet another person who knew her parents, who lived on the other side of the state. "the state of north dakota is like a really spread-out town," she told me. and it's true. it's not seven degrees of separation -- it's two.

so now, back in my urban flat, surrounded by cars and concrete, i'm wondering how i can maybe try to replicate a teensy bit of north dakota in my landscape here. because knowing every third person in the state is kind of cool. it means you'll always be able to borrow a cup of flour.

but more importantly, i would like to be a little more connected to the process of growing things. with the news trickling in of poisonous toothpaste and irradiated spinach and puss in cow's milk, i think being a tad more connected to the people who actually process the stuff i choose to put in my mouth could only be a good thing.

so last weekend, j and i and our upstairs neighbor LS started a flower garden in our backyard. it's a small step, but i have brown thumbs. we will master the daisies, then move on to something more wholesome and life-giving, like maybe the tomato.

and then maybe i'll think about that 10 p.m. loaf of bread.

actreevism, interrupted

2007-07-01T21:08:00.000-05:00

okay, so it didn't happen. TK had this thing. and j and i had both just come home from respective out-of-town trips. so we didn't decorate the park with peace signs in time for the city's huge fourth of july festival.

next time.

(our fab friend V comes for a visit in a mere FOUR days, so surely something appropriately subversive will happen with her company.)

but, j and i DID go over to TK's last night for the fireworks. she lives across the street from the park where the fireworks were happening, so we waited until 10 minutes to showtime, then downed shots of tequila and snuck across to the park, in the dark, where we found some tree stumps just on the other side of a line of trees from the crowds of people.

so it was just us, and the grass, and the tree stumps, and the few bats circling in the air, and the almost-full moon, watching the explosives in the sky, erupting into showers of light.

every time they set off a firework, the sound of it ricocheted off the roofs nearby and the pavement, and it sounded like the sound of bombs. it sounded a little too much like the sound of bombs, and like gunfire. i wondered if anyone was wondering the same thing, that here we were, celebrating our country's independence by shooting colorful explosives into the air that sounded like bombs, while on the other side of the world, our military was busy bombing another country.

the fireworks were pretty.

they've gotten fancy since i was a kid, with giant smiley faces and hearts exploding in the sky.

but it felt fake and hollow, celebrating our independence by setting off things that sound like bombs. i've never been bothered by this before, and i've seen fireworks almost every year since before i can recall.

earlier, before the fireworks started, j and TK and i were sitting in TK's front yard, watching as the families poured down the sidewalks toward the park. we were talking about a dinner party TK had attended the night before. one of her hosts was a liberal history professor at the local college. and he talked at dinner about the need for the US to hunt down the terrorists and kill them. that the US wasn't a bad place to live, so we needed to put the terrorists in there place and go back to being safe again.

TK couldn't believe this was a liberal history professor she was talking to. she tried the line about how the US has engendered ill will, that to fight "terrorism" perhaps we should reconsider some of our foreign policies, that we can't expect to convince people to stop blowing themselves up by blowing up their countries. the man didn't budge. and neither did TK. and the whole thing left her feeling a little unsettled.

so she recounted all of this last night, in her yard, before the fireworks started that sounded like bombs.

j and i nodded in sympathy. yes, it's impossible to change each other's minds, we agreed. yes, we said, it is more complicated that just killing "those" people and bombing "them" back to where they came from. yes, we nodded, the US's declining reputation around the world has happened for good reason.

"so," TK asked us, "why do you think this way?"

we didn't have great answers -- why do we think anything we think? where did we learn to feel what we feel? these questions require some degree of reflection. but right then, the fireworks started, so we ditched our conversation and ran across the street and found the tree stumps and watched the fireworks that shook the ground.

fireworks always last a little too long for me, and my mind wanders. last night, it wandered back to TK's question. and i think the answer is empathy. as a child, i was taught, always, to move through the world with empathy. to value other human beings feelings and perspectives at least as much as my own. to be willing to sacrifice for someone else's benefit. to see the interconnectedness of all human life -- that if one of us suffers, so do we all.

and i think, if you aren't taught this from an early age, you grow up to become an adult who says the answer to terrorism is to bomb them all back to the stone age. or someone who makes $50,000 a year and still shops at wal-mart even after attending a lecture on sweatshops. or someone who can walk by a homeless person on the sidewalk and make a snide comment about urban blight.

i suppose if you aren't taught empathy as a child, you become someone content with being selfish, someone whose sense of what is right revolves around what is right for you, someone whose heart and mind are hardened by complacency, someone who cannot imagine why "they" hate us, who can watch fox news and nod along at the fountain of self-righteousness.

this morning, after we got our new coffee pot to work and were gulping the first cups, j turned to me and said, "you know, i had this funny thought last night. and i wondered if anyone else thought it. i thought how crazy it was that we were setting off fireworks that sounded like bombs. in other countries, they hear that sound all the time, but it isn't entertainment."

"no," i said to him, "i don't think that's crazy at all."

arboreal anti-desecration league reunited, part I

2007-06-24T21:28:00.000-05:00

the tree branch thing was TK's idea.

the park across the street from her house is the site of the city's biggest fourth of july party. 200,000 people show up. bands play all day, and there are booths of things to buy, and families with picnic baskets.

TK told us about the party a couple of weeks ago, while we were drinking beers in her backyard.

"i have an idea," she said. "let's gather branches over the next few weeks, and then, the night before the party, we can sneak into the park and make giant peace signs out of them, and lay them all over the park."

of course, we immediately agreed.

the party is one week from yesterday. six days from today. last night, j and i were having dinner with TK, and we each humbly admitted that none of us had gathered any branches.

"hmm," she said.

then i recalled the time back in alabama, when the city had marked dozens of old-growth trees in our neighborhood with big, red "X"es, marked for destruction because the electric company wanted easier access to the power lines. TK and j and i and several of our friends spent hours painting protest signs, then nailed (yes, nailed -- but only after asking the trees' forgiveness) the signs to every tree we could find marked with the red X. we called ourselves the arboreal anti-desecration league. we sent anonymous press releases to the newspaper.

as a result, the city held a meeting. officials exclaimed surprise and alarm over the neighborhood's arboreal loyalty. and the trees stayed.

"hey," i said now, "remember the tree protest!"

so instead of making giant peace signs out of tree branches, it was unanimously decided that we should paint peace signs onto giant cardboard signs and affix them to the hundreds of trees lining the park (with rope this time, not nails).

we'll see how this small-time activism goes over in this big-time activist town.

i'll let you know in a week.

maybe it was that feminist bookstore i dragged him to?

2007-06-21T22:03:00.000-05:00

my cousin nick, who is 16, to my mom: "aunt kathy? aunt kathy?"

my mom: "yes, nick."

my cousin nick: "i think cailo is the most independent woman i've ever met."

a pause, during which my mother perhaps contemplates how to respond.

my cousin nick, correcting himself: "no. i think cailo is the most independent woman i've ever heard of."

this conversation happened over the weekend during the Family's Visit. i have no idea what inspired nicky to say this. my mother shared it with me earlier today, and i will take it as a compliment.

the family

2007-06-04T11:20:00.000-05:00

the family visits one week from tomorrow.

j and i still have boxes half-unpacked in the hallway. and no kitchen table, and so we'll have to eat with our plates on our knees in the living room. this is going to be a disaster.

this is a very important visit, because it's the first visit since The Loss. we can't talk about The Loss, so instead we will get together and drink beers.

most everyone will sleep at my aunt's house, except my brother and sister-in-law, who will sleep in our bed, while j and i sleep on an air mattress in the study ("oh, good idea," i said when j suggested this, "because then i'll have access to the computer," to which he rolled his eyes).

my aunt was worrying about the sleeping arrangements at her house. "i don't wan't T to sleep in a twin bed," she said, "i think that will be too much of a reminder." and at first i thought, yes, let's not have T sleep in a small bed, this is smart. and then i thought, wait. she doesn't need a reminder. her husband is dead. it isn't like she forgot.

and that made me think of the time i was sick and no one wanted to say the word "cancer" around me, as if i didn't realize that was what was wrong. like the word would surprise or alarm me.

and then i remembered that we always worry about the wrong things. the things we worry about tend not to be the things that actually are at risk of going badly. and this isn't a bad thing. because it gives us something to do, when worrying over what is actually the problem would be too difficult or painful.

and so i don't say anything when my aunt worries over putting T in a twin bed. because at least that's more productive than the alternative, than reminding herself of the fact that none of us has forgotten, that we are one person short of family.

walls

2007-06-03T21:55:00.000-05:00

i was doing some work on the front porch this evening (heaving rocking chairs and giant pots and several folding chairs and a couple of watering cans around, in various arrangements, in the last phase of that unruly beast otherwise known as unpacking). our front windows were open, and i realized how clearly i could hear not just the songs playing from the stereo inside, but also hear j, singing along. and then i realized that the neighbors and anyone who happened to walk by could hear this, too. which isn't a problem, as i think we have fairly decent taste in music, so it's not like anyone would complain or anything.

but it got me thinking about walls. and how when we're inside our walls, we feel private and alone. and how we can feel this privacy and aloneness in such close proximity to each other. and how, if you could peel back the walls of all the houses up and down my block, we sure would look funny, holed away in our living rooms and bedrooms and kitchens, pretending to be alone or with our families, when all this life is going on around us.

and now it's raining. a hard rain. the kind that washes the dirt out of the yard and onto the sidewalk the next morning kind of rain. and i'm thinking how the only thing that is keeping me dry is this flimsy wall and ceiling.

i look out my front window and wonder what is going on on the other sides of all the other walls.

overheard on the sidewalk today

2007-05-30T18:49:00.000-05:00

so, i'm getting out of my car after parking in front of the house this afternoon, and a young woman is walking by with a couple of very little kids -- two girls about three or four years old. all of a sudden, a big gust of wind swoops through the trees next to the sidewalk, causing a shower of thin baby leaves to blow from their branches and fall, each in sort of a slow-motion spiral, to the street.

one of the little girls points to the falling leaves and says to the woman accompanying her: "look! it's raining helicopters!"

and indeed. small baby leaf helicopters.

the look

2007-05-27T16:33:00.000-05:00

this morning was my cousin's confirmation. as a sweet coincidence, my aunt and uncle live here, in this mid-sized, uber-progressive town to which j and i have recently moved. so this morning we followed them to their church for the service. with the exception of a bus boycott re-enactment and rosa parks' wake, i don't think i attended church one time while living in alabama.

as soon as we settled into our row, j flipped open the program. "look!" he nudged me. there, in bold print on one of the first pages, was a notice that gluten-free wafers would be provided during the morning's communion. he gave me that look we've been giving each other with some frequency during the past few weeks, the one that involves raised eyebrows and a general expression of gleeful incredulity, the one that says, "we're not in alabama anymore".

the service began, and my cousin spoke a couple of times and was very poised (significantly more poised than i was at 14), and the sermon was lovely and they played a slide show of baby pictures for the two kids getting confirmed. and then the choir sang. and 3/4 of the choir was wearing birkenstocks. "look at their feet," i whispered to j. and again, we exchanged the look.

earlier tonight, j and i were eating dinner on the front porch (showing our southern feathers, we nod and say hello or hi ya'll to everyone who walks by). and as we finished the last of our tortellini, we heard the strumming of a banjo. soon, a guy wearing a straw hat and chewing on a long blade of grass walked down the sidewalk, playing his banjo. we made eye contact with the guy. we couldn't help it: we gave him the look. in return, he gave us a meaningful, almost imperceptible nod and kept walking.

rage is good has moved to wisconsin

2007-05-26T15:44:00.001-05:00

so, i'm doubtful anyone checks this anymore b/c it's been, oh, EIGHT months since i last posted anything (and that last post was itself an apology for not posting anything in a while). i'm lame. i got busy. what can i say.

well, i can say this. rage is good has moved north. we left alabama behind to simmer it its own red dust, and high-tailed it to a state that is technically the midwest, but try telling that to the suthnuhs back home. this is north of oklahoma. therefore, this is the north.

and i gotta say. there's a hell of a lot less to be rageful about here. j and i were talking with our new neighbors and they were complaining about things like how sometimes the cars don't always respect the cyclists in the bike paths. and they went on and on about the travesty of the situation, while we were grinning like idiots and thinking, "bike paths?! they have bike paths here?!?" (and dog parks and organic gardens and people with green hair working at the FedEx, and gay people everywhere.)

someone else we met recently lamented that living here, in this city-so-blue-it's-blinding, was like living in a bubble. "it's sooo not the mainstream," this person said. and j and i were like, "exactly!! we need the bubble! bring on the bubble!!!" we're walking around with our mouths hanging open. seriously. drooling on the tofu at the co-op. it's embarassing.

but i'm sure we can get into some trouble here, too. maybe no horn ladies protesting outside of the abortion clinic. but something equally as entertaining.

the deafening silence...

2006-09-15T11:43:00.000-05:00

okay. let's make this the last time i apologize for a prolonged and overwhelming absence. (not that anyone wilted or perished, while futilely re-checking for new posts. but still.)

let's chalk this up to the massive exodus that's been my workplace, resulting in a very overworked me. and lots of travel. including a couple of short, internet-free vacations. yeah, i know. excuses, excuses.

much has been happening here: namely, they shut down the abortion clinic, unexpectedly, overnight. more on this soon.

albany

2006-07-28T09:56:00.000-05:00

so, i went to the national NOW conference in albany last weekend, and i've been meaning to write about it, but it's a been a crazy week with lots of people quitting where i work, and deadlines to meet, and a general feeling that i really, really need a vacation, and so the idea of sitting down and blogging at my computer when i could be at the park with my dog or watching law and order with a glass of wine in my hand doesn't sound as appealing as it usually does.

but i have a few extra minutes this afternoon, so i thought i'd mention a couple of things that were on my mind while i was in albany.

first, it felt SO GOOD that at a well-attended, national conference, almost every panelist was a woman. let me say that again. IT FELT SO, LIBERATINGLY, FREEINGLY GOOD. the experience of going to conferences usually culminates for me in a brewing resentment over the token woman they assign to every third panel (not to mention the severe absence of people of color), who either doesn't get to speak as much as the men on the panel, or who is talked over or "interpreted" or reframed by her male colleagues. yeah, that still happens, and at supposedly progressive conferences, too, sponsored by organizations with "gender equity" clauses in their bylaws.

but not at the NOW conference. there still weren't as many women of color on the panels as there should have been -- and the panel on immigration was comprised solely of latinas, as if immigrant issues don't affect a wide, wide array of women of many colors from all over the world -- but it was moving in the right direction. when i got home, j made a stupid joke about being "whipped" when i told him this, but to top it off, at the session where we were voting on resolutions, the husband of the president ferried her a coffee refill as she presided from behind the podium. not a secretary, not a wife, not a woman. the person doing the coffee-fetching was a man. the little things matter.

more later -- i need more coffee.

at the clinic this morning

2006-07-28T09:19:00.000-05:00

the anti-choice protesters at our abortion clinic have found a new tactic. they're bringing their children -- from a two-month-old baby strapped to the chest of a woman holding a sign that screams, "Babies KILLED HERE for $700", to teenagers who matter-of-factly explain to the younger kids that the trash cans on the corner contain the bloody, mutilated body parts of murdered babies. the kids stare in horror first at the trash cans, and then at us -- for we MUST be forcing women into the clinic, possibly drugging them, to perform abortions against their will. (never mind the gross distortion of basic biology -- a first-trimester abortion results in what looks like menstrual blood, not little arms and legs and baby feet.)

and, they've taken to praying at us. we do such a good job of preventing them from giving their drivel to the women entering the clinic, that they've almost stopped trying. instead, they stand on the sidewalk, a big cluster of white women in long, homemade dresses, holding signs that look like they bought them from a pro-life mail-order company in 1978. and then they sing. sometimes, they bring musical instruments, like violins and large horns. today, they followed us around, praying in our ears.

this morning, one of the protestes explained to me that a battle for my soul was raging right above my head, between the devil and god. she said she was there to help persuade god not to smite me. i could look up, and while the battle was in the general direction of the clouds, i wouldn’t be able to see it. but don’t worry, it’s invisible, so if i didn’t see it, that didn’t mean i was crazy.

it's a circus, only better.

Weekly Action: Stop Coastal Drilling!

2006-07-25T15:19:00.000-05:00

Stop Coastal Drilling and Other Give Aways to Big Oil!

The high price of gas and election-year politics have put Florida's coastal areas at great risk of environmental degradation. For the first time in more than a decade, the bipartisan consensus to spare coastal areas from drilling has broken down. The House passed a bill ending the moratorium last month, and the Senate is set to vote this week.

The Weekly Action Coalition urges you to contact your Senator to oppose opening our precious coastal areas to oil drilling. To learn more, read this background article from the San Francisco Chronicle.

Contact your Senator today (Find your senator's contact information here) and send them the following important message from Save Our Environment.org:

Dear Senator:

As your constituent, I urge you to protect America's Gulf coast and oppose S. 2253, sponsored by Senators Pete Domenici and Jeff Bingaman. The Domenici-Bingaman bill would allow oil and gas leasing and drilling in millions of acres off of Florida's Gulf coast in an area known as Lease Sale 181.

Florida's coast is a complex mosaic of sea grasses, wetlands, bays, estuary systems, beaches and dunes, and offshore drilling is simply not compatible with the quality of life and economy this fragile ecosystem supports. That is why both Florida senators, Senators Martinez and Nelson, are opposed to S. 2253.

Finally, there is not much oil and natural gas thought to be in the eastern Gulf of Mexico. At current rates of consumption, Florida's coast probably contains less than four months of oil and only six month's worth of natural gas.

Obviously, we cannot drill our way out of our energy problems. There is simply not enough oil and natural gas off of Florida's Gulf coast, certainly not enough to reduce prices or make America energy independent.

We strongly urge you to vigorously oppose - and not sign on as a cosponsor - S. 2253, the Domenici-Bingaman bill, and oppose any attempt to lift the moratorium for offshore drilling off of our coasts. Instead of promoting drilling projects that harm our coasts and do nothing to solve our energy problems, we urge you to support energy projects that promote energy efficiency and renewable energy.

Thank you for your consideration.

mississippi's last abortion clinic under siege

2006-07-19T14:18:00.000-05:00

okay, i've been meaning to post on this for DAYS, but things happened, as they often do, and i haven't had a moment to write since returning from jackson.

i'm going to post some pics from the mississippi pro-choice rally later today. for daily updates about the demonstrations and counter-demonstrations, check in with the folks at World Can't Wait. Unfortunately, I'll be at the NOW national conference in Albany this week, but i'll be updating Rage from there...

other articles about the Jackson protests:
Last Clinic Standing, by Sunsara Taylor
The Jackon Clarion-Ledger's coverage of Day 1

ha!

2006-07-14T14:25:00.000-05:00

another clinic escort sent this email yesterday. the folks mentioned in the beginning are the lovely people who protest at the abortion clinic every week. it's too funny not to share...

I took a long walk this morning and did some thinking. What we need to do is find something for Hat Lady, Joshua Horn Woman, Violin Girl, etc. to do in their spare time -- you know, days that aren't Wednesday or Friday. I think we should suggest to them that they take their protesting skills to some place like McDonald's. They could meander around the parking lot, harrassing potential customers by begging them to not purchase junk food. "You're killing your children!" Or "If you're thinking of eating a BigMac, I can help!"

They could hand out liturature with pictures of morbidly obese people, or display jars of fat that has been liposucked out of somebody's butt. They could imply that McDonald's is practicing genocide by targeting African-Americans in its ads, and selling more Quarter Pounders to Blacks than to Whites. They could promise to pray for everyone that consumes transfat.

Of course, McDonalds would be forced to use McEscorts to safely get the public past the protesters and into the Golden Arches.

not so entertaining

2006-07-11T08:47:00.000-05:00

so, i watched the first "pirates of the caribbean" this weekend with the Boyfriend. the second one's in the theater, as anyone who's turned on a television or glanced at a magazine cover already knows. but, living under a rock as i do, i never saw the first one, so the Boyfriend rushed to the store and bought it, in an effort to give me a crash course in all things "pirates."

we settled in, with bowls of ice cream and the surround-sound speakers hooked up and the lights dimmed. "isn't this great??" he whispered. and it was -- at least the first 15 or 20 minutes and the last hour or so. but there was one little blip, about 15 or 20 minutes in, and i almost didn't notice it, and i kind of wish i hadn't. because every now and then, it would be nice to enjoy a movie without the running social commentary buzzing in my head.

in johnny depp's introductory scene, his character, the pirate jack sparrow, announces he's come to a seaside village to rape and pillage. those are the words he uses, plus a few others. the two soldiers with whom he's speaking decide he isn't kidding. flash forward several scenes. the pirates from the black pearl -- the ship jack sparrow once captained -- descend upon the town, with crazed eyes and outstretched hands, and begin throwing fire bombs into windows and chasing screaming, terrified women. one particularly rabid pirate almost catches a frantically fleeing woman, but he's stopped when a local blacksmith lodges an axe in the pirate's back. potential rape averted! i'm sure the movie execs figured viewers would either a) cheer for the good guy, b) consider such material fair game for entertainment, or c) not notice it at all.

when i saw this, i cringed. later, when the lead female character -- played by young, doe-eyed keira knightley -- was kidnapped by the pirates of the black pearl, i asked the Boyfriend if there were going to be any rape innuendos during her captivity. after all, we know what pirates do, right? jack sparrow already told us: they rape and they pillage.

when i asked this, the Boyfriend jokingly responded, with a smile, "i knew i shouldn't have watched this with a feminist!" he was kidding. but i wasn't.

"they didn't have to put that in there," i said, regarding the pirate-chasing-the-woman scene.

"but that's what pirates DID," he said. as if historical accuracy, when it comes to pirate behavior, is of paramount importance when making a children's movie based on a disneyland ride.

but he's a dude -- so he can understand intellectually that it bothers me to see what basically amounts to a loose "rape" joke in what's supposed to be a kid's movie, but he doesn't "get it" in his gut that rape is too real to be considered entertainment -- even when it's done in innuendo, and especially when it's done in passing.

we live in a world where members of our military rape and murder teenage girls.

we live in a country where 11-year-olds are gang-raped.

unless a movie is trying to make a grand social point (boys don't cry, the accused), filmmakers have no business using rape as a plot point or a device to build suspense or tension. it's crude, it's tacky, and it's just too close to home for the majority of women around the globe for it to be considered anything remotely close to acceptable entertainment.

i don't need a movie reminding me of the days when women had to run for their lives, trying to fend off men with outstretched hands. those days never went away. to realize this, all you have to do is turn on the television or glance at a magazine cover.

Weekly Action: Support Stem Cell Research

2006-07-10T09:58:00.000-05:00

This week's action comes from the Alliance for Stem Cell Research:

Tell the Senate to pass the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act!

Millions of people suffer from diseases and injuries that could be treated if we have adequate research to develop new therapies. Human embryonic stem cell research has enormous potential for finding life-saving treatments for Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease, diabetes, brain injury, stroke, heart disease, burns, and spinal cord injuries.

Embryonic stem cells are derived from excess embryos, which were created for infertility treatments and will be discarded once treatment is discontinued. Stem cells have the ability to divide indefinitely in culture and can develop into most of the specialized cells and tissues of the body such as muscle cells, nerve cells, liver cells and blood cells. Using stem cells could reduce the dependency on organ donation and transplantation.

Our nation's best opportunity to aggressively move stem cell research forward is here!

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist announced this week that HR 810, the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act, will see a vote on the Senate floor before their August recess!

We're almost there!

To get this vital piece of legislation passed, please do two things:

1. Contact your Senator and urge them to vote "Yes on HR 810"! Be sure to share with them why this research is so important to you.

2. Forward this message to your friends, family, neighbors and co-workers and ask them to do the same!

HR 810 is the only piece of legislation before the Senate that will move stem cell research forward. From now until the vote, we need to be vigilant in putting pressure on the Senate to pass HR 810!

Background information:

Senate to Take Up Stem Cell Bill in July
~from the Alliance for Stem Cell Research

Embryonic Stem Cell Research Holds Unprecedented Hope
~from the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice

introducing the weekly action coalition

2006-07-10T09:11:00.000-05:00

Starting today, Rage Is Good is a proud member of the Weekly Action Coalition, a diverse group of bloggers promoting weekly progressive actions. (So far, in addition to Rage, the group includes two secular feminists, a Buddhist science professor, and two liberal Christian activists. Links to each member blog are listed over on the righthand sidebar.)

Once a week, I'll be posting an action from the coalition -- check out the archives on the link above for a list of past actions (happy stuff like protecting the voting rights act and helping rape victims get access to emergency contraceptives).

I'll add this week's action in a separate post.

Help!

2006-07-06T15:56:00.000-05:00

i have an addiction. i can't stop posting comments to a right-wing conservative blog. i think i need an intervention.

back story: a couple of weeks ago, my friend C, a kick-ass fabulous feminist woman, wrote an op-ed in our local paper about the dangers of banning abortion. (okay, first, before i continue with this distressing story, let me share an aside. J's parents were in town this weekend. they live in a moderately large city in north carolina. they are progressive christians, active in local democratic politics. they read the newpapers and write letters to the editor. so, they're kind of with it. J's mom was asking me about the clinic escorting stuff, and i was telling her about the crazy protesters. she looked increasingly perplexed. and then finally she said something like, "you know, this isn't an issue where we're from." yeah, they have anti-choice folks in their town, but abortion isn't at risk of being outlawed. it was a healthy reminder that i live in a bubble. vigilance is necessary here, but there are places on the map that still shine bright, beautiful blue. sigh. and anyway. lot good it does us here.)

okay. so, the op-ed. in the local paper. it got picked up by a religious right-wing blog, the name of which i don't believe i'll share here. the owner of the blog posted C's words and then used ominous and threatening language to "warn" her to stop killing babies. what followed was a lively conversation among readers about how "those" women (i.e. pro-choicers) love abortion because a) they hate humanity and want to yank us back to the dark ages and b) because they want "convenient" solutions to their "profane lifestyle" choices. oh, and also that rape and incest don't matter, because "rapists should be killed, not babies."

this made so much nonsense that i couldn't stop myself. i chimed in. my first post was brief and pointed, yet still civil. i wrote it, i selected "anonymous" (didn't want them spamming me here), and then hit "Post." a new window informed me that my comment would be posted pending the blog owner's approval. "oh great," i thought. i figured the blog owner probably wouldn't approve something so obviously contrary to his own beliefs.

i was wrong. i checked back today (i don't actually have a lot of free time -- i just procrastinate a lot and end up working late because i spend so much time futzing about online) and there it was. not only had he approved my post, but he'd responded. and so began my decline.

part of me wanted to badger and condescend the other posters and make them look like hypocritical idiots. another part of me wanted to dispel their myths that pro-choice women are a bunch of selfish baby-haters. and all of me hated the idea of being the lone voice of reason amid a sea of knee-jerk "legalized abortion leads to increased rape" arguments. (sidebar: i don't think all anti-choicers are rabid fools. i've had intelligent conversations with a couple of people who understand nuance and don't succumb to stereotypes about baby-killing sluts.)

so, kind of without thinking, i did something even sillier than post a comment. i posted two comments. from what appeared to be two different "anonymous" people. one used proper grammar, capitalization, few exclamation points (sort of a toned-down version of me). the other was all lower-case, lots of !!!s and just a bit more barbed (sort of a ramped-up version of me).

of course, they all got posted. and replied to. now, i know i use language here that is entirely dismissive ("rabid fools", "hypocritical idiots"), but in conversation with an anti-choicer -- and in my posts to that right-wing blog -- i make sure my discourse is pretty civil. i also try not to generalize. i think i had expected -- no, hoped -- that that would be the case there. that by pointing out, "hey, i think that sounds like a stereotype, what about xyz?", we might be able to have an intelligent conversation among people who happen to disagree.

HA.

with one exception, everything other posters wrote was laced with lies, stereotypes, personal threats and ridiculous misinformation. maybe my expections are too high. maybe i'm invading their in-group space by posting to their blog. but if a seriously anti-choice reader posted a thoughtful, intelligent comment to this blog, i would respond in kind, and i expect the other people who read this would do the same. so what gives?

i know there are more meaningful ways i could be wasting my supposed-to-be-working time, so maybe i'll stop posting to the conservative christian blog. or maybe not. or maybe a whole bunch of you will gather around my desk in a human chain, as a de-blogging intervention.

baby moses is back!

2006-07-06T10:50:00.000-05:00

SM said he missed the baby moses picture, so here you go -- enjoy!

no, this image is not a joke. they sell it on t-shirts. you can walk around in public with this picture emblazoned across your chest, or maybe ironed on to the front of your ball cap. it's a nice fashion statement for the end-of-the-world, death-to-feminazi's crowd.

i looked at this picture, and mostly i laughed. it's pretty hysterical. that anyone would take this seriously, or look at this image and feel moved and inspired. but check out the race commentary here: baby moses is white and plump, and he's surrounded by mostly white babies who also are round and plump and who seem to be following baby moses freely and happily.

and then there's that little emaciated black kid, who looks like he's being dragged by baby moses against his impoverished little will. and really -- what's up with that??

a couple of shout-outs.

2006-07-05T12:05:00.000-05:00

(i just had a flashback to a raucous debate several years ago in the copy room of a DC nonprofit over whether to hyphenate "shout-out". jana -- you remember that?? ah, the good ol' hunger-fightin' big-house-livin' bread-and-chocolate-eatin' paper-crane-makin' CD-burnin' days.)

anywyay. what i meant to say is that i received a lovely email a few days ago from a montgomery native (who has since escaped) who accidentally and happily stumbled upon this blog. and i wanted to say thanks to her for writing. (emails are great. as are comments. shameless, i know.)

also, i wanted to wave to SM. (the person, not the practice.) you know you who you are.

happy 5th of july

2006-07-05T11:25:00.000-05:00

i'm driving around right now with a "god is pro-choice" sign and a "christian coalition: stop the war on women!" sign visible from my back window. i'm surprised i haven't been keyed. we'll see how long it takes for a cop to pull me over and arrest me for disorderly conduct.

in other, more patriotic news, i went to a minor league baseball game monday night. they were passing out those little american flags, the kind stapled to wooden sticks that people wave in parades. a little boy a couple of rows in front of us was using two of the flags to beat his brother over the head.

god bless america.

don't talk to strangers...

2006-06-30T10:47:00.000-05:00

...or to strange people. especially when they're standing outside of an abortion clinic, yelling to women that they're murderers.

i braced myself this morning. i'd heard word that the number of protesters had grown, that the police had been called last week, that they were trampling all over the grass, stalking the escort volunteers, shouting at the women. a far cry from the timid Hat Lady with her satchel of pamphlets. i wasn't nervous, because there were three escorts on this morning's schedule. we could handle five noisy nutcases.

but then i got there, and no one else showed up. S was sick. i didn't know where E was. i checked in with the clinic staff, and they told me there were 16 women on the patient roster this morning. that's a lot. last friday, there were five.

the protesters immediately started in. "we didn't think you'd show up -- we'd hoped maybe you'd had a change of heart," said the lone man in the group. another woman tried to introduce herself, asked how long i'd been "working" there, told me she was praying for my soul. i ignored them. i didn't make eye contact, pretended i was the only one there. when they came right up next to me to ask questions, i casually wandered a few feet away. this left them confused and disconcerted. "i know you can hear me," said one woman who told me her name was victoria.

i didn't blink. but i did help seven women get in safely in the course of about five minutes. it felt like triage, asking some to wait in their car while i helped others in, escorting them to the door in small groups. "do you get paid to do this?" asked the man. "or do you just get the satisfaction of knowing that you're helping these women kill their babies?" all of a sudden, their energy seemed focused on me. three of them huddled, intentionally close enough so that i could hear them. "it amazes me that people who promote abortion can't even discuss it," one of them said.

"do you really think you're protecting these women?" they demanded. "do you really think we want to HURT them?" they sounded incredulous and bitter. their faces twisted in anger. the man looked like he wanted to spit on someone.

i'd been there 30 minutes, and they hadn't been able to hand out a single nasty brochure. so they took to heckling the women. one woman showed up with her infant son and a friend -- the friend had the appointment; the woman with the child was there to support her. the protesters, of course, assumed both women were there for abortions. as the woman hoisted her child from his carseat, the man sneered in her direction, "it's too bad you're here to kill your other baby!"

finally, D, a second escort volunteer, showed up. S had tracked her down, asked her to fill in. most of the 16 women had arrived by now, but four were still unaccounted for. this was my first time to deal with multiple protesters, but D had been here twice before with them. the man saw her walking up the sidewalk. "hello, there!" he shouted. "well, hi, Carl!" D said. she was smiling. so was he. "i didn't think you were coming today," Carl said. "oh, I woudn't miss it! if just to see you!" D said. they interacted like old buddies.

the other protesters looked on approvingly, then shot me smug, reproachful looks.

i asked D why she was talking with them, and she said it was because they were human beings, too, with strong beliefs, that they deserved respect just like we did. that she might have to see them in the grocery store, or at the coffee shop, and that ignoring them completely was disrespectful. "we may disagree about this issue, but we probably have a hundred other things in common," she said. i understood her point. but i also completely disagreed with the tactic. escorting women into an abortion clinic isn't exactly the time to try to find common ground with the enemy.

Unsettled

2006-06-14T16:55:00.000-05:00

Revelations can come in funny packages. Like over hummus sandwiches. Like in the middle of otherwise-banal conversation. Like today.

I had an unsettling conversation today with a close friend. We'll call her Molly. I love Molly, and I know Molly loves me. We've relied on each other during times of stress and heartbreak. We've revealed things to each other that we don't widely share. I feel like we know each other pretty well.

Now, before I go on, I feel the need to clarify something. There was a time in my past when I required near-complete ideological agreement with other human beings in order to become or remain their friend. I think this is a common reaction to going to college and also to becoming a 20-something. That period of time doesn't usually last long, as it means you don't get asked to many dinner parties. And besides, variety is a good thing, and yes, conservatives are people, too. But still, like most folks, I have some general measuring sticks. Like, I try not to closely associate with racists. Or with people who don't think women should be president. Or, generally, with evangelical, Anne-Coulter-loving Republicans. I'm just not sure we'd have much to talk about.

Another issue of importance to me (aside from anti-racism and democracy and religious freedom) is reproductive rights. I know this comes as a surprise to anyone who's ever read this blog. :-) Being human, I tend to assume similarities with other people until I receive information to the contrary. So I generally assume my close friends feel pretty much the same way I do about most things, and especially about women's rights and feminism and pro-choice politics. (I also tend to assume that women in their 20s and 30s who wear hip shoes and funky glasses and eschew things like plaid blouses and shoulder pads are, of course, radical feminists with a burning desire to bring down the patriarchy.)

So, Molly and our friend S and I were having lunch today at a cafe near our office. The subject turned to a meeting S and I are attending later this week to discuss ways to fight the looming abortion ban. Molly got kind of quiet. We didn't notice this, so we kept talking. Then Molly, who wears hip shoes and funky glasses and eschews plaid and shoulder pads, said something that made me almost drop my fork. "I think abortion is murder," she said.

Now, Molly has every right to think this (and, given her audience, it was brave of her to say).

I was just surprised to hear her say it. I have spent the past several months fighting against the anti-choice movement in my state; hearing that my dear friend felt something of an allegiance to that movement was a bit of a jolt.

After we had paid our bill and were driving back to work, Molly elaborated on her feelings. She thinks abortion is murder, but she also thinks abortion should be legal. It's a paradox that bothers her. She doesn't know if how she feels is the right way to feel. She knows women have abortions for many legitimate reasons, but she can't get around the notion that the fetus is a human being, and that aborting that fetus is like murdering a child.

As we stepped into the office elevator, Molly turned to us. "So, I guess neither of you thinks it's murder?" she said.

S and I both shook our heads no.

"So you think it's just a bundle of cells that's okay to kill?" she said.

"Well, I mean, no," each of us sputtered.

"Then when is it okay to kill, and when is not okay?" Molly asked. She wasn't being argumentative or accusatory or confrontational. She sincerely wanted to know. Her voice was conflicted, almost pained. I think she wanted to know what we thought because maybe it would help her unravel that paradox.

As I stumbled over an answer about when a fetus becomes viable, and how legally, a fetus isn't really a person (well, in most states), I realized that Molly's conflict was probably more common than my certainty. Because at the heart of her conflict was the emotional, gut-level response to abortion and what it means to say you're okay with ending a potential life.

I've never really stopped to think about this.

I spend so much time thinking about the woman, and her circumstances, and the need to protect her, that I don’t think at all about the fetus that would be her baby. I'm not sure if this is okay, or if it's a problem.

S has a close relative who works in an abortion clinic; S tells me all the time that the pro-choice movement does a horrible job recognizing that abortion can be a difficult and painful decision for many women, that it's deeply emotional, that those feelings matter. S is right. If someone says "I think abortion is murder," you can't answer with, "You have the right to feel that way, but don't infringe upon my choice." That's like saying, "If you think it's wrong to murder your mother, then don't murder your mother. But let me still murder mine."

So what did S and I say instead? We shrugged. We looked at each other. In some ways, it was like we were all three looking at the same thing, but through a prism, so that the contours and colors of that thing looked different to Molly than it did to us.

"This is an important conversation," S said on the elevator. "It's almost like both sides of the abortion issue need to take a step back and look at the language we use to talk about it."

The abortion battle isn't just about passing laws or fighting laws or keeping clinics open. It's about, as it always has been, how people feel. It's about what mothers teach their daughters. It's about what we value and what we fight for. And it's about answering Molly's emotional questions with something that doesn't feel like a court case citation.

2006-06-09T14:50:00.000-05:00

anti-abortion protesters are lunatics.

2006-06-09T11:15:00.000-05:00

okay, perhaps not ALL of them are crazy.

but i would bet my next paycheck that a hefty percentage are at least mildly unstable.

s and i escorted at the abortion clinic today.

this means we helped women get from their cars to the clinic door without first getting accosted by the anti-choice protester who tries to hand them fistfuls of nasty pamphlets filled with pictures of bloody, dismembered baby parts.

the toenail-painted hat lady doesn't look like the protesters on the news, those mostly men, holding horrible posters of dead babies while screaming "murderer" in women's faces. the hat lady doesn't carry big posters. she wears gingham sundresses and lipstick and pink toenail polish. she wears widebrimmed sunbonnets decorated with floppy, oversized bows. she is petite and even kind of puny. she's married to the president of the alabama christian coalition. she carries a bible with her, and usually a hymnal, and all morning she stands on the sidewalk outside of the clinic, softly singing songs about jesus and meditating and smiling her vapid, churched-out smile. she looks like a sunday school teacher on crack.

several mornings a week, the toenail-painted hat lady paces back and forth in front of the clinic, reciting the same saccharine words over and over to every woman trying to enter the building: "morning! how are you today? if you're here for an abortion, i'd like to help you!"

the clinic is a bland place on the outside. it's one story, brown brick, with a sagging, white overhang. it has narrow windows framing the front door, but they're mirror-coated so you can't see inside. a small strip of grass separates the clinic from the sidewalk, and a gravel parking lot stretches along two sides of the building. even the sign -- white plastic, with plain, black letters that say, "reproductive health services" -- is easy to miss. no brand name. no fancy logo. everything about it fades into everything else. i drove by the clinic for a year and a half before i realized it was there. this is to its advantage, of course.

the hat lady (and the preacher or two who sometimes accompany her) isn't allowed on the grass or the parking lot or the driveway. she can stand only on the sidewalk; one step anywhere else, and we call the cops, and she gets hauled to jail. so, as we walk with women -- and sometimes the men who are with them -- from their cars to the door, we're careful to stay off the sidewalk and stick to the grass. one of us walks next to the woman; the other body-blocks the hat lady. once, i "accidentally" walked backwards, because i knew she was behind me. i didn't knock her over, but i knocked her off guard. and she wasn't able to get to her satchel of pamphlets in time.

the woman who organizes the escorting has warned us to take the protesters seriously. "these are dangerous people," she says. doctors in alabama -- like in new york and elsewhere -- have been murdered over this. clinic-bombings may have died down in the 90s, but the fervor of things seems to be on the rise; who knows what could happen. it's easy to think the hat lady harmless. and on some level i do. i scorn and ridicule her on the inside, and part of me hates her for the weak-minded misguidedness of her actions.

but i know better.

today, she got to a woman. i wasn't fast enough. the hat lady recited her script and handed the woman a pamphlet filled with photocopied images of death. i got to the woman before she could open it. "i can take that from you, if you'd like," i said. she looked at me with a mixture of gratitude and fear. "yes, please," she said.

in sight of the hat lady, i tore the pamphlet into several pieces. i'm sure i looked smug while doing this. then, as i walked back to my post at the front of the driveway, the hat lady and i made accidental eye contact. and i did what i shouldn't have done. i smirked. by the time i got to the curb, she had pulled out her cell phone and was dialing a number. she was probably calling the dry cleaners, or the exterminator, or the daycare. but i made sure not to make eye contact again. she has a fancy cell phone, the kind with a built-in camera. i'm sure she has close-ups of me and my car.

as someone who interviews people for a living and is paid to be curious, i have to stifle the urge to talk to her. i want to ask her a million questions. i want to know what motivates her to do this. i want to challenge her with medical facts and see how she responds. i want to hold her accountable. i can't do this. because, obviously, none of this is about me.

Plan B in 'Bama

2006-06-08T09:06:00.000-05:00

This is a true story.

Seriously.

What follows is an actual conversation with a registered nurse. A medical provider. Someone who is paid to dispense medical assistance and possess a more-than-average knowledge of basic medical information.

Yesterday afternoon I called my doctor's office to find out if she prescribes emergency contraceptives. I didn't need any -- but it occurred to me that I ought to check, based on a couple of recent events.

Some background: At our local NOW meeting last month, someone passed around a flyer encouraging people to call their doctors and ask if they prescribed Plan B. If the doctor said yes, the flyer suggested we get a prescription in advance (it can be hard to access in case of a real emergency; and besides, with conservatives in control, who knows how long it'll be legal). If the doctor said no, we should think about getting a new doctor.

Then, earlier this week, I read this washington post article, about a woman in northern Virginia who had unprotected sex with her husband and was refused emergency contraceptives by her two doctors. She got pregnant and, for a host of reasons, decided to have an abortion. If her doctor had prescribed Plan B, none of this would have happened.

So yesterday, I decided to follow up on the advice from the flyer at the NOW meeting. To the best of my memory, this is how it happened.

I call Dr. F's office around 2:30. A receptionist answers the phone. I tell her my name and say something like, “Hi, I was calling to see if Dr. F prescribes emergency contraceptives.”

The receptionist: “Emergency contraceptives?”

Me: “Uh-huh.”

The receptionist, sounding very stumped: “Hmm.” Then a pause. Then, “What do you mean by that?”

Me: “It’s, like, a really strong version of the regular birth control pill. It’s sometimes called Plan B? Maybe you've heard of that?

The receptionist: “Hold on a minute. I’m gonna let you talk to the nurse.”

After a very long wait, another woman comes to the phone. She has a thick Southern accent. I immediately recognize her as the same nurse who took my blood pressure the first time I visited the office. She was sweet as pie as she asked where I was from and why I had moved to Alabama. (My lack of a strong Southern accent is like an invisible billboard.) As soon as I told her where I worked -- at a rabble-rousing civil rights law firm -- she recoiled. Her face turned to stone, and she said in barely controlled anger, “Seems like none of you people is from here.”

So I am thrilled, of course, when she’s the one who picks up the line.

The nurse: “Okay, exactly what are you looking for?”

Me: “Emergency contraceptives. Um, Plan B?”

The nurse: “Who are you?”

I give her my name. I tell her I'm a patient. I tell her I've been there several times before.

The nurse, sounding increasingly skeptical: “Let me pull your chart.”

She comes back after a couple of minutes.

The nurse: “Now, okay. What exactly is this medicine? What does it do?”

Me: “Um. Well. It prevents a woman from getting pregnant if she takes the medicine within 72 hours of having unprotected sex.”

The nurse: “Really?!”

Me: “Really.”

The nurse: “Huh.”

Another long pause follows, during which time she’s either thinking to herself, ‘damn, that’s cool!’ or looking up the number for the Christian Coalition to report a traitor. I decide to clear my throat to remind her that I’m still here.

The nurse: “So, 72 hours, huh?”

Me: “Yep, 72 hours.”

The nurse: “So you take it 72 hours after you... ahem. After you have sex?”

Me: “No, no, you have to take it within 72 of having unprotected sex.” (I kind of want to say the word “sex” a little more slowly and loudly, just to make her squirm a little. But I don’t. Because deep down, I really am a decent person.)

The nurse, incredulously: “And that keeps you from getting pregnant?”

Me: “Exactly.”

The nurse: “Huh. So, do you need this now?”

Me: “No, no, I just want to know if Dr. F provides it.”

The nurse, silent again, and perhaps a little confused.

Me, clarifying: “Not all doctors prescribe it.”

The nurse: “Oh.”

Me: “You know, I want to make sure that, if I did need it, like in the future, that I’d be able to get it from my doctor.”

The nurse, still sounding like she doesn’t understand what, exactly, I’m talking about: “Oh, of course. I mean, of course!”

But it turns out the doctor is seeing a patient. So the nurse takes my name and number and says she’ll be happy to find out for me and call me back.

The phone rings 15 minutes later.

The nurse: “Yeah, Dr. F said she’d prescribe that if, you know, the circumstances were right. But you’d have to come in first.”

Now, it takes many, many weeks to get an appointment with my doctor. And the comment about circumstances being right sounds a little ominous. Or at least a little weird. And then -- and I hate that I think this next thought, but I do -- then, with a sinking feeling, I think: “But Dr. F is Catholic.” Which means an “appointment” could really mean a counseling session. Or a chance for her to badger me and try to make me feel small and shameful for wanting a piece paper with her signature on it that I could then take to the CVS and exchange for a couple of little pills.

I sigh into the phone.

“Thanks,” I say.

Then I go online and make a donation to Planned Parenthood.

the GOP made me have an abortion

2006-06-06T16:01:00.000-05:00

read this washington post article.

it's absolutely ridiculous that plan b is being opposed by conservatives. it's not abortion, people. it prevents abortion. big difference.

rape in the congo

2006-05-23T11:35:00.000-05:00

it isn't news. we know this happens. every day. in every country. it's not new. not hardly.

but still, some article can come along and remind us, especially us americans all caught up in american idol, that there's a whole world out there, and that in it, very very bad things happen all the time.

this morning i saw this headline on CNN: Rape, brutality ignored to aid Congo peace.

i waited until i was finished with my breakfast to read the story.

from the article: "Some of them have knives and other sharp objects inserted in them after they've been raped, while others have pistols shoved into their vaginas and the triggers pulled back," said Dr. Denis Mukwege Mukengere, the lone physician at the hospital. "It's a kind of barbarity that only savages are capable of."

the women walk -- or are carried by relatives -- 100 miles or more to get to the doctor. one woman had to save money for a year after her brutal rape before she could afford the travel to the hospital.

these attacks are being carried out by members of the congo's own army.

again from the article:

Mukengere, who attends to an average of 10 new cases a day, explains bed-by-bed the cruelty that has become the Congo.

"Helene, over there, is 19 years old. She first came here five years ago after having been raped," he said. "We treated her and discharged her, and off she went back to her home village. Five years later, she's back after being attacked and sexually violated over and over again. This is pure madness."

Equally troubling is that aid money designated for victims of sexual abuse here may run out at the end of June despite the relative success of this program, the only one of its kind in the region.

Sadly though, many of the people responsible for these rapes -- what is being described as the new weapon of war in a time of peace -- have yet to be arrested, tried or convicted. The peace process is too delicate at this stage, officials say.

(end excerpt)

yesterday, the article that send me into an IMing tizzy with a couple of friends was an alternet story about a new book by philosopher peter singer, in which he argues in favor of a vegan lifestyle.

"i think i'm already doing enough to save the planet," said a vegetarian/religious-recycler friend.
"what about poor people?!? they can't afford to eat organically," lamented another.

we all waxed intellectual for a while and then stepped down from our soap boxes and went back to checking email and talking with colleagues about how we hoped taylor hicks would win american idol and maybe did some work.

reading the congo article was a jolt to my comfortable, white american existence.

i IMed the story link to the same vegetarian/recycler friend and said, "what can we do about this. it's more important to me than recycling and eating organic produce."

there is something so fundamental -- and fundamentally wrong -- about the atrocities committed against poor women in war-torn (or peace-fragile) nations that it kind of drowns out the picture. or at least it should. i understand how we can sleep at night knowing we haven't hit the streets in favor of an international recycling program. i fail to understand how we have yet to make a dent in the use of rape as a common tool for control and power in the wars waged by mostly men.

and so i sat at my computer, feeling angry and hopeless and small. my vegetarian/recycler friend IMed back, "send that article to everyone you know and include links to some organization working to stop it."

please, reader, do the same. imagine living in a world where even in your own home, you are at constant risk of being brutalized by strangers in a way that makes many women wish they had instead been killed. economic stability will never occur when half of a country's population lives in the most basic kind of fear. human potential will never be reached. let's step outside our privilege, the shield of relative economic security, of living in a country where rape is at least marginally illegal, and try to imagine that terror.

here are organizations working to end violence against women internationally:

End Violence Against Women International
Amnesty International’s “Stop Violence Against Women” Campaign
International Center for Research on Women
Human Rights Watch
Zonta International

To learn more about the effects of sexual assault as a tool for war, see:
Stop Violence Against Women
End Violence Against Women

threats to our freedom: the women, the unmarrieds, and the gays

2006-05-18T16:30:00.000-05:00

so i sat down at my computer yesterday morning and went straight to alternet, as i am generally prone to do while drinking my morning coffee, and was greeted with this riff on an alarming article from the washington post that basically outlines how the government thinks all women under age 45 are mostly good for being incubators. apparently, if you are of child-bearing age, you should consider yourself "pre-pregnant" and stay away from excessive amounts of alcohol and cigarettes, even if you never want or plan to have children.

"nice," i thought to myself.

then yesterday afternoon, i stumbled upon this story about the missouri couple who, along with their three children, were forbidden from living in the same house together because the mother and father weren't married.

"crazy," i thought to myself.

then this morning, three friends IMed me the same link to another alternet article about the right-wing attempt to not only ban abortion, but contraception, too. in their twisted logic, the birth control pill equals abortion, and men who wear condoms while having sex with women are baby killers.

"great," i thought to myself.

then, this afternoon, bored and kind of hungry and trying to waste time before the end of the day, i skittered over to the new york times homepage, and i found this very depressing story about a u.s. senate panel's initial approval of a federal ban on gay marriage.

"okay," i thought to myself. "this is bordering on overkill."

what are they going to do next? pass a law forbidding women from wearing pants?

aren't there more important things to do?? like figure out an end to the war, maybe feed some poor people, maybe raise the minimum wage, maybe try to improve sex ed so that we don't have one of the highest teen pregnancy and std rates in the industrialized world?

jeez.

sorry sorry sorry

2006-05-18T16:24:00.000-05:00

i am back. sorry for the three-week-long silence. work and school and work and travel and emerging from said work and school and travel, and then moving, have sucked up all my non-sleeping-time. but i'm sort of back now, at least enough to spend time writing here instead of unpacking boxes.

i hate unpacking, and besides, much has happened worth writing about in the category of "insane things intended to jerk us back into the 1950s".

i don't know about you, but 1955 wasn't a particularly friendly era for a lot of people in this country. like people of color. and poor people. and women. and gays.

people have been talking about the handmaid's tale, by margaret atwood. i'm not much into conspiracy theory, but the more i read the news (and not even the alternative press, which i prefer, but also corporate stuff like the washington post and cnn and the nytimes), the more i think the handmaid's tale metaphor rings true.

more on this in a sec. i just needed to post something to get my blogging self jump-started...

from today's protest

2006-04-20T14:28:00.000-05:00

dirty hippies. :-)

glad i don't live in ohio.

2006-04-20T13:51:00.000-05:00

goddamn.

so a new bill in ohio wouldn't just make it illegal to have abortions, it would also make it illegal to cross state lines to have abortions somewhere else.

pinko feminist hellcat has more on this: the state bill, introduced earlier this month, "would make it a felony for a woman to seek to terminate her pregnancy and holds the same penalty if she chooses to leave the state for the medical procedure. additionally, anyone who helps coordinate an abortion or transportation to leave the state for one could be charged as well."

is there something in the WATER??? what's the deal with all these white men scowling and screaming their heads off about women's bodies? it's practically a fetish, i tell you.

to all the women over 45: We're sorry.

2006-04-19T15:57:00.000-05:00

s and i have been planning this weeklong pro-choice demonstration against the christian coalition. the turnout -- for alabama standards -- has been wonderful. the press coverage more than we dreamed. people we've never met are showing up every day.

and yet.

yet i can't help but feel like we're moving backwards.

a friend of mine who's 50 emailed me yesterday and said, "we've already fought this fight! what is going on?!"

and she's right. i feel this nagging need to apologize to every woman over 45, every woman who was there in the 70s on the streets, who was there in the 60s and 50s and before, when abortion was dangerous and often meant getting maimed or shunned or killed.

they already fought this fight. and now, it seems, we need to fight it again.

it isn't that women my age don't give a damn. it's just that we thought those crazy, right-winger loonies were too nutty to be taken seriously. we thought access to abortion -- that private and personal and sometimes-painful decision over what to do with our own bodies -- just made rational sense, and so who would ever successfully try to take that away?

but then shit happened.

"the christian coalition wants to ban abortion in america."

that's a joke, right? that we, in 2006 for christ sake, would be talking about this. debating it. seriously. in state legislatures across the country.

now we have states passing abortion bans, and laws giving fetuses rights that trump those of the women in whose womb they're being carried, and organizations that once were relegated to the margins of right-wing radio and southern-style revivals being hailed as heroes by the republicans we accidentally voted into office.

so to all the women over 45: we're sorry. we'd rather be fighting a new fight, too, if it makes you feel any better. we know you're tired, and you might feel the urge to throw up your hands and stay home and say, "what's wrong with young women these days? why'd they drop the banner?" but the truth is, we need you. one more time.

vaginas for christ

2006-04-17T15:45:00.000-05:00

"vaginas for christ" was the only sign that didn't make the cut for our pro-choice protest today outside the christian coalition. but i thought it was so catchy that it deserved mention somewhere (thanks, trish, for the brilliant idea).

shockingly, about 20 people showed up to stick it to the christian coalition for their brazen attempts to ban abortion in alabama. we were hoping for five people, so we were pretty ecstatic. the newspaper even sent a photographer. (yes, i know, in the vast majority of the country, 20 people at a pro-choice rally would be considered a whopping failure. but this alabama, a state that still hasn't made it into the 1970s.)

for more pics, check out the blog for alabama feminist action.

"creation science" in alabama schools

2006-04-14T13:57:00.000-05:00

so, we're already the ONLY STATE IN THE COUNTRY that requires warning labels in public school biology books (something to the tune of, "warning!!! learning about evolution has been linked to the dangerous disease called 'reality.' please proceed with caution.")

now, alabama's esteemed legislature wants to pass a bill that would allow the teaching of "creation science" and "intelligent design" in public school science classes. they're calling it the "academic freedom act."

okay, if you want your kid to learn that a christian god created the world in seven days, and if you want your kid to think "evolution" is a dirty word used by dirty hippies, and if you want your kid to be laughed out of their required college science courses, then by all means: yank your kid out of public school and send her to a christian day school. hell, this is alabama -- there's one on every corner.

but please, please, keep your christian hands off of our public schools.

if you live in alabama, think about signing the act for change petition to tell the state senate to vote 'no' on this bill.