Denial & Revisionism

These days, education in Louisiana is not only plagued by the current ease with which the law enables any public school to slip some non-scientific creationism in with its science courses, there is now a possibility that history itself may be challenged by a nifty bit of revisionism embedded in HB-660, as Lamar says:

Not content to let House Republicans monopolize unconstitutional legislation, Louisiana State Representative Katrina Jackson (D-Monroe) recently filed HB 660, which she’d like to be known as “The Parental Choice Historical Prayer and Pledge Act.”

If passed, Jackson’s bill would allow and encourage public schools to begin each school day with the recitation of the Lord’s Prayer. In fact, it’d mandate BESE to establish a Lord’s Prayer policy. Quoting:

A. The State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, or “state board”, shall establish a policy and develop procedures to allow public school students to participate in the recitation of the Lord’s Prayer and the “Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag” at the commencement of each school day. Such policy and procedures shall include but not be limited to provisions for the following:

(1) Student participation in the recitation of the prayer and pledge shall be voluntary.

(2) Students shall be reminded that the Lord’s Prayer is the prayer that the pilgrim fathers recited when they came to America in search for freedom.

(3) Students shall be informed that these exercises are not meant to influence an individual’s personal religious beliefs in any manner.

(4) The recitations shall be conducted so that students learn of America’s great freedoms, including the freedom of religion symbolized by the recitation of the Lord’s Prayer.

B. The state board shall develop a program of instruction for public schools with regard to the pilgrim fathers.

"Revisionism" is the nicer term for what Representative Jackson is proposing. Much of what is in HB-660 is an outright denial of what those "pilgrim fathers" had in mind for this country, which didn't include separating church and state at all. In fact, the history of religious tolerance in this country is a far messier business than most people like Ms. Jackson and others around the country who have introduced similarly-worded bills in their states would have us believe. As this Smithsonian article says of those pilgrims:

The much-ballyhooed arrival of the Pilgrims and Puritans in New England in the early 1600s was indeed a response to persecution that these religious dissenters had experienced in England. But the Puritan fathers of the Massachusetts Bay Colony did not countenance tolerance of opposing religious views. Their “city upon a hill” was a theocracy that brooked no dissent, religious or political. 

The most famous dissidents within the Puritan community, Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson, were banished following disagreements over theology and policy. From Puritan Boston’s earliest days, Catholics (“Papists”) were anathema and were banned from the colonies, along with other non-Puritans. Four Quakers were hanged in Boston between 1659 and 1661 for persistently returning to the city to stand up for their beliefs.

In a state that, last time I looked, still has a significant number of Catholics in it, I don't think many of them look to the pilgrims as practitioners of freedom of religion.

Also, to get a much larger, more frightening view of what outright, downright insanely stupid denial is, I direct you to Exhibit A. There's a reason why I and my fellow Jews are taught never to forget about the Shoah - remembering the truth of such horrible times is a great tool for helping see the truths about proposed blatant violations of the U.S. Constitution as outlined in bills like HB-660.

The truth about this bill? It's based on lies.

V-Day Pileup: On Silence and Violence

The following has been cross-posted at NOLAFemmes.

There are two links in this post I urge you to contribute to, one being the fund for the recovery of the Garden District robbery and rape victim, the other for the Metropolitan Center for Women and Children. Read on to see why.

More and more, I'm finding it cannot be avoided, no matter how hard women try. We are still surrounded by people who would put us in what they think is "our place," a position that tends to be highly restrictive on any and all physical and mental levels.

Tell me I'm crazy. Go on and talk down to me, I dare you.

...the out-and-out confrontational confidence of the totally ignorant is, in my experience, gendered. Men explain things to me, and other women, whether or not they know what they’re talking about. Some men. 

Every woman knows what I’m talking about. It’s the presumption that makes it hard, at times, for any woman in any field; that keeps women from speaking up and from being heard when they dare; that crushes young women into silence by indicating, the way harassment on the street does, that this is not their world. It trains us in self-doubt and self-limitation just as it exercises men’s unsupported overconfidence. 

I wouldn’t be surprised if part of the trajectory of American politics since 2001 was shaped by, say, the inability to hear Coleen Rowley, the FBI woman who issued those early warnings about al-Qaeda, and it was certainly shaped by a Bush administration to which you couldn’t tell anything, including that Iraq had no links to al-Qaeda and no WMDs, or that the war was not going to be a “cakewalk.” (Even male experts couldn’t penetrate the fortress of their smugness.)... 

...Credibility is a basic survival tool. When I was very young and just beginning to get what feminism was about and why it was necessary, I had a boyfriend whose uncle was a nuclear physicist. One Christmas, he was telling–as though it were a light and amusing subject–how a neighbor’s wife in his suburban bomb-making community had come running out of her house naked in the middle of the night screaming that her husband was trying to kill her. How, I asked, did you know that he wasn’t trying to kill her? He explained, patiently, that they were respectable middle-class people. Therefore, her-husband-trying-to-kill-her was simply not a credible explanation for her fleeing the house yelling that her husband was trying to kill her. That she was crazy, on the other hand…. 

Even getting a restraining order–a fairly new legal tool–requires acquiring the credibility to convince the courts that some guy is a menace and then getting the cops to enforce it. Restraining orders often don’t work anyway. Violence is one way to silence people, to deny their voice and their credibility, to assert your right to control over their right to exist. About three women a day are murdered by spouses or ex-spouses in this country. It’s one of the main causes of death in pregnant women in the U.S. At the heart of the struggle of feminism to give rape, date rape, marital rape, domestic violence, and workplace sexual harassment legal standing as crimes has been the necessity of making women credible and audible.

Events and discussions will occasionally converge that lead me to a boiling point on this subject...

Why it's disgusting and ignorant of you to imply that a woman caught large Mardi Gras beads in a risque manner, for instance. Yeah, it's one of the oldest, sexist, dumbest Carnival tropes, but it does get tiring after a while. I caught huge, LSU-emblazoned beads just from being at the start of the Thoth parade route. Next Carnival season, I'm gonna ask the next guy I see with giant beads on what he flashed for them.

A list of the 10 cities where women earn the highest salaries is always nifty, but women are still earning less than men.

The horrific news about the murder of paraplegic Olympic sprinter Oscar Pistorius' girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, who was an advocate for victims of sexual abuse.

Controversy over the Eve Ensler-organized One Billion Rising Campaign, which I only just heard about today, but I also wonder about its premise...as do many other women around the world.:

I recently listened to a Congolese woman talk in a speak-easy setting of radical grassroots feminists. She was radiantly and beautifully powerful in her unfiltered anger towards the One Billion Rising movement, as she used the words "insulting" and "neo-colonial". She used the analogy of past crimes against humanity, asking us if we could imagine people turning up at the scenes of atrocities and taking pictures or filming for the purposes of "telling their story to the rest of the world". Take it one step further and try to imagine a white, middle class, educated, American women turning up on the scene to tell survivors to 'rise' above the violence they have seen and experienced by...wait for it...dancing. "Imagine someone doing that to holocaust survivors", she said.

I had occasion to speak with someone about the recent kidnapping, robbery, beating, and rape of a young woman in the Garden District, and large chunks of the conversation revolved around the same tropes that come up whenever something like this happens to any woman. It all came around to our living in a world where women are taught "not to be raped," and the suspicion that comes up is generally directed first against the woman who is the victim rather than the perpetrators. When a victim's first move is to tell her would-be comforters and shelterers "Don't touch me. I'm evidence," then we know who the burden of proof is on.

This hasn't ended with the capture of the criminals and their upcoming trial. Though a large amount of funds has been raised thus far for the victim's rehabilitation, she will need far more than that - keep contributing here. This friend of a friend of mine will be grateful.

I ask you to also consider that state budget cuts will likely destabilize what structures there are to assist women who have been victims of domestic violence as well - among them New Orleans' own Metropolitan Center for Women and Children. They accept donations of time or money here.

Know of any other needy organizations in the city or state that help female victims of abuse, rape, or violence? Please contribute names and links in the comments. It'll be the best Valentine's Day gift you give. Honest.

Our annual KOPAS Ball

Once again, we are opening our house to any and all folks coming to see the parades uptown early on Mardi Gras day - 'cause by that time, we ourselves are so paraded out, we stay in and enjoy our friends who need to pee on that fabled day and have a little nosh (hopefully not at the same time, but anything does go on that day).  We decided to have a little royal incentive on this year's invite - and we'll be throwing in some special king cake pancake recipes, one of them by famed cookbook author & culinary specialist Amy Cyrex-Sins.

We'd love to have you stop by! But contact me first for directions. Email is listed below.

You'll have a flipping good time!

You are invited to the 7th Annual Carnival Ball of

THE KREWE OF PANCAKES AND SYRUP

"The krewe with the edible doubloons"

When: Mardi Gras Day (Tuesday, February 12, 2013) from 8 AM until...well, we really don't know when it will end.

Where: Contact Leigh at liprap2@netscape.net for the address.

What: Pancakes, and LOTS of 'em!

Who: You

Why: For the fun of it.

Krewe Fees: We're supplying pancakes, syrup, coffee, milk, juice, and probably Leigh's homemade king cake, so bring whatever else you want to share.

Honorary Krewe Royalty: King...Abel Skeever

                                         Queen...Pala Tchinka

*Food disclaimers: pretend you keep kosher and please bring something other than pork, shellfish, catfish, or anything that mixes milk and meat in the same dish. AND NO KING CAKES.

*Religious disclaimer: We started this because we like pancakes, always make too many of them, don't want to give up our parking spots for Mardi gras, and like company. This has absolutely nothing to do with the Christian tradition of observing Shrove Tuesday, or "Pancake Day," by making and eating pancakes, which we didn't learn about until a few years ago.

Oklahoma!

These days, my parents and my brother have settled into the state that calls itself "Native America" on its license plates. And though I've said far too many disparaging things about Oklahoma City in previous posts, fact of the matter is, there's always more to a place than meets the judgmental eye.

One thing that Oklahoma does do right is house a gorgeous collection of art in its state house. We went to see a new exhibit in its halls of some beautiful fiber art and were treated to this spectacle.

The derrick is symbolic these days, but the tanks in front of it aren't.

Seems that, although the state's Arts Council has this fantastic program, the building in which much of it is  housed has been deemed less worthy of the same care given to the exhibitions in its many floors. I think they want a bunch of private donors to do for the rest of the building what has been done for the capitol dome.

 

Among the names of those donors that ring the bottom edge of the capitol dome (look carefully) is one that's gained some notoriety locally for its policies on health care:

Craft store chain Hobby Lobby announced on Friday that it will ignore the ruling of U.S. courts and refuse to provide copay-free birth control access to its employees. It will do so despite whatever costs it may incur, even if they are higher than the cost of birth control itself. 

 Upon learning that Obamacare required employers and insurance companies to provide birth control with no cost to employees, Hobby Lobby sued, saying that, despite the secular nature of the business, the company’s owner’s religious objections should be taken into consideration. When a court denied that line of reasoning, Hobby Lobby took its grievances to the Supreme Court and asked for an injunction. The highest court in the land denied that request, telling Hobby Lobby that it must allow its employees access to birth control as it seeks further litigation. 

 But Hobby Lobby is saying no. 

The store plans to ignore the provision anyway, opting to pay a fine instead of provide birth control, including the morning after pill commonly known as Plan B, which the owner feels goes against his personal religious values: 

With Wednesday’s rejection of an emergency stay of that federal health care law by Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Hobby Lobby and sister company Mardel could be subject to fines of up to $1.3 million a day beginning Tuesday.  

“They’re not going to comply with the mandate,” said Kyle Duncan, general counsel of The Beckett Fund for Religious Liberty, which is representing the company. “They’re not going to offer coverage for abortion-inducing drugs in the insurance plan.”

Honestly? I'd personally rather let a state house crumble than rely on such people to pony up for its renovations. The people who run that company aren't interested in the overall health and well-being of anyone except those who are just like themselves. It's not a principle I stand for at all.

Then again, I should talk, considering the state in which I live. We in Louisiana tend to be fond of saying "thank God for Mississippi" when it comes to bottom of the barrel status in matters such as education and health care.

What do you think they say here in Oklahoma?

*Sigh*

Double-digits

Nowadays, my son wants an alarm clock.

I'm not sure when I got my first alarm clock - a glow-in-the-dark Miss Piggy one that had an annoying buzzing sound - but I know that even with the clock, my mother still needed to get in my room and prod me out of bed in the mornings. It looks like the little guy has inherited this propensity from me, complete with the "leave me alone" attitude. My mom was a saint, as is Dan, because I still have trouble getting up early.

I also have some trouble waking up to the fact that this kid is now ten years old. It's every parenting cliche that has run through my brain and then some over this fact, but it's only a few years from now when the real attitude will begin, when he will talk to us even less than he already does, when (hopefully) he may start caring more about food because (hopefully) he'll start growing even more like a weed than he already is, when he'll start being more interesting to/interested in the opposite sex - or maybe the same sex, when he'll chafe at the state of man-childness he'll be in and we'll be bearing the brunt...why, look at that, there's a glass-half-empty theme developing.

Perhaps it's my mother's propensity to be a champion worrier that is seriously kicking in now for me. My dad on the worrying Mom does over his and Mom's new puppies: "I had no idea that your mother worried this much. I guess I was working so much before, when she was raising you kids, that I didn't notice." (I kinda wish Dad had had this epiphany much, much earlier, but that's a whole 'nother few posts)

Thing is, I've always worried about the time that's coming up. I want to believe that we're going to have an easier time of it than most - but I firmly believe that kids are a crapshoot, which doesn't fit with optimism, by and large. Thank goodness for Dan and his sense of humor, which is annoying some of the time, but it gets me loosening up when I start thinking about the things the little guy does that drive me up the wall. Things could be worse, I guess; I could be dealing with this all by myself.

I love the little character like I've loved no one else in my life. It's amazing seeing him grow and change and try to grow and change with him. He's a bright, sweet person at his core, and at this stage of the game, he's not afraid to let it show. I'm just hoping, beneath all this worry, that he keeps those basics intact - and that we have the sense to recognize those things even when he's hidden them behind inevitable bad choices and growing pains.

Here's to my little angry bird.

The Players

I can't say that I wasn't warned.

I knew it was coming from the moment my mother-in-law showed me the instrument in her living room and my then soon-to-be-husband mentioned bringing it to our home someday. That large piano with the defunct player mechanism on casters to make it easier to move around the living room whenever Dan's mother got the urge to rearrange the room's layout - which was more often than anyone would think. I looked at the piano, thought it was a nice (albeit heavy) idea, and put the instrument's eventual arrival at our house many, many years into the future.

That was the year 2000. Today is that future.

...well, it was supposed to be. A few funny things happened on the way to our future with the player piano:

• My husband planned out his longtime strategy for moving the thing, which was to rent a truck and drive it from Silicon Valley to New Orleans himself. His family decided to use it as an opportunity to empty out a storage unit they rent, so my husband ended up with the player piano...and a bedroom set...and another special piece of furniture and its accessories I'll get to in a bit.
• It took a few days for Dan to drive out here, which he did carefully and with a little trepidation on coming to Houston...during rush hour...on Friday evening. He called me back nearly 40 minutes after his first message to say, "Gee, that wasn't so bad."
• The bedroom set was unloaded from the back of the truck, with help from a friend, on Sunday. The special piece plus accessories was taken out by the hired movers this morning. The player piano itself proved to be a juggernaut.

How much of a juggernaut is your average turn-of-the-20th-century player piano? We probably could've asked the movers to schlep our car up the stairs and gotten the same results - except that the piano actually made it halfway up the stairs before the movers gouged a hole in the wall, scraped the hell out of our baseboards, left sweaty handprints all over the rest of the place, then finally had to give up and haul the piano onto the porch, where it currently sits.



"So, I think we should enclose the porch!" Dan said, and I guffawed. That'd go over real well with our first floor tenants, who share the first floor porch.

Dan's reasoning: it's our house and we can do what we want, even if it inconveniences some of us for a partially working 800-pound instrument.

Dan has, in the meantime, measured our second floor balcony windows, assessed the likelihood of getting the piano up the rickety back stairs, gotten a line on actual piano movers that could use a crane to get it up to the second floor (but then we've got to get it through the windows), and concluded he wants to get it into a first floor tenant's place or into our first floor closet after we clear darned near everything out of it. This is a piano that has been in Dan's family for four generations. It came from its place of manufacture in Detroit to his great-grandparents' home in Hannibal, Missouri, with some stops in Peoria, Illinois, Portland, Oregon, and San Jose, California before coming to rest on our front porch. It is currently a temptation for our tenants and their friends (I can hear them tickling the ivories on the Colby even as I type this) and a small source of relief for the tenant who was standing in her kitchen when she heard the movers gouge a hole in our wall and thought the piano was going to come right through and kill her where she stood (she's relieved the piano's on the porch and not on her sternum).

He's not letting go of this instrument that easily.

As for the mystery piece of furniture I mentioned...well, check it out...





It's a 1922 Edison phonograph, a BC-34 model, made to play not the usual phonograph 78s, but special Edison "Diamond Discs" like the one below:



Yeah, it came with a bunch of the discs, too. Thanks to Twitter, I learned a great deal about the Diamond Discs (named for the diamond-tipped stylus that played them; they can only be played on Edison players and not on Victrolas). I also learned that Edison's taste in music left a lot to be desired - with the possible exception of some jazz that seemed to have been "sneak(ed) past the inventor as he napped." Looking through all the disc titles is a hoot; I'm especially fond of the title of #50686 - "Daddy You've Been A Mother to Me."

The best part? It's inside the house.

Now if anyone can get me a line on getting the "Baby Console" working, I'd greatly appreciate it.

I Wish It Came With Actual Weight Loss

Perhaps I was somehow prescient in buying a bottle of wine on Sunday.

"Don't get upset over a job that wasn't even paying you minimum wage," Dan told me over the phone. But hey, here I am, and I'm...kinda upset. I also know that I'm kinda breaking a paramount rule of blogging, which is don't blog about work. Ever.

Thing is, I learned a few hours ago I've been downsized. So here goes...

I loved my job, even though it didn't pay very much and I wasn't close to full-time. The people in the upper echelons of the place simply relied too much on the tourist dollar to carry them through - and, believe it or not, Hurricane Sandy threw a serious wrench in their financial works (I can believe it. Seriously, I can.)  Some good people who were there full-time and who worked hard are out of jobs, too, and the status of my boss - who is one of the great bosses of the world - has changed as well. And me? I'm back at home most of the week, wondering what in the heck happened to me in the past year.

There were some firsts with this job: it was my first time in a cubicle, behind a desk, looking at a computer screen and manipulating social media for a semi-constant paycheck. It was my first time in a work situation where I encountered more than one or two other people whenever I went into the workplace. My first web-published articles that I was paid over $10 for. This was also the year I dived into Twitter and swam in the sea of hashtags, higher-profile-than-we accounts, and other quirks of the 140-charactersphere - and now I can confess that my favorite hashtag EVER has got to be #CruiseLikeANorwegian. I somehow picture myself sliding about in floor-length furs on a freezing deck as I'm being catered to by Scandinavian cooking maestro Andreas Viestad, all while barely holding on to a 98.6-degree body temperature in the process - but I digress...

The ubiquitous "they" everyone talks about ad nauseum say that certain bad things come in threes, and boy, did I get them. It's definitely been one hell of an autumn. And I'll be kicking off my winter by turning forty. AH-HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

The good news? Thanks to my in-laws, I now own a Nook e-reader. Strangely enough, I tried configuring it to download e-books from the public library here and was able to start reading the NOPL's digital copy of Cloud Atlas - on my Android phone. I'll get there yet, but 'til then, I'll be reading Pride and Prejudice, which came with the e-reader. I haven't read it since the eleventh grade. Mr. Darcy, be ever-so-rude to Miss Bennet, make like Calgon and take me away...

Gilda

For the first time in nearly fifteen years, only two-legged humans live in my place. All of my pets were rescues. Only one was directly rescued by me, however...

Second Sunday of JazzFest 1998 and I was in the middle of my glass rat days...meaning I wasn't taking much advantage of the Fest, or of many other things for that matter because I was working constantly. This morning was no exception, as I was on my way to work. My then-boss loved animals and that love had infected me some, too - I'd just taken in a darling dark gray tabby kitten with green eyes a housemate of mine had rescued from a convenience store worker's errant broom and then gave up to me because she was allergic to cats. I figured one very sweet cat would be enough for me, but I didn't figure on sitting in my car at the stoplight at St. Charles and Henry Clay and seeing her, a medium-sized, long-haired black dog wandering back and forth across the wide expanse of the asphalt and the streetcar tracks and following people as if to say Hey, look here! I'm sweet and friendly! I'm meant for you! Can I be with you? 

Problem was, the people she was following didn't respond to her.

I pulled over in front of Loyola University, thought this over for a minute, watched her try to cross the street again, and something in me snapped. I got her into my car and brought her to work with me, thinking she was so friendly, someone must be missing their pet.

Later that day and all through the following week, my then-boss and I drove around looking for lost pet signs that might have her picture or description on them and turned up nothing; I got the four-legged girl a collar and leash and took her with me to a lot of places over the next couple of days - at each stop I made she instantly conked out and slept deeply, to the point where I had to shake her awake. The next week, my then-boss (and landlord) and I decided she was my dog and tried to figure out what to name her.

We sat in a back cottage where my boss' two dogs had been joined by the new girl, her eyes glowing happily in her black face, her tan paws dancing with delight at being home. The TV was tuned in to Turner Classic Movies, and a certain Rita Hayworth movie came on - which is when I looked at the dog and knew what she ought to be called.

Gilda and I shared some adventures. I brought her to march in the Barkus parade in the Quarter when it seemed that she was all right on the leash after a couple of obedience classes - her two big things were not wanting to walk over metal grates or plates in the road and wanting to be in the very front of the marching pack. I came home once to find her engaged in one of her favorite activities with my then-boss' dogs - being chased - but there was something extra that made the chase more exciting: a large, dead rat hanging out of both sides of her mouth. Disposing of the rodent was a real joy, as she loved putting her border collie-springer spaniel legs into gear and thought I was simply joining in the chasing game. She did get nervous with the dogs around, though, much preferring to be by herself, or even with my cats (I adopted a second cat not long after I got Gilda into my car), and it showed when she chewed the corners of two needlepointed seats on some dining room chairs that were in the back cottage. I learned to needlepoint because of her.

Always averse to being walked in damp weather - I teased her by calling her Ms. Dainty Paws - she was even more disgusted by the snow when we moved up north, giving me the dirtiest look one morning when I opened the door and we beheld a full-on blizzard in Queens. "WHY are you doing this to me?" she'd have asked me if she could talk. She was a Southern dog despite her long hair, and she remained friendly to other dogs and especially to people, presenting herself to passersby in New Orleans and in Queens on walks as a source of unconditional love - people would take her up on it in the former and ignore her in the latter.

Over time, she learned to live with a cat who hated her and another who decided to tolerate her, a human infant who became a child, and a move back to New Orleans that coincided with her doggie golden years. I walked her in one more Barkus parade when we returned to New Orleans, but she gradually lost patience with being around dogs for longer than occasional encounters along her walks. Even chasing squirrels became less of a priority. I noticed in recent months she was having a harder time going up and down our stairs, and I kept tucking away the thought that she might not be living forever after all...until I took her out in the late morning this past Thursday and she refused to climb the stairs.

I had to help her into my car and help her into the veterinarian's office where she'd first been checked out all those years ago. The doc had estimated that she was probably two years old at her first checkup...I was amazed that fourteen years had passed since then. She had given up - her teeth were bad and her back muscles had atrophied some. She'd never left that vet's office in pain, and I was going to make sure things stayed that way for her. My pain lingers, though...

I loved this dog of mine so much, I'd had a pet portrait made of her based on a photo taken of her at her first Barkus parade. I can't locate the photo, but I do have the portrait hanging on my wall. The artist, Georg Williams, captured her dog-onality quite well, despite missing the touch of black that was on the tip of her tongue...

I still keep thinking I have a dog to walk and feed and water. I still miss my Gildaleh.

Rest in peace, my girl.

Disasters aren’t “natural.” As disaster historians, we don’t even use the term. What makes something a disaster, as opposed to just a hazard, is the way it interacts with society, with the built environment. Much of Zone A, which was evacuated in Manhattan, is on landfill. Of course that’s going to be most likely to be flooded. People in the evacuation zone were about twice as likely to live in public housing as the rest of the city. That’s not natural; that’s about how we organize society.

Disasters are not blind. We have this rhetoric of disasters affecting rich and poor equally and that’s just not true. People who evacuated from Battery Park took a cab – maybe to summer homes, maybe to hotels. People who took crowded city buses from public housing are now sleeping on the floor of a high school gym. And we see the way class intersects with all these other groups: After Katrina, we saw rising rates of sexual violence. And the elderly poor and the disabled poor are particularly at risk. The people who die are the people who die alone.

Further words from me and linkage on how to help those who were in Hurricane Sandy's path can be found at NOLAFemmes.

In A Bind

I'll admit a couple of things, first off.

Last night, I didn't watch the second presidential debate. I've sadly become cynical about this election. I already have a darned good idea of how I'll be voting, and it won't be for the guy talking about...what was it again?...

Women in bondage?
A book of mail-order brides?
Great bookmakers (pun intended and not intended) who happen to be women?

Well, no, I mean this:

ROWLEY: Governor Romney, pay equity for women?  

ROMNEY: Thank you. And important topic, and one which I learned a great deal about, particularly as I was serving as governor of my state, because I had the chance to pull together a cabinet and all the applicants seemed to be men.  

 And I -- and I went to my staff, and I said, "How come all the people for these jobs are -- are all men." They said, "Well, these are the people that have the qualifications." And I said, "Well, gosh, can't we -- can't we find some -- some women that are also qualified?" 

 ROMNEY: And -- and so we -- we took a concerted effort to go out and find women who had backgrounds that could be qualified to become members of our cabinet. I went to a number of women's groups and said, "Can you help us find folks," and they brought us whole binders full of women. 

 I was proud of the fact that after I staffed my Cabinet and my senior staff, that the University of New York in Albany did a survey of all 50 states, and concluded that mine had more women in senior leadership positions than any other state in America.

I want to believe that the man had some good intentions. It would be nice, after the past couple of weeks (hell, couple of months, couple of years, couple of millenia - take your pick...but I digress) that women around the world seem to be having.

I need you to get out of bed and go to school this morning for Malala. 

Grumbles and a slight roll over from the bed.  

 Hala. I need you to get out of bed today, without any whining, without complaining for Malala.

…and then a grumpy, whiny voice comes from under the blankets. 

Mom, what are you talking about, what is Malala.  

No. Not WHAT is Malala…WHO is Malala. Malala is a girl, just like you. She lives in Pakistan. And all she wants to do is go to school and learn. She wants to get out of bed every morning and learn. And the other day, she was coming home from school, and horrible men who think she should NOT be allowed to learn shot her. They shot her because she is a girl who dares to think she deserves an education. She dares to think she is just as smart as boys. She dares to think she should get to read every book and do every math worksheet and write every paper and do every report and learn and learn and learn just like every boy in Pakistan. But some of the people there do not believe that girls should learn. Malala stood up to those bullies. She stood up to the mean, horrible men who believe girls should not be allowed to go to school. And she went to school. So you, you will get out of bed, and you will go to school without one whine, without one moan, without one complaint…because you are lucky to live in a country where you CAN.  

Slowly my daughter got out of bed. Looking at me with confusion. She got dressed with me watching, and we went into my room where she brushed her teeth and continued to get herself ready for school. So far, she hadn’t said a word. She was still processing everything I had told her. The silence was deafening. 

I wasn’t sure I was going to tell her. She is only seven. A seven-year old should be not burdened by the evil in this world. But she is also old enough to understand that she is extremely fortunate to be able to get an education in a world that still does not treat its females with the respect and reverence it treats its males.

Would that this were confined only to Pakistan. It'd be easier to dismiss it as something belonging to another country, or another religion. Another religion...ohhh, I wish I had that smokescreen. While the Obama-Romney debate was finishing up, however, I got this news from a member of the Jewish clergy:

On the eve of the Jewish New Month of Cheshvan, 16.19.12, at 11:00 PM Anat Hoffman, Chair of Women of the Wall, was arrested while leading a prayer along with members of Hadassah, some of whom have travelled to Jerusalem from all over the world to celebrate Hadassah’s centennial convention. Over 250 women joined Women of the Wall for a late night prayer which started off beautifully, until Hoffman was detained during the Shema prayer. Hoffman was held in police custody for over 12 hours, much of the time in handcuffs and has sustained bruises from violent and aggressive treatment while detained.  

This morning, 17.10.12, at 7 AM, while Hoffman was still detained, Women of the Wall gathered for the monthly new month prayer service. Though the services went smoothly and quietly with no disturbance, police arrested Lesley Sachs, Director of Women of the Wall and board member Rachel Cohen Yeshurun, in the middle of prayer. The two women were detained and questioned for several hours. Upon release, the women were asked to admit to the crime of disturbing the public order, which they refused.  

In court proceedings today, following her detainment, Anat Hoffman was accused of disturbing the public peace for singing out loud at the Western Wall. She was finally released and issued a restraining order from the Western Wall for 30 days.  

The leadership of Women of the Wall remain committed to their struggle to gain the right of all women to pray at the Kotel, each according to her own custom, with Torah, Tallit and voices raised in song. Violence, intimidation and threat will not deter the group of women from joining together and praying together to celebrate every new Jewish month at the Western Wall.

Rosh Hodesh, the celebration of the new month, is sacred to women. So is their right to pray, to take on the obligations of prayer (tallit, kippot, tefillin) so long reserved only for men, to say the blessings that were meant to be said only by men, to gather and read Judaism's most sacred text at Judaism's most sacred site. Their only crime at the Kotel? Doing those things as women.

And then we go right back to Romney.

Sure, I laughed over "binders full of women." So did most of the internet. So did Tumblr. Hell, I may have helped create the Sacred Krewe of Binder Femmes as a marching bunch via Twitter. Look for lots of 36-to-48-to-50+ inch bindered broads come Halloween in New Orleans.

My question once all our giggles die down...

When do we do something other than make jokes about these acts and these lies?

And in Romney's case, I DO mean lies.

I know where I can keep on keeping on on all of this. In the voting booth next month.


cross-posted at NOLAFemmes

Granddaddy

The last time I recall seeing my granddaddy, it was my brother's college graduation, and his dementia was only apparent when I showed him pictures of his great-grandson, who couldn't make it to the event. "And who is that?" he politely asked me in the student center, and it hit me that, despite the overall happiness of the occasion, I had to momentarily face a reality my step-grandmother was valiantly dealing with each day - and I was ready to buckle under that moment right then and there. It would have crushed me if I hadn't done what we in my family tend to be too good at doing: I fast put it out of my mind and focused more on his merely being there and the miracle of his reaching the season of his next-to-youngest grandchild's commencement.

I would have taken in far, far more if I'd have known I wouldn't see him again.

How do I prefer to remember my granddaddy? Well, I'd known him since a little after my birth - the tall man who would fondly recall when I got just tall enough that he could place his hand on my head and simply turn me to where I needed to go. The man who would bring me to visit his aunt Ruth, a bright, happy redhead who lived at the top of a small mountain on Little Switzerland Road off the Chapman Highway, driving his huge blue Caprice up the frighteningly winding one lane road and honking the whole way to better warn those who might be driving down. He had faith in the power of technology - not to mention some good luck on his side, as we never encountered any cars going the opposite direction on Little Switzerland that I remember. Even if we had, driving in an early-70's Detroit heavyweight with extra former-pace-car horsepower at a low speed probably wouldn't make much of a difference if we did hit anything head-on.

He liked where technology was going, jumping into mastering personal computers just as much for the joy of experiencing them as well as the fact that, in his fifties, he was starting to get shaky hands and writing out what he had to say via keyboards was far easier. He adopted email communications pretty early, fell in love with playing with flight simulators, and got a kick out of seeing what the internet could provide on occasion. His first technological love, however, remained airplanes...he couldn't become a pilot, so he went for the next best thing during World War II and became an airplane mechanic, stuffing his brain with so much knowledge of how they worked that it got him into trouble when he got into University of Tennessee and began engineering courses. A report card from his freshman year that popped up amid family photos passed around during a reunion occasion showed that he had a series of Ds and Fs.

"Granddaddy, what on earth...?" I asked him.

"I'd just come out of the army and thought I knew it all," he said in a manner tinged with a little humor.

He turned it around really quick, eventually becoming the chief engineer of the Rohm & Haas plant in Knoxville. It gave him license to do the things he loved: getting a pilot's license and going in on maintaining a Cessna with a group of like-minded friends, singing in a barbershop quartet, and doing some things that I'm sure would have made my grandmother tear her hair out if she hadn't been so concerned about her appearance.

One afternoon, my grandparents, in town for a visit, came to pick me up from high school in Houston. Before I came out of the building at the end of the day, a sophomore came out to the student parking lot early, got in his car, and turned on the stereo. It instantly had all the other cars in the parking lot literally jumping a little on the pavement, and Granddaddy was intrigued.

"I'm gonna go talk to him," he said to Grandmother.
"Oh, no you won't!" she said, a tad embarrassed and very focused on watching for me.
"But...I just want to ask him how he managed to turn the entire car into a speaker."

When a friend of mine in college needed advice on how to make electromagnets for an art project, the first person I thought to call was my granddaddy. My friend talked to "Mr. Nichols" for quite a while and handed me back the phone, jazzed by the possibilities of hooking up an electromagnet to a car battery, or plugging it into the wall to see what would happen. Amused and a little horrified (I knew my friend and knew he would likely try those things), I got back on the phone.

"Granddaddy, what did you tell him?"

"Nothing I hadn't already tried before," he said cheerily. "Just like opening an umbrella and jumping off a pile in the hayloft - everyone should try these things once."

I learned later that he'd plugged an electromagnet into the wall of the house just to see everything momentarily jump three feet in the air before all the fuses blew. And yes, he'd tried the Mary Poppins umbrella bit as a youngster, too.

I could go on and on, and with many tales of my granddaddy that weren't exclusively mine. It seemed, though, that from what I'd heard, he carried the same demeanor he'd always had throughout his alert days into his dementia days. It helped that he had a loving woman in my step-grandmother caring for him.

He died peacefully yesterday morning, a son of Knoxville, Tennessee. A part of its history, born prematurely in 1924, so small he'd had to be incubated with warm bricks. He grew to be the tallest of his brothers and sisters, always curious and full of life.

Rest in peace, Granddaddy Hal.

Third-Hand News From First-Run Bands

We would fly along the interstates, windows down, the rough noise of passing through the air buffeting us beyond the windshield as we pushed along to Galveston on the weekends, or, occasionally, Tennessee in one extremely long day-to-night to see family. When Dad wasn't working the CB radio and chatting up any truckers he could conjure through the airwaves, we were adding to the roaring in our ears by playing cassette tapes on the Bronco's stereo. The tapes of choice? The Beach Boys' Endless Summer compilation comes to mind. Also, as I recall to my chagrin, a collection of John Denver's best.

But then Mom would pull out the homemade Maxell tape with the two albums she'd occasionally blast on the turntable at home, the ones she'd prefer over the two shelves crammed with late '60's - early '70's albums Dad had collected from his after-college days working at Sam Goody's. Depending on which side it was, "Monday Morning" would shout out first, or "Second Hand News," both of them displays of Lindsey Buckingham's virtuosity and his particular infusion of power rock.

The music on Fleetwood Mac and Rumours didn't end there, either. It was the women of the group as well as the men who shined. Though these days, Stevie Nicks is now a cliché-d witchy woman swathed in scarves and swirling skirts sounding as though she's singing (gracefully!) in gravel, she had a voice then that, cradled sometimes by bandmate Christine McVie's backing vocals, was a beautifully rough revelation. And McVie herself...well...

"I always loved her maiden name: Perfect," Mom would sigh occasionally when she'd hear tracks from McVie's solo album on the radio or when she'd hear "Songbird." It seemed McVie was perfect, beyond correct, able to slip into another softer realm that could be sentimental without being cloying. Whether she was backed by a great rhythm section (and boy does that get downplayed in the Mac's history, how solid the bass and drums were in their sound) or simply accompanying herself on the piano, Christine McVie was the center of the moment.

Those two albums were well crafted, yes, but they were also great to listen to in their entirety. Period. If I had a tape deck that didn't eat cassettes, I'd hunt down that old Maxell and really wear it out. Thank goodness for MOG.com.

I consider all of this now because, since I've been reviewing albums and books for a certain local publication for over a year now, I've had to come to terms with albums composed entirely of remade covers of a single band's oeuvre. Oh, I'm not unfamiliar with them - there was the Sweet Relief album for Victoria Williams, Red, Hot & Blue, as well as this personal favorite of mine that horrible, thieving movers stole years ago - but I do question making those types of compilations businesses in themselves, especially when ones like Just Tell Me That You Want Me are released. There are great moments on this tribute, don't get me wrong, but not enough to justify the album's existence ("Gold Dust Woman" done by the particular artist the producers chose sounds no different from the way it did when it was first cut. The point of that is lost on me.). From a straight critical blurb standpoint, that's where I am.

...but then I read reviews like this one and am struck by something else: compilation albums seem determined to amplify nostalgia whilst exploding it - and the best ones walk that tightrope so well, delighting you and giving you a shock all at once, that anything less is simply sad. Asking only indie rockers to handle classics like "Tusk" is catering to a lowest common denominator of interpreting and listening - it insults everybody involved. Where were hip-hop artists on this? Jazz musicians? Come on.

Compilers must keep in mind why the originals were so memorable in the first place, before they got consumed in commercials, abused as presidential campaign theme songs, and overcome by the band members' salacious backstories. It's what many bands do when they occasionally cover songs: play it in their own way, but with that window onto why they're playing it in the first place. Hopefully, the results will reach your heart and transform it a little, as any good performance does.

Unfortunately, I find that, in the particular instance of the Mac tribute, if I tried it out on a similar road trip today, the album wouldn't last me more than a few exits off I-59.

Compilers, artists, you can do better.