Kali Dharma X Shakti Dharma

Gloria Steinem on Human Trafficking at Washington University

2010-04-14T13:14:00.000-05:00

So, props by woman Margaret for her hard, hard work getting this event together.She and the St. Louis Sex Trafficking Initiative, and various other good people at Washington University's Brown School of Social Work put this event, and a series of event together. They are doing good work. As for my friend, Go You! Nothing like being in your first year of your masters in social work, focused on addressing demand for sex slaves, and hooking up the right people to do the right thing, pretty much from the get go!

It's an event for a third-wave woman to see Gloria Steinem. One pays attention, one knows Something Is Happening. She's been fighting the good fight our whole lives. And the best part of that was: what happened was totally human and real.

We know she's a badass feminist and social justice activist. We know she knows her feminist history. We know she's not even kidding. But, watching her talk yesterday taught me that all that badassery comes from a very solid, very sure center of herself. She's calm, level, focused in her urgency. A quality, as this blog has often shown, I seldom possess.

She was also grieving. Chief Wilma Mankiller, of the Cherokee Nation, died last week of a very aggressive cancer. They were great friends, and Steinem spent the week before Mankiller's death at her home, helping with the general care and preparation for her passing. As she put it, "There was no reality outside of that house." Naturally, this experience, this intense and intimate time in a most sacred moment for the Cherokee people, influenced her talk with us on human trafficking--especially trafficking for sex. Partly, she wove this experience into this issue to honor her sister-friend, and partly she wove them because traditional Native American attitudes about women are a living reminder that our attitudes about gender and sex are not the only one's we might inhabit. (A long way around to the point of the laugh line, "What we are learning in the contemporary moment is that patriarchy doesn't work anywhere.") As Steinem reminded the audience, regarding her friend's death, "We don't control life; we can only use what happens." So, she used what happened to teach us on Monday.

Interesting connection: Steinem pointed out that our early colonists were perplexed to discover that rape, in or out of the context of war, was unknown among the native peoples they encountered. It's a clue to how "normal" a part of the masculine mystique that kind of power has long been in Europe, and just how cultural and contingent that normalcy is. Indeed, as the work of Elaine Pagels and Monica Sjoo and Barbara Mor -- and hosts of less famous feminist archeologists and theologians and historians have shown -- what we know as patriarchy and its gender ideology in is very new in human culture, only about 5% of our collective history according to work Steinem cited. We have, if we would like to consider them, old models on which to imagine and build new futures.

In and against a context of sex trafficking, Steinem therefore exhorted us to "eroticize equality and de-eroticize dominance." It's not the first time I've heard this call. bell hooks asked for the same thing in Austin a few years ago at Book People, an event in which my woman Carrie was involved. hooks asked that we insert into popular culture more and more stories and images of loving relations -- that don't follow the traditional romantic formula, since that is often a formal substitute (in cultural productions) for presenting the complexities and beauties of love. It's the key point I like so much in Luce Irigaray's work: what that means and how to make that real in our world.

About sex trafficking specifically, Steinem spent a good deal of time on the American misconception that this horror only happens "abroad" in places like Thailand or India or Europe. What we don't know about this misconception is significant. An estimated 25% of the sex tourists who frequent slave brothels are American. As films like Very Young Girls demonstrate, American pimps seduce and then essentially kidnap American girls -- from every tax bracket, all regions of country -- and force them into prostitution. There is a growth industry in the US in the trafficking of girls, boys, women. Steinem described The Minnesota Pipeline that works by running adds in small town papers in the northern Plains (where there are lots of young, blond women), promising them jobs in New York City -- jobs that are traps full of drugs, isolation, and rape. This is organized crime, there are syndicates. It's city girls, country girls, suburban and exurban girls. A great long form bit of journalism is Girls Next Door at NYT Magazine. Historically, this is not news in America. Steinem described sex camps that were established in up-state New York in the 1800s where women were kept in barracks, behind 30 ft stockades, guarded by dogs. A point often made by First Wave feminists, but overlooked in our popular understanding of their grievances.

Steinem focused on what can be done. What can be done? One, remember that these behaviors are addictions, really, and that while many women experience rape in our country, that's not What Men Do. The average US rapist has assaulted 14 women. They are men at one end of the spectrum of the masculinity. Their numbers are small, but the social and personal damage they do is enormous.

More, seek out and encourage, or establish, men's groups that work against gender bias and trafficking and abuse. Abusive men don't care what women think or say, but they do respect other men. One such organization is Man UP, which (among other things) is working to prevent trafficking in South Africa in order to capitalize on the upcoming tourist influx for the World Cup. (This point came up when an audience member asked about the rumors that 50,000 women and children were trafficked into Germany for the last World Cup. Turns out that's true, Steinem telling us that whole apartment buildings were rented for this purpose, high rise brothels.)

Seek out, support, establish trafficking awareness and support organizations in all communities. Between sex and labor trafficking, there is no area of the country, no county, no city that is not affected. One often cited example is GEMS in New York, an organization that helps young people transition out of sexual exploitation.

Give up the idea that these kids and women are "there by choice." That libertarian view is balderdash. The average age of entry into forced sex work is 13 in the US. No one says, "When I grow up, I want to be a hooker, ... maybe a stripper...." The life expectancy for these exploited people is somewhere around 40 years. That's not an ambition. That's an accident orchestrated by criminals and economic insecurity.

Lobby and agitate for laws and their enforcement. The US has not ratified the international CEDAW treaty, AKA the Treaty for the Rights of Women. It should. This problem is international, and we have responsibilities. Lobby for education programs for police. The pimps and customers need prosecution. The women need counseling and support services. Lobby for such services. The average domestic violence shelter has neither the space, the resources, nor the experience needed to help these women and children.

One of her stories affirmed our instincts. If something smells wrong, it's wrong. Report your suspicions. Who works in the kitchen of the restaurant you're eating in; why does that nanny seem so afraid of the husband, the wife; why does that factory have fences that keep people in rather than out? Learn and share the numbers for relevant hot lines in your area. A quick bit of googling will bring them right up.

Remember that trafficking is not just about the sex economy. It's cooks, bus boys, it's construction, it's janitorial services, it's roofers, it's lawn care and landscaping labor, it's nannies and au pairs, it's garment workers, it's wait staff, it's strippers, it's girls in porn films; it's the guy who cleans the meat grinder in the factory that makes cattle into hamburger meat. It could be the guy stocking the shelves in your grocery store. It's you name it. Slavery is experiencing a glorious renaissance.

Steinem asked we remember that Stockholm Syndrome is not just for prisoners of war. The men and women who buy, sell, own and "season" their victims work hard to inculcate that deadly combination of love, fear, and total dependency. Be gentle, these people are convinced they need their kidnapper, pimp, and abuser.

And be careful. This is high-dollar, international, organized crime the profits and reach of which rival the black markets in drugs and weapons. There is lots of money at stake, and you know how people get around Lots of Money at Stake. Call the authorities, local, state, and federal. The list of laws one must break in order to accomplish trafficking and sexual exploitation involves all jurisdictions.

It was a wholly inspiring afternoon. This travesty of humanity is not natural. We are more than this. As Steinem put it, "We have our individuality, our community, our humanity to claim."

A Poem, likely the beginning of something

2010-04-08T13:50:00.000-05:00

Poetry came to visit again, too bad she seems to be in a bad mood. But, she's got the feel of something new astir in here. We shall see where this goes.

*******************************************************

folded in this trunk, somewhere, is the me

this moment is not about sex

the debt of that girl’s death also folded in the trunk

this moment is not about to happen

somewhere, in the me, the dance that girl performed is written

this moment is happening

and is not about sex

nothing lyrical or pretty is folded in here

the debt of lyrical to that girl

So, Wanna Pay Your Taxes Now?

2010-03-05T08:14:00.000-06:00

Back in the 1980's, there was a recession. States needed to cut budgets. They cut money from psychiatric care facillities. The persistent homeless rates went up as people who weren't really dangerous, but who could in no way function on their own, wound up on the streets. I had a chat with a man in San Francisco who carried on very involved conversations with the rat living on his shoulder. Yes, the rat talked back. The rat's name was Charles. The man never told me his name. So, it's the 20tweens, another deep recession, and states are cutting budgets again. Now we're parolling criminals. (In between, we privatized much of the prision system, and that complicates things, I know...) Now we have a national focus on a really sweet girl who was abducted, defiled, killed, and buried in a shallow grave by a known and repeat sex offender because there's no money to keep very bad people in jail (and because we think rape is a less serious offense than murder). This was one of the "hard decisions" we are forced by circumstance to make.

So, I ask you. Do you want to pay your taxes now?

"What's your definition of Post-Feminist?" asked a friend of mine.

2010-02-03T14:20:00.001-06:00

Post-feminist: (n. adj, Am E) A rhetorical flourish of the backlash offered as a compliment or sign of historical chic, but functionally a rightist conservative term meant to short circuit actual feminist cultural work. Know uses: She's nice to men so she's a post-feminist. He speaks to women respectfully, so he is a post-feminist. In the post-feminist era we have addressed the complaints raised by feminists concerning parity, education, safety from intimate violence, and the commodification of women as tools of the entertainment and advertising industries. In the post-feminist era, women are not abused, not sold into sexual slavery, not paid less, not suspected of emotional unpredictability, professional ineptitude, or intellectual handicap. Everything's ducky now, so hush. Oh, and post-feminist pornography is all images of hot lust in reciprocal and mutually satisfying sexual partnerships.

December Reading: Thorium!!!!!

2010-01-05T11:10:00.000-06:00

I read political mags, many of them. With the traveling this past season, though, I bought science mags at airports instead of The Nation, The National Review, The Economist, Harper's, Tikkun, et alli. The science mags lead me to what Jung would have called a kind of universal memory moment, like the memory that makes us afraid of snakes and lions, but in the other direction.

Do you recall personally, or from learning history, or just vaguely and dreamily that in the post-war years we Americans were all hyped up over the "infinite and clean" energy of thermonuclear reactions? I do. I have this vague memory of this utopian promise.

Well, there were two plans for fission. One involved uranium and its conversion to a fissile material. This substance had two uses: it could make electricity, AND, and this is key, it could make nuclear bombs. This, since we had us some Russians to contain, and mutual assured destruction seemed the most reasonable route to this end. But, the other substance is thorium. It can make electricity, but not bombs. It doesn't contaminate the earth. Its reactors are tiny and require no population buffer zone, and its waste is smaller in both volume and radioactive shelf life than uranium by orders of minitude. It gives off more just plain old steam than waste matter. It is freakishly more abundant than uranium. There's enough of it, thorium nerds think, in the lower 48 to power the US for 1000 years. This makes the electric car look much greener than it does now. Maybe.

What I don't know is what kind of damage is required to mine it. But, here you go: a possible game changer. See these links: Uranium Is So Last Century at Wired, and some rather technical info at Thorium in Wikipedia, and much discussion at the thorium blog.

Happy New Decade? Possibly.

I also discovered that these bugs that live behind the exterior walls of my garage are Kissing Bugs, that they carry Chagas Disease, which is B A D, so you win some, you lose some.

Little Poem from SF

2009-10-24T09:59:00.000-05:00

Beggars here near inaudible,
just a sidewalk look, coinshakey little cup,
jingling their shamehope.

I am a grenade.

The Cutest Thing, Loudly

2009-10-14T22:36:00.004-05:00

Last winter my dog Tonka's favorite game was Chew Ice. We'd throw the crusted water off the horse troughs, so she'd could run around and shatter them easily with her square pit bull jaws. She was delight incarnate.

This morning, Tonka ran around outside with her left ear screwed over head, the way pits do when they're perplexed, snuffing the ground, looking everywhere, and barked and barked at the frost. She was worry incarnate.

That was a good morning laugh.

Movement on Poetics of Being Two and its abstract

2009-04-06T09:09:00.005-05:00

So, my dear editor at my dear press tells me that the reader's report on the poetics book is just a few days away. After two whole seasons of impatience, I find I am now scared. What, oh what, will the reader report? It's been so long that this process has begun to feel like I'm a murder defendant waiting twelve hours for a jury to come to verdict. As defense attorneys will explain, that's not usually a good sign.

To cheer myself up, I present to you the chapter summaries of the first full length study of 20th Century poetry through an Irigarian lens, specifically that of her ethics of sexual difference. I add, should you have unlucky and never read these poets, go read these poets. They are simply astonishing. Especially St.-John Perse's and his Seamarks/Amers. You did not know that poets would try That!

Also, Well now, kids, to my happy astonishment, someone just dropped by and asked to be apprised of the publication of my book, should that ever happen... So I thought, hmmm, for his sake I should put up the chapter abstracts. Hence here 'tis, but modified as I discovered that the chapter on G. Stein is a whole other book on 20th C poetry, and is not in the present volume. Also said visitor, Paul, runs this cool poetry blog: Wordsalad. Go read it.

Ahem, the book:
Prologue: For Novices and Adepts (22 pp.)

Quick review of the position of Irigaray's work in the larger frame of feminist philosophy.

Introduction: What? How?

Overview of the book’s argument, organization, and style included with this proposal.

Chapter 1: A Tantric Ethics of Sexual Difference (60pp. ds. 11pt.)
This chapter describes the dialogical subject, or Diotiman relation, that Irigaray posits in her ethics and that relation’s parallels in Tantric philosophy. Through detailed explication of the terms of Irigaray’s ethics in terms of Tantra as explained by Octavio Paz, Andrew Harvey, and Miranda Shaw, I show that Tantra is a system in which two complex and nuanced subjects are taken to exist and the complexities of that relation are explored. The conclusion of the chapter shows this ethics to require a spiritualization of the carnal and carnalization of spirit in order for Irigaray’s ethics to address humans in their full complexity. Irigaray’s use of touch, the caress, as an important aspect of her ethics is given close consideration.

Chapter 2: Burn the Panopticon (60pp.)
This chapter moves from the symbolism of Tantra to an explication the central terms of Irigaray’s ethics of sexual difference through understanding her work as that of a “symbolist philosopher,” and develops a theory of poetics and the poetic subject (one model of subjectivity generally) in the spirit of that ethics. Imagination, in this ethics, becomes not the flight of fancy, but the risk of responsibly trying to imagine a life beyond the problematics of the postmodern. It is this texture of imagination that allows one to burn the panopticon to see and be otherwise. Having explored some of the sources of Irigaray’s thought outside the Western philosophical tradition, I turn here to the implications of this hybrid thought of sexual difference for poetry, poetics, and the poetic subject as a model for subjectivity in general (as the poet has thought of the poetic subject since at least the German Romantics). The chapter concludes with an examination of Irigaray’s response to Heidegger’s ideas of the poet and of the purpose of that subjectivity of risk and complexity in ethical love for poetry, but also as a site at which poetry can teach us how to be two (and more), that is how poetry can lead to an ethical and vatic sense of our being.

Chapter 3: For the Other in Yves Bonnefoy’s The Motion and Immobility of Douve (56pp.)
This long chapter is both an extensive close reading of Bonnefoy’s long poem and an exploration of how difficult it can be to arrive at a poetics of being two. Exploring the instances of the interval, and examining the subjective dynamics between the voices/characters, I will read this poem as ambivalent in regards to sexual difference. In one direction, its narrative and characters resist any possible trace of such an ethics or mode of being, while in another, theun-dead female figure of Douve presents readers with a textual representation of the sensible transcendental and a respect for the interval like few other figures in poetry. The poem is dramatic, narrative, disjunctive, and surrealist. In this matrix of cooperative, if sometimes dissonant, genres and styles a pair of lovers speak to each other across the abyss of death. Douve, the woman in the poem, is dead, and has taken a disruptive and antagonistic posture toward her former lover. The man in the poem laments the loss of his beloved, associating her with nature and its power, but also seeing her loss as tragedy only for himself in still fairly traditional patriarchal terms. The tension between the two, the insistence even from death that she is not as his fantasy wanted her, the failure to wonder and to allow the other-subject their existence in relation to their gender and their own unique being, threatens not just the integrity of their subjectivities but he integrity of the phenomenal world itself. The poem is examined as an opportunity to meditate on the dangers of refusing being two and on the difficulty of bringing this state of being to consciousness and culture.

Chapter 4: St.-Jean Perse and the Languor of Renewal (c. 35 pp.)
Perse’s poetry is also not yet a poetry of being two, but his sense of language and phenomena, of love and the sensual, and the pleasure and joy often found in Perse’s poems. Working primarily from the Irigarian terms mucous and angels, and her definitions of love of self and love of other, this explication of Perse’s poem focuses on Seamarks. This epic poem registers the complexity of Diotiman relation sometimes by considering human interactions, sometimes relations between humans and nature, and often represents these complexities in the interrelation of symbols and the layers of tension in his poems. Perse is poet of the water, of the wide open ocean, and drop of a tear, and provides an opportunity to explore the Tantric and contemplative paradoxes with which we will learn to live with confidence in a culture of being two: for, in it a city's women march to the sea to demand/pray for a world in which they exist as subjects-feminine, and a pair of lovers take to the sea for a year to be transformed into the founding couple of that world. They layers of Greek drama, Tantric-like cosmology, and frail human risk in the face of always possible failure demonstrate the leap that a culture of two would be, and the difficulty of leaping.

Chapter 5: Jorie Graham’s Parousia (40 pp.)
The close readings offered here focus on the use of multiple simultaneous perspectives, disjunction, and ambiguity to represent the difficulty, and sometimes the success of arriving at a being two. Graham’s work is as encompassing, interdisciplinary, intertexual and ‘difficult’ as Irigaray’s, partly because she working out in poetry many of the problems to which Irigaray applies herself in philosophy. While many of Graham’s astute readers have commented on these propensities of Graham’s styles, none has yet collected those comments into an understanding of Graham’s work as also thinking its way into being two. Jorie Graham is the first poet to write much of her poetry with the concerns and difficulties of Irigaray’s thought in mind. Of the poets I consider in this book, she is the only one to write after Irigaray. Graham’s interest in the stories of Daphne, Cassandra, Penelope, and Eurydice, many of the Guardian Angel poems, the Aubades, and some of her biographical poems directly explore the tension in our culture that Irigaray identifies as patriarchy’s foreclosure of sexual difference.

Chapter 6: This Impasse which Is Not One (40 pp.)
The book concludes by opening onto the wider scene of the present culture. If poetic subjects imply or suggest ways of being human when they are understood as having something to say to ethics and thus living together, this chapter explores, celebrates, decries and laments the trends in our culture at present that might let us move into a culture of positive differences and that frustrate, but do not render impassible, that horizon. This chapter brings the discussion of Irigaray’s ethics out of the “narrow” world of poetics and literary criticism to suggest some of the ways in which the reader might go and engage the world from this Diotiman point of view and where, in addition to Irigaray, feminist and other thinkers are imagining their way into a new world. The work of bell hooks and Ken Wilber and Curtis White, as well as several others, are addressed as to their resonance with Irigaray’s thought and the opportunities for a culture of life they open to us.

Twittering GOP at the Address to a Joint Congress

2009-03-02T08:25:00.003-06:00

Dear GOP, MSM, and many blogs,

Others may have made this point, but I haven't drilled down far enough through the noise to find them.

Twittering during the President's address to Congress and the Nation was plain, old fashioned, inexcusably RUDE, CHILDISH, and PASSIVE AGRESSIVE. Such behavior tells me who you really are.

When I teach, whether in a lecture or discussion session, students I observe texting/twittering or Gods-forbid letting their phones ring in class, quickly find the room silent and The Prof standing next to them. I confiscate their mobile communication device. Class does not resume until the device is surrendered to my temproary proprietorship. It's all very embarassing for the student, but highlights the severity of the distraction, and then it never happens again.

In movie theaters, classrooms, churches and temples, court rooms, public spaces devoted to shared experience requiring full attention, One Does Not Text or Twitter.

If the GOP can't even manage basic mature politeness, then they should be treated accordingly. I suggest the guards present be empowered to appropriate MCDs at such events.

I mean really. The Dems often looked angry or bored when your guy was "speaking," but they did not just up and tune out. They sat and listened because that is the respect due the office if not the man.

That the MSM and lots of bloggers neglected to comment on the sheer hubris of these meaningless "twitters" (their very meaninglessness embedded in the metaphor of their name) is equally disappointing.

Lead, follow, or get out of the way. Those are your choices. Twitttering/pouting because you lost your monopoly on political power is not one of them. Deal. with. it.

OK, So I'm a Little Slow, but amused ntl.

2009-02-27T19:22:00.003-06:00

From Saldef.net.

From CafePress.com.

Train from Disney Land to Las Vegas, Dammit.

2009-02-24T22:29:00.003-06:00

Listen up Rush, Fox News, Govenor Jindall (who is quite charming, Happy Mardi Gras to you, and laissez les bons temps rouler!) and my own dad.

The train. From Disney Land to Vegas-- full stop. Tone of paternalizing dismay. Sounds very much like a silly toy, a wasted gift, an extra attraction for tourists doubling their vacation.

Can you feel the whip of rotation? Can you feel both reason and planet shudder?

The Train is an experiment in high speed rail service for short distance runs. LA to Vegas. Dallas to Austin to Houston. St. Louis to KC or Chicago. The entire Eastern Seaboard. Orlando to Tampa. Name your short hop on a plane.

It is an experiment in taking short hop and Highly Polluting flights out of the skies. It is an experiment in decent and humane service (if we follow the European model). It is an experiment in the modernization of our passenger transport infrastructure.

Oh, no! NOOOOOOOO! Terrible. Symbol of Dem habit of throwing money around like Mardi Gras beads.

Get a real objection. Start singing about some serious new ideas.

On such a train, one sits in a comfortable seat, might eat a decent meal, watch the countryside roll by. One does not fear car wreck by drunk or by tractor trailer or plummeting from the sky.

Given the security delays at airports, on most of these short hops, the train will get us there with greater haste.

A gazillion people run that highway from LA to Vegas every day, every weekend, in cars that don't run on sunshine. Some are tourist, many are locals. It's a good location for the experiment.

Stop making it sound like an expensive toy. It's completely disingenuous and short sighted and anti-livable-planet and transparently stupid to do so.

Stop it.

Dear Super Bowl Advertisements:

2009-02-02T07:32:00.003-06:00

I noticed two dominant themes in your work the first half of the game: anarchy and sexism.

In the current economic clstrfck, the anarchy was satisfying--aimed as it was at the innanity of office life, the fun of breaking things that don't work in our favor. It's an old theme, not very inventive, but in this moment it was hilarious and cathartic. Good on ya.

The sexism, however, was gratuitous--as it always is. Head's up: women watch football, eat junk food, drive fast cars, and not just because we can't avoid it. The sexism was adolescent in nature, silly that is, non-threatening, but sexist nonetheless. We can't avoid men (unless we can drive faster than they can, and I can). Yawn.

Next year, when people are still out of work, thinking a little harder about how to get at who screwed 'em--stick with the anarchy. If you can't have any new ideas, that is.

Marketing? ... Anyone?

2009-01-30T17:13:00.001-06:00

So, why-oh-why would one call it a Flammable Safety Cabinet? Paging Mr. Carlin. Mr. Carlin, there's a call on the line for you.

Languages? Maybe Not.

2009-01-25T12:25:00.003-06:00

And we worry over our official language. We're I French, and I sort of am, and as an American English speaker of some literacy, I say, "Arrettez le Globish!!!! Immediatement! Sacre Monde!"

No metaphor. No humor. No connotation.

In both languages I say, "Fie on't."

Srsly.

Fascinating and Problematic

2009-01-25T10:02:00.003-06:00

NYT Mag article "What Do Women Want." I'm still processing, and it's preliminary. I would recommend reading the last few paragraphs first, and then dig in. Warning: some discussion of rape and rape fantasies, but nothing graphic. Will be back with more thinking. Am sure that the feminist and women's listserves and blogs will be very busy later today.

Dysfunctional Equine Relations

2009-01-22T23:27:00.003-06:00

Right, I go to feed the horses tonight. I forget to turn on the barn light, which in winter is their supper bell. I whistle the horses up instead. They don't come. Get to the barn, turn on the light, and whistle. Galloping ensues. Mickey Joe trots up nicely on her side of the pasture. Hers is separate from Jack and Seeker's pasture because MJ is given to founder, that is she will eat herself to death, so smaller pasture. All good. Hay for MJ, no worries.

Galloping continues, and Jack all but body checks Seeker, heads up the hill to me and the barn at a dead run, stops dramatically as you have often horses do in westerns, and turns to, I am not kidding, guard the barn. Seeker gallops off into the dark. I recriminate Jack while also pitching him some hay in the barn. Jack doesn't so much as look at it, no. He's staring off into the dark with his ears back.

Yes, you're right, no one actually rides Jack. He's retired for reasons of personality.

So, I walk over to Jack and nudge him in the direction of the hay, patiently explaining that there's lots of it, and it's just as good, the same bale in fact, as the hay Seeker is about to get. He looks at it, at me, and stands his ground. I go back to the hay room, fork up another serving, and walk outside the barn to the spot by the trough where Seeker likes to eat -- where he can easily run away from Jack.

Jack saunters over and chows down on Seeker's hay. I walk about half way down the hill and whistle for Seeker. Jack, being Jack, trots meaningfully past me to the bottom of the hill and glares meaningfully out into the dark. I whistle for Seeker and call him, and Jack comes back up to resume his post, now guarding all the hay. Meanwhile, MJ is over on her side of the fence, content with her dinner.

So, I go back in the barn and move Jack's hay out and around the far corner of barn where there is no way he can both guard his pile and run Seeker off of the other. Whistle. Nothing. Seeker will have none of it.

Turn to close up, and Jack, I swear, gave me the evil eye.

Dear SEC and Bush Co.

2009-01-16T10:14:00.003-06:00

Madoff might not have made a single trade, according to Reuters. That, that is an epic fail. So, in honor of seeing the back of Bush and loving the sight:

Dear President Obama --

Make sure that never happens again.

Thanks.

2009 and the Detournment of My Quotidienne

2009-01-11T17:59:00.005-06:00

(pardon the SI reference, but there was this review of a memoir by Guy Debord's lover in The Nation, and it got me thinking about those cats and that lingo lately)

A lull in the flurry of Father Care and visit from Tricksy (Speed's SO), and I feel that blowing off a bit of serious writing on the Murdoch essay (which is getting entirely off the chain)to read some friends' blogs is just the ticket.

Yeh. So Princess at Flooded Lizard Kingdom wrote herself some New Year's Resolutions, and tagged a couple blogs reflecting on the spirit in which to think and write them. So, agreeing with her, as I often do, I got to thinking about mine. Late, I know, but things have been a tad busy here.

Some are making lists of intentions for their resolutions, some keeping themselves to the one. Having made lists called "To Do --> Ta Da," including master lists of Things To Accomplish This Year, or Things to Accomplish This Summer, including action items like "Meditate more," and "Recycle More" and "Fix Your Bloody iPod" (that one's from five months ago) ... You get the idea. I'm not making a list, and I'm not limiting to The One Resolution.

Rather. My deal right now is that I don't feel all that resolute, or resolved, or fixed like the North Star at all. I feel very drifty, very much unmoored, but not in an entirely bad way. I'm unsteady, and processing a relationship, and seeing some patterns, and getting ready to "let what does not matter truly slide." A Situationist sentiment if ever there was one.

(What. Is. Wrong. With. San Diego. Tonight??? It's terrible when football teams forget how to play football.) -- pardon --

I shall instead drift, maunder, detourn, announce some very general intentions -- because if you read this you probably know me, and if you know me, you know what my To Do list looks like. I would like to wander down to not so much what I will do or what I will stop doing in my life, and get down to what I really do not want anymore. Ever.

Emotional confusion so deep that I cannot articulate it, barely let myself feel it, and try to soldier on in spite of it thinking that I Can Be Strong Enough and Up My Game and then All Will Be Well. --- Dear PMRSC, this is the stupid thing you do. Of the stupidest things you do, this is the really big one, and a root cause of many others. Hence forth, Dear Woman, you/I shall Call a Foul a Foul from now on. Challenge the play, and the call, and point out that Creating Insecurity Where There Need Not Be Any is plain not cool.

Mistaking momentary good/kind/attentive/generous/reciprocal behavior for a desire to behave that way on a regular basis. (See above.)

Attempting to reciprocate said behavior/tone/emotional motif later and being ever so gently looked at as if I've grown a horn, broken a rule.

I shall remember that my friends are not insane, and that if they had seen/heard the actions behind this New Year's Refusal, they would have duly chastised the offender right quick.

Hence, I shall try to sniff out new and deepen old relationships in which I am steady enough to tell the truth, all the time, without hesitation. People with whom I can glow, because they know how to. People with whom I can be small and need some help, because they have been small and needed help. People who will Feel All the Way Right Now because there is no later anyway. Because, I don't have to shield myself from such people while attempting to know them intimately as humans. Which, I am writing to remind myself, is not possible. Those to whom telling the truth (be it gorgeous, silly, serious, or ugly) feels risky or wrong or stupid are people I do not need to know.

For instance, people who say that "the problem is that this matters to you," and when want to parse the meaning of "matter to." Pretty pedestrian phrase in my book.

No doubt by now, you have figured that much of the above is break-up related. It is. But it is also a Pattern with Enough Men to Be Worth Thinking Now. And it is a pattern shockingly similar to my relationship with my chosen profession.

Both those men and this profession hold out just enough positive reinforcement to keep me in the game. Both those men and this profession seem good and reasonable and talk in even tones and make very few sudden movements, even when saying the most ludicrous and soul-wrecking things. Both assume that I will (because I have) accept "working" below my full ability or evolution, and for far less "pay" than my talents and acumen are actually worth. Both claim a kind of passivity that is really a position of perfect control. Both claim a desire to critique or live outside of the usual hierarchies and yet reproduce them in the form and content of their activity or organization.

The academic world of Literature/Philosophy especially. Like a partly-engaged lover, these professions waste talent and can only continue to operate under the illusions/seductions candied out to graduate students. They are, however polite, abusive systems. They refuse the obligations of their own professed values. They are, by the way, quite. fine. with. that.

Harsh? No. The MLA and APA and ACLA have, for decades, bemoaned the recursive problem of needing graduate students to teach first level courses (because the profs are soooo bored with those ingorant kids), and knowing full and well that whopping lots of them are being told they're brilliant and the profession needs them ... to adjunct. And if you just publish a few peer reviewed articles, and maybe a book, and drive a couple hundred miles between schools, and refer to the trunk of your car as your office, get paid 1/3 of your full-time "colleagues," and live w/o health insurance for just long enough, and keep applying for full-time jobs, you might, someday, get one. What they do is burn up good teachers and scholars--and they can because there are so damn many of us. In short, newbies, if you are not in grad school in a top 20 school/department, for-get your professional aspirations. You are padding as far as they are concerned, the padding between them and the ground.

Fact is, kids, that universities CANNOT operate any other way at this point. There is nothing for it. The professors who teach or taught us, who went before us, who manage and defend the profession --- sold out a couple generations of intellectual and pedagogical talent. They did not stand up to this waste of good human time and acumen, and in fact, encouraged us to this impasse.

Hence, I shall not subject myself to that particular waiting game, either.

The feeling in me that says, "See Me, Just See Me" -- yeh, next I have that, I am out. Because living in a place where I spend a lot of energy refusing to feel that, I become a complete nut case.

Glowing, burning as much as I can, staying with people who let me and whom I can encourage to do so. Working in some place or way that feels that way too. That's 2009. That's where I'm going to go in 2009.

The books are there for themselves, now. They're not signs of my belonging/qualification. They are self-referentially existent and meant to better the conversations they will enter. They are now pure things, in the old Symbolist sense no one uses anymore because it's obligations are just too, like, real 'n' shit.

I am now a Writer of Independent Means, and I plan to enjoy that rare status/identity thoroughly.

I shall, in Fleur's words, "shit-can" the whole thing once those books are done and, like the 20's expat I would have been, hie mine self to Europe to drift and detourn my previous social identity, re-edit the Coming Soon trailer of my future so that making myself and other people more of their own good-glowy-rightness the new motif.

Any thing, or situation, or person/s that interfere with that will be promptly allowed to truly slide. It's time. Here (spirit willing) endeth the lesson.

Hemingway Update-- Better, and Post #555

2009-01-09T19:59:00.003-06:00

Hem's was released this evening, so we're not in immediate danger. Tests of every conceivably related sort were run. No blood clot in lung, no danger of stroke, and no particular reason for the woozy faints other than a massively elevated white cell count, to the tune of 19,000 where normal is 5-6,000. Am now informed that this could cause said woosiness and hallucinations. Am told this "sometimes happens after surgery, and no one know why." Blood was drawn for cultures to discover whether there is infection, as there is no obvious sign or reason. Monday, return for another blood draw and reports on the cultures. Meanwhile, make progress as can. Scary No Good Day seeps slowly out of my muscles, adrenals, and mind.

Right, so My Dad Is Not Dying Right Now! Sweet!

Metablogging: this is post number 555. I promised myself when I got here I would reflect on the total lack of focus of this, well, notebook.

Nevermind. Better to say my dad's OK instead.

Hemingway Update--Really Not Good

2009-01-09T10:00:00.006-06:00

So, um, let me catch you up as fast as I can. Hemingway had both knees replaced on the 29th. He's been home four days. The first day was good, but he felt happy to be some and was taking Percocet every 4 hours, so he did too much. Next day, not so good. Dizzy and massive drops in blood pressure every time he got vertical, like by half. On Tuesday afternoon, the wooziness stuck with him for several hours, and he looked like candle wax, even while in bed. Oh, there was that moment when he almost passed out on me, listed over, mumbled, and I thought he was having a stroke, but then he righted himself. And then, there's the hallucinations, which seemed minor, but are bothersome. So, he might be dehydrated. So, I pumped him full of water, 10oz an hour, and that's better now. But, his heart's out of rhythm today, so it might be too much Sotenol. And it might be that his blood's too thin, so the Cumidin level is off because his diet and habits are totally different right now since he's not hungry like usual and hasn't had so much a single beer in two weeks.

And, oh yeah, it might be that he has a BLOOD CLOT in his lungs -- which is not one bit OK because that's like being right next to death. Meanwhile, he can talk and we got him into the car by wheeling him in his office chair, and so Fleur and Hemingway are off to the hospital to get this all sorted. Kinda hard to do your physical therapy, or eat, or pee, if you're totally out of whack. Weird thing is that yesterday he was kinda more steady, and today his BP is kinda all over the place, sometimes normal for him, and sometimes as low as mine, which for him is really not at all good.

Basically, if you send metta, or prana, or mojo, or pray -- keep lots of thoughts and send them for him. The local hospital is NOT my first choice for this level of care. Because this, well, this just sucks.

I am both scared and angry as hell. So, between my unhappy heart and having all the rest of my energy focused on my dad, if I'm not calling or writing you back, just know it's really not personal. I'm just much too tied up here.

Here, Watch This!

2009-01-03T16:11:00.003-06:00

Mom Does Not Usually Share My Proclivity for the Vernacular

2008-12-25T16:03:00.004-06:00

This conversation took place on Dec. 23, 2008.

Me: Sorry I've been short today. It's hard right now, keeping up a happy face when I have no interview at MLA. Sure, I get to go to San Francisco, tour about, see some friends, which is peaches; but good God, this trying not hope, and then hoping anyway, and then nothing. This is about as Zen as I get about it. I try not to get attached to the possiblility of a job, but then I do. Just sucks sometimes.

Fleur de Bretagne: Well ... honey, I say you finish the two books this spring, and then just shit-can the whole thing! Go to Europe for a month or two, see your cousins, and reimagine yourself. It's more emotional trouble than it's worth.

Me: Shit-can? (which, as a verb, is hyphenated)

Fleur: Well, I mean it.

(I'm feeling MUCH better about the whole sitch after That!)

Update on Poetics Book

2008-11-25T13:02:00.003-06:00

At stunning long last, I have all the copyright permissions for the book together. I have not done an official tally of cost, but let's just put it around $2000. Lesson: from now on, Be Stingy With Quotations and Stop Being So Helpful With Quotations. My sweet stars.

Included with the valuable permissions is the marketing material.

Now, all I need is the peer reviewers comments back and at least one answered email from my new editor dude. That would be greaaaat. You know, since this book was supposed to be, like, done now and coming out in March.

But, we're closer! We're very late, but we're closer.

Meaning of this Economic Crisis: A Culture of Life Post

2008-11-20T11:16:00.004-06:00

It is a truth explained in psychology and the wisdom traditions: when some aspect of your life or self needs to change, and you refuse, resist, deny that change -- events, conditions, actions beyond your scope of agency will force you into it. That you kick and scream will make no difference: you will have to change and grow, or you will suffer and you will make others suffer with you.

As with the spirit of one, so with the macro-spirit of nations, and now the integrated world. (The wisdom traditions infer this principle by resemblance of patterns.)

When we were fat and happy (or some of us were), we refused to take that advantage and change. We refused universal health care, we refused efficient cars, we passed risk downward, we lied and cajoled and stole and screwed over, we consumed unwisely -- sometimes borrowing on our home equity in order to support that consumption. We refused to start building the green economy we will need to survive in anything like comfort for more than the next hundred years, give or take. Some of us are still flying our private jets to DC to ask for money (as CNN reports the auto company CEOs did this week).

(My apologies to those who have conserved, bought local and fair trade, purchased a Prius, offer their time to those less priviledge, I am not talking about you. You are the change required.)

Today, it's reported that an UNexpected extra 500,000 people filed for unemployment assistance. So, it's getting worse faster than we thought. That downward spiral we have been anemically trying to pull out of ... I can hear Charybdis sucking on our boat (or was Scylla the whirlpool?... anyway.)

The money doled out to financial firms is not moving, and they're waiting for more in the form of lower interest rates. This is their refusal of the revolution. It is also akin to extortion.

This is not your average long, hard recession. This is the Memo From the Universe that we need to get our whole entire house in order, from the ground up, the top down, wall to wall. Our assumptions need revision, our modes of connection and economic flow need restructuring, our values as consumers and citizens need perspective and generosity added to them. Our Rich need to reinvest their profits into their own failing firms and thereby benefit everyone.

We are no longer allowed to live unconsciously. Halelujiah!

We need to save the auto makers. In the process of bankruptcy protection, they will dump their pension obligations. Those obligations will be picked up by what's called the Pension Benefit Insurance Program. It's a federal program that puts taxpayer money up to support pensions promised by corporations that offload their obligations in this way. For the auto workers alone (and who deserve their promised retirements) the bill could be as high 200 billion to the people. Floating the Big Three for a little while, giving them the chance to reorganize, to make consumers lust for electric and hybrid and hydrogen cars, is a much smarter move financially and spiritually. The people will get comparatively little by picking up the tab for the pensions.

We need to rewrite the corporate mandates so that consideration of political stability, of worker and environmental well being, fair labor practices, economic progress for more than 2% of the population are requirements of their citizenship. We need to make corporate citizens fulfill the duties of citizens -- which is a duty to each other, to the people. This is the opportunity.

We did not choose the revolution, but it is choosing us. This is how Kali works: refuse what is required of you, and she will break you until you learn. This terrible downturn, the fear and suffering of the people, the trembling we see in every sector of our economy, this is the call to courage and growth. Refusing it will prolong the suffering, damage, and pain to ourselves and everyone else. Accepting the necessity of the revolution will bring us closer to Shakti -- she rewards life-giving choices with more robust life. We are being called to a real Culture of Life -- a culture that takes the living of life as an end, not a means.

Composition 101: Some Suggestions from PMRSC

2008-11-18T20:18:00.005-06:00

Never fails: I get to the end of a semester, and I want to (presumptuously, arrogantly) Redesign First Year Composition From the Ground Up for All Programs in the US!

The difference I see now in my first year students is that they are naive relativists rather than naive dualists; they are naively savvy about marketing and various televisionary fakeries; they are instinctive multicultural consumers (if not really culturally fluent); they are far less other-phobic than they were even ten years ago.

But, they still hate Comp textbooks -- no matter how hip those textbooks try to be.

And I have figured out why.

They're insulting.

They are basically hippified versions of "current events" and "current debates" that place the students in a "context" of competing voices of varying degrees of expertise and rhetorical cleverness.

And they expect the student to develop a cogent (if inexpert) essay on a controversial subject from this fractured and fragmented reading. OF COURSE, they're going to be tempted to A) retreat to received wisdom, or B) disengage via the "everyone's got an opinion" fade.

Because they're insulted. They're asked by their teachers to become rhetorically aware (if not savvy) cogent arguers in a context of floating bits of opinion. That is an insult.

I have two ways that I want to teach First Year Composition (and the rhetoric, research and argumentation classes, for that matter).

First, for a composition class in which we are working on modes of organization and their skillful combination, and mature style and rhetorical savviness: Teach the Personal or Creative Non-Fiction Essay. Use Lopate's poetics of the essay to get a sense of the rules of the genre, read good essays, analyze them for modes, style, voice, audience. Then write. -- I've used this one, and I know that for this level of writer, it works like a CHARM.

Second: Teach Comp I and II like a graduate class or an upper division class -- but simplified. Present some Seriously Readable Theory, create a real frame both philosophically and historically. Ground them somewhere. Then read arguments, even about the frame. But start them someplace other than Received Knowledge (no matter how tolerant and hip that reception may be). Analyze positions in relation to the frame, and for style, voice, cogency, audience. Then write.

High school writing does precious little, STILL, but ask students to return the Received Knowledge in a well organized and grammatically interpretable manner. It does not ask them to look beyond themselves.

This method would let them look because they would have a frame. Frames assist looking, after all.

In short: get rid of composition textbooks -- or make smarter composition textbooks.

Of course, we can't do this because so much comp is taught by grad students and adjuncts who are in no position to choose books or make their own due to inexperience or shortness of notice before employment. So, you know, ignore me.

The White Gen X Male Turns 40, Money to Be Made in 4th Dimension, Nation Sad Enough to Grow Up

2008-11-15T14:45:00.004-06:00

The Onion may be one of the world's greatest sources of accurate social criticism.

(which that the $ is the 4 key is just bonus rich)

The Fourth Estate Warned to Grow A Spine

2008-11-15T13:13:00.002-06:00

Rabbi Lerner of Tikkun sent this over the list:

[Editorial note: We hope the people who did this spoof on the NY Times and Tom Friedman don't get sued or go to jail, because this is some of the funniest and at the same time smartest things that have come down the pike in a long time. Send it to your friends. Apparently someone (with a lot of money--that same amount probably would have kept Tikkun funded for another few years) printed a million copies of this bogus issue trying to appear to be the NY Times and had them distributed free throughout NYC....]

Here's the link. What I love is just how much I want to see most of those headlines. And Friedman's editorial is a scream!!!!

Smiles to you!

MS. Wants to Your Opinion on What to Do Next!

2008-11-15T08:10:00.002-06:00

Ms. Magazine Says:

We want to hear your voice! This is our chance, at last, to move forward again and make transformational change.

The first issue of Ms. magazine in 2009 - which will hit newsstands just as President-elect Barack Obama is sworn in - will feature the best of YOUR ideas for moving forward to make the change we need.

What needs to happen next? We want to hear from you. We will choose the best ideas for change and feature your name and plan in Ms. magazine. And we will forward your ideas en mass to President-Elect Obama's site Change.gov so he and his transition team will be sure to hear our feminist voices.

As Barack Obama said in his eloquent election night speech, "This victory alone is not the change we seek - it is only the chance for us to make that change." But as he went on to say, change cannot happen without all of us working together.

Here's what I said:

Create universal, opt-out, sex education instruction including sexual respect and healthy relationships and communication. Discuss rape, domestic violence, and psychological abuse with both girls and boys. Include instruction on homosexual love as co-equal to heterosexual love. Analyze messages counter healthy love and sex in the popular culture. Make it a detailed, holistic, two semester course taught freshman year of high school. We should not assume healthy love comes naturally. We have no evidence for that. Our children should not end up in the Self Help aisle at forty years old, wondering why they can't create joy, intimacy, and real pleasure in their love lives. Love and sexuality are sacred: we should take them that seriously.

Click that link at top to tell Ms. what you think.

Women Profs, Adjuncts, Coporiversity

2008-11-11T13:23:00.005-06:00

AAUP summarizes the structures of contingent faculty, including its feminization. This is not news. It is, however, still a matter of some urgency.

Brief response: private liberal arts college pays me $4000 to teach two classes in frosh-comp. Do some math: how many of those would I have to teach to keep a roof, food, and my own health insurance, own and insure a car, ...?

(And I kinda like this little job and this nice school with these fairly smart kids that lets me look for a job that would let me use my full range of scholarly and pedagogical talents -- which is the thing I want : to use all of it, that's all this life is for.)

Second brief response: the devaluation of women's labor in academe will ONLY change when women insist on the value of our labor, and the value of labor period.

Third brief response: you teach frosh-comp, involving reading comprehension, interrelational thinking, clarity of organization and coherence, basic grammar, discourse analysis, style and academic voice, critical thinking, rhetoric and argumentation, and research methods, on a nearly one-on-one basis, to students who have rarely if ever been exposed to that level and complexity of thought and work ---- and then you tell me that meeting that set of objectives is A) possible and B) spiritually fulfilling and C) NOT intellectually demanding.

Fourth brief response: "team players" and "family members" in business or academic departments are marks in a con. Free labor is good employers and bad for employees. If we are to live in a Corporiversity, let us not be Wal-Mart. The friendlier the rhetoric, the more dangerous the "request."

But, let us not live in a Corporiversity. This kind of institution is not that kind. The confusion is now, as it has been for the last 15 years, very very dangerous.

Fifth brief response: the worry in this summary that contingent faculty are structurally bad for undergraduate education is just plain and simple: those who are undervalued in monies, support, office space, access to benefits, and intellectual acumen in a profession of intellectuals cannot keep it up for long.

But, from the Admin's point of view, they don't have to. The husks they become are replacable with new graduates whose profs failed to hip them to the con, who are fresh and green and ready for harvest.

I don't adjunct for a living. I am adjuncting between livings. Imagine what will happen when I have an office and some security.

Imagine the benefit to those students.

No, wait, it's NOT about benefit to Students. Learning. Knowledge.

It's about efficiency and productivity. Both of which are qualities that do not pertain to Learning (inherently inefficient as involves error and correction, practice and experimentation) nor to Scholarship (ditto as involves creativity and rumination, critique and experimentation).

Careful, we are very near the university becoming as empty and fake as most financial institutions and securitized mortgage packaging with the students being the marks of the universities, taking out loans on an education the value of which will turn out to DEcline.

The appearance, rather than the actuality.

The REAL, people, does in fact affect reality.

In the Words of P-Funk

2008-11-05T01:04:00.003-06:00

"They still call it the White House, but that's just a temporary condition."

Congratulations, President Elect Obama.

My condolences, Senator McCain. I hope you learn only this: never, ever, sell your soul for power. I wish you some rest and a good life and a continued career in the work that matters to you.

Welcome to a new future, everyone! Welcome to settling down to WORK!

Thank you, voters, thank you for getting in here and participating. That's all it takes.

Blessings on us all.

IT'S HERE!!!

2008-10-24T15:45:00.002-05:00

So the new cloudbank rolled in with its sister Chill. Time to read Keat's Ode to Autumn again, bring in the outside plants, and layer up the fashion!

Also, I promise to get the trip to London and parts east and some other news up soon.

Just too much other-ness to do lately.

Fisherman's sweater made of an entire sheep's coat, ahoy!!!

Ambivalence and Eye Surgery

2008-10-21T09:05:00.003-05:00

The candidates and how they deal in ambivalence. -- Note, if you do not understand the psychological definition of abmivalence, look it up before reading this essay. -- Very interesting. Further comment after some chores, getting Hemingway off to eye surgery, and some other distractions at The Valve.

About the surgery, Hem's said this morning, "Someone is going to cut on my eye today. ... I've had that sucker for a long time." So, we're developing some humor about this. All will be well.

Good Things and an Irritation

2008-10-12T09:45:00.004-05:00

I'm learning more about my friends. In some cases, what I'm learning makes me sad or angry on their behalf; and in others, we're just discovering slowly that it's good to find like soul; and in others, we are finding deeper kinds of comfort.

If you read this, face Dallas and send a tired woman lots of love and strength.

It's amazing to me how trained we are to go to friends and lovers for consolation, for a source of easing life's confusions and terrors. On one hand, these people are sources of consolation, and on the other, they are the loving sources of confusion and terror that make us bigger and better. But, what's really interesting is that no matter how old I get, how much complicated life I live, I have this illusion that new people in my life will be sources of consolation, and never a challenge to my established habits. Of course, there is no evidence for this illusion, and that's a good thing.

Jobs. I am applying for jobs. More jobs than ever, ever, since ever in my areas of 20th Century Poetry, Poetics, and Feminist Philosophy. Ten so far, and six more I tracked down today.

I am very much in danger of getting my hopes up.

I have great little stories to write and illustrate with photos of the trip to London and the conference and lovely Co-Editor's town and self. Irritation: I can re-size the photos becuase Picasa doesn't have a good way to do that, and I can't get Picture Manager to talk to my photos. There are also pics to send my aunt, and I can't do anything with them either. Gah.

So, thanks cosmos. This is working.

All I Will Ever Need to Know

2008-10-12T09:37:00.002-05:00

Threatening a Presidential Candidate with Death

Troubling is not strong enough a word. Harrowing, there, that gets it. Harrowing it is that neither McCain nor Palin has taken so much as ten seconds this week to repudiate, refute, refuse to be associated with these outbursts. And, that, kids, is all I will ever need to know. Life must be protected, dears, unless that life might beat you in a race.

Can You Spot the Problems With This?

2008-10-09T17:35:00.001-05:00

Pentagon Sees Reconciliation with Taliban, Not Al Qaeda.

Athena

2008-10-05T09:48:00.003-05:00

Binden v. Palin at Wash U

2008-10-02T20:58:00.005-05:00

Biden committed many fewer sins of talking point repetition than Palin, or McCain for that matter. And his sentences scan.

Palin actually showed up with some chop. Stealthy. No, her sentences don't scan well, and that's worrisome. But, it turns out she's not a shiny afterthought and mere dishy campaign tactic.

Athena. Think Athena, because that's who this woman is.

When she didn't answer the questions, she took the opportunity to preach to the patriarchal choir, or try to scare us to death (... our grandchildren about back in the day when we were free -- where I take her point about making America as we live it, but come on.)

Break's over. There's serious politicking to do now. The Right just got the shot in the arm it was looking for.

Given the Sheer, Heart Freezing, Tendon Contracting Terror, Why Bother?

2008-10-02T13:15:00.004-05:00

57 seconds Props to Princess, and Trauma Queen for spotting this. And, I may have lied on the last question, there's really no way to know, no is there?

Recent Whifs of Nietzche and Athena

2008-09-20T14:47:00.004-05:00

Free markets are an exitential condition. The Gentry thought themselves Ubermenchen while the simulacrum of an economy puffed profits up their skirts. Trouble arrives, and feeling less Nietzchean, less prepared to take their full Ubermenchen-hood as their right, they paled, they called Daddy, and asked Him lift them out of the void. -- Like all lighter students of N, they bail when the void looks back and socialize the risk.

Athena has arisen. Did you notice? Here is Palin, born fully-formed, fully armed, smartly dressed, from a pain in McCain's head -- a lack of hope, as had Zeus with that migraine, in this case Democrats. Watch yourselves, Athena worshippers. This warrior goddess might also rule wisdom, but recall that when Posiden, her uncle, raped Medusa, her priestess, in her temple ... Athena made of lovely Medusa a Gorgon. Remember, not every powerful woman is a friend of women, and some thrive on defending Daddy's rule -- not being strong enough to confront Dad or Uncle, she will turn on her sisters.

Also, in sorrow, dear David Foster Wallace, there are days when I really get it. Rest you now, come back in better times when you won't need that coat of irony. And to your wife and family, my heart's strength in this mourning. We still here will love the world in your stead.

Shane's Comment was so right on the money, I'm moving up front!

We are forced to underwrite the arsonists to keep from burning, because self-regulation has self-destructed. The ideological clusterfuck rivals the national one. As, well, David Foster Wallace said:

In one of his last published writings (how terrible it feels to put it that way) David Foster Wallace referred to “the sound of our U.S. culture right now” as Total Noise: “a culture and volume of info and spin and rhetoric and context that I know I’m not alone in finding too much to even absorb, much less to try to make sense of or organize into any kind of triage of saliency or value. Such basic absorption, organization, and triage used to be what was required of an educated adult, a.k.a. an informed citizen – at least that’s what I got taught. Suffice it here to say that the requirements now seem different.... In sum, to really try to be informed and literate today is to feel stupid nearly all the time, and to need help. That’s about as clearly as I can put it.”

http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2008/09/17/mclemee

Picking on Palin, and Time to Go to London

2008-09-03T15:59:00.004-05:00

Right, got the new term off to its start. These are the shiny children, the one's raised in clean, well-lighted places. They are studious (mostly), pretty well trained in the mechanics of writing, and shockingly polite. So far, so good. But, next week I leave for the conference in London, then the editing stint to the north, and these kids are 18. We will see how they fare in my absence.

So, London. Anyone want a nic-nac? One that I don't have to get only at say a castle or art museum? These are not on my list this time (she said hopefully).

Now, ahem, but DEAR BADLY BEHAVED BLOGGERS AND MEDIA WHIZ-O-MATICS, on both sides, I call foul. This shit is just getting boring. Your assumptions and attitudes about gender are so completely out of date it's nearly laughable.

Women politicians are not to be evaluated on their clothing, their hair, their families, or their relative cuteness. My sweet gods. Hillary's not mommy enough because she won't bake cookies, and then she's shrill, and then she's a ballbuster, and then she couldn't control her husband so how would she run a country (psst ... countries are much easier to control than any one person, as we have all witness these last 8 dark years), and then.... Oh, help us, a girl might be in power!

Oh. No. Then. We. Won't. Be. Men. Anymore.

Please. Be men. I've been waiting.

And women. In many cases, I've been waiting for you too.

But, at least that was all just bluster and balderdash, a epiphenomenon covering the real deal: her politics, her scary health care plan that threatened your lobbyists and HMOs, THAT's what really bothered you. But, now that we all basically agree that without massive revision of our health insurance, and maybe of our health care system, we are fucked economically, as in bankrupt -- well, we have go after her voice, her style, her .... --- you chickens.

RE: Palin. Holy Mother, why have you all suddenly turned into TMZ? What? She's a cultural conservative. Ok. We should have a national talk about cultural conservatism, about the culture wars, about the various positions all sorts of people take on these issues. Many of tribe have studied these fights: their points of debate and digression and red herring. We can help you do this. Or, maybe discuss and question how her personal creed will play into her policy agenda, her advise to the Prez? Oh, that would be hard. Let's pick on the kid.

Get the tar and feathers because she and her family are all mortal humans. Flawed, confused sometimes, muddling through, struggling to live up their highest values and better angels. Is that all you've got?

Piety. Sanctimony. Salacious gossip. -- Obama has a point. THIS we have to get beyond.

Abuse of power in her own trooper-gate -- maybe. But, you know, threaten my family and all bets are off. That's a fairly American and bi-partisan value. Dad had a few and got stopped by the cops? And??? Not cool, not laudable, true that. What does this have to do with the bat-shit idea of drilling in ANWR, here and now? Her kid's knocked up. And? Your kids never sneaked off and did something you were completely unaware of, something with life altering consequences? She can't be VP and keep raising her family and her new born who has Downs syndrome? Really. Because there is no reliable, high quality child care available for such situations... And her husband, you know, might be around to help.... And just what does Palin think of redefining many forms of contraception as abortion and leaving their prescription and use up to the personal creed, or whim, of medical care providers rather than the patient's choice/need?

Because, dears, we don't all live in megalopoli where we can just go get us a new doc if we come to moral loggerheads with the available doc.

I don't want a cultural conservative making my policy, not anymore. Thanks. Done with making the world safe for God and assuaging the paranoia of the "persecuted".

Done with my rights and creed being over-ridden by those of people sworn to my well-being.

I want something serious. Real talking, actual attempts to understand before reaction. I know, I do dream.

Interestingly, my 18 year old students are non-plussed. They're all sitting here, waiting for the so-called grown-ups to get them some useful information on her record, on policy, on her political mores. They can't all be trusted to do their homework, but they can be trusted to want some intellectual and political meat from the rest of us.

They might be fooled by watching Lieberman lie through his teeth about Obama's bi-partisan cooperation, but not for long, and not about this.

These kids are leagues ahead of your fear, your desire for revenge, and your general pot-stirring. They know people vote for non-relevant reasons. They wish you would be more reticent to supply those reasons.

Readiness, a thought on language

2008-08-24T09:08:00.004-05:00

A letter from Doug Wichert to The Nation this issue makes a clear and important point of rhetoric: the incomplete phrase "Commander in Chief" is not only inaccurate, but plain false.

There is no "Commander in Chief." The correct phrase, from our Constitution, is that "the President shall be Commander in Chief of the United States Armed Forces." The omission of the latter part of the phrase transforms the head of the military into the tyrant of the nation. Anyone who supports such a transformation has injured the Republic and aided the oppression of the American people.

Right on. A point that connects to these questions of readiness to lead. The argument that any civilian is not ready to lead the Armed Forces strikes me as a last ditch argument, the one made when there is little else to argue. As President, a civilian is not making military decisions on the fly in the field and under fire. A President makes those decisions with consultation of the Joint Chiefs (who one hopes have that experience), in light of policy, and with the consent of Congress (in some cases).

Never we mind that McBush was in the military, but never led men in battle, never created or executed strategy in war. In his war experience, he was given orders, not giving them.

Indeed, Rumsfeld and Cheney both served under a president fighting a war with failing strategy. That's experience. And yet, returned to national political service to design and prosecute another failed war. Experience is no guarantee of wisdom or knowledge.

Or take now running-mate Biden's previous statement that the Presidency is not a job that "lends itself to on-the-job training." WTF?? What other kind of training in that position could there possibly be? Really. It's a quantum leap beyond any position in state and federal government and the military. The complications and nuances of the Presidency transcend them all. No one is really already ready.

Hence --- advisors, the Cabinet, the people of the Republic who can speak.

Do let's read through, behind, between, and beyond the lines. Do let's try to keep one toe on reality.

New Rule Protects Doctors from Their Job, The Pill Could Be Abortion

2008-08-21T17:11:00.009-05:00

Feministing's response, and a link to action at Planned Parenthood. And to screaming at that spineless bunch of patsies in Congress (who can't even protect the Constitution and balance of powers with a much needed impeachment.... so what do we really expect?)

I would like to know which doctors are being punished for not performing abortions. Where? When? I'm delighted that conscience will be protected. I also know that from time to time abortion is necessary to save a woman's life, and if my life were in the balance, I would want my ER doc to know how to do it and then to actually do it. Yes, doctors of conscience, any proceedure that would save my life is a matter of full medical competence. I am a human, whether you like it or not.

But back to this question of conscience. Now, when a woman chooses to terminate a pregnancy, she has also consulted her conscience. When a man joins the KKK he has also consulted his conscience. So, let's try this on for size, a little test by analogy.

(Note that I am fully aware that this 'protection' is limited to matters of medical termination of a pregnancy. However, that limitation is in no way acceptable, even on its face. At least if what is really at stake here is principle, which it isn't. But, Pandagon's read makes my analogy the stronger.)

So, I ask you to consider this scenario: A member of the KKK is seriously injured at a rally. Without proper medical care, his life will be forever altered physically, emotionally, and economically. His actual breathing life is, however, not threatened. The emergency staff in the ER tasked with his care are a mix African Americans , Caucasians, Native Americans, Latinos, and Asian and South Asian Americans, all of whom just happen, on that shift, to be morally opposed to the ideology, action and choices of the KKK. They refuse to treat the clansman on grounds of these moral objections as his condition is a direct result of his choices. KKK-boy is SOL.

WTF is OK w/ u re: this?

The difference here is that pregnancy can and often is the result of an accident, a mistake, a misjudgment, or (worse) a violation. It is often as unwilled as an injury. Joining the KKK is voluntary and intentional all the way down the line. The really big difference here, the key difference, is that becoming pregnant is never (on the woman's part) a vicious act. Neither, for that matter, is choosing to abort. There is no woman, rubbing her hands together, thinking, "Alright! I'm gonna abort this baby!" There are white supremacists, however, who do rub their hands in glee at the prospect of a rally or a chance do some harm to their supposed inferiors. That's part of being a racist fuckwit, all that totally ineffectual glee.

The Hippocratic oath does, in deed and in fact, trump personal morality. If not, medical care could be provided at the pleasure of the provider. Hippocrates realized this, waaaaaay back in the day, and said as much. He knew that without doctors sworn to this morality, one that trumps clan, city-state, ideology, even personal choice (because these people were hardcore): people would be let to suffer, be left maimed, and die -- because of the preferences of the physician.

Which, for the last 2400 years, give or take, has been considered totally unacceptable in civilized society. Which, for the last EVER, has been one of the hallmarks of civilization.

Don't want to perform an abortion, Doc? OK. That's totally hunky-dory. Work in a medical field in which you will not be asked to. Think thoracic, geriatric, genetic, do brain surgery. Whatever. What in hell is so hard about that? Seriously.

The real stakes here are not the fabulated cognitive dissonance between the Hipporactic oath and a woman's right to choose. The real stakes here are in the current, totally unpredictable, election. And congrats McBush Co, LLC: abortion just went back on the debate agenda. Which is what's at stake here is motivating that little bitty base that wants to rule unopposed in its comfy theocracy. The base that does not grant the rights of others to their Constitutionally protected creed. -- You're worried they won't turn out for your patsy. Aren't ya?

So, it's not the 1950s, or 1890s, or even the Middle Ages you find attractive, but a Greece pre-Socrates, a Greece pre-democracy. The Greece of the Iliad, the Odyssey. I mean, this works analogically with both your social and economic policy, and your domestic policy come to maunder that. It is also, I would just like to point out, and like the 600-odd commandments of the Torah from which you cherry pick your morality, a PRE-CHRISTIAN Greece to which you would take us.

Good luck surviving there, fellas, in that old world or its present incarnations.

You, no, you do not have the chop for that. This move right here proves that much.

And it gets better, people. HHS tries to draft rules that define contraception as abortion. Feminist Majority has the scoop there, and the petition.

On their way out, McBush Co., LLC are going to try very hard to get the rest of their misogynist agenda through. Stay awake.

Sympathy Cards

2008-08-21T12:03:00.005-05:00

People are dying. My neighbors' dad/grandpa, a close friend's brother and dad. All this week. For the close friend, no card. Why? Because I went to go by a card for the neighbors, and sympathy cards lack an essential quality...

sympathy.

I've lived near and known my neighbors for over 20 years. I babysat all three boys, who are now all 2 to 3 times larger than I am. I used to toss them onto the couch in a game well called Flying. One is now a pro rugby player, and I assure you, the size of a small truck. When he got be about my size (he was 10) he said I couldn't tell him what to do because I wasn't bigger than him anymore. My response: I grabbed him about the waist, turned him upside down, and bounced his head gently on the floor, righted him, and asked, "What was that?" We have not, thank goodness, had the payback moment. His mother cracked up at the time and said, "Huh, I hadn't thought of that." But, then she's 5' 10". This is an amazing family of care, good manners, helpfulness, smarts. They are the kind of people that you just know are good to the core and willing to act on it. You know this right when you meet them. I know Grandpa had a hand in that from stories they've told. Grandpa was the special elder to the youngest of the sons. We were just talking about that last week when the son came over to ride horses. He, by the way, is studying to be a large animal vet.

When my grandma, Betsy Helen, died, there was not a thing in the world you could tell me. I knew her death was a good thing for her, I knew that she welcomed it, I knew that I had a hole in my chest, I knew that I would have to walk through that hole. People let me be, or held me, or let me rattle on telling stories about her for a long time, or let me stare into space at odd moments. But, they did not shower me with half-baked schmaltz. Which was wise. Her wake and funeral reflected her and how she lives in all of us. We told stories, we cooked marvelous food, we laughed big belly laughs at some stories and at each other. We showered Grandpa with hugs and sat by him in silence. We cried, hard, at the eulogy. We spent that time loving each other real hard. It is one of my favorite memories, ever.

Deaths and families and funerals all have their own character, their quirks and necessities. Attending to those nuances is a big part of loving those in grief.

These cards, however, suck. What is it about death? I mean, really, it's not a shocking new development in the human experience, and these cards just skip right over any actual emotion or connection or reality to canned phrases and pablum seconded only my mother's day cards. They do not approach the situation honestly or sincerely. I hate them. What about the phrase, "May your hearts find their lightness again.... with sympathy" is in any way comforting or even really kind? "The stars may not be lights, but windows in the heavens through which our loved ones watch and love us." Oh. my. god. Thanks, I feel all hugged and supported. This emptiness, this cliche, can this actually feel even just OK when the emotions a grieving person stews in are Vast and Quite Deep and often Complicated even paradoxical? We're going to tell fairy tales in this situation? What are we? Even the official phrase, "I am sorry for your loss," is more genuine and real.

Is it that hard to find the words, the look, the gesture that will tell a grieving human, "I am right here with you"?? Is it? I don't think so. I've done it, I've seen it done, I've received it.

Someone died. This is normal. On the other hand, it's a terrible, normal, everyday thing that breaks our hearts utterly. Because there is no recourse, no alternative. That particular heart break is one we Must Learn and Make Part of Us in order be human together. These fucking cards do their level best to negate that, to refuse it, to guard against it. They are the antithesis of care or love. They are the words of strangers. We are not strangers in the presence of death. We are intimates, siblings, immediate family there.

So, if you become a grieving person, and I don't send you a Hallmark Card, please be assured I have something much more appropriate in the works. Cultures of Life deal with death head on and in full. Just keep that in mind.

Fuck Off Creepazoid!!/ How Can We Help You?

2008-08-07T21:58:00.004-05:00

Neighbor On Whose Property Sits the Giant Oak reports to Hemingway today that there's been some 'stalker' or 'creep' hanging around their property. Just hanging. Chain smoking. And broke into their camper and took some stuff. Neighbors have two teen girls. Called the city police out. Piles of butts, some footprints, but no clear clue and no trail to follow (easy, he walked in on the road and the driveway, duh). They have a security system that got a pic of him, but not his face.

What does Creepazoid want? One of the girls? One of the fantastic dogs? A car? Stuff to pawn for drug money? Food? Psychiatric care? Medicine? I don't know.

What I do know is that the New House Rule is Lock the Doors and Cars. Which, this close to nowhere, we have Never Done Before unless collectively out of town.

Fuck off Creepazoid!! Or walk up in the day time and ask for some help. You'll get it. We're good folks around this pond. But, stop creeping us out, dude. OK?

More Found Days in San Francisco

2008-08-06T11:17:00.008-05:00

Right. Enough looking for my check book.

So, up the nice flat street and bit of hill to City Lights. Book addicts and 20th Century Poetry majors understand why this is important. Beats, atmosphere, place of history, memorial to Kerouac and Cassidy and Ginsberg and ......... Lawrence Ferlinghetti established and owns the joint. It is one of many Lit Meccas dotting the orb we toddle on. The place is wedge between China Town (around which the Beats wonder in more than one tale) and some classic titty bars. Here I arrive with my List of Books to find that I can only find one of them -- mostly as I am not hot for much contemporary fiction at the moment, nor for a copy of everything any Beat ever wrote. Proto-Beats like Miller, yes (accidentally), and anthol. for Lioness (no dice), and Language for a New Century -- finally! Whilst musing over others' muses, a Savior installs himself with, oh yes, sandwich board and bullhorn, to harangue the titty bar clientèle, "We do not want you to burn in a lake of fire for eternity. Do not enter that den of vice and sin! Consider your soul!" Etc. Like anyone bent on watching strippers can even hear him. Poor Savior. We inside the temple are amused and a little sad for Savior. Meanwhile, I'm flipping through Miller to find this: We'd have to take the whole world into consideration and see that every man, woman and child got a square deal. We'd have to have something positive to offer the world--not just defending ourselves...and pretending that we are defending civilization. If really set out to do something for the world, unselfishly, I believe we would succeed. So here Miller and I and the Savior coalesce, and my inkling that interning with Smart Mag of Soul is a good idea, AND that there are a gazillion yummy quotations in here that go in my Murdoch-Irigarary essay, just to keep people on their toes.

Behind the temple is The Alley with its art and plaques and pigeons which someone kindly left with a whole baguette to peck. And I'm for heading home. The bus I'm to take is not running here, I discover, at this time, and hiking is all that's left. It is UPHILL every way I test, and not just a little. I'm a gal raised on the prairie, so any incline of a grade more than 15* is mountain climbing. These are grades of 30 and 45 and 50*. But there are views to be had on the way up. Way in the back of this one is the bridge, not that you can tell, tho my phone camera takes pretty kickin pics.
It's a good walk. That was the night of staying in and Pizza Orgasmica, which was pretty good, but not as inuendoed.
So, we back up now to Thursday and Friday.

Arrive Thursday. Lioness is in fine fettle and hankering to eat at a place called The Street, likely cuz it's on Polk, the street where SF keeps much of its swank and fun. Now here is food. Apperatives of vodka infused in-house with fig (scrumptious) and cucumber (must drink this every summer), and then a steak salad for me which has become in a Lioness-phrase The Platonic Steak Salad of meat the thickness of a chapbook, seared and rare, with Gorgonzola and box cherry tomatoes on romaine. Lioness had the shrimp risotto, divine. Then a cheesecake of Meyer's Lemons with raspberry drizzle and a glass of real, honest to Joan of Arc calvados for a digestif! The joint itself is hip full of hip SF folk in their zen-like grooviness and music contemporary-electronic-jazz-Ocean's 11-soundtrack-y pleased us all night. Lioness fills me in on the smart and world-saving work at the sexuality seminar that will help her rescue teenagers from dumbassed views and addresses to their sexual being. She rocks. But, those are her stories to tell. Thence away from delightful eatery and off to unpack and sleep. After that meal, one sleeps convinced: Let us stop playing the role of recidivist. Let us stop murdering each other. The earth is not a lair, neither is it a prison. The earth is Paradise, the only one we will ever know. We will realize it the moment we open our eyes.... We have only make ourselves fit to inhabit it.

Friday. Lioness does a half-day at the seminar, and we hook up downtown for lunch and the SFMOMA to see Frida Kahlo exhibit. Which, if that's anywhere near you on its tour, GO. This was my astonishing find, Moses. Whew. Now, a bit of fun here is that we wind up the stairs with the gaggles of other art enthusiasts to the top floor for the exhibit. Across the atrium, a small window, into which is peeking Oh joy and happiness! Tickled to dissolution. So, gazing and exploring there is also the grand red abstraction: Philipe Guston's 1955, For M. And thence to the street again to home, to rest and find our way to the evening meeting with Princess. This sadly, went wry and lead to the bus stop with the Broken Screaming Man, to whom I wish all the peace ever.

And Sunday before the awesome cab ride to travel doom, there was tapas and this drink. This drink was also a vodka drink. Again infused. Grey Goose Pear Vodka with slice of pear and sprig of rosemary, very bruised. I argued it tasted like the sky. Lioness argued it tasted like winter twilight. Fair enough. This inspired a Christmas Cocktail Party plan, which in turn inspired my idea that we bruise the sprigs and slices by concocting the libation in a hamster ball with ice cubes and play catch with it amongst the guests. Lioness on this plan, "I love the way your inner fascist is balanced by your inner anarchist." Because she is hilarious, and right. Moment's before, we were eating a small pile of roasted and garlicked eggplant, under a sliced of quickly sautéed tomato, under a heap of goat cheese, to which I announced, "This will be breakfast every day after the revolution." So, she's right.

Thanks for inviting me out, dear sister. Now, gotta find that check book and write something about Murdoch while the universe will not let me work on anything else because she's telling me to work on Murdoch, now, silly, while you can. Do not be distracted by the shiny new projects just yet!

Another Kind of Image

2008-08-06T08:40:00.003-05:00

I have a mild neurosis: alway worry that I'll be late to the plane for a trip. Spend more time in terminals than is really necessary because of this.

Am flying to London in September. Have flown to Europe a number of times before without incident. Closest ever to not getting home or catching a flight/connection was the fiasco in LAX last month.

I keep having this dream that I miss my connection/flight home from London and am royally screwed. Why my dream-self considers getting stuck in Europe royally screwed, I have no idea. It's happened several ways.

Dream 1: I go to the wrong airport. That anyone would allow me to drive in London.......
Dream 2: the security (or customs?) line winds through the basement, up a drippy rusting stairwell, and then the Official I encounter tells me I'm violating some law and have to step out of line and wait. It's very Kafka. While waiting, I end up in a multi-story parking lot looking for my car, which cannot be there, and miss my flight. As if I have the world's most severe case of ADD e-v-e-r.
Dream 3: I am without my passport. Left it in the hotel? I dash to the gate, which is this super-fly jazz lounge, and try to explain that my name is on the manifest, I have made it here, but my passport has evaporated. No sale. I watch my plane pull away. I run to the bathroom, there's my passport. Dash back, screaming at the bartender/flight attendant, who calls the plane back for me while amused loungers wonder whether I've ever travelled before.
Dream 4: I leave my purse on the plane from UK and can't get on the plane to STL as have no ID, or money. Am told to deal with it. Think that I could stay in a hotel, realize have no money. Plead case again. Nearly punch impressively unconcerned airline employee. I suggest there might be a lost and found, there is, I go, there's my purse, with my passport (which I don't need in the States), but no wallet, no notebook, no stuffed blue monkey (a totem). Am screwed.

They're getting unevenly worse. And less logical. See, if I have my passport, I have ID and can get on the plane, but instead decide that I can't because I don't have my driver's liscence. Sheez, self, get a grip!

Sooooo, that's since about June. I'm averaging two a month. Please, concentrate for a few moments between now and mid-September on two things: the calming of my dream-self, and the actual well-greased ease of this trip! Because that's a lot of unconscious worry over a pretty familiar activity.

Hey, Look, Images!

2008-07-30T23:18:00.001-05:00

Pics I've been meaning to share, and with captions.

Developments and Musing, Foreign Policy, Candidates and News from Me

2008-07-30T20:13:00.005-05:00

We do not need to win in Afghanistan or Iraq for us, we need to win for THEM. Iraq we may not get, and never should have gotten into, but Afghanistan? That was action into which we were Invited by Afghanistan... which is another matter. It's also the battle with the right people in the right place, and could result, if we don't blow it, FOR Afghans who actually want democracy, peace, human rights, women walking about unsupervised, and an economy based on something less pernicious than opium. Remember, it was WE who left them in the lurch 20-odd years back and left room for the Taliban and bin Laden to get there totalitarian and terrorist hooks into them in the first bloody place.

Hence, Obama is correct. The Iraqi government Wants Us Out Soon. The Afghan government Want Us To Stay and Win. Are we to play Bush and not listen?

Ok, sigh, in other news:

When Tonka (my pitbull) chews on this one rubber chew-toy, which she freaking adores, the sound liquefies my spine. But, she's happy. Also, Foxy and Tonka got into it the other day, and Foxy realized half-way into the fight that Tonka is a pitbull. Tonka is basically laid back, happy, playful. She is a dog of peace. However, when pushed far enough she also has jaws that lock. Foxy now has some stitches and will hopefully stop trying to boss Tonka about.

I am employed at a small liberal arts college in Illinois. It's the size of my thumb, and old-old, with creaky floors and huge trees and the whole bit. They like me, I like them. The classes have only 18 students, it's Comp I but OK then, and it's part-time, but OK then, it's two classes and one prep. The commute is through the lovely farm country, so my worries there are Major Snow Events and tractors. The small money makes up for copyright fees and conference expenses recently discharged, which is enough. The dept. chair was not wearing shoes when I entered the office. Turns out that said chair has always thought with shoes off and plans to keep on doing so. Alright then.

I will likely intern with Tikkun Mag starting in Jan, with their editorial staff. I have homework and a writing assignment which amount to: Do some serious discourse analysis and learn our history, and then prove you can write for spiritual intellectual and activists instead of just in Academese. No freaking problem! Could lead to editing, writing, a job Elsewhere doing Something Even Cooler Than Teaching. We shall adventure and see.

And, I still have to finish my essay for the Murdoch anthology. Someone please order me to stop procrastinating on that. Because at this point, that procrastination will no longer serve!

More on Frisco in the days to come. I won't leave my pals hanging for too long.

Found Days in San Francisco

2008-07-26T12:52:00.011-05:00

Sing your song and dance your dance--time is short. Let's us return to hiking the city. It's Saturday, and Lioness has had enough of the big ville and people who keep randomly talking to her--which they do, just up and talk to her. Like it's her job to be Metaphysically Available or something. It's a drag. Anyway, she's for staying in, and I'm for going out. Sometimes singing your song is done very low and close to the skin and indoors, sometimes not. First there's breakfast and then sandwiches from the micro-Whole Foods call Le Beau , the Nob Hill market, with these two (-->) as company. The cats who own the flat Lioness sublet for the month are my kind of people.

Goals, seek Princess at the Westin, get to City Lights, walk around China Town. I have a list of books to buy that I want to be from SF. We look to plan the route by bus. It makes sense. But, by the time I'm outside, I'm walking, testing my sense of the town's shape and off I go. Downhill for a very long time. This is to the good, but not of my right knee which is missing a ligament and gets cranky about steep and downhill. Whatever. Everything is gorgeous, new, a gift. I'm thinking about the long tradition of DIY here, and how SF just keeps its cool and lovely in spite of most pressures to turn into Dallas (which every city is pressed to do, and most, smartly refuse). I'm thinking about the future, about how much Work there is to do just keep the planet habitable. That these trees and critters evolved to live in a world at a certain mean temperature and with certain average weather patterns. The change we are unleashing will be too quick for them to adapt to, and they will die/migrate. And then there's people to look after, alway. As Henry said it looking back over the history of sapiens sapiens: In no instance did the genius of a people wait until the political and economic life had been arranged in Utopian fashion. No, they just got on with it. I'm thinking, walking down hill, that I really have to stop freaking out that the big picture is so big and just get on with it.

Princess and Boy Detective. Wow. I can't tell you how glad I am that other women have such strong mothering instincts. I have some, but they don't seem rule me. Princess is delirious and raw with lack of sleep (months of it) and yet herself, with her warmth and wry wit. We talk babies, and BlogHer, and my writing and future. She's of the opinion that one of my superpowers is Encouragement. Hmmm. This is a natural part of teaching, I say. She says, Sure, but there's lots of community based ways you can use that gift, with the disadvantaged and the advantaged both. There's no promise that those born lucky also know what to do with themselves. Meanwhile, BT is sampling the dirt and pigeon feathers of Union Square, toddling in circles around his mother. So, this is a thought I'm mulling since. Where to use an ability to see how people light up and their voices drop half an octave when they're thinking about things that make them alive. Helping them figure out how to do that in the world and keep a roof/fill the belly. Human beings cannot be turned out like machines, we do not take the form proscribed from above or outside. We must take our own forms, and teaching is not the only method of helping humans stay human. Hmmm.

Also, as I walk, I find myself surrounded by French people, as if the consulate kicked everyone out for a day on the town. I try to eavesdrop a bit on their conversation, but they're all saying the same things I'm thinking: where's the bus to _____?, surely there's a cafe on this street?, so forth. The cheap dollar means the Europans gets to fly all the way West. Good on them. They need to see that other American style of being. SF is one of those places where America is not prematurely old, as a fruit which rotted before it had a chance to ripen. So, I'm glad they're tasting it. The Mothership, I kept saying. The groovy bits of every town I've been to in the US are like out-bases, satellites, probe missions from the spirit of SF. The word uptight simply does not apply here. There's an ease of mingling amongst classes and castes, styles and types, and does one ever have to work hard to be weird here! Your groove, on the stipulation that it not harm, is all good.

I can't find my bus. The stop we located in the morning is on Stockton, which is one way the wrong way. I'm flummoxed before realizing that I just sauntered out of a 5* hotel which has a concierge who knows everything. I approach said Mage, who apologizes for my wait. There's a line, and a Spanish family who want a car for the night and reservations pronto at some eatery, all which is being arranged by, "Hi Sara, it's Mike at the Westin, I need a reservation for eight in an hour..." Suave as can be, and the car for the night $108 an HOUR! OK then. Me, I just need to know where the bus to Broadway is, for which I am provided a map with lines drawn on it directing me personally to my destination and more apologies, to which I just say, Thanks, brother, I'm in no rush. Walk through Union Square to Kearney, that's where the 9x goes uphill. Look up the street. Flat as the prairie but the last two blocks, so a nice stroll in and then upland. And Arrival!

All along the way, I'm in the shadow of the TransAmerica Pyramid. It does raise the question, Why pyramid? A tomb, for crying out loud, and the irony there. Here I am, says this phallus, this pinnacle, this proclamation, a taller, skinnier, monument to ... death. Triumphant as the natural force itself. What we dream we become. We'll get the knack of it soon. We'll learn how to annihilate the whole planet in the wink of an eye--just wait and see. And just three years after H wrote that, we did. We made of the sun a death. But, here in SF, this tomb rises bright and certain and glorified. Up at Broadway, it shoulders up this Victorian beauty which seems to have survived the fire or been built four seconds after it. It's this kind of juxtaposition that gets those CA Language poets running. This is a building that says, Come in, sit with your coffee, live in me. I am wrapped in copper and have missed you always. This is a living thing. It is also, some will know, the home of Cafe Zoetrope, which, yum and pretty. But, I'm not around the corner yet, the corner where the financial district ends and the strip clubs emerge and the bookstore nestles. Alas, that waits the next installment. I leave you then with these images and this meditation: Tell me what it is that man can build, to protect himself, which other men cannot destroy? What are we trying to defend? Only what is old, useless, dead, indefensible. Every defense is a provocation to assault. Why not surrender? Why not give--give all? It's so damned practical, so thoroughly effective and disarming. Here we are, we the people of the United States: the greatest people on earth, so we thing. We have everything--everything it takes to make people happy. We have land, water, sky and all that goes with it. We could become a great shining example of the world; we could radiate peace, joy, power, benevolence. But there are ghosts all about, ghosts whom we can't seem to lay hands on. We are not happy, not contented, not radiant, not fearless. But, we still could be. See, it's right there in that picture.

Lost Days in San Francisco

2008-07-20T16:28:00.011-05:00

Sunday in San Francisco, meant to get up On Time and hustle over to the, not kidding, African Orthodox Church of St. John Coltrane, but was up late processing life and soul with Lioness, hence went to bed functioning on one tenth of brain, and forgot to set alarm. No Jazz Mass for me. But, a link for all of us that we may gaze and desire in classic "can't have that" mode. Next time. Next time with lovely M who is kinetic enough that I'll be kinetic enough to get my booty to church on time.

Also, it's cold and windy out. Yesterday, I hiked the city, and hiked home to the top of Nob Hill from China Town and City Lights, and it was cold and windy then too, so I'm not feeling it today. I simply am not feeling brave and jumpy enough for The Haight and Church and possible other wonders.

So, stay in, waste it, and read H. Miller's The Air Conditioned Nightmare purchased at City Lights yesterday. Because he was human, and even here on the Mother Ship, there's way too much that's not-human. The doppelganger mad homeless I've seen in the last two days are haunting me. One, late at night, Lioness and I having visited the Princess in town for BlogHer, and eaten at some random forgettable cafe, wait for the bus. A man is doubling over and screaming, "ahhhhalalallalalalalala!" about every four to seven seconds. He is not performing. He is mad, lost, shattered, and trying to walk down the street, but has to stop, bend, and yell every few seconds. Truly a lost soul. There is no way to help him, no one can even tell if its possible to communicate to with him. Everything that is inhuman in us infected this man and sent his self away. Next day, in Union Square Park, am waiting for another bus after visit with the Princess and new son, The Boy Detective. Another homeless man lies on the grass as if napping, head cradled in arm, face down, convulsing. I observe because he might need more aggressive help than a city shelter and hot meal. He is laughing, at nothing, and no one, alone in his laugh, and seems just as trapped in it as Yelling Man was in his yell. This is the nightmare paralleling the pretty pretty city and it's lovely lovely groove and jazzy church. Not at all ironically, these men bookended visits to The Westin St. Francis. Anyway, it was air conditioned, heavily carpeted, elegantly jammed, discreetly lit, pompously efficient in every detail. S-w-a-n-k. Lioness stayed in this day too and read for her seminars. That work, this crewe of people she's meeting, and the knowledge sister is nailing down, this will help the world suck less. I'm so wildly proud of her. While stimulating, it has not been easy for her. Brave woman.

Art is not born of a dead people.

Have now returned home. Let's us begin with the return home. I can get back to hiking the city later. Air travel these days.What. As Miller puts it, writing of America as WWII gets into high gear: we sit in the sky and talk of cardboard boxes and button fasteners, while they sit in the sky and talk of extermination. Now the reverse, but still. I was waiting to sit in the sky. On the way to SFO Monday bright, I met Dean, the taxi driver. I like taxis because I never know whether the driver will be chatty and affable or not (unless in the South or Ireland where, always). Dean was chatty. He warmed me up with weather (excellent for walking, easy on the tourists), and the architecture (color, history) and BAM, we were off on Dean (the painter's) theory of urban renewal and historical restoration, which boils, correctly, down to this: How can you have a vision for your future if you cannot see your past? A rhetorical point applicable far far beyond the city. Also, Dean is not originally from America, he's from someplace where the routine is to keep the history. And then on walking: humans are designed for it, suburbs make us fat and dead. He was vibrant, wide open, and completely one of Henry Miller's men. Alive. I arrived at SFO awake and happy and ready to go.

In the city one can stroll at random and feel like a civilized human being. But not the airport. Flight out of SFO was delayed beyond my scheduled arrival time at LAX. Clearly the Travel Gods were not with me this day. Something else held their attention. This happens. Roll with it is my take. Time to give in and shop. Couple lefty mags to read (RS's cover of Obama, just he man, no words, go you RS!!) , a souvenir coffee cup for a friend who collects souvenirs from other people's trips.She's awesome. Some lunch. A snack. Some walking around noticing the distinct and unsettling lack of clocks in SFO. At last on the plane. Up, pleasantly, and notice that none other than Forrest Whitaker is sitting three rows up. -- !!!!! -- I don't know what snafu led him sit in coach on my flight, and I waited to detect the incomplete gesture, the smile not right, the tell that this was an impersonator, but no, it was him. We locked I eyes, I smiled thanks for the good work, and so there he was. All cheerful and easy. That fast way of turning his head, the slightly lazy eye, him. The French father behind me asked for a pic with his son, and got it, happily. So, you know, brush with fame. Then saw a forest fire out the window. Billows of brown smoke rising wide and high as a mountain before flattening in the lower winds. Angry thing it was. A future. Then, LAX.

They buy anything and everything, just keep the money in circulation.

Every bad thing anyone ever said about LAX is true and then some. Sadly. I'm a bright-side sort, really, don't expect angels to pee in my beer. I'm pretty sure they already did. Defeat awaits the optimist, however. It arrives at not-quite ridiculous 11.55pm. Six minutes late, and it's tomorrow. I call the 'rents with the skinny. They suggest bargaining for an earlier flight. I try. There are none that do not route me through A. Chicago, or B. Atlanta and get me in at 1 am or 9can't wait for the pessimist. The pessimist is already there. Chat up the AA rep about the next flight to STL, of which there had better be one, and there is. at 6.20. OK, that's only a few more hours delay and puts me into STLish tomorrow morning!!!! NFW am I doing that. Call the 'rents with my refusal. Agreed. Check the flight status board. My flight is now delayed until, gulp, center self, 8.40 pm. I will not arrive in STL until 3 am, which means that I will not see my house until 4 am. Which I don't, and decide to just ride it out Tuesday and not sleep (which I didn't, until 7 pm when I fell like a stone). But, I'm in LA right now, stuck there long enough that I bought a Tshirt to commemorate the experience. These are my feet and and another book which I started reading because deconstructing the notion of hospitality in philosophy was, srsly, comforting in the badland that is LAX where was so little to be found. Because, you see, there was this huge storm over the Rockies and then the Midwest around which all the flights were diverting, both ways. In the total travel time from apartment on Nob to home at Walden, I could have hied myself to, oh, Bangkok, or Istanbul. Really.

Up side of this: not the bowl of "chili" I had at the Chili's (you sad bastards) in the terminal, nor the million hours til my next cigarette. Only this: I got to fly around a thunderstorm of epic intensity for the second time in my life!!!!!! I flip out over this. This rocks. This is why there is 20th Century technology. Seeing that energy, that explosion from the point of view of angels--oh. hell. yes! I want this for a present someday: four hours circling a thunderstorm in a plane. Anyone? Coming? There will be music? C'mon. I'm going to save up for it. OK, and my iPod battery made the whole trip, and the flight attendant decided I was cute and doubled my drinks. I was not so cute at that hour, but I had inquired of the crew to make sure they felt OK and were still alert. Same attendant showed me the cover of the current US NEWS&WR, the snake eating tail, and said, "This is what the crew feels like. It's been an ass of a day." So, I was humane to this guy because he was human to me and voila, free libations for me. Easy. I mean that late at night, trapped in a tube hurtling through the sky, exhausted, sleepless, no longer able to focus well enough to read, I will not turn down booze offered to moi for being moi. Oh no. I can't sleep on planes, so I read, play cards, or drink a little. What.

THE WORLD AWAKE! Just to repeat that to yourself five times a day is enough to make an anarchist of you. How would you awaken the world? Have you ever thought about it? Or would you rather remain asleep?

On that flight, it was a toss up (but for my nosleeponplanes thing). I would fly people around thunderstorms. I would do that and say, We will have to stop this on Wednesday so that we might survive.

And that, that was the down time. I leave you with this bit from Henry, indicting myself on two counts along with all of us: The wealthy can always be induced to support another museum; the academics can always be counted upon to provide us with watch-dogs and hyenas; the critics can always be bought who will kill what is fresh and vital; the educators can always be rallied who will misinform the young as to the meaning of art; the vandals can always be instigated to destroy what is powerful and disturbing. The poor can think of nothing but food and rent problems; the rich can amuse themselves by collecting safe investments furnished to them by the ghouls who traffic in the sweat and blood of artists; the middle classes can pay admission to gape and criticize, vain about their half-baked knowledge of art and too timid to champion the men whom in their hearts they fear, know that the real enemy is not the man above, whom they must toady to, but the rebel who exposes in word or paint the rottenness of the edifice which they, the spineless middle class, are obliged to support.... Such is the state of America to-day. How long will it endure? Perhaps the war is a blessing in disguise. Perhaps, after the war we have gone through another blood bath, well will give heed to the men who seek to arrange life on in other terms than greed, rivalry, hatred, death and destruction.

That was four for five wars ago. All I have to add to this, to the coal-hot rant of that generation is this:

How dead are you willing to get?

Dear Obamas New Yorker Cover,

2008-07-14T08:19:00.003-05:00

The trouble with satire is that most people don't get it. As you know. Still, I'll expect fair play and an equally ambiguous cover of McCain lampooning the Left's misconceptions about him. Let's see if your smart-smart audience (which includes me) can get it when it's their turn to be indirectly lampooned. Let's see if they get that the cover is about them and not about McCain. Why?

Simple. It's not that your cover is tasteless in its tapping into about a million asshat stereotypes about no less than three political minorities in the US. It's not that. It's that in addition to that tapping in, you are both affirming the bigotry and mythology of people who A. know better but manipulate their audience's who don't know better, and B. who don't know better. See, people who believe that Michelle is a militant feminist para-Black Panther and that Obama is a secret Muslim possibly sympathetic to the terrorist cause are not smart enough to read your cover and get that they're being lampooned. Or, maybe they're smart enough but not informed enough. The few who are will be furious and simply deploy the old saw about "East Coast elitism" and all those other old rusty saws that still manage to cut a bit of wood.

So, you failed. Becuase you are playing to your audience, and in your use of satire (indirect satire at that so even more complex) at the expense of gullible Americans, you are only assuring them that your readers Really Do Think They Are Stupid and that You Are Better Than They Are. Hence, feeding the culture war red herring that 'average Americans' Should Feel disdained by cultural/academic elites//The Left and should vote against anything and anyone they support out of that resentment -- even if the policy those Snooty People put forward would benefit average Americans tremendously.

Becuase you know, the Right respects average Americans even as it rakes them over the economic, educational, health policy, housing and red hot coals.

Look, I don't approve of the Right's button-pushing manipulation in the place of real political thinking or debate either, but address that. Put the Scarry Mythical Obama's in a thought bubble over Rush's head. Duh. Can't you hear it now, all over the right-wing media outlets, "Even the New Yorker thinks the Obamas....." Holy creeping prejudice!

So, you really failed. Tanked. Bombed. No one's laughing. I hope you had some fun snickering. It was a politically expensive snicker. Now, go snicker at the Left too. If you have real artists working for you, they can pull it off.

Where the hell is Mark Twain when we need him?

Symposium on PRSC's Future

2008-07-13T10:01:00.002-05:00

Dear Beloveds,

As I (and thousands of other aspiring academics) wait for the fall job lists, it occurs to me that the Ivory Tower may not be the place for me. It is beginning to feel like time to change directions. I know, it takes me a while to stop. And I need your help.

You see, I'll be 40 in November. Signs that this is actually true are these: a mamogram ordered de rigeur by my doctor, a prescription for a statin drug (proving both age and Celtic genetics). Other than that, I'm just me doing my thing.

So, if I quit trying to join a club that is much less cool now than it was when I first wanted to join it*, what do I do? What's my new job? Because, as eco-friendly as it is to live in a passive solar house with my parents and reduce my overall carbon footprint by living in a small town, I really, really cannot live here all that much longer. It's starting, as sweet as this deal is, to mess with my sense of independence and autonomy. It's objective purposes are partly served.

Here's my request: a Symposium on PRSC's Future. I am asking you to give me the biggest birthday present ever: help me get my next move in life moving.

Here's how: help me envision how my smarts and skills and interests work outside of the little academic world. Suggest fields, industries, political organizations, non-profits or, and this is probably the best, write the resume you think I could offer the world. If I need more education or training, fine, I get it, suggest it. I am not opposed to working in the corporate world, as long that corporation treats me like a human and isn't "part of the problem."

I'm asking you because you know me, and not being me, you see me from another perspective. I need that perspective and suggestions that come from that wisdom. Partly because there's too much other stuff I kind of want to do, and I simply can't get a focus going.

Here's stuff I'm doing now:

I'm thinking that an intership with the Network for Spiritual Progressives might be both happy and lead somewhere good. It would allow me to use lots of my skills and integrate lots of my interests (writing, literature, editing, politics, spirituality, social justice and feminist issues, getting out of the morass into a differently messy future, so forth).

Margaret and I are starting a writing services biz: web, editing, content development. It's nacent, but we're very interested in making it go. This too could lead to work in areas that I care for and use of some of my skills and maybe even some independence. Either way, it's a freelance gig that I can always work on and maintain, and helping Margaret get of the corporate hell is important.

Finishing the last rounds of the poetics book (soon). Finishing the editorship of Murdoch anthology (by next June). Sending poems to mags/contests, getting a chapbook together. Looking for a part-time job in town to enable all this. Going to London for a conference on Murdoch and editing session with Alison. Going to NY in Nov for double scorpio birthday and networking artsy friend with artsy cousins in The City because Heather knows the arts world is where she needs to be. Cold calling small liberal arts colleges with a letter and vita in hopes of inspiring/seducing them into giving me a home.

Wondering what in the world to do next. Which is where you come in. Here's how: go to my little personal blog (link takes you to this post) and leave a comment with your ideas, responses, general imaginative musing.

Get back to me when you can. I know all of you have lots of balls in the air.

With much thanks and love,
Post-Modernity's Red-Headed Step-Child
_______________________
* On this cool-deficit see How the University Works. This explains my current campaign to cold-call small liberal arts colleges and see if I can seduce one of them into just hiring me because I'm that moxy-fied and motivated and generally rock at what I do.

Flood of '08, and Katrina, again, dammit

2008-07-07T17:53:00.003-05:00

So, I get this email from my cousin who is otherwise totally awesome and not a jackass:

Is it just me? ...... As you watch the flooding in the Midwest , have you noticed that there are no farmers running around with stolen plasma TVs or holding stolen liquor over their heads. There's no looting or yelling "Where's Bush?", "Where's FEMA?, Where's my check?", or "Why isn't the Gov't out here saving me and my farm?"Likewise, I've also noticed there are no reports of any other country coming to help or sending aid. Is that interesting, or WHAT???!!!!

To which I responded with this (being one to, you know, hold my tongue):

Dear {Cousin},

So, Mom showed me this email, and asked, "Yeh, isn't that interesting?" I'm taken aback by the implication you make here, {Cousin}. That she accepted. She got her earful, and I think it worth sharing. You imply that those nice white people in the Midwest behave well, and those not-so-nice black people NO behave badly. Because I hope I'm reading you incorrectly. You don't strike me as the type to accept mythology, whether created by the news or not; nor as the type to just let the mythology slot into place and stay there. The impression you seem to have is easy to get, and it's partly right, and it's partly wrong. And it just happens to have struck a nerve with me. And, like others in our clan, I just have a really hard time not saying what I have to say. So, if I read you wrongly, please forgive me.

Mostly due to differences in the situation of the two floods, and the reporting on them, you get to notice this difference in behavior. I've kept up with New Orleans because I have connections to that amazing, gritty, graceful, dangerous, joyful town. Friends live or lived there, and I've spent time in many of its wards and quarters. I know that place pretty well for someone who doesn't live there. I still hope to live there for some part of my life. There is no place like it.

The floods in the Midwest affected people spread over a large area. This is farmland, not a dense urban situation like New Orleans. And the city/country context matters in the case of human behavior under duress. The people of the Midwest, most of them, had time to gather some belongings and evacuate. Floods in the Midwest, while devastating to communities and lives, move slowly, take weeks to unfold. You can get ready, sort of, for a Midwest flood. You can prepare to help you neighbors. You don't need soldiers from Mexico backing up your National Guard because the flood didn't happen in a matter of hours. The flood in New Orleans happened in a matter of hours. The morning after the hurricane, I saw a friend's house on the news, when they were still showing pictures how well things were going, that the levee which holds back a lake 10 miles wide (the Pochatrain), was still holding. He lived just outside the French Quarter on Burgundy Street. By that evening, his house was in five feet of water. There was precious little time to do anything but try to save your own butt and that of your family. This is NO, neighborly behavior is the rule, tradition, rich or poor, all over the city of looking after each other. The fact that that broke down tells you how scared and panicked people were.

Most of the people who did not evacuate NO before Katrina simply could not do so. Had no car, or not enough room in a car for the kids and grandma, etc., and stayed in an attempt to care for family. Or, as many do when they panic, followed the misguided notion that they might be able to save their house, get the furniture upstairs, that someone would come help. They did not know how bad it would get in the course in the one morning. This according to almost every news report during, and especially in the weeks after the storm. Basically, no National Guard came to drive the empty, idle, city school buses and get people out while they could. And there are about six Army and National Guard bases within 10 hours of NO. Remember those people, some in hospital beds, stuck on the bridge? They were there for three days. Any Army helicopter could have been there in mere hours and lifted them out. But it was not ordered, and did not happen. There were dead bodies, hundreds, floating the streets. What might that, I wonder, do to my head? Knowing that my military can get soldiers into and out of combat zones, but can't get me off a bridge or a roof, can't drop some food and water supplies outside the arena. Really, just did not do so. Yep, I would be mad as hell too, I would be demanding my fair share and rights as an American too. I might be looting, depends. I'm not excusing, I'm explaing that there's more at work here than the "sense of entitlement" you imply in your email.

And, let's not talk about the infrastructure. Those levees in NO had been known, reported, monies requested from the state and Fed to strengthen them, for a decade. Nothing. And the levees in the Midwest: equally criminal. It was known that likely one more big flood would breach them. But, what have we, as a nation, done in the last 15 years to protect our precious farmland, its farmers and residents, and prevent billions of dollars in losses and more increases in the price of food (that is, passing the buck to the people again, just without actual taxes, this is just a market issue). Nothing. And, I've read reports recently that some of the contractors rebuilding the NO levees are filling them with, are you ready?, newspaper. Which is not notorious for its resistance to pressure when wet. So, how often do we, as a nation, have to abandon people before we get done abandoning them?

Remember the nursing home in New Orleans? The owner/managers abandoned it and left something like 12 people in their beds to drown and die. Old, infirm, people, the one's good people are supposed to save first. Treated like furniture. Those owners, who didn't cry out for FEMA, were jailed for life a year later, for murder. Not looting, murder. Those were middle class people who let the poor and vulernable, whom they knew, just die.

Or that broken man whose children were ripped away from his arms in the flood? All he wanted was to find them. Trying to get some help from anyone to find them. That did not happen to one man. That happened to a lot of families. For weeks and months, Red Cross and other were trying to help thousands people find family. Or, locate the dead. So, your home is gone, you've survived the arena, and now you can't find your cousin who used to live down the street. This is not happening the Midwest. This level of personal heartbreak is not happening here.

Many in the Midwest are in the same end result as many of the people in New Orleans. Poor people live near rivers because the land and home prices are affordable to them. Land on a river, a house near a river, the poor live there because that's what they can afford. They didn't have money for flood insurance, were under the impression that faulty levees would hold, and now have lost, some permanently, everything. Though, reports say that FEMA is on the scene, and will be helping the under- or uninsured. And these are people who are used to living on the rivers, they expect this kind of trouble from time to time. No one in the Midwest has been trapped in a sports arena for five days without shower, food, or water or protection. And unspeakable things happened in that arena. People under that much stress don't behave well. People in NO are not used to dealing with floods of that kind, and not that fast, and not right after a major huriane which knocks out the city's pumping system, which dumps into the lake that was flooding into the city through the levee that gave out.

In the Midwest, FEMA and the National Guard showed up in time. The trailors are not sitting idle in Arkansas while people are wondering where they're going to live while they try to rebuild a life. The quiet people of the Midwest will have shelter, they don't even have to ask.

There were reports locally here in the Midwest of business owners being worried about looting, and glad that the Guard was on the scene to help with sandbags and crime prevention. Because without them, those home and business owners would not have had protection. But, there was only one report of that concern, not two days of pictures (the same pictures, of two incidents) of looting: image of the blacks taking TVs, the whites taking water out of a grocery store. Looting by people trapped in a flooded city, with no support, who were hungry. So, it's easy to get the impression that nice people in the Midwest just up and behave better than those other people in that bad 'hood in that city. Really, it's very easy. And partly just wrong.

Like the people in the flooded Midwest, the people of the 9th ward were poor and working people. Most of them lived in that ward all their lives, for generations, were homeowners (who, by the way, still owe on homes that cannot be rebuilt because the bank gets the insurance and FEMA money before the owner, so the houses rot, get condemmned, and then the city tracks the owners down and fines them for letting the property fall apart, razes it, and builds a nice new condo for the rich who will move in now -- most of these people will never, ever, go home, they are effectively, exiles. This is not being reported MSNBC and similar.). These looters and screamers you mention used to clean the hotels tourists stay in while they party in the Quarter, they delivered ice for our drinks, they bartended, they cooked in the city's famous restaurants, they tought in the schools, they ran stores, they worked retail, they work. Many were lower middle class and poorer too -- just poor enough to be vunerable to a disaster of this kind. Some, yes, were gansters, and criminals, and believe me, we have that in our nice little farming communities too, where in Illinois and Missouri the number one crime problem is methamphetamine, its making, its dealing, its personal and social effects equal to that of crack cocaine, and it's huge -- though not as reported on as crime in the cities, mostly for reasons of geography and the location of most local news outlets, the big cities they cover. Unlike the Midwest, NO had just been hit by category 5 hurricane. No electricity, no running water, no basic civilization, no nothing.

As far as race is concerned: white people were looting in NO too. Black and white, when the looting was over most of what was missing was diapers, food, water. Nobody was helping them, so they helped themselves. Not TVs, plasma or otherwise. The jail in NO was breached, many actual criminals escaped into the general population... you can imagine how enjoyable that was for the good people of NO. On top of the bodies floating in the streets, on top of being left to cope for five days before any government agency sprang into action, criminals getting a holiday.

The crime in the city since? Who left? The good people who could, before or after the storm. Who stayed? Those strong and mean or stuck there enough to stay. It's social darwinism in its worst incarnation.

While the president told his friend Brownie he was doing a good job, and then assured Senator Frist that his plantation house on the coast of Mississippi would be rebuilt. Yeh, there's a president on the side of the people. I'm sorry, but that symbolism (nor the actuality for that matter) just is not right.

I met these people, {Cousin}. When busses of them arrived in Dallas to stay in our arena for a while before being settled into living in Dallas, Karen, her sister (who flew in from CA) and I took up collections of money, thousands of dollars, and went shopping, for two nights, and hauled everything to the area. We gave away babystrollers to mother's who didn't have them, bras to women and teen aged girls, underware, shirts and pants, diapers, toothpaste and brushes, shampoo, some toys for little kids, and luggage for families that came by. These people were utterly shell shocked, and totally, I mean godblessing us all over the place, that these three women would just up and pull together their own little red cross for them. And they were deeply embarassed to be in such need. My friend Amy, a pedicurist, tended to people's feet. They were sore, or injured and infected by the debris and the sewage in the water. She would help the injury cases to the Red Cross after cleaning them up. Folks whose feet were just sore from all that standing and stress, she massaged. They thought it was the best thing ever. A tiny reminder of their humanity in all this sadness they were living. I handed a kid a little toy dinosaur from the dollar store, and you'd have thought I was Santa Claus. I gave out a lot of toys and underward, and seriously, I was Father Christmas. His mother gathered a few things they needed. No one took more than they needed, and mostly they were grateful for being treated with some dignity now theirs had been stripped from them. It was hot in Dallas that weekend, in the 102 range, but at least this arena was air conditioned, the lights and bathrooms worked. There were cops around. Karen and us, we hung out under the parking lot, next to the donated clothing people were picking through, which was lying on the ground, just to get a couple changes of clothes. Even where no one was looking, I watched people take a few donations and deliberately leave stuff that fit them because someone else might need it. These people who had, literally, nothing but the dirty clothes on their back. We drank a lot of water. We ate with these folks in the food line set up by a local restaurant owner, who had the the good sense to make some gumbo. Easy to serve, loaded with nutrition, a gesture of understanding for what these folks were missing. And he did not skimp on the ingredients. It was good food. I have no idea what it cost him, but he fed many hundreds of people twice a day for three or four days. Other restaurants had done the same at other locations around the arena. We accepted a lot of thanks for what was just the right thing to do.

They were just people. Hurt, dispossessed, and assured that they weren't worth saving. Not quickly enough.

So, no, people in the Midwest are not looting and screaming. Mostly because they are in small towns where the social dynamic is different from the city, and because they are not being left to die for almost a week. The madness in NO set in over time, it didn't happen right away. It happened after it became clear that help was not on the way, not in time.

So, be careful, OK?, let's not let the way the news frames a story determine what we think of people. Because that story is already an interpretation, picking and choosing the facts we report is already interpretation. We're not reading reports on the rates of drug abuse, child abuse, spousal abuse, teen pregnancy, alcoholism in small town America, but the stats show it tracks right along with the big, bad, cities. Is worse in some cases because there's so little other entertainment. And their schools, well, those are not great either. The mainstream press does not report on this aspect of life in small town America. They leave intact that notion that everyone in the small town is decent and just and self-reliant. Myths are very dangerous. They let people suffer, in the city and in the country. We, who have homes, and comfort, should be very careful of the myths we accept. Frankly, if I'd been stuck in NO, I would have been screaming too.

Prices of Mind

2008-07-01T11:16:00.005-05:00

People I want to visit soon live in South Carolina, Oregon, Texas, New Mexico, San Franciso (temporarily), New York and Europe.

Europe is a conference and some editing on the other book, so that has to happen.

New York is a 40th b-day thing and much needed sister-friend vacation, so that has to happen.

Total spent on copyright permissions for the book, so far, and we're not done: $1500.

Royalties expected from literary critical book: not a lot, and not for a good long while.

So, don't take it personally if that trip I was dreaming with you to see you doesn't happen.

Which, guh.

Very Long Poem

2008-06-27T12:32:00.002-05:00

Sometimes I write this prosey, humor-y poems that are not like the others. Here's one from the frustration file in the overwritten style of the break-up letter:

May 2007
The Kitchen Table

Dear America,

We have been married for thirty-eight years, and while you have always been something of a fuck-up, America, you used to be a dashing, well-meaning, even groovy fuck-up who tried to do some good in the world. It wasn’t always good, but you and I could at least feel that your motives were right and just, that we had both good and bad in our marriage, as we should expect. And we were so in love for a while, and the sex was delicious at first. I know, I know, I pledged myself to you. I was so happy just be with you that I said that pledge everyday for years. But you made a pledge to me too. These last twenty years, the last six mostly, have become too much for me to bear. I barely recognize you now. I just can’t keep apologizing for you in public all the time. Especially since I remember my pride at being with you, extolling your virtues at all those dinner parties. But that public embarrassment is nothing compared to our private life.

I am leaving you. The sadness I feel at those words nearly stops my hand, but I feel I owe you some explanation.

All of our marriage together, while you helped to support me and make my teaching our children and others’ possible, I have suffered, America, the buffeting of your abuse. I can’t win what has become only battle with you no matter much my love for you leads me to wish to fulfill your desires.

Over the years, more and more often, what you have promised and what you have done diverge. Either you are lying maliciously, or are simply too callous to care about the effects of your behavior. You said you would focus our family’s well being, but neglected us in the most disappointing way. You refused to let our children really learn, or even to feed some of them, and you made many of them sleep outside for no reason at all. When I raised objections, you said I was crazy, that they had to learn to fend for themselves, and huffed out of the house to disappear for hours. Then you went and tore up Kyle and Dwayne’s landscaping, probably to warn we what would happen should I let the kids back in, but that’s another matter. You said that you would consult me in the important decisions, that we would discuss them and choose the best courses together. Instead, you have made decisions unilaterally, saying that discussion was a sign of my doubt, even a lack of love for you. When you allowed discussion, you misrepresented the facts and choices, leading me to agree to courses of action I would never assent to with full knowledge. The cognitive dissonance is just too much bear. No matter how much I remember loving you, I just don’t know who you or we are anymore.

And the physical abuse? Need we rehash that? You know what you did. What you allowed to happen. Remember how you used to want me to call you Uncle when we were in bed together. “Say Uncle, Say Uncle,” you would whisper in the desperate moments. Well, then it changed, it changed to, “Who’s your daddy?” I started to worry that the incest metaphors were getting too creepy, so I asked that we not play that game anymore. You know what you did. And you taped it, and you put it on YouTube, and now men on the street won’t stop leering and rubbing against me. I just can’t deal with this. I know I could go to the police, but getting the fuck out of here is just easier than dealing with your legal system. There are so many husbands with whom I would be safer that staying with you is simply irrational.

And the neighbors? What really terrifies me is that you’re becoming more and more paranoid. Yeh, I know one of their spoiled kids blew up our tool shed, but you know, the Karsoszy’s kids were in there too. Why did you have to go all Rambo like that? We were not the only ones bereft that day. I know that some of them just are not on the same reality map we are, but you and I are not on the same reality map anymore either. I fear that you have felt my withdrawal from you, my support flagging. Your constant fear even of people we use to have cookouts with and worked with on some of the homeowners association projects, I fear you might escalate your more and more random and aggressive behavior toward them. They’re so scared of you that they haven’t even noticed the crack house is open for business again. I know, right on the corner where we worked so hard to get them out, but they’re back because everyone used to look up to you and now they don’t know where to look. I have no idea why you had to blow up down the Jaffif’s Rose of Sharon, but you did. And they had nothing to do with the shed, and you knew it. Now I can’t even look Noor in the eye. She and I used to have coffee. Now we have nothing. That was all you, America. You’re breaking everything. Isolating me more and more from my friends. Where did you get that C-4 anyway? What is in that room in the basement you put the electronic lock on?

Anyway, I’ve asked you for years and years to help me get the radon thing under control and a water filter that catches arsenic, but you just won’t do it. You’ve gone so overboard with your precious goddamn “lawn care” that my vegetable garden and my roses are poisoned at the root. I couldn’t grow us edible vegetables if I were Martha Goddamn Stewart. And all that smoking in the house, do you know what that’s doing to my health? Do you care? No, all you do is bitch about our insurance premiums, how we can’t afford that new Escalade.

There’s just too much to write. I mean thirty-eight years of unstable and now dangerous marriage, America? How could I explain it all?

I have to go catch my plane. Now don’t go looking for me, don’t ask what flight I was on. The most mortal moments in a woman’s life are the days just after her abusive husband discovers she is leaving, so I assure you, America, by the time you read this, I will be long gone. I have had myself declared legally dead so my paper trail will end. I stole the identity of a long dead French sheep farmer who used to make Roquefort. To do this, I have betrayed you for a long time by saving part of my meager teacher’s salary in a tax exempt account in the Cayman Islands that I might pay for identity theft and expatriation to a place where you will never find me. I know the double insult of my betrayal and absence will leave no place for you to aim your anger. Your frustration and possible consequent behavior sadden me for both you and those you will no doubt injure or annoy as you burn it off.

But I can’t help anyone if I am not whole, and I am not whole, America. Not anymore. Please, take care of yourself, and there’s a casserole in the freezer. I know how you hate getting back from a junket and there’s no food ready in the house. I have arranged for transfer of the kid’s custody to people who love them, and made that custody a condition of your inheritance of my assets and possessions in my will. I suggest you get some therapy and put yourself back together, but you will have to do it without me. I don’t care what you do with the house or my grandmother’s silver or any of it. A legal death certificate and the new notarized will are on the desk next to your iPod. So, that’s all up to you, which is how you like it. I just need to rest. I’m going someplace where I’ll have to live by my hands. You know, most of the world. Working with my hands, concentrating on simple survival will help settle my soul and rebuild my sense of connection to life. It’s all I can manage now.

I loved you.

Your legally dead wife,
Kathy

Humor Sent This Way, Now That

2008-06-24T08:58:00.002-05:00

A stamp most people could use.

A video lampooning corporat-iverse's inability to create.

A Leggo installation project worthy of the ages.

And, why NASA is so cool. Anyone take pics of clouds out airplane windows like I do? Well, how about out the window of the Space Shuttle! -- Not humor, just awesome!

Happy Day.

It Is Done

2008-06-17T15:30:00.002-05:00

A Poetics of Being Two, draft one, is in the mail to Lexington for peer review and the beginnings of the rest of its life.

Whew.

Not feeling joyful. More like worried and scattered. Possibly in need of a good cry. It's just been this huge thing, and now it's poof.

And there are Piles of Books and Files that need sorting and putting away and clearing out for the next projects.

However, I am declaring None Of That until next Monday.

But, if you feel like celebrating, friends who read this, please do. I'm sure the vibe will travel up my way.

If you don't miss Russert, don't vote.

2008-06-13T23:14:00.003-05:00

That's the bumper sticker Hemingway wants to make.

He's right.

Thanks for being here, Tim, and teaching us how to hold Power's feet to the fire.

May God hold you in the palm of his hand, brother.

Hale-God-Damn-lujia!

2008-06-12T12:40:00.004-05:00

We get Habeus Corpus back!!!
I know, it means the evil doers get it too, but if they don't have it, neither do we.

"The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times,” Justice AnthonyM. Kennedy wrote for the court.

Especially so.

ExxonMobile Advert, Gen X, Changing of the Guard and Rant

2008-06-12T09:19:00.008-05:00

Head's Up, people.

I'm good at noticing Things That Are Rediculous, so please, you do not have to smack me with them while I'm watching TV (though, that is where you keep a lot of these Things).

I'm watching the news last night. An ad comes on for ExxonMobile. (disclosure: my grandpa retired from Mobile as one of their gazillions of VPs, which means he worked for you, which means I owe you nothing). Calm, expert sounding, warm-faced people are waxing imaginative and ecologically conscious about the future of our energy needs and working to solve them. The shots are all Traditional Bust of Authority Figure portraits, from mid-chest up. It's all very reassuring in tone (and schmaltzy). And then, gradually (it's a looooooong, expensive ad) all they're talking about is OIL and new, expensive widgets for getting at it, and how much investment all that is going to take. Don't worry, the ad means, there's plenty of oil, we don't need to change energy sources, we're using our Value of the Whole Roman Empire Profits to invest in widgets and exploration and extraction, and never you mind the impending eco-collapse and deaths of billions of people, land and water wars, having to learn to raise and butcher your own meat, weave your own cloth.....

Now, we know they're nervous, Oil Companies, about how much $$$$ they have and how we want to know what in the world they're doing with it. I want them nervous. I don't want their schmaltzy-assed propaganda. I want them and their cadre to get the Memo From the Planet.

It reads: Work with me here, or I will decimate you. --- Love, Kali.

Like the love and reproductive capabilities of women, the planet is exhaustible.

I want them to produce solar panels and home-batteries so cheap that we can buy them at Wal-Mart, put them on roofs all over the world (except for religious and historical buildings), get off the grid, and power up our small, cute, electric cars in order to commute to our local, recently dispersed, centers of corporate work. See, the internets literally mean that we don't have to be In The Office in order to be in the office. Build more trains for long distance travel. Power those with wind and solar electricity too. That host of Living Smaller ideas whack-o hippies and tree huggers have been suggesting for freaking decades.

Everything we to know and do is already thought, half-built, or so obviously suggesting itself that it's not like we can claim we have no idea.

For one: Put gobs of the remaining oil energy into creating the new energy infrastructure so that we can stop burning carbon and killing ourselves. Dammit. That is the message of peak oil, and don't pretend that you don't know that and don't just refuse to play nicely.

This is what has always pissed me off about much of the Greatest Generation and mainstream Boomers (and the uber-wealthy, and lots of patriarchal history): We have a new idea! --- It's the same old idea! Ta-da!

Like, oh, say: dumping economic risk down scale. This was the economic logic of which political system we threw off in the revolution and the New Deal? Come on. You know the answer. That's right: Aristocracy and Robber Baron-ism. The new idea was called NeoLiberalism, but it's just an old idea. The people are a resource, kind of like a coal mine, let's get all we can out of them, ha-ha, another glass of sherry my man? Besides, if we drain them now, they won't be able to afford the costs of these necessary changes, and we win!! No?, then cognac?

(To those of you of that class who are working for good, I do not mean you. I thank you. Cuz, dude/ttes I do not have the scratch you do to leverage.)

A book I came across recently: X Saves the World: How Generation X Got the Shaft but Can Still Keep Everything from Sucking. Which pretty much sums up my sense of the last 40 or so years of American social, political, and cultural history (backlash, etc.). Since about age 14 my running question has been: How did you people fuck you-name-it up this badly?

You see, there was "America" as I was taught it, and there was America as I was living it. They do not jive.

Which sense of betrayal and outrage and dark astonishment is why I'm jazzed about Obama and the Jonesin Generation (as in jonesin to get things done). I do not think he is the messiah, I do not think he can Fix It All For Me. (My only problem with the Amazingly Strong Hillary was not even really about her, it was just that the past is not where I want to go. Which is totally emotional, and not really fair, and insufficiently feminist of me, but there it was.) I think he, and lots of folk in that generation and mine, have evolved different assumptions and and can create structures so that We can Implement Really New Ideas and Save Souls from Torment and Trouble Here On Earth.

Because, duh, History is the accumulated evidence and force of Decisions People Make and Accede To.

What's happening here,

in our political moment, underneath the gender and race (class, civil rights, respect for peoples of the world, and all that) issues we notice still need our sustained and fierce attention (and some scathing pressure on talking heads to get the hell with it, man),

is...

A Changing of the Guard.

Not just "change" like changing your pants. A shift. Like chaning your self. Gradual, needing some foundation laying, rewarding, enhancing, and totally possible.

It's pretty clear to me that lots of the Greats and Boomers in power (econ, politic) simply don't know or really care (both of which are marks of shame) to clean up the messes they made.

So, get out of the damn way and let us and the Yers and Millennials and Indigos do it. (And you Xers who are driving your two kids to soccer and commuting 40 min each way in an SUV, cut that kind of shit right out. If you're acting like the Me Generation (many Boomers), Stop It. It's just embarassing.)

We will need to consult you, we will need your help, but your deep-structure-level SOP is not working and you can't seem to learn any other tricks.

Note: To those in the G and B generations who are working for the new ideas and the cleaning up, I do not mean you. I am, however, very sad that you are not in charge. Also, for the insanely hard work of getting this country through the middle of the last century, my hat's off, I bow, I sing your praises.

It's just that running our history and the planet right out to the end of its tether is not going to be pretty. See, y'all also just assume that there's enough. And there's not. Not of the material stuff we need to live and improving living for those for whom it sucks. And as for privatization, neo-con, neoliberal thang ya'll have going on and voted for Twice, that's death. Death. The monoculture of consumerism and corporate life --- death.

There's plenty of death for all us. We don't need to make more. Hence my occasional maunderings about what the phrase "culture of life" really means. Hence, this post.

ExxonMobile, stop it with the obviously fake concern for planetary and human well being. It's just insulting the way you did that.

Everybody else: the problems we face are Collective problems. All the individual responsibility and pluck and ingenuity in the world cannot address Collective problems. I mean, it's necessary but not sufficient. We will have to start working and playing together much better than ever.

That's all for now,
PRSC

Fix a Wet Cell Phone: A New Wive's Tale

2008-06-11T08:39:00.003-05:00

Dirty clothes. A shower at a neighbor's house. A very helpful neighbor who takes the clothes to the washing machine. A clean self. A question. "We're washing your clothes for you." "My cell phone is in my jeans."

Doom?

Why no. Smart friends of my dad's took the inundated cell phone out of the wash cycle, opened it and took the battery out, and

Put the open phone and separated battery in a bag of Minute Rice for a couple of days. (Seems MR absorbes moisture more quickly than plain old rice.)

At this time, all reports are that the phone works perfectly. I'll let you know if that changes.

Note: Google reveals a host of anti-inundation techiques: from lamps, to ovens, to things so complicated you'll just go a buy a new phone.

Time to detail the '66 and buy some art!

2008-06-10T08:44:00.003-05:00

Route 66 Fest this weekend! Driving, eating, art, music, and general midwestern time passing. Gotta give Sally a shampoo and blow-dry. Finishing the body work would be cool, but hey, I like her with her age showing a little.

The Golden Mean

2008-06-10T07:37:00.004-05:00

Fleur and I were idly gazing catalogues last night. We do this sometimes and comment on the products (that's clever, why?, they want what for that faux antique chest???). So, then this:

ME: Hey, there's a green tea concentrate in here. Says one dropper full is equal to the antioxidant benefits of 15 cups of green tea.

FLEUR: Sounds pretty good.

ME: But, like, in 8 0z of water, you drink a concentrate of 15 CUPS of green tea!!! You'll be healthy, but awake forever and ever. (we like our sleep in this crew)

FLEUR: Well, tea only has like 3/4ths the caffeine of coffee.

ME: Yah, that's still, like, 12 cups of coffee!!!

FLEUR makes pained face as she imagines being trapped in that buzz.

Note: neither us really knows the coffee :: tea caffeine ratio; nor do we care, being avid, snooty drinkers of both; but I think you take the my point.

Note: the propaganda for the tea-concentrate said nada about being decaf (since decaf-ing tea negates lots of the antioxidants). Just shows a pic of a full dropper poised over an 8 oz Evian bottle, which inspired the nonsensical conversation.

George Lakoff and David Sedaris Back to Back!

2008-06-06T12:26:00.004-05:00

Lakoff at the Library, and Sedaris creates a street fair! Left Bank Books has arranged to close the streets in order to seat people for Sedaris's reading from When You Are Engulfed in Flames.

How freaking much fun is this! So. there!

(So that's why I can't get tics to Tom Waits... this was coming.)

Scattergories Meme

2008-06-06T09:15:00.005-05:00

Answer with word/short phrase. No using your name for the boy/girl names.

Your Name: Si
4 letter word: Sigh
Boy's name: Solomon
Girl's name: Sally
Occupation: Security Mercenary
Color: Scarlet
Something you wear: Sass
Beverage: Sassafrass Tea
Food: Sushi
Something found in a bathroom: Scents
Place: San Salvador
Reason for being late: Sex
Something you shout: Salutations!

Random Error

2008-06-06T00:03:00.008-05:00

According to this gemology webiste (nevermind): "The word 'sapphire' is an ancient name of uncertain origin; it possibly is derived from the Hebrew word "sappir" or the Sanskrit word "sanipruja" (dear to Saturn).

If you think Sanskrit has the word Saturn in it (as opposed to say a word for Saturn), then no wonder the origin is uncertain. Is it the theology, astronomy, translation, or grammar that went sideways here?

UPDATE: Please see the comments, where I am kindly schooled on my own intellecutal limitations. Also, Rings-Things.com is, in fact, a pretty awesome site in that area.

Unwanted Friendly Virtual Gestures Getting You Down?

2008-06-04T21:03:00.002-05:00

Princess who blogs at Flooded (and many other joints) found this here anonymous service, StopForwarding.Us. Send that friend who mindlessly forwards every single inane-ass forward sent to her or him by their equally mindless inane-ass friends in chains going back to the ante-deluvian period a Miss Manners level polite push back.

We who are under construction think of forwards as gifts. We send them with thought and consideration and hope for the recipient's happiness. Not because we have functional fingers.

History in the Making

2008-06-04T20:27:00.008-05:00

Thank you both, Hillary and Barak, for turning the page. Congrats Barak! Congrats America!

This is going to be great fun!!!

Dig the new zen!

Not the irritating racism hiding in the translation humor.

The actual zen.

We get to go under construction!! Whahoooo!

Note: to you patriarchal scaredy cats (fe/male) who couldn't handle the idea of a woman in The Seat of power, watch it. You're history.

TaDa!!! (nearly)

2008-06-04T15:22:00.001-05:00

And there it is. The complete draft of the poetics book. A bit of tweak and edit and a bibliography and I am there, baby!!!!

Makes a girl want to get dressed up and cause trouble!

Good Medicine Reading Company

2008-06-01T01:48:00.003-05:00

No, it's not the name of the press I want to start someday, so if you're out there, and you want to start a press, take that title. I'm fine with that. It's yours. Just make me chief editor, 'k?

H has come up from Tejas to visit. She came for heart-head clearing fun before settling into the groovy flow of her disseration (once she clears a few points up with her committee about just who owns this project [her] and where she going [not academia]). The details are hers to share/not. Find out at The Wood Report. ANYway, her visit has bonked some stuff loose.

We saw Eddie Izzard's Stripped at the Orpheum, which got the happyhappy endorphins rolling. No spoilers here for those of you still checking to make sure you know where your tics are, that you didn't wake up and forget to go to the show, and similar. Eddie Izzard is good for you and tastes better than tofu. I will that while I laughed hard and my face hurt afterwards, I did not quite get my comedy rocks off, but I am spoiled on that front RE: Eddie in particular. May the rest of the performances go better for Eddie and for you.

So, there was some real, like, JOY. And maybe the planets are dancing more elegantly, or more robustly, but M has cheered up in recent days, and though the You Can't Grasp It complexity of my non-conformist family's material life is really beyond even our ken at this point, I have come to the firm and warm observation that It Is Going To Be Fine.

The poetics book is going to go live a good life. M and I are going to keep on keepin on in the way we do, and with more laughing, for however long we will it so. H is going to rock her badass self into a PhD and then go teach bright-souled underpriviledged high school students and make all manner of Art. Lioness as received actual spiritual grace, in my presence, and came to stay with me in order to get it and start processing it. So, also, there is grace. In this case, it bumped Wonder Twin rings with a tree and a 66 Mustang and took the form of a heart.

H and I wandered STL today -- poking around, eating, marveling, lamenting in the city's jawdropping potential and utter refusal to go for it. Like, M told me that STL, which has no less than FOUR children's hospitals, also has the highest infant mortality rate in, like, practically the US (for urban areas, I think, haven't googled it yet). Which just says that lots of immigrant, poor, young, and otherwise marginalized moms are not going to/getting in/staying at these marvelous warm-fuzzy hospitals. !!! Because that should not be hard to fix. Because there is enough.

Now, this gets me to the Medicinal Reading part: At Left Bank Books, I did what I do. Purchased books. One on serendipity, one on robust democracy based on systems and assumptions of plenty (note: Not the system in which we currently sleepwalk), and Jorie Graham's new book o poems. (eeeeyayayayayay!) Now, if you know me, you can read this map. If you don't, you don't read this blog, but I'll explicate anyhow.

I needed a reminder about serendipity. I used to trust it with my whole entire soul. I could read signs and hear Comos whispering like nobody nowhere ever. I watched Lioness trust it for about a week in person, then some via the Interweb. Underneath grocking it all mentally, I was like, "Th'hell is going on?" It was like I, who once spoke serendipity fluently, had a rail road spike in my head and couldn't understand a word of it. I mean, I could, I knew it was a language -- I just didn't feel it anymore. OH MY SWEET MOTHER OF ALL GODS! Who am I? Well, I'm the gal who jumped a sick life like a sinking firey boat, that's who. And serendipity had a lot to do with that. And yes, it's a Deepak Chopra book, and back off. I need the reminder. I forgot who I am. So, there's some medicine. It's called The Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desire. Go read it. I mean, with that title, how could you not? (there's science in it, for you materialists have not yet gathered the spiritual implications of recent theoretical physics and some very innerestin' experiments with light and stuff)

Then, I found this book by Frances Moore Lappe, and why in the wide world have I never heard of her, and why didn't any of you Tell Me She Exists???!!! Holy cow. It's called Getting A Grip: Clarity, Creativity, and Courage in A World Gone Mad. If you have also been deprived of familiarity with this woman, rectify that situation immediate-ly. It's a users manual, it's a deconstruction, it's a workbook, it's written this amazing tone that assures you that indeed the world and your future are utterly managable and imaginable, and that completely avoids complaint. She's like, "Sure it's nuts, but at the very same moment we have every tool and resource we need to make it (everything) right, and so here we go." The jacket calls it a vibrant, intimate voice. Nah. The voice is bemusedly assured that "making a world we can be proud of" is quite simply on offer. It is confident and encouraging.

Whaaaaah!? No bitchin and moanin? No initerminable Age of Critique!? Really? I'm in.

If I don't get a job a Nifty Lib Arts College, I am calling her up. I am going to work with these people. Serendipity-do. There is an organization on earth that essentially jives with everything I dream and want, but that does not cater/market to deepening the souls of the rich because then we gurus can be rich (a thing that has bugged the living fuck out of me about Ken Wilber and frankly kept me arm's length there -- not that money is bad, just that not making your wisdom Affordable, really, dude, bugs the fuck out of me), and might spare me the soul-killing that kind of ground level work that people like Lioness have the tungsten for an' I don't. I was just talking to H about that today, how I have gifts, but the one I would need for That Work, I don't have. Get too pissed off too fast in there. Would end up eating my own head for lunch, maybe with side of slaw and two fifths of Jameson everyday until liver failure. Really. I've seen me sadly astounded just at students who hamstring themselves by not doing the Learning part of being a student. I can't handle a whole lot of that particular texture of failure/refusal, from either end.

I'm not proud of this. It's just the case, is all. And I know that writing about difficult poets is not going to really change the world, not practically.

She, Lappe, knows what I rattle on about in my poetics book: all (nearly all) previous notions of love/desire/gender/society/economics (and poetry, and ...) have been based in LACK. This is complete and utter unfactual bullshit. It is despicable and poison. (whew, that was a nice sentence. yeep!) Plenty, and wonder, and extra, and here have some of mine are right here and let me show you how reading poetry that way changes the game ha-ha. Hence also the Murdoch project. As we all know from the many less-fun to read posts about said. Have been wandering my corner of the earth saying this for, well, my whole adult life. I don't mean this in that "I thought it first" competitve way. I mean it in the HEY! LOOK! FRIENDS! way.

AND, Jorie has a new book out. Sea Change. I read one poem from it while sitting at Dressel's waiting for yet more rain and KNEW that Never and Overlord and Sea Change are a trilogy. Other critics who have jobs I want will say this, but you saw it here first. In the way that I now, abruptly, see that End of Beauty and Region are a pair, and Materialism, The Errancy, and Swarm are a set as well. And I do mean this in the I said it first way.

Good Medicine, Reading, Company. All of these for you as well.

Why It Looks Easy to You

2008-05-25T14:41:00.005-05:00

Much of academic work is like this: "Did You Publish Today?" at The Chronicle.

It is just so true. But, I post it since at the Chronicle, chances are only other acadies will read it.

Also, as if Cosmos were tickling the scillia of my inner ear: three nice jobs at small colleges and uni's have shown up, and M said to me yesterday, when I told him of the detachment registered about conference and book, "Hey, not every one has even a little dream. Especially a dream they're good at. Don't give it up."

One is a one-year non-renewable at Fontbonne in StL over in U-city. Nice hold-over if I get it.

So, for the summer, I do not give it up. Plus, because if they'll just Talk to Me, I'm in.

Dear Cosmos,

2008-05-24T09:11:00.002-05:00

Please arrange matters so that I and at least one friend or lover may attend the Tom Waits Glitter and Doom tour at the Fox Theater in St. Louis on June 26th, 2008.

This request is very specific because I would not want you to misunderstand what, when, or where.

Why? It would be minimally harmful to the planet and very pleasurable to me.

Thanks in advance,
PRSC

Murdoch Conference in Kingston UK

2008-05-22T09:52:00.004-05:00

It's an odd feeling.

My paper on Murdoch and Irigaray is accepted to this kickass conference, organized by a kickass scholar, Anne Rowe, in a town near London that is so damn adorable I might never go into London while there. I'll run up to Cheltenham to visit with A and work on the Murdoch anthology for a few days, and likely meander about in the oh-so-soul-feeding English countryside, plus the happy goodity of A's company. She's such a big-sister/mom type with funky cool edges and a razor of a mind (she digs Ricoeur, I dig Ricoeur, it'll be fun to talk about his work too) that I always feel totally relaxed around her. Last I saw A was in Dublin with Lioness.

The conference: Intertextuality and Interdisciplinarity: Iris Murdoch. And here's where you can gaze pics of the town. Just the sort of place I like to be. Kinda like my little town, only British and older and cuter and smack on the banks of the Thames. Some of the local propaganda, too. And they brag about their shopping and food and coffee and beer, with which I have no quarrel what so ever. Several of the authors in the Murdoch anthology are attending, so I'm excited to get to meet them and visit. If their writing is any indication of their persons, this will be a lovely time indeed.

Normally, I would be buzzing-excited about this. But, here comes the odd bit. In composing the conclusion to the poetics book yesterday, I wrote a sentence that let the Whole Thing Go. It said that here at the end of this project, I see that the collateral goal (a real job at a real school) is no longer my concern. Yep. Just like that.

I now wish that I had written the whole book under that assumption because the conclusion is turning into a personal essay about many things, most them having to do with what all the several hundred pages before have to do with living life in this world under these conditions. A whole study on Irigaray and these poets written in a more affective mode would have been more fun than even this was (and it was Fun), and probably would have been more honest about the deep reasons literary scholars do what we do. It turns us on. Everything lights up.

That after scrapping a 20 or so page conclusion that tended in this direction but had lots to say about irony (chez Rorty) and the freaky way that the bad relativisim the conservatives used to bash PoMo intellectuals for is now their favorite tool, and then some stuff I'm keeping about love and bell hooks and disobedience and White. But, really, who in their right mind would want to read that? How many literary studies end with this summary-implications conclusion that makes you wonder why it was ever committed to the corpses of trees better left standing? Gah.

But something just gave out. Not hope really. Just, something akin to need, to identity. To an idee fixe whose time had run out.

So, here I am, fixin to go to England, to another conference, and I'm just about ready to get my soul out of the whole game. Maybe write stuff, but only because compelled, not because I'm knocking on the door of a club I likely cannot enter for reasons the MLA people know allllll about concering the cancer in our profession. And there's this book that people like a lot, and this conclusion turning into a exercise in non-attachement, and a sense that I have no other plan for my life.

Between now and my birthday in November, there will be another plan. In fact, that's my birthday present: I'm going to ask all my sharp, loving friends to help me dream up my new plan. What does PRSC do next?

Why Obama's Foreign Policy Is Spot On

2008-05-16T17:52:00.002-05:00

Head's up neo-cons and your copycats:

A joint communiqué on the BRIC [Brazil, Russia, India, China] meeting set forth coordinated positions on a wide range of pressing international issues that put the group at cross purposes with the United States.It stressed the need for “building a more democratic international system founded on the rule of law and multilateral diplomacy” with the United Nations “playing the central role.”

Read on at The Hindu.

Turns out the Second World is to be taken quite seriously. As per the point of this book, The Second World: Empires and Influence in the New Global Order, by Parag Khana. See the interview with Charlie Rose for the May 15, 2008 program.

Next Houseguest

2008-05-15T10:46:00.003-05:00

Just so lucky to have friends who are about 90x funnier than I am!!!!!!! Recent email about a visit.
*************************************************************
things that H would like to do in St. Louis:
disclaimer: this is not an exhaustive list, this is not meant to be an all-inclusive, exhaustive list.
it is flexible and expandable with the needs of the living breathing universe
ps. H is on vacation and refuses to use commas

1. say hi to PRSC's dog & cat
2. meet PRSC's realtor mom and hemingway look-alike dad
3. eat at iron barley, the diner i saw on the food network
4. go to a yoga class w/ PRSC
5. go to the st. louis art museum
6. drink at the pub
7. laugh at eddie izzard and hope he's dressed in drag (why is he photographed in man's clothes so often lately in places like Entertainment Weekly?)
8. have a beer and ask PRSC the previous question. discuss.
9. drive by the mall but refuse to go in
10. go see some jazz on the riverbanks old school ragtime style
11. chase t.s eliot's ghost if we can find it
12. do some bootleggin w. jelly roll hogan
13. see the glass menagerie
14. build a life-size replica of the Wainwright Building out of legos in PRSC's bedroom
15. have coffee in benton park west
16. Guest-conduct the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra
17. go to the City Museum
18. have long conversation with PRSC about life liberty and the pursuit of happiness
19. come to decisive conclusion about the former
20. sit on the banks of the pond at PRSC' s house in a deep trance-like meditation

OK...i guess that's it. if i think of anything else, I'll send an addendum.

Politics and personalities

2008-05-14T21:35:00.007-05:00

What I am loving about this election cycle is that it's pointing up, unavoidably, the fault lines in our society. I mean, how about that intersection of race, class, gender, and generation huh?

Whole classes can and will be taught, not long from now, on this race. Big irritatingly interdisciplinary classes. They will be enormous fun to teach in Comp I and II.

What I enjoy is that I have to keep checking my head. Am I going to vote for X or Y because of their chromosomes and genes, the sound of their voice, their clothing, their age, their youth, their past and present associations, their endorsements, or their positions? Not being a Vulcan, I find it's a salad sort of thing.

Policy looms large, of course. But then there's all this other stuff.

I can tell you this: as much as many white men don't like Hillary's voice (Shrillary they call her, for raising her voice in excitement and to be heard over crowds, oh my -- a situation in which the untrainded voice goes up an octave to two), I can't stand listening to McCain. It's not that he sounds like my dad. My dad never speaks to me that slowly, or that reassuringly. Even my Grandpa at his most arrogant was never as condescending to me as McCain is when he talks to us. McCain talks like the man who thinks the women (or people) he's talking to are stupid. He makes the issue sound simpler than it is because women (and you voters are all women in this particular power dynamic), well, we just can't handle the complexities. The truth, maybe, but not the whole truth. Drives me nuts. This is how the Straight Talk is just as twisted as the unabashedly political spin.

On a purely personal (political) level, I do not want to move from listening to Bushisms and bravado to listening to McCain talk to us all like we ride the short bus.

Then there's the part where he's to the right of even Bush Co on many points, and just no way. That would piss me off so much that I would run for president. And trust me, that is a job I do Not want.

Personally (politcally), affect-wise, I don't like the way Hillary is playing the old dirty pool of politics. I don't agree with Faludi that this is some awesome display of feminine masculinity and toughness and getting down with the boys. I agree with Ehrenrich that it is wholly possible to be a woman, play hard and Fair, and win. That it's possible to just be a woman and kick ass without being a jackass to do it. I like that she's that smart, and strong, and stubborn, and savvy. Go Hil! I do not like that she's that sneaky. I don't think that foul play is a sign of masculine strength.

I think its a sign in women of the same thing it is in men.

Fear. Avarice. With nice a reduction of revenge and cassis.

I do not need another president with Something To Prove. Been there. Stuck in Iraq, paying taxes to support the debt for a war that means we may not only have more Iraqi blood on our hands than we can Ever karmically redeem, but that we may well, Again, "fuck up the end game" in Afghanistan as Charlie Wilson complained LAST TIME.

And when she used the word "obliterate" in relation to tension with Iran? That was just fuckwittedly irresponsible. Not even wrong. Help Iranians get rid of the mullahs whom most of them detest, or at least defang the bastards, and you won't have to use such words. Sorry sisters, that was the last straw for me.

I mean no other comparison in the following than this next bit says. When Bush was running the first time, I mumbled to friends that voting for him was dangerous. This was back when he was practically ad isolationist and all I was worried about politically was the fundmentalists who wanted to save the world for Christ by making everyone else miserable. But Bush had another facet. He's a recovering alcoholic with something to prove (that he's not a dillitante). Knowing some active and recovering alcholoics, I watched him. He liked excitement too much, glowed in an uncanny way in its presence. What I said was that recovering addicts don't go into action, don't become alive or really engaged until there's an emergency, until it's all on the line. And Bush went golfing a lot until 9-11. Clinton also has something to prove. That she can come back, that she can get power back, that she can get into a position to beat the crap out of the 'vast right-wing conspiracy' (which, we now know, there so was). Also, she digs power too much. Clearly will do just about anything to get it.

It's a purely psychological response on my part. Both Bush and Clinton 'read' to me like people with second and even third agendas running behind and even contrary to the interests of the nation and the people. Hence, no vote from me.

Still,could I just smack the daylights out of the pundits, talking heads, and voters who are having their sexist little roll in the shit at her expense? Oh hell yeh. I just love having it confirmed, again, that I live in a world rife with men who hate women. Just plain hate us, no matter how suave they are about it.

And, sympathetically, I know what it's like to work for a good long time for a goal and get smacked down. I've been doing that with the book, the job market, the whole set of goals for my little life for a decade. There comes a point when one feels owed. That feeling is utterly wrong and misplaced. I cringe for her when I watch her win a primary and then Obama gets a click or two closer to the ticket. I cringe for her when I watch her talk on podiums and at interviews, and then the misogynists get there gleeful hate on. I know that part of this not acceding the nomiation is sheer will and a desire to show that a woman won't be sent home by set-backs and insults. And good on her for that. The emotional gut punches that keep coming from talking heads and the voters and the delegates have got to hurt. The pushing through frustration and will are laudable. The bad feeling I have and the dirty pool and the dick-measuring of "obliteration" just won't let me get behind her.

But equally to the misogyny grinning from the TV, it's good to remember that we live in a world of white people who just don't know a damn thing about black people. And are scared of them. Part of white privilidege is being able to get along in life without that knowledge. Sadly, Clinton has played on that too. This is not a democratic gesture, an invitation to become familiar with the other, to transcend ethinicty or religion for the higher goal of the welfare of all the people. That Obama jujitszued the Wright-thing into just such an invitation is astonishing and beautiful and encouraging. While the sociological study I get to do this cycle is very interesting, that was the second to last straw for me. Not Cool. Racism might be handy politically, just like homophobia is, a wedge issue, but it's just not worthy of a vigorous democracy or of the Democratic Party.

Am I in love with Obama? No. Do I tote the Obama line all the way? No. His policy needs tweaking for me. I'm actually a good bit to his left. But, people, whose policy wouldn't need a tweak if you really thought about it? Mostly, I'm good with his positions.

What I'm really good with is that he has nothing to prove, and that he really is trying to do the work of politics and democracy with more seriousness and grace and fair play than has been seen in my whole yearning lifetime.

The difficulties and changes and new directions facing this country and this society right now are many, deep, wide, and very serious. Not only "our civilization" but all civilizations hang in the balance between the hydra heads of global warming, food crises, and energy supplies (and kinds of it), poverty. Let's not even being to think about potable water. Our social infrastructure needs as much repair as our physical one. Our whole understanding of what it means to be democrats (small d) needs to be reaffirmed after the coma its been knocked into by the neocons and their allies. Our economy needs as much attention as all of the above and renewed and smarter sense of oversight and regulation. We do not live in 18th and 19th Century markets, and we should never have been blinkered into believing we do just because Men in Suits say so. Saving social security etc. for our parents and children is going to be a real nailbiter.

Without serious leadership, in short, we are screwed.

We Gen Xers, Jonesers, and Millenials, we have a whole big fat lot of work in front of us. I just doubt that playing dirty or continuing with more of this will be of any use at all.

We simply can't afford second and third agendas getting in the way of working on this set of problems which will, very directly, stick their fingers in the guts of us, our children, grandchilren, and the whole rest of the human world.

I'm not sure of my reasoning, not entirely. I know that other than what I've read of position papers on their websites, I'm dealing with these candidates on intuition. I am fully aware that this intuition is being pinged by their PR and handlers. I also know that we have no other tools than those: some history, some knowledge, and very hopeful guessing according to that internal radar.

Like you, I want a leader. Not just a president. A LEADER. Leaders don't condescend and transmute their embarassments into virtues (McCain), and leaders don't run second and third agendas (Clinton). They work the problems. Hillary felt like a leader to me at first. She felt like my Second Wave older sisters whose steel and dedication I work to inculcate in myself. But after all this time, all this dithering in the crap, I can see that the person up for the position of Leader is Barak. Sure, some won't follow him easily. Some won't follow Hillary easily. And some won't follow John easily.

Even if he looks like the sort of human we are used to following.

The 8th Grade Final Exam (meme)

2008-05-14T21:27:00.003-05:00

If you teach, you've been sent this through the web-vine. I you study, you should just know:

88888888888888888888888888888888888888888888

Below is the eighth-grade final exam from 1895 in Salina , Kansas , USA . It was taken from the original document on file at the Smokey Valley Genealogical Society and Library in Salina , and reprinted by the Salina Journal.

8th Grade Final Exam: Salina , KS - 1895

Grammar (Time, one hour)

1. Give nine rules for the use of capital letters.

2. Name the parts of speech and define those that have no modifications.

3. Define verse, stanza and paragraph.

4. What are the principal parts of a verb? Give principal parts of 'lie, 'play,' and 'run.'

5. Define case; illustrate each case.

6 What is punctuation? Give rules for principal marks of punctuation.

7 - 10. Write a composition of about 150 words and show therein that you understand the practical use of the rules of grammar.

Arithmetic (Time,1 hour 15 minutes)

1. Name and define the Fundamental Rules of Arithmetic.

2. A wagon box is 2 ft. Deep, 10 feet long, and 3 ft. Wide. How many bushels of wheat will it hold?

3. If a load of wheat weighs 3,942 lbs., what is it worth at 50cts/bushel, deducting 1,050 lbs. For tare?

4. District No 33 has a valuation of $35,000. What is the necessary levy to carry on a school seven months at $50 per month, and have $104 for incidentals?

5. Find the cost of 6,720 lbs. Coal at $6.00 per ton.

6. Find the interest of $512.60 for 8 months and 18 days at 7 percent.

7. What is the cost of 40 boards 12 inches wide and 16 ft. Long at $20 per metre?

8. Find the bank discount on $300 for 90 days (no grace) at 10 percent.

9. What is the cost of a square farm at $15 per acre, the distance of which is 640 rods?

10. Write a Bank Check, a Promissory Note, and a Receipt.

U.S. History (Time, 45 minutes)

1. Give the epochs into which U.S. History is divided.

2. Give an account of the discovery of America by Columbus.

3. Relate the causes and results of the Revolutionary War.

4. Show the territorial growth of the United States.

5. Tell what you can of the history of Kansas.

6. Describe three of the most prominent battles of the Rebellion.

7. Who were the following: Morse, Whitney, Fulton, Bell, Lincoln, Penn, and Howe?

8. Name event s connected with the following dates: 1607, 1620, 1800, 1849, and 1865.

Orthography (Time, one hour)

1. What is meant by the following: alphabet, phonetic, orthography, etymology, syllabication.

2. What are elementary sounds? How classified?

3. What are the following, and give examples of each: trigraph, subvocals, diphthong, cognate letters, linguals.

4. Give four substitutes for caret 'u.'

5. Give two rules for spelling words with final 'e.' Name two exceptions under each rule.

6. Give two uses of silent letters in spelling. Illustrate each.

7. Define the following prefixes and use in connection with a word: bi, dis-mis, pre, semi, post, non, inter, mono, sup.

8. Mark diacritically and divide into syllables the following, and name the sign that indicates the sound: card, ball, mercy, sir, odd, cell, rise, blood, fare, last.

9. Use the following correctly in sentences: cite, site, sight, fane, fain, feign, vane, vain, vein, raze, raise, rays.

10. Write 10 words frequently mispronounced and indicate pronunciation by use of diacritical marks and by syllabication.

Geography (Time, one hour)

1 What is climate? Upon what does climate depend?

2. How do you account for the extremes of climate in Kansas?

3. Of what use are rivers? Of what use is the ocean?

4. Describe the mountains of North America.

5. Name and describe the following: Monrovia, Odessa, Denver, Manitoba, Hecla, Yukon, St. Helena, Juan Fernandez, Aspinwall and Orinoco.

6. Name and locate the principal trade centers of the U.S.

7. Name the republics of Europe and give the capital of each.

8. Why is the Atlantic Coast colder than the Pacific in the same latitude?

9. Describe the process by which the water of the ocean returns to the sources of rivers.

10. Describe the movements of the earth. Give the inclination of the earth.

New LangPeeve

2008-05-11T10:16:00.004-05:00

"We have to incent new technologies to address..." the end of the sentence does not matter because we see that by "incent" you mean "encourage" and that you're verbbing "incentive" and trying to get close to "incite" without the mob-psychosis connotations.

Though, in the case of technologies and social/economic redesign that might keep the global ass whipping Mother Nature (as Kali) is soon to deliver from actually slapping us back into the early 19th Century (and earlier in many parts of the world), I would encourage you to use the word "incite." As in, "We need to incite new..... forms of life real damn fast."

Roll this around on your tongue: "Teaching should incent curiosity," or "Both faith and ethics should incent generosity," or "Sunday news programs do not incent the seriousness of thinking required of the electorate at this moment in our history."

Now, make up a few of your own with this new transitive verb and feel how they sound to you. Do any of those sentences make you WANT to get up and do whatever it is they suggest?

No. Because "incent" lands in the mouth like a tablespoon of solid lead.

"Incent" is slightly less infelicitious than "incentivize" (which just screams: oh i want to sound smarter than i am), but let me just say that both words appear in the Random House Dictionary (not any of the snootier dicts) -- which, RHD is not exactly the gatekeeper of American usage.

As with the use of "impact" for solving the affect/effect distinction, this is just a cheat and not sign of real linguistic invention. As with "impact" this use comes out of the business communities. As with "impact," this makes my teeth itch.

Just learn to use the words we have. I love that this mongrel language of ours is flexible, creative, responsive to the zeitgeist, includes the words "D'oh!" and "sussuration:" but for the love of all souls;

invent more effective and affective, smarter and prettier words.

Sex, Labor, and My Car

2008-04-29T09:35:00.004-05:00

Sexuality became commodified and started appearing everywhere, but without the least trace of individuality. The porn industry taught us how to have sex. Like fashion, the more sexuality is standardized, the more easily it can be sold.

Even the Europeans are getting bored with faked sexuality. Please, do not have your sex by the image. Instead, follow this advice.

Globalized labor in the EU looks a lot like globalized labor in NAFTA (except for the legal status of national borders). But you figured on that, right?

Also, my little 92 Nissan Sentra gets 34 MPG, with old oil and underinflated tires, and maybe a power steering leak (to be rectified shortly).

Cool Posts/Blogs inspired by humility and priviledge

2008-04-28T09:25:00.005-05:00

On how be patient with your imperfect self: "How to Fuck Up." At Shakesville, which is a pretty cool news, politics, live well kind of place. They're having fun with McCain right now, which is entertaining because, well, it is. Not nice fun, but fun.

Which, one of my fave male feminist bloggers, Hugo Schwyzer, linked as part of his thinking about how he doesn't deconstruct and rectifiy his white priviledge nearly enough:

I’m tired of being one of those people whose sensitivity is so carefully tuned to some and not to others.
So I’m not giving up blogging. But something has got to change. I’ve got to get better, much better, not to increase my readership but because my future children and my current students desperately need me to be the kind of man I am not yet, in words or actions, choosing to be.

If there’s one thing I know, it’s that recovery from bad behavior happens. And if there’s another thing I know, with nearly ten years clean and sober, it’s that it happens in community. Preferably with a sponsor. So I need an anti-racism sponsor, and my project is to find one. I’ve got some ideas of where to look on campus. If I can have a boxing coach and a Pilates instructor to make my body hard, if I can have a spiritual director to teach me how to deepen my relationship with God, I sure as hell can have someone who will help open my eyes and kick my ass until I surrender forever the privileges to which I so viciously and viscerally cling.

As a link he includes to Feministe shows, it's possible that breaking down one's own cultural baggage doesn't happen enough because, well, read this.

Also, this whole blog sent to me by Shane: TheGSpot, feminism, inequality, smartness.

And then, just because the outrage channel in my brain has been worn completely and totally out, I'll let Bitch PhD tell you about how the Reps are not interested in OUR democracy, or any, really, to tell truth.

I suppose I'm tagging this a culture of life post because on the whole, these are good observations in that direction many of which I should continue to undertake myself.

Intellectual Generosity

2008-04-27T15:38:00.003-05:00

I shall meander.

It's raining, I'm procrastinating. My horse, Seeker, seems to have a bad case of either mites or mange. This is distressing. I want the rain to come harder so he'll just come in the barn and I can work on him. If not, I shall coax with treats. Poor enormous baby. There has been Much Rain here, and I have been lax in my springtime attention to him. Not good karma.

Several conversations have arisen in the last months about intellectual generosity, collegeiality, and the like. MC and I have shuttled poems and essays back and forth for review, commenting at length, as acadanerd friends do. She's lamented the dearth of such generosity in her department even in conversation. This is the department where she hopes I am hired by the way. I suspect this is just SOP for most places. She says of this aspect of collegeiality that she holds it above most others. I wonder, hard and often, what it is with colleagues that they take their differences of literary period, or critical school, or philosophical position, or favorite color to lead as if by force of logic to intellectual stinginess. I am not the first to wonder this, I know. Common Knowledge's response to this is one that I intuitively dig: irenic scholarship --> peaceful and peace-making. Do you, really, have to agree with me aforehand in order to read my work attentively, or even responsibly, or listen and speak together? It helps, that makes it easier, but we didn't get in this biz to do easy. I maunder on. Writing of substance on this would be fun to do.

My grandfather's dementia (Greek for mind-away, isn't that, well, poetic?) deepens. It's just regular old wear and tear on the brain (plus decades of highly functional but impressive acoholism). He's cheerful enough and all, and physically healthy for an 87 year old, but the other night he asked my mom why her mom wasn't at dinner with them. Well, grandma's been dead and in an urn on top of her piano for six years. Fleur said, "Well, she's gone, Daddy." Grandpa asks, "Fine, but when will she be back?" Dementia does not do metaphor of any kind, not in his head (in some it's all metaphor all the time). But, what does one tell him? Truth? That might be devastating, given that he sort of cracked in half when she died. She's out playing bridge? No, because he's very good at obsessing about anticipated events: a visit from one or all of us, his wife coming home, a trip to the grocery store. He would just get stuck on, "She's coming back soon," and never go to sleep wondering where she is. What's fair and kind?

I sent a recent suite of poems to friends for comment. They're all entitled "conge" (should have an accent aigue on that last e: Konzhay), which is a no longer practiced French genre of farewell poem, usually written shortly before death/exile/etc. I'll bet they were all the rage during the Terror. This is my new toy, my Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms which has tons of terms and concepts in it that don't get much play anymore (see: ghostword -- tempting isn't it?). I've been pulling things about and writing from/around them. Very fun. ---- Anyway, I found this word for this genre and four poems came out. They're farewells of sorts, to situations or states of being, not people or this life. Very "post-lyric" and whatnot. Straight ripped a couple moves from J. Graham because I'm writing about her work these days (plus she mimics freaking Everybody at one point or another, love it!). Well, L over in Holland is forwarding the suite on to a friend who works for (or edits??) Yang. L hear's Pound in these poems (which, wha??, but OK). So, Yang's former editor translated and published, for instance, Michael Palmer, Luis Zukofsky, bunches of Objectivists and Language poets. DUDE! Thanks L! Now that, people, that's intellectual generosity. You return some karma to me, you get some karma for you. Whether they take it or not. But do let's observe that so far I have a Much higher acceptance for my poetry in, ahem, Europe than in the US. And just what the ? is up with that?

You Go Rev. Wright!!!!

2008-04-26T07:41:00.004-05:00

UPDATE: Please note, this post was composed after watching Wright with Bill Moyers before the shall-we-say performances of Sunday and Monday, and the heartbreaking spectacle of the end of a long friendship. Note too: democracy is for grown-ups who fundamentally accept the prinicple that friends, even pastors and their parishoners, can disagree while loving and respecting each other. Democracy is a widening, an opening discipline. In case you wonder why we have an electoral college, pledge and super delegates: this (w)right here is the reason.

****************
Do Not be hoodwinked by soundbites. Rev. Wright on Bill Moyer's Journal last night aquitted himself quite well. Here's the interview, the whole hour. There is nothing to fear in this man that is not :

1. A legitimate and careful reading of scripture, and
2. That same reading informed by actual knowledge of history, and
3. A practice of his faith and ministry based on the premise that lived world outside the church and the lived world inside it must be thought and loved to together.

One of his main points last night boiled down to this: it is possible to know what is immoral in our history and still love this country. It is possible to condemn a government's deeds and still love its ideals. It is possible, necessary, to love your god, your family/friends/community, your country, in the full knowledge of their truth -- which is infinitely more complicated than any mythology you create for them or they create about themselves.

Related point: My fave quote of this past while is from the Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson, "If you really live your live on the model of Christ, you will be in trouble most of the time."

Do Not Be Hoodwinked by the information chop shops.

Grocery Shopping: 2008

2008-04-15T14:27:00.003-05:00

Phone rings.

Me: Hello?
Fleur: Hi honey, are you in the kitchen?
Me: No, I'm in the office.
Fleur: Could you check up there for the Aldi list? I forgot it.
Me: Sure, I'll be right back.
Fleur: Well, instead, could you email the list to your brother? He's on the plane, but when he gets here he's getting supplies, and he can go by Aldi, and then bring our things out here tonight.
Me: Uh, yeh, sure.
Fleur: Thanks, that'll make things easier.

And it will, but let's do realize that I'm emailing my brother a grocery list whilst he is en route from Denver so that when he gets to his house here in Goshen he can get on-line and download the email with the grocery list that is upstairs in the kitchen, here in Goshen. About which, I could even just call him once he's home. Like, on a land-line even.

Just so we're clear.

Obama, guns, liberal elites, memory

2008-04-15T08:33:00.004-05:00

Obama said the wrong thing about small town America. People are freaking out. But they're freaking out way too much about the wrong thing. I could and do point out that W said a similarly stoopid thing once, to a dinner for the uber-rich corporate barons, the real elite,

"...or as I like to call you: my base."

And real Americans put him in office, again. To my complete astonishment and dismay.

The National Review points out that Obama is one of the elite, and knows little about real or ordinary Americans.

The Nation points out that these scary liberal elites don't exist, not the way you think they do.

And what's more: the very people teaching you to fear liberal elites like the red scare are ...

conservative elites.

From the Ivies, from the priviledged classes. All of them. Even Ann Coulter.

So, to borrow from Lewis Black: if you don't want people who use the word "summer" as a verb running your country, your industries, your universities, your media: you want revolution.

Enough with the smoke and mirrors already.

Obama and Clinton and McCain didn't start out elite or "ruling class", they worked (or married) their ways up there, like real Americans wish they could, mostly can't, and aren't serious enough about it to insist on the kind of political and economic reform (deep, wide, huge reforms of sweeping consequence) that would actually help them.

Anyone who rises to these levels of power is elite, hangs out with the elite, rubs elbows, kisses ass, summers, and generally does not eat dinner at Applebee's or shop in big box stores with you and me. Dig?

If you want influence with that class of people, you have three choices:

1. Become one of them.
2. Make them very, very uncomfortable.
3. Be one of them, and make them uncomfortable, establish the New Deal which made America amazing, get elected to the Oval Office four times.... oh, right.

The conservative elites have dismantled all that now. Right. Might need a revised version, but you and I will not get that unless we insist. Creatively.

The kinds of organizations (unions) and regulations and laws and cultural attitudes required to make them uncomfortable, well, we real Americans have to work harder to make those a reality and in ways the "ruling" class doesn't see coming.

I can handle smoke blown up my ass, but those shards of mirrors? Dude, that's harsh.

Cool it.

Dear FAA, American, United, Delta, et alii

2008-04-11T10:39:00.003-05:00

Remember this:

You. Carry. People.

PRSC

PS. Look, I get the culture of the post-industrial capitalist world. Quarterly profits, off-loading risk down the line to the consumer/citizen. I get it. I get that it is quite other than a culutre of life, in which humans are of primary value.

You carry people. To my mind, you just entered the same echelon of trust and respect I offer HMOs.

What's Going Right?

2008-04-08T10:16:00.004-05:00

Lots of things. I offer this little list because all my dreams lately have had one theme: frustration, road blocks, not getting there, etc. Fortnately, they're all so far out that none have that 'oh, this could happen in a year's time' feel to them.

1. Tikkun offers the Global Marshall Plan: use reason and generosity to make the world Better (and more secure). On first read, it looks marvelous to me. It will require that many leaders undergo an internal and personal paradigm shift. But, that's what Tikkun is all about.

2. Oprah and Tolle's classes on A New Earth. Fleur bought the book, I'm handling the internet witchery for her. This means I'm reading the book. I'm glad. There's people to process with, there's a workbook. This prevents me from my intellectual's habit of being satisfied with just reading. While I sometimes get that Oprah eye-roll tic, there is no denying that this book and these classes mean that there is a world wide community of people reaching for the paradigm shift Tikkun is also pushing. On which point, also the work at the Integral Institute.

3. The US primaries. I know, that sounds insane, but check out Mark Morford's take on the Obama phenom. We are not dead of soul, so yay for us.

4. There's Guernica Magazine. Nooks and crannies of consequence, and lots of interviews with writers. It's smart but not stupid-smart art and politics and culture mag. Have some. Muslim punk scene in the US, anyone?

So, a reminder that not everything is a road block. Though on behest of M, I have been reading Dewey's Art as Experience before bed. One good line on this subject is that Resistance is not just an obstacle to be overcome, but a signal of a moment to reflect more fully. Also, props to Dewey for being a philosopher whose aesthetics are not bonkers.

Derrida gets fears, I get 'stupids' about writing

2008-04-03T11:49:00.001-05:00

but seeing this, like reading Ronell on stupidity in the writing process, just makes me feel BETTER.

Attack Ads-a-paloza

2008-04-03T08:59:00.002-05:00

I fucking love graduate students!!! Here's a three-way campaign you must, must not miss!

Kant Attack Ad.

Nietzsche Attack Ad.

Kierkegaard Attack Ad.

Oh, my face hurts. Too fun!

(Also, turns out YouTube has lots of clips for brainiacs. Yay! Now I'll get an account.)

So ... Confused: Salander Art Mess

2008-04-02T10:28:00.002-05:00

If you care to, read this. Art dealer gets into fraud (?) suit over attempts to change valuations in the art market because Old Masters auction for less than pop art.

I'm processing. There's almost too much going on here.

Around and About Obama's Pastor

2008-03-28T09:33:00.003-05:00

Here a caveat: I know lots of smart, good people don't know all that much about our history because our history books are not as honest as they could be. Also, I know lots of smart, good people don't have political memories that go back more than six months, or the time or fortitude to try to get context on crazy "issues" that come up in campaigns. Ok. That said, here goes:

First: I don't know how many more times, or how strongly, Obama can say some version of "Wright was often wrong, I do not agree with his statements." He's going to say it AGAIN tonight on TV. I would rather hear him and Clinton talking about the differences in their proposals for responding the economic troubels we're in. But, then, I vote on issues and policy -- not race, or gender, or whether I'd like to date/drink with/invite to a bar-b-que a candidate.

Because I don't live in a world all my own.

PBS's MacNeil News Hour last night had a 15 minute disussion about The Pastor Panic. Generally, very interesting and helpful comments were made. But, the man from the ethics society said, by way of racial comparison, that if it were discovered that McCain belonged to a church headed by a loud right-wing conspiracy theorist whose sermons incited anger and hate, the issue would stick around just as it has with Obama.

Maybe. Now. It might.

But it is still a non-issue over which the GOP consultants are "lickinig their chops" according to this morning's CNN story. Greaaaat.

We've had a president whose religious friends and advisors were nuts in ways quite similar in form (but not content) to the way Wright is nuts. For eight years, that president has been both culturally supporting and economically screwing the far-right culturally conservative hate mongers who got him elected. Gay people, according to these folks, are the new communist threat. In some documentaries, Buchanan has admitted that when the Cold War ended, the conservatives needed a new enemy, and they picked this tee-tiny, politically disenfranchised, minority community -- because they have ballistic missiles in their condos, you know. These scary people used the angst and economic stresses as motivators for their congregations to want to repeal the gains of the Civil Rights and Women's movements and the New Deal to boot, and many would like to see "fags burn in hell" as their demonstrations at some famous burials of dead sons in Wyoming have shown. Fallwell after 9-11 anyone? God punished America because we tolerate gays, and women's rights, and abortion, and the whole catalogue. (I would ask, then what really does He have against the Gulf Coast and Florida? What are those folks up to? Come to think of it, didn't that KKK guy get elected down that way back in the early oughts?? David Duke? Maybe God doesn't like him. Who knows.)

I mean, 9-11 had no historical connection to the 'freedom fighters' in Afghanistan who fought the Soviets in our proxy war, and then we abandoned that country to try to rebuild itself, and the power vacuum let the Taliban and Al Qaeda get a good, deep, foothold there .... noooooo. Not at all. Couldn't be related. Couldn't we were a bit shortsighted on that back under Regan? Noooo. ---And Bush and the right labeled anyone who suggested historical shortsightedness and selfishness as part of the opportunity (if not cause) of that horror, well, they were anti-American. Not historically honest, just plain bad.

These way-right-evangelicals were Bush's buddies and congregations, and he said so, and No One Challenged Him On It In Two Elections! Not the press, not the other candidates. -- Bush did not have to repudiate these nut-jobs whose God is so hateful and scared. In fact, he did quite a bit to try to legislate their cultural agendas. Because they love America, but they hate me and my ethnic and my gay friends in a blazing hot way --- Not in the mainstream press. Harper's and The Nation and Mother Jones and Ms. and Tikkun raised these questions, but y'all out there in the big media did not listen, would not stand up to the business agendas of your corporate bosses and hold the man's feet to the fire--which is your job. Did not bring these cultural points to bear against that loon and his hawkish but criminally stupid and atavistic friends.

I suppose we learned our lesson, but we're using that shiny new knowledge to bash a candidate who is Clearly Capable of doing his own critical thinking and who does not, like so many of the poor sheep, just up and swallow what ever his pastor is serving up or whatever hubbub is circulating via email. Obama is not beholden to a religious and cultural agenda in the way Bush was, not by a long shot. To think that Wright=Obama, you have to believe that Obama is an idiot -- and if you believed that, you would not be attacking him for things Another Man Said. You would be pointing out that his principles and ideas are idiotic. Which you are not. Because there is no traction there for you, dear GOP.

So, now we're applying the lesson. Well, good for us.

Some of my mother's bridge partners (Clinton voters, at least by demographic) were excited about Obama, but now they're just "so dissapointed." That is white middle class code for "shocked." On this, two points. First: name me one person in your life who has never disappointed/shocked you (that is not your god). Just One.

Second: Let's think about Obama's work when he was in Chicago. He's working with blacks and Many Other Ethnic and Social Groups on the south side of Chicago, which is where Chicago "kept" blacks and the Irish, conveniently away from the WASPs up northside. It's where the economically depressed neighborhoods are, its where a socially conscious lawyer would be working, the people he would be working with and for are living, and it would make all the sense in the world for him to worship in a church that they attend. Because seeing him in church on Sunday makes him personally available, knowable, trustworthy. And one thing many disenfrancshised blacks don't trust is a privileged one. It made professional and political sense for him to attend that church. It made him, in short, part of the community.

Now, Wright has retired some time ago. Now, Obama is running for President, which would make him the representative of all of us, all of us. And guess what? He's shown us that he doesn't follow Wright's party line. He has worked with, and it is publically documented, every kind of American there is, befriended, supported, etc. He's related to some of every one of our demographics. Not just said it in that great speech (though, abou the Muslims, Obama....), but SHOWN his cross cultural and cross ethnic cooperation in his work his whole career. He does not just talk the talk, people.

Which I think is a very good thing given the recently expanded powers of the Executive Branch.

I would be "disappointed" if Obama had said what Wright did. But, let's try to remember the example I give my white students when they give me the "why do we have to deal with this race stuff, everything's fine now...." line. Well, my dear historical innocents, listen up. My great uncle Bill, who was white, died by shooting himself in the gut by accident while out deer hunting in West Texas. (yes, really, great story) My cousin Mary, who is black, her great uncle Bill died while being lynched and disembowled by white people in East Texas (some of them probably also my cousins). And those same white people, all across the US and North and South, also lynched women (some pregnant) and children. So, our conversations about "rememeber great uncle Bill" around the dinner table have different emotions, tones, and lessons associated with them. This dirty little secret is not a cultural practice that we emphasize in our history books. Liberal-y white families also don't brag about their great-grandpa who organized that lynching in ____________, back in the day while telling family history at Thanksgiving. Becuase it would be embarassing and "disappointing" to do so. So, that horror is still in living black, but not white, memory, you see.

Plus, let's review Jim Crow and racist economic policy and ...... oh boy. I wind up being a history prof all just to explain to them why the narrator of The Invisible Man is invisible, and pissed off. But, props to the kids: they don't get it. They're really a bunch more cool about being friends with people who don't look like them, or speak with the same accent, or have sex like they do. Which, folks in the Baby Boom generation, and the in-between generation of Obama, well, not as easily as these kids and some of us in Gen X. --- The cultural right is pissed that the social changes instigated by the brave of those generations are working.

And Obama is paying for it. (So's Clinton, but that's another post)

Folk in Chicago have these scary family stories too. That's why they moved to Chicago and New York and St. Louis from the Jim Crow South in the first place!!!! And then, well, things only got a little better. And the whites moved out of the cities, and the tax based dropped out, and .... voila! The conditions we refer to now when we say "urban". Chicago aint' much different from St. Louis, and y'all know how cozy the races are here, how equitably public funds are distributed, what great care people get at the public hospital in East St. Louis with its abundant funding, how marvelous St. Louis's public urban schools are. (please, connect some dots)

So, deal with your disappointment, mom's not very well informed friends. No one's whole history, including yours, is spotless. Do you also think the Hillary Nut Cracker is just a cute novetly toy? Come on. We still have lots of very hard working through to do with our history.

It's the policy, stupid. It's the advisors who will be the Cabinet, stupid. And on policy and advisors, McCain is Bush III. Are you really looking forward to four more years of this? Really? Are you? Over this "issue"? When you will need to also elect more Dems to Congress in order to get either Clinton's or Obama's policies made into legal reality? Really, this is where you want to focus your concern and worry? Well, knock yourself out.

YAY, the book

2008-03-21T13:47:00.001-05:00

Editor says:

This is absolutely fine. I understand all of your reasoning and I agree with you absolutely. I believe that when a contract is offered on an unfinished work that it should be allowed to develop organically. I do hope you will further pursue Stein, perhaps, as you suggest, in a second book. I think you should proceed exactly in the way that you lay out in this email.

I say:
Whoooooohoooooo! Hippety Hop!!!

Nail Biting

2008-03-19T15:25:00.004-05:00

In which our heroine continues to blow her authority effect in blogging about the book:

So, I've sent the email below to several friends who might either know or at least have an intuition about how to proceed here in the To Stein or Not to Stein crisis.

One has sent back that he can't think because his beloved dog just died. So face Jerusalem and send him love. Because this is terrible and shattering.

One wrote back that "editors are very simple people" and to just send them the book as I choose to complete it, not bother the seriously overbooked acquisitions editor with compositional and thematic issues about which they will know not too much and will have to consult with review boards. A good point.

One wrote back that I might simply send a revised chapter summary reflecting the changes. Give, as is my impulse, full disclosure and show that:

the new shape of the book is simply so much more compelling elegant and leads to this gorgeous sort of meta-historical moment of writing about these poems that are constructed dialogically, and that moreover, and to boot!, Graham's poems in two of her books are very much having a conversation with Bonnefoy and Perse!! And all that neatly theorized in the poetics of being two, you see, because it so works.

Because honestly, Stein and all that is another book about this poetics, but about Another Poetic Tradition -- not so organic as I had wanted to cram it into being. (a move quite contra the whole ethos of Irigaray's ethics and the poetics, moreover) (the quite clever conclusion solving a major critical cat fight-- a ha!)

This is my impulse. Fair warning, chance for them to think about it. It might also just be suicide, since the peer review person/s will have no idea what the proposal said.

So, if you haven't answered my email, do. I need to take the temperature. And if you happen to be or know someone with practical insight here, do let me know.

Meanwhile, I maunder on.

Obama on Race and America

2008-03-18T23:31:00.004-05:00

I hope you didn't miss it. But, if you missed it, here's the whole speech.
No matter your vote now or in November, THIS is worth hearing.
This is how you rise above.
By facing up.

Oh ... No

2008-03-18T11:22:00.002-05:00

So, I'm sending the following letter to my editor:

As I complete the chapter on Perse and return to the chapter on Stein, I am finding that the fit is not good. The chapters on Bonnefoy, Perse, and Graham are close and interconnected readings. The chapter on Stein is becoming more clearly inorganic to the rest of the project. It’s turning into a bridge to another book, a metacritical piece on Stein as the Objectivists and Language poets quite consciously descend from her work. Those schools are so coherent, and so critically conscious of their relation to Stein, I am finding that while their poetry and critical work can be thought through under the umbrella of a poetics of being two, cramming that other branch of poetry into this book, even a little bit, is not an elegant approach. I had thought that the difference in origins would not matter so much, Bonnefoy, Perse and Graham descending more clearly from the Symbolists – but it does.

To a good reader, a refusal to recognize these points of difference in a project very much about how difference matters would seem confusing at best and quite simply stubborn at worst.

So, I propose this change: the book still develops Irigaray’s ethics as a critical frame, as a poetics toward and around which Bonnefoy, Perse, and Graham are writing; but with the added dimension that both Bonnefoy and Perse are influences on Graham’s work heretofore not discussed. Every critic connects her to Stevens, but no critics have yet connected her work to Bonnefoy and Perse. The echoes of them in her work are quite strong, sometimes nearly imitations at both the level of structure and linguistic style.

The result of this change would be a more aesthetically organic project that develops a poetics of being two, and establishes (the beginnings) of a line of poets who approach that poetic. The key to this line of reasoning lies in the performance of close readings on the terms of the poetics I develop, and since both Bonnefoy’s and Perse’s poems are quite long (both in the range of 80 to 100), we won’t have to worry about the book seeming ‘thin.’ Further, those close readings fully prepare a reader for the readings of Graham’s poems, which are considerably shorter, but can run to three and four pages and whose themes and metaphors develop across whole books (one result of Perse’s influence).

In short, it’s making more sense to go for depth rather than breadth. I had very much wanted Stein and the introduction of the tradition that descends from her work in here. I think it’s an important bit of reading to do for the purposes of feminist aesthetics, but it simply does not fit in this book. The work on Stein’s poem, the critical readings of them, and the poets related to her simply do not fit the larger direction or style of this book.

My deepest hope is that this realization is not a major impediment for you and Lexington. The book you will be receiving will, I think, be the stronger and more compelling for the change – the work in it and its implications the clearer for the shaper focus.

**********************

Mercy. -- No, the iPod had nothing to do with it. Really. REally. I've just been W.R.O.N.G. about this all this time. As I said to Red Lotus, writing is mostly listening and crashing into your own stupidity, as I glean from the honesty of Avital Ronnel. It's just so true.

eep!

2008-03-14T11:44:00.001-05:00

i have purchased an iPod, the 30G. what a tempting distraction from my work. what a nice chance to help an acquaintance raise some moving funds. what a tempting distraction from my work. eep.

Good and Bad People

2008-03-09T15:37:00.001-05:00

Thrift store employee

v.

Iraqi Govt.

Guests and Pet Peeves Re: Body Image

2008-03-08T10:36:00.006-06:00

Our Guest accidentally reminded me of a pet peeve that I've never told my friends is a peeve -- out of politeness. When Guest arrive the other night, the first thing she asked me was, "Wow, have you lost weight?"

It's a kind-of compliment.

Because, you know, every curvy woman in the US has a patriotic duty to be dissatisfied with her body and be trying to lose weight and to gush thanks when people indicate that she might just have dropped half a pound.

It's as if simply telling a woman she looks good today, or in that dress or those pants, or just as is might ruin her humility and make her too happy and strong to contend with. Well, I'm with Nietzsche on that: give me strong contenders. Most of the US, however unconsciously or innocently (or pointedly), goes for the back-handed take-down.

I have a pal in TX, gay and male and more body-hating-conscious than most of the women I know, who would say that to me every time we saw each other. He meant it nicely, as a compliment. I love him. He's a dear friend. I never told him that when he asked that my brain went, "Huh ... thanks." I would smile and say, "No, I haven't." And that would be it. This went on for the whole six years we worked together.

The sub-text of the "compliment" is that I SHOULD be trying to lose to weight. I should be distracted from relationships, scholarship, poetry, fun, and spirit by the fact that I have a body, am female, and am therefore permanently defective in some obvious and socially embarrassing/limiting way.

Here's the thing: I Am Not Trying To Lose Weight. Never have, likely never will. I'm pretty damn happy in my flexible, strong, balanced, talented, curvy body that rarely falls ill.

I have never, in my life, asked anyone if they've lost weight. Or if their hair color is natural. Or if they wear elevators in their shoes. Or if their eyes are really that shade of violet. Or if they've had some work done recently. Or if that chest waxing hurt. And I wish that y'all would cut it out because this (probably accidental) policing of each other's bodies translates to a policing of to what ends we put our energy, dedicate our life force.

What I can tell you is that I have never been at loss for flirtations or attractions though I do not walk about the planet Knowing That I Am All That. Being too physically strong "for a girl" in high school put the hex pride, and vanity ain't pretty.

So please, just stop at "Wow."

Non Sequitur hits it again

2008-03-05T12:50:00.002-06:00

While I'm Procratinating: William F. Buckley, Jr.

2008-03-05T09:57:00.003-06:00

I LOVE it that Buckely's son told the world that his dad died at his desk fingers on the keys, mid-composition, with his boots on, as son put it.

No, people, not for mean progressive-girl reasons.

I love it because that's how a thinker and writer should go out. And because the intelli-nerd in me loved how WFBjr could kick. ass.

I was probably the only teenager I knew who really dug watching Firing Line. It was way good prep for grad school and academic fencing. It was fascinating, compelling, inspiring. I did not agree with WFBjr much, but I learned oodles watching him and his opponents work.

I read The National Review because I like to know what smart and "smart" conservatives are thinking and how, and because my aunt reads it, which makes it easier to debate with her. I got her turned on to Harper's and The Nation so she'd have some smart (and "smart") liberals and progressives to read.

Also, there are two degrees of separation between me and WFBjr. My grandpa spent a stint as the Buckely family's lawyer while WFB was on the Supreme Court, just until the elder son could take over doing that work, like three or four years. I didn't know this until I was about 14, at the ranch with the grandparents, watching Firing Line. My G-pa harumphed into the living room, leaning pointedly on his rather elegant mahogany cane, stood right behind me, gazed at the TV for a second, and said, "Harumph, that fellow was a jackass when he was six years old." I knew G-pa was a little vain and didn't much appreciate precocious children (me being a case in point), but Wha? This led to the storytelling in which I learned just what a major player my G-pa had been in his day (and it went beyond the Buckley's, but that's another post). I have a copy of WFB's book, or one of them, inscribed to my G-pa with thanks.

So, his passing is not just a historical matter for me. It's a matter of someone I admired (not for his opinions themselves) passing, and honorably. Which, more with the honorable, please. There's a good deal of retrospecting going on in the press, and here, for your review are a few of the retrospections: The Nation (really about how converstism these days offers no arguments), Alternet, and The National Review (where you will have to scroll down and eventually search on his name).

Weather, Politics, Writing

2008-03-05T08:48:00.007-06:00

Seasons: Sunday was late spring with 78 degrees and balm for the soul. Fleur and I spread mulch on all but two gardens (which F. created, no landscapers here). To the tune of 56, 3 cubic feet each, bags of somtimes half frozen mulch. Place looks fantastic. The robins and the kildees rode the warm air and awakening insects at least this far north to be freaked out by a fresh snow of 4" to 12" around here. Poor birds. And the mockingbirds are chasing them around to boot. Also, winter wins, at least, I'm tired of every single of one of the wool sweaters I almost never wore in Texas. But, I am going sledding and building some snowpeople (if the snow is still sticky).

Guests: the wife of one of Hemingway's best pals is staying with us for a few days. Her brother-in-law is in the hospital. The only problem with this is that she is one of those people who cannot Not Talk. Y'all know how I feel about that. Sigh. A small thing to help her support her family.

Politics: Sen. Clinton has hinted at a shared ticket with Sen. Obama. Might be machiavelian shenannigans, might be a fucking great idea!!!! I wouldn't care who's on top of the ticket (though, one can settle that by totalling the popular vote), but I can say this: if Obama were Prez, the racist fuckwits probably wouldn't try to kill him because then there would be Clinton -- white and black women and people of color would ALL get their historical sea change and not have to hem and haw over gender or race justice movements, a problem nicely addressed by several feminists in The Nation just now -- we would have two (or three, or four? Michelle is no slouch) whip smart people in the Executive Branch who would do good things and, I think, create a situation in which the Boomers and Xers work together (Obama not quite being an Xer but lots of us and lots Millenials are voting for him) and maybe do some longer term thinking (I salivate at the possibilities for the line up of advisors and Secretaries of This and That) -- and those white men who just can't vote for a woman for any number of wholly emotional and irrational reasons would get their sexist commupence! The general election would be the most interesting, maybe even the most particapatory in, like, ev-er. Quite a test of the country's "progress": almost progressive black man and white woman vs. old guard white guy. That's an experiment I would Deeeelight to see run. And the poor press, what would they do if they couldn't play race against gender in their little observations? Really, the triangulation would be fascinating!

Books by other people: Seems Oprah's been duped by another "memoir". No dis to the great O. Some writers just don't have the chop to call their book a NOVEL and compete with all those really good writers. Not to mention the insult to all the real memoirs, stories by people who lived them. Hence the word "fraud": you "memoirists" didn't earn it either way. Seriously, do not "cover" for your lack of writerly or personal chop by appeal to "being real" and being "not a writer" but some battered soul who just had to tell us about the heroine habit you screwed your dealer to support and hid from your nice suburban family for ten years, mommy. Nooooo. Go learn to write and call it a novel. Novelists go to a great deal of trouble to create convincing worlds, even worlds that examine contemporary social phenomena, and they don't fraudulently import cache and voyeuristic atavism from the word "memoir." They just do the goddamn work. Also, I smell a cultural bleed from "reality" TV to the "reality" memoir, and that cannot be a good thing -- for writing or for reality.

Books by me (and other people): A friend is writing a novel, a sort of magical realist multicultural western (which works Much better than it sounds put that way) , and sends a draft to me with this message in the email, "I am having real trouble with this." The sound of a writer in panic. No pointed questions about this or that, just the general, "Arrrrrrrgggghhhh!" -- I know the feeling. I'm having it this week. This is the hard thing about writing creative and scholarly work that makes it different from journalism (not that journalism is easy): there are any number of points in the process where you do not know what you are doing, or do not know whether what you are doing makes any sense at all. It is very, very scary given the irrecuperable Chunk of your life on those pages. It is a fear that takes lots of energy to kick through (because that is your only option). It is a fear and a kicking that makes you sullen and a bit short at the dinner table. It is almost always a total illusion. It's only good purpose is to make you stop, re-read, think harder, and then do well. Without these moments of What The Fuck Is Going On Here, writers of poetry, or fiction, or scholarship write crap.