Sans le Nom

Scabs

2019-09-22T18:07:00.001-05:00

A friend of mine recently posted on Facebook, "A few situations and conversations this weekend have led me to feel simultaneously judged and pitied, triggering feelings of inadequacy and isolation. I have evolved radically in the past decade, and I have to remind myself I’m living my life on my terms; other people’s opinions don’t get a vote. Easier said than done, y’all." She posted the meme below as an addendum to her frustration.

I responded, "Pity is gas-lighting masked as concern. A relative pulled that on me recently, 'Are you feeling okay, Jennifer?' I responded in my cheeriest voice as I stretched my arms, 'I'm on top of the world!' Gas-lighting subverted. As far as judging, I don't have an answer. I feel it every day, mostly from other women. I'm half tempted to say, without warning, 'Look, I have no obligation to fit into your mold. If that makes you jealous, then your problem with me is actually your problem with yourself."

After some thought, I realized I did have an answer, and here it goes.

The person who pities is making a desperate attempt to place themselves above someone they perceive as having more by trying to insert the idea into the head of the pitied that, maybe, they actually have less than they thought. Less mental and physical health, less wealth, fewer friends, fewer resources. Queue the flickering lights and disappearing paintings. The thing is, pity may well, in fact, be projection of someone's own inner workings onto another (a defense mechanism) or possibly well intentioned. It's easy for me to brush it aside.

I still hate it. Worry about your own act, please.

But the judging part is far more insidious.

As those who pity you, those who judge you are playing nearly the same game, but with a different and intended effect, at least from my perspective. When a judge drops the gavel, the ruling has been rigorously reviewed and is final. In our personal lives, there are no appeals.

My husband and I recently stopped for drinks at the Capital Hotel Bar and Grill. We were both dressed way down because...weekend. About 10 minutes went by, and a couple our age sat down at the bar next to us. It didn't take long for the wife to strike up a conversation with The Hubs.

Here's where I have to back up a bit. We were in Little Rock for two reasons: 1) to buy a five-gallon clay fermentation crock for makgoelli making at the local Korean store and 2) to see the "Hateful Things" exhibit at the Mosaic Templars Cultural Center, a museum whose mission is to preserve the history of Arkansas's African Americans. "Hateful Things" is a traveling exhibition of the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia housed at Ferris State University brought to Little Rock to mark the 100th commemoration of the Elaine Massacre, which ended in the lynchings of ~200-400 African American sharecroppers, probably the largest mass lynching in our country's history.

Two images got to me. One was Rastus, who greeted me often in the mornings as I prepared my Cream of Wheat, and the other was a stamped metal sculpture (also a caricature of an African or African American) used for target practice at gun shows up until 2001. People who managed to shoot his tiny feet were awarded big prizes, and I think we can all relate to the horror of that. But Rastus is almost equally as evil because my young mind understood, in all my naïveté, that, though Rastus was dressed as a chef, he was merely a servant who could only be trusted to prepare and deliver the simplest of foods. I hate that I KNEW that even then.

Hold on. I promise this is not some wildly irrelevant tangent. I'm still on the topic of how we are judged on a daily basis, and you will see my point shortly.

It became obvious to me that Wife—blond, blue-eyed, highly made up and coiffed, dressed to the nines—had sized me up (quite literally...I'm 40 pounds overweight as I write this) and judged me as a non-entity because she proceeded to openly flirt with The Hubs. Her husband, an Episcopal priest—I kid you not—tried his best to become part of the conversation. Since this has happened to me before, my go-to is ignoring the entire situation as if I couldn't be bothered. The priest has not figured out that the way to deal with an attention seeker is to ignore them. I feel sorry for him. Wife, in between her flirtations with my husband, assailed the bartenders for not providing the free and fried black-eyed peas she remembered from her days living in Little Rock despite their efforts to assure her that they were only available when the actual cook staff arrived in the evening.

And then it happened.

A young African American woman (possibly lesbian or transgender) arrived to start her bartending shift wearing a black, long-sleeved Oxford shirt, grey vest, black silk bowtie, black slacks, and natural hair.

"Well don't YOU look spiffy!"

Translation. Good for you to dress up in a way that makes you look like a happy servant. There are three white bartenders here dressed similarly, but, since you're the only person of color here, I feel the need to extend kudos to you because you took time to cater to my stereotypes. End translation.

So there we were with this white woman (NOTE: I am also a white woman): I was judged as inconsequential; I don't know what standards my husband was judged by but clearly he won the day; Wife was obviously unhappy with her own husband...perhaps because he had too many duties to fulfill as an Episcopal priest, including a funeral for one of his parishioners; and an African American woman who showed up proudly for work, judged as "spiffy," "smart in appearance," a.k.a. uncharacteristic of people like her. I say that because, again, the three white bartenders were dressed similarly.

I'll wrap this up. Wife and husband left and The Hubs, who had to leave the exhibit because it made him sick, looked at me and said, "So this young woman is just another Rastus [from the Cream of Wheat boxes] to that c***?" I reminded him not to use that word around me, but, honestly, y'all, I was kind of feeling it.

So here's the thing about judgers: they are THE standard. And their standards are usually the standard of society at large. If you don't conform to how they and our society orders the world, you are less than. Their decision is final, and, since they often maintain positions of power (real or imagined), their standards are a stranglehold on everyone around them. They'll use pity as a weapon, sure. But they'll also use their ability to command or commandeer attention to belittle and dehumanize. I don't understand how they so often occupy leadership positions because, as I obliquely said to my friend, their judgment belies a fragile jealousy. They hate the standards they conform to, but they most especially hate the people who refuse to or can't conform to those same standards. I'm on a sabbatical from make-up, high-heeled shoes, hair spray, and the office uniform. The bartender showed up to shine as a woman of color feeling safe in her own skin. Neither of those things conform to the current American order of how people, especially women, women of color, and LGBTQ+ people, should present themselves. We are the preferred subjects of trolls everywhere.

If you want this BS to end, stop letting them, the scabs, cross the picket line of your authenticity. Confront them instead: "I am not obligated to fit into your mold of what's normal, worthy, or good. I carved myself out of my own mold, intentionally incorporating what fits into the framework of what I value. Since this isn't a court of law, I don't accept your judgment. Your ruling means nothing in the court of life. Now get out of my labor of love."

If you read this, please leave an emoticon (if that's all you can manage, it's cool) or a comment to let me know how weird it is that I'm collecting the scabs from my most recent fire-ant bite as some kind of badge of honor. #seeWhatIDidThere

But seriously, let's have a discussion somewhere because, to quote Lady Gaga, "enough is enough with this horse shit." Tell us your story or stories of being pitied or judged. Your voice is valuable, and it is safe here.

What I Will Say to the Young Man Who Tried to Steal My GA's Backpack If He Ever Returns

2017-09-14T20:14:00.002-05:00

Excuse me. Did you find the office you were looking for Wednesday?

Oh, that's good to hear.

Didn't you say your major was English? I got my BA in English here, too. In fact, I've taught on this campus for many years.

Mind if I sit down and give you some advice?

You remind me of a student I had in class several years ago. His name was C., and he was from Dermott. Have you heard of it?

Yeah, it's a small town. Not many people have heard of it.

Anyway, my first assignment for students was to write a story about something that had happened to them. C. asked if he could write about the way his dad was always teasing him. I said sure, but "give us only one example that shows what a joker your dad is. That's what a story is, an example."

Two weeks into class, he raised his hand and asked me if I could take a look at something. I went back to him, and he whispered in my ear, "I don't know how to make a capital letter." You see, his parents had bought him a Dell laptop as a graduation gift, and he had never had a computer before, nor, I guess, a keyboarding class. I didn't say anything because he was already embarrassed. I just showed him three times how it worked: press the shift key and, at the same time, press the letter.

I still have the story he managed to peck out with two fingers. In it, C. and his dad had gone out to feed the deer they would later hunt on their property. It started to become dark, and his dad sent him to get flashlights from an outbuilding, across an earthen bridge that separated two ponds. And he had a warning, "Be careful of that alligator." From that point on, everything in the water looked like alligator eyes peering at C., and he was terrified. When he returned with the lights, he found his father doubled-over in laughter. There were no alligators, but C. had crossed the bridge so painstakingly it was comical, the effect his dad was looking for.

He struggled mightily with that story and the other assignments, but he passed and took the next class with me in the spring. He was my student for an entire academic year. When we ran into each other between Arkansas Hall and Snow Fine Arts...you know where that is, right? Anyway, I was happy he had returned for his sophomore year because I worried he wouldn't make it. We chatted for ten minutes or so, and then he said, "Ms. D, I gotta go make sure my friends are studying. I told them I'd help." And I asked if he had recruited them into the same residential college where he had lived and taken classes. He smiled, "Yes, ma'am!" As we parted ways, I asked him to stay in touch and visit me in my office some time. He said he would.

One week.

One week later, four young men, maybe your age, drove onto this campus, and one of them shot into a crowd of people and killed C.

You saw an empty office, an unattended backpack, and an opportunity.

I assumed the fear on your face when I whipped into that unoccupied front office to answer the ringing phone there was prompted by the fact I had leapt out of nowhere. After I put the phone in its cradle, I asked how I could help you. I took you for your word. I wrote down the name of the building and room you said you were looking for and gave you directions on how to get there. I almost offered to walk you to that place, but I was the only one of my colleagues around to answer the phone. Surely, "it's the building right next to the library that way" would be enough to get you there.

I believed you.

Until you came in a second time three minutes later. Remember? I leaned back from my chair to see who had just walked in, and you immediately turned around and walked back out when you saw me. I scanned the front office and spotted my graduate assistant's backpack lying against the wall, out in the open. I unzipped it and found the MacBook Pro she worked however many jobs (they're on her résumé) to buy so she would be ready for graduate school: $2000.

I took it and all her belongings into my own office, and when she returned from running an errand for me, she was visibly upset: "Where is my stuff!"

"Yeah, I think someone was trying to steal it, so I brought your things into my office. Don't leave them out anymore. This is an open campus; anyone can come up here."

No. Sit down. I'm not done with you.

C. died trying to get an education. The university raised money to help his parents bury him...the laptop probably set them back quite a bit. And you would come here to steal from people like him? People like my GA. Young people who want to change the world, or, at the very least, their world. Seriously?

The next time I see you on this campus, you had better be enrolled as a student here.

And what I meant is this: instead of becoming an ex-con, try becoming a college graduate instead. How about that?

And by the way, you told me on Wednesday your major was history, not English. In fact, you gave every person you interacted with on this floor a different story, which is how we figured out your true project. If you want to be successful in a life of crime, begin by keeping your stories straight.

Here's a blank notebook with a calendar. You can use it to plan your current trajectory, but it also comes in handy for writing down deadlines, taking class notes, and tracking your to-do list.

Now you can go. I hope you choose wisely.

NOTE: there is a memorial to C., and the other young man who died in the shooting, on our campus. You will find me there often. If you would like to give to their memorial scholarship fund, contact me at sanslenom@gmail.com.

Defiant

2016-10-14T19:27:00.001-05:00

"Defiant Souls Prevail"
by Frank Hebbert
Licensed under CC BY 2.0

I suppose it's human nature that, when a group of people we can categorize as similar makes the same mistake over and over again, our go-to is that they are lazy, sloppy, stupid, or a combination of all three. There are some problems with this assumption, and they go by the names of racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, and privilege, just to name a few.

Let me give you, my small audience, an example. The group being targeted in this case was "first-year college students."

There was a period of time in the not-so-distant past when students in our first-year courses suddenly started using "defiantly" in place of "definitely." This seeming epidemic became so widespread as to become the subject of many hallway grousing sessions among my colleagues. For me, with my slight case of synesthesia, the frustration I could hear people talking about looked like black smoke darting from office to office.

And "frustration" is the emotion I most want to avoid, and I DEFINITELY don't like talking about it because I just become more frustrated in my frustration. In fact, I've had conversations with teachers in which they've frustrated themselves talking about their frustrations to such a degree, I had a panic attack for them.

And that ain't cool.

"Defiantly." I turned the problem around in my mind.

"Defiantly" is not a word many people carry around in their personal writing dictionaries and is even more scarce in a person's speaking dictionary. Sure, people can read it and understand it, but it's not common usage, especially among 18-year-old adults.

So why were my first-year students typing "defiantly" instead of the word they meant?

I came up with the answer.

Knowing I was going to college, I took a semester-long typing class (fun fact: the year-long class was for students on the path to becoming "secretaries," as it was explained to us back in the day) in eighth grade. Two things mattered to my teacher: speed and "error-free" text.

Students today take a keyboarding class. The focus is the same: speed and "error-free" text.

Now, if you, dear audience, were a keyboarding teacher during a not-so-distant era, you probably taught your students to use auto-suggest and hit the "Return/Enter" key because that would increase your students' speed (important, no matter their track). There's only one problem with that strategy: "defiantly" comes before "definitely" in the global English dictionary. Stopping to check the suggestion slows one down, so the natural inclination would be to accept whatever the word processor suggested, thus, "defiantly" over "definitely." My guess is that keyboarding teachers probably looked for the obvious typos, not at actual content, not at ensuring the sentences made sense, only that they were exact copies of the text to be typed. "Defiantly," being an actual word, would register in the teacher's brain as "definitely," simply because that was what the brain was expecting and it looked "right." Given these criteria and being as busy as public school teachers are, I would have missed it, too, in their situation.

So my students were making this mistake, not because they were lazy, sloppy, stupid, or a combination of all three. They were making it because they had been taught to use a word processor as efficiently as possible but NOT as effectively as possible.

I'm going to be honest: If they gave a Nobel Prize for laziness, I would win it. Seriously, I would go down in history as being the winner above all other winners. But I don't think laziness is some sort of malignancy. I'm lazy because I detest doing the same thing twice. In my mind, I should've washed the dishes one time and said, "Okay, I did that! On to something new!" And I'm not the only one: "Laziness" is the mother of invention, not "necessity," as the saying goes. Laziness is the reason we have dishwashing machines. Someone said to herself, "My time would be better spent on something else. Let's come up with a solution that doesn't involve me running hot water for the dishes, soaking the dishes, scrubbing the dishes, rinsing the dishes, putting the dishes in a dish drainer, drying the dishes for the next batch, and putting the dishes away." (It turns out, the repetition of the dishwashing machine I bought was more onerous than washing the dishes by hand, so I got rid of it. Irony.)

Because I understood the cause of the problem my students were having, I was able to address it. First, I taught them the simple act of going to "Edit"—> "Find"—> "Replace." Thus, they had learned a skill to replace a single mistake made throughout a document quickly and easily.

But then I asked them a question: Why are you using -ly words in your writing?

Invariably, the response was "because I want to show the importance of what I'm saying."

Well, you can do that with "defiantly," but guess what? You can't do it with "definitely," "really," "very," "truly," "actually," and (sadly, from my perspective), "literally." Overused words, especially adverbs, weaken your prose. Concentrate on more nuanced words instead.

So, during the next class, we spent time exploring the thesaurus, discussing the word "nuance," and choosing more powerful words for a boring, meaningless, and vague paragraph I wrote for the purpose of the lesson.

The moral of this story is this: If you find yourself complaining about people you lump into one group (students, faculty, people of color, Europeans, older adults), the problem you're complaining about might be yours to solve. Also, put your magnifying glass away because you're missing the bigger picture.

People in the U.S.: Human Trafficking Is Right under Your Nose

2016-10-14T19:27:00.000-05:00

I hate to be a downer. But that headline is a fact. And I was asked by a friend to explain this for the people who might not be aware, which is my assurance this is important and y'all need to know.

And I will now issue what I feel is a proper trigger warning. Don't read the rest of this if you have been the victim of sexual abuse, domestic or dating violence, sexual assault, or any form of human trafficking. You already know how this story goes.

Also F-BOMB alert!

I have been researching the problem of human trafficking for a number of reasons. For one, I wanted to write a grant to provide technical assistance training to prosecuting attorneys, people in the hospitality industry, health inspectors, salon inspectors, social workers, among others, to learn to recognize the signs of possible trafficking. More arrestingly, it was because of the story of Arkansas State Representative Justin Harris and his wife Marsha, who introduced me to the term "re-homing."

The Arkansas Times (see the above link), a true bastion of investigative reporting, did a far better job of outlining the facts of the case than I can, so I'll keep this to a summary. The Harrises, who earn most of their income by operating a private Christian pre-school in northwest Arkansas, adopted two children out of the foster system they had repeatedly been warned they were not prepared to care for. The girls they adopted were in the system because, at ages 3 and 5, they had been repeatedly sexually abused and would need a level of care a normal family could not provide without significant training. When it became apparent to the Harrises they were out of their league, they "re-homed" the girls to another couple without reporting it to any regulatory agency, which was perfectly legal in Arkansas up to 2015. Eric Francis, their new "father" and a teacher at the pre-school the Harrises own, is now serving a 40-year sentence for raping the older of the two girls.

She was six at the time.

And now for the ultimate reason for the research I have done.

My mother was the victim of a child molester at about the same age as the two girls the Harrises "re-homed."

She doesn't know I know this.

And I'm now shaking with ire.

My mother told on THAT MAN, our uncle by marriage, when she was seven. But her sister was three, and according to my grandma, he "began" molesting them both at the same time. More likely, THAT MAN began molesting my mother at the age of three, and, when he began molesting my aunt at that same age, my mom told on him to protect her sister.

THAT MAN never touched me, but he might as well because he absolutely destroyed any semblance of a mother-daughter relationship I might have had with the woman who gave birth to me. I was born at a time when the gender of a child could not be determined during pregnancy. I have to wonder what a nightmare it was for my mom being told she had given birth to a daughter, when she probably hoped I would be a son. Because in my mother's world, I imagine, little girls were hurt beyond repair. Little boys lived care-free lives.

Little boys aren't immune, either. And I know this because I've read it all again and again, at first in horror, then with numbness, and finally as someone who has to be inured against it in order to fight it.

But more importantly and more related to the subject at hand THAT MAN took a photo of my mother, a little girl.

Naked.

I know this because he gave it to my dad on my parents' wedding day.

Soak that in for a second.

I have, literally, tried to express my anger about this, and, frankly, I can't come up with any words. I'm speechless.

In THAT MAN's world, he owned my mother first, and it was he, not my grandpa, who was giving her away to someone else.

Sick fucking bastard. The product of a sick fucking system where children, girls, are goods to be sold or "generously" given away.

My grandmother threatened him and his wife with a gun. As she explained to me, just prior to a visit with him and his wife at a sort of family reunion when I was 11, it was her only recourse to save other girls. In those days, "We didn't talk about that stuff, and the police wouldn't have believed her [my mom]." I'd like to write a superhero comic about my grandma: her outfit would be made of the flour sacks her own clothing was made of back in the day. But, in this one instance, I don't think the gun or her threat had the power it should have. I think it made THAT MAN more determined.

If there was one picture, there were probably more. And they were most likely part of an illegal trade among other sick men who could easily get away with selling their "wares" in the 1950s using the U.S. Postal Service and vague newspaper ads.

In essence, my mother was a victim of human trafficking. Her unclothed childhood body was likely sold through images of it without her permission. Her body was taken from her. She never had a sense of ownership over the very thing that made her a being in the world, to reference Heidegger.

And let's be honest. Eric Francis, a man who raped a six-year-old child, could have easily trafficked that child in the same way, so long as he never went high tech, where the probability of getting caught is much higher. Is this why the demise of the Polaroid was so lamented? No worries. They're available once again...because, you know, profit.

So, I've shown the small group of devoted readers who follow this inattentively published blog one form of human trafficking. If you wish to continue (it'll be tough), I'll explain the myriad of other ways human trafficking is alive and well in our country.

Labor Trafficking
Do you want to understand "illegal" immigration fully? Read on. If you think A-rabs, "Metsicans," and all other people of color don't belong in the U.S., just go back to your regular programming and leave me alone because many of them don't want to be here. Thanks.

Children of working age and adults from every country on earth are lured to the U.S. with the promise of a job by a network or group of networks that has created a system for moving people across borders with real or very-well-faked passports and visas.

I'm being too polite.

These aren't networks or groups of networks: they're Triad; the Serbian and Russian mafias; and the North and South American drug cartels. They prey upon the poor, as they have always done because there is money to be made from the most desperate. Members of one of these groups walk into a town in the middle of nowhere Central or South America, Central Europe, rural Russia, China, or any southeast Asian country. (I haven't done ANY research on international human trafficking in Africa because I figure we've established the fact that Africa has been subject to widespread international human trafficking, but I should probably update my knowledge in this area and will.) These seemingly friendly "neighbors" who know the language and may even have grown up in the village, offer jobs in the U.S. and assistance getting there to people who are looking for a better way of life.

So villagers sign up.

Once they arrive, if they're lucky, they end up working in a restaurant, nail salon, cleaning company, etc., in exchange for a place to live (generally a tiny apartment crammed with other laborers), food, and clothing. And maybe a few dollars a week spending money.

They don't complain.

Let's remember what a child predator invariably says to his victim, "If you tell, you'll get in trouble," which is what THAT MAN said to my mom before she decided to tell on him. (BTW, good on her!)

The perpetrators know exactly where the victims' families live because that's where the victims were recruited...in their homes with their families watching. The threat that parents and grandparents may be killed or younger siblings recruited into the same life in the very same way is very, very real. Also, their English is limited, and they may not even be able to read or write in their own language, so they don't know how to get help. And we have no way to track them, so we have no data on where then end up. What happens when they get sick, pregnant, or old? Beyond their years of providing service to their "employers"? Pfft. You know the answers to these questions. No one notices when invisible people disappear.

Sex Trafficking
Sex trafficking makes a profit of $58 billion annually across the globe according to Sex-Crime.Law.com, which is, admittedly, a for-profit organization focused on justice for victims of sexual crimes. My guess is that the profit for perpetrators of sex trafficking goes well beyond this calculation and is far higher than any profit the lawyers at Sex-Crime.Law.com will ever see in their lifetimes of litigation.

Immigrants who come to this country in the not so lucky way end up in the sex trade. Their English may be better, but their situation is worse. They are sent out into our streets, wearing minimal clothing, not knowing what's permissible and what isn't, not knowing their rights, unprotected, except for a pimp intent on making money from their mouths, vaginas, and anuses...and whatever else they can profit from. They commit the crime of "prostitution" and are subject to jail time and fines their pimps will not pay. In other words, and I hate to put it this bluntly, but it's the truth, that $15 they just made for giving a blow job in the massage parlor (talk about low wages) goes directly to the pimp. All of it. They're given enough to live on until they are arrested. Period. And when they are arrested, they are left to deal with a system that does not recognize prostitution as part and parcel of human trafficking in most jurisdictions. Those who are not legal immigrants are subject to more fines and deportation when they may have had children in, or brought family members to, the U.S. who counted on their language support and networking to get jobs...let alone what little they might provide financially.

Having said that about immigrants, let's talk about "our own": foster children (natural citizens born and raised in the U.S.) are particularly vulnerable to sex traffickers. They don't know what a "normal" family is or what a "normal" romantic relationship looks like. They are in the system because they have been emotionally, physically, and/or sexually abused to such a degree the state has decided to remove them from their families of origin. Many don't make it out of the system without being groomed for prostitution by a "beloved boyfriend," a man with tangential relations to the foster family, a man who has no qualms about lavishing affection and gifts on the victim in exchange for having sex with his "friends" (and a former female victim is often involved in normalizing the situation). More importantly, when fostered young adults (again, it's not limited to females) turn 18, they are left completely on their own and are even more vulnerable because they leave their temporary families behind.

Read this if you can.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/master-sentenced-torture-teen-sex-slave-article-1.1453355

In the eyes of the law, these victims are perpetrators although many law enforcement agencies are starting to recognize prostitution for what it is: human trafficking.
Hustle and Flow, was a great movie, not because of the rap and the main character's determination for success, but mostly because it exposed an important truth. Prostitutes don't go into the sex trade willingly but out of necessity; they are recruited. In the film, it was a case of three people trying to make it out of the Memphis ghetto, but in the real world, the prostitution system doesn't provide a way out for anyone involved. Well, except for the jerks who pay the prostitutes. You know, the guys who pay for it because they can. The fellows who prefer fellatio from a stranger. Who would promote their 10-year-old daughters as sex objects. The "regular" guys who grab women by the pussy.

At the end of the day they are all slaves. That's what human trafficking is, y'all: slavery. I have quit nail salons (all Vietnamese) where I've seen a high turnover rate among workers (one way to hide labor trafficking is to keep victims constantly on the move). I have quit cleaning companies (all white women) because I wondered why the 16-year-old girl accompanying the middle-aged manager wasn't in school. I have seen prostitutes on the streets of Little Rock, and I KNOW that was not something they chose for themselves because I would not choose if for me.

And, yes, I have given these women $20 without their ever having asked because I know that's money they can hide from their "master."

I quote Michelle Obama: "Enough is enough."

You Forgot Your Change

2016-07-04T17:57:00.000-05:00

To say that I've developed a lot of baggage over the last four years (please see the graphic on the left side of your screen) is probably the understatement of my life (or less hyperbolically ...because I love a good oxymoron) of the last four years. To whit...

One month and fifteen days before my four-year work anniversary, I have been introduced to my fourth new leader. And I'm going to refer to her as "my leader" because that's what I want: not a boss or a supervisor but someone who leads the way, shows me how to accomplish what I want, what I know will be positive change for all...and not just where I work, but out in the community, in the world. I want a "leader" because I want to co-lead with a shared vision of what is possible. What I don't want is just (so much meaning in that four-letter word) someone who tells me what to do...as if I didn't already know.
I've lost friends...due to betrayal and to death (J, your number is still in my phone as if I'll be able to reach you on the other side...though I know those numerals now belong to a stranger. Our final conversation lingers...I remember you started with, "Oh. My. God!" I can still hear your voice and see your pony tail swaying as you walked in that lovely green dress. I miss you).
I've experienced conflict with people I thought were the least likely to question my motives or ideas and who cost me important progress in my career.

We all try to maintain perspective, but it can be hard to do if you're already struggling with a mental illness (generalized anxiety disorder for me). Under a tight deadline, I function exceptionally well because I'm a writer, I live for that excitement, I know that drill, and the end is in sight.

Under constant and uncertain stress, it's a different story. What did I do wrong, and when will this end?

Under these circumstances, I withdraw. Completely. As in I haven't been to a party or out to eat with friends in months. I quit exercising because that requires being somewhere other than in front of the comfort of my horror flicks and K-dramas. There is a very private booth reserved for me every day in a local restaurant at 11:00 a.m. I've been going there to escape; the staff ensure I'm well protected from intrusion. And I've spent thousands of dollars on this luxury, no joke.

The unfortunate result is NOT just that a lot of mental baggage is sitting at my door everyday when I prepare to leave, when I leave. I've added a couple physical carry-on bags as well, and I'm not referring to the ones I keep at the ready because I hate preparing for trips, either (I LIVE to travel and keep my luggage up to date for that reason). I'm referring to those bags bulging from my stomach, rear-end, etc.

And to those who might say, "You should accept your body as it is," my response is this: "Right now, my body does not match how I think of myself: strong, athletic, capable of climbing mountains, able to throw a huge order of drycleaned clothing over my shoulder without my knees buckling," etc. (My family is in the drycleaning business; it keeps one in shape.) This is not how I am (to quote Pink Floyd).

These extra 40 lbs. don't represent how I envision myself out in the world. They DO represent very well how weighted down I feel in my heart and in my mind.

So I need to start remembering to collect my change. See, I've been through this before...back at the turn of the millennium. I had even more weight, psychic and literal to lose, eight-years' worth. I felt so stuck, I took a year off to lose all the baggage, which worked, but I'm older and don't have a year off to spare getting rid of all the spare tires.

I will admit I am the laziest person in the world. The thing is, you can always turn a minus into a plus if you ponder it long enough. A colleague and I have an ongoing discussion about how laziness is the most significant factor leading to innovation. These conversations take the form of "Yeah, Edison was the youngest, so he probably got stuck lighting and putting out ALL the candles and thought, "Eff this noise, I'm going to find a way to make this simpler."

They're really just extended and fun jokes we use to punctuate office-worker time. None of it is based in fact, actually (except, Thomas was, indeed, the youngest). Edison innovated the best electric light bulb (for the time), not the first.

And I'm not really lazy. I'd just rather be doing other things than grunt work a "boss" expects me to do because he doesn't have a vision of what I COULD do and doesn't bother asking me about my vision. Let me have a go at my vision. Let me go for a walk and take photos with my phone or camera. Don't constrain me to cleaning house, cooking, going shopping, or driving ANYWHERE. (I hate driving; it requires extreme concentration and boredom...at least if you're doing it right..and there is no other way for me).

In short, remind me I forgot my change.

Yes, remind me about the things I did in 2000 to lose weight and gain perspective and all the things I forgot (the quarters, nickels, dimes, and pennies that add up after a while) I could be doing now. I was so worried about the present I was presented and not enough about the present I could make, I forgot I could still change, still grow, still be who I wanted to be because I'm the only one who is in charge of that. Not a series of weak "bosses," bad personal relationships, or untapped / un-mined conflict. (Damn! Conflict, like wind power, is a natural resource, y'all!)

Recently I said this on Facebook: "I will not wake up at 5:00 a.m. beating myself up for all the things I still haven't accomplished. Good things take time, and small incremental actions accomplish more than grand gestures thrown willy-nilly at creating change."

So here's the deal, social science research indicates that if you have high expectations of someone (yourself included), that person feels respected and respects you in return.

So it's time to collect the change from the little slide that dispenses the coins owed when paying cash.

I vow to have high expectations of the people I work with and care about. I will see my new leader as that, a leader. I will see my colleagues as co-leaders, all leaders in a vision of change...if small and incremental.
I vow to keep close the friends and family who have remained true to me because we don't know what's going to happen (watch...or not...1000 Ways to Die). And I'm letting go of the people who suck up my energy with their drama. Planet Sans is now a drama-free zone.
I vow to uplift those with whom I've had conflicts. Conflict helps us identify someone else's perspective, see where all concerned are missing the point, and find ways to help each other out. If we avoid it, nothing will ever change
Finally, I will maintain my perspective by adapting to the reality of who I am and the accomplishments I hope to make in my life.

In short, I want to condense my baggage to only those things I need, those things that will make it possible for me to travel all over the world, write, start a new career, and feel like a physically and mentally strong human being. That will not happen if I keep forgetting my change (literally, as in spending money I could use for other things, and figuratively, as in forgetting to adapt to new circumstances).

So. How does one lose mental and physical baggage? How does one start small to begin change?

I'm not an expert. Just a person who knows how to innovate in small ways and who has a few goals. Tomorrow, after doing the day gig that pays my bills and the night gig that brings me joy (that's a 10-hour day, y'all), I hope to begin giving my readers something in return. This will not only give me a chance to practice my writing craft, but also think about community and economic development. My next post will cover sustainability and food waste as related to our mental and physical baggage. I hope to complete it July 10, 2016.

In the meantime, don't forget your change.

I Only Hate Ben

2016-03-17T19:24:00.000-05:00

Given the new rule, I will have to make peace with this species.

So I have this new life rule.

"Hate" is a really strong word, one I really don't like to use. But I, as with all of us, feel it. Sometimes very strongly and with very good reason. And I'm going to let that be okay because I think all emotions have an evolutionary protective value. When someone has personally wronged you repeatedly, there's a point at which you need to ask yourself, "What would be the better choice: 1) punching him in the throat right now? or 2) saying, 'I'm done,' and walking away...and actually being done, as in I'm not speaking to that person, except when I absolutely have to, ever again?"

At 48, I've learned a number of things. One is you can almost always avoid talking to someone for the rest of your life if you try hard enough (and, given social media, it now takes true effort), and the other is that I really don't want to go to jail.

So, because the older I get the bolder I get (I won't regale you with the CVS story, let's just say an entire group of people, including my mom, got really quiet after I had my say in one of their stores), my new rule is really a means of keeping me from incarceration, but I think it has other benefits as well, which I'll get to. But I like to go long.

Here's the rule: I'm allowed to hate up to five living individuals at any given time. And that means I allow myself a visceral response upon hearing their name, seeing them, and most especially being forced to interact with them.

To put it another way, I am allowing myself to count the number of people I hate on my right hand. This may seem arbitrary, but the way I figure it once the number jumps over to my left thumb, then I'm the one with the problem: I'm allowing hate to slowly begin to take over and pretty soon it will be in my heart.

And I don't want it there because I know what that feels like.

Flash back. If you teach in higher education, you work on a nine-month contract. Typically, the contract runs from August 15 to May 15. After May 15, you have no obligation to be on campus whatsoever. The thing is, finals are usually over and grades turned in well before the 15th. Now, my "chair" was on a 12-month contract, and unlike non-administrative faculty, had to be, literally, in her office chair from 8:00-4:30 (and really she created that obligation, no other chairperson had such a seat-time rule for herself). One year, she locked us up in a conference room 8:00-4:30 after grades were due but before our contract was up to revamp our curriculum. Yeah, she bought our breakfast and lunch, but we resented being there. And I'll be damned. After the week was up and we had mapped out all these potential changes, the decision (and I'm pretty sure it was hers) was to leave the curriculum as it was. We all understood that the entire situation had been an exercise in "I want you to see how hard I have it" on her part. And I hated her for it. And then I hated her boss. And then I hated her boss's boss. And then I hated a colleague. And then I hated a couple students who were being disruptive.

And that kept on going.

To an insane level.

Arkansas had been enjoying a remarkable stretch of lovely weather one March that I had enjoyed by reading the New Republic (still my favorite magazine) on the porch drinking a glass of wine. And, then, Ed Buckner (or whoever) forecasted a nasty onslaught of wintery weather. (Kind of similar to the current weather forecast, hence the inspiration for this post.) I went berserk. I was so pissed off at the weather, I wanted to stab it to death. My anger was so awful I was lashing out at people left and right. Any slight, any slip of the tongue, any gesture, became a reason for me to wage war.

A few years later, I quit that job over something trivial. But it gave me a year to step back and examine what had led to all that emotional upheaval. To a certain extent, it was my former boss's fault. Department chairs are experts in their field, but their field isn't usually management or leadership studies. They haven't been taught to lead effectively or share leadership, so they tend to be reactive and arbitrary...one minute you're friends, the next minute she's pulling rank and yelling at you for not guessing what she wants from you.

Here's the thing: I shouldn't have hated her for that, but I was too young to understand her situation. And I was too afraid of her to walk into her office and say, "Hey, I think you should know I'm unhappy in my work."

Now, through a series of unfortunate events, I've learned when hate is appropriate: when someone manipulates you to do something you wouldn't normally do for their own gain, lies to you repeatedly, treats you with willful disrespect, tries to tarnish your reputation among your friends and colleagues? Own your right to hate THAT person.

Just remember this, when it starts to seem like even the weather is out to get you, you may be the one with the problem.

BTW, I have four empty fingers on my right hand. I am working to keep them empty.

Also, the Hubs, my ever-faithful editor, titled this piece. And we both laughed.

Update: I thought about that last line, and I realized that working things out, being on each other's side, wanting what's best for someone else, may actually look pretty bad. Yelling, sending each other links to sites to fully inform, stomping off and saying "I'm not talking to you for a while," may be ugly but helpful in the end. Plato said it best: When you truly love someone, you want to be a better person for them.

The One Thing I Would Never Say to My Daughter...If I Had One

2015-06-23T20:18:00.000-05:00

"Solve for E,"
Courtesy Aaron Parecki
Flickr.com

My dad died in 2010. Three years later, I wrote a song about him. Here is the refrain:

An absence greater than zero,
The square root of negative one,
An unimaginable number,
From this there is no sum.

You see, there is no zero greater than zero; the square root of negative one is an imaginary number, therefore, impossible to imagine...like life without someone who has always been there. And once that person is taken away, they cannot be added back.

As for my hero and stand-in dad Pythagoras, an amazing theorem, which actually makes rearranging furniture in my poky old house a lot easier, is named after him. Seriously, it's like the universe's gift to people who live in small spaces.

A² + B² = C².

Genius.

In some sort of myth I created for myself, Pythagoras was accused of hubris for demonstrating that the geometry of the universe was imperfect: if a² + b² = 2.16666 repeating...what the hell? There is no precision in that! Hence, "Pyth" and his school had to disperse, and he most likely died of starvation hiding in a cave. Except records of the time indicate he died of natural causes at the age of 75 in his hometown after having served as something akin to mayor. Still, it's a good story.

But back to imaginary numbers.

Multiply a positive real number by itself, and you get a positive result. Multiply a negative real number by itself, and you get...a positive result. So the square root of both positive and negative numbers is always positive. But electrical engineers and physicists need negative square roots. I could discuss the position of a particle in space...and snowplows...but I wouldn't know what the hell I was talking about. I think the gist is imaginary numbers make solving equations more elegant in the way that the colon (as used in writing and not pooping...although...sometimes writing is pooping) replaces a whole lot of words.

I know a lot about math.

And if you are willing to look up my second-grade teacher and explain that to her...for me...I would gladly stand behind you, peer around your shoulder, and nod my head, with my lips pursed, in complete allegiance.

Because I still can't subtract. Twelve minus eight? I use my fingers because I can't remember.

I'd like to believe this has something to do with my philosophical embrace of optimism: it is simply against my nature to negate.

The truth is, it's because of a blue crayon.

Also, I'm not philosophically optimistic. I could theoretically subtract some people from this earth for their actions and/or ideology if it weren't illegal (and against my conscience...because I do have one), and that doesn't really indicate an optimistic bent.

But back to the blue crayon.

We learned to add in first grade, we learned to subtract in second grade, we learned to multiply in third grade, and we learned to divide in fourth grade...all the while "practicing" the skills we had previously learned via worksheets filled with numbers that became increasingly longer. We had calculators in the 70s; I can only guess my teachers thought they were a passing fad. But, even as young as I was, I completely understood the concept of "work smarter, not harder" and wondered, really, what the point of all the worksheets was. I'm an educator, and I still consider all that busy work a weak attempt at scaffolding.

My second grade teacher, let's call her Ms. Break-It (which is actually an awesome play on her real last name...but I'm protecting "the innocent"), decided to try something new.

A million bad ideas have been born out of a desire for novelty, so this was not the first of its kind: we would grade our own subtraction worksheets...with the crayon color of our choice. I will never see a pedagogical value in having 2nd graders score their own work, but maybe I missed something in one of my education courses. Whatever. Black has always been, will always be, my favorite color, but it was not an option...the little weasel, a chubby boy with a handsome face and dirty blond hair, who turned me in probably got to it first. Blue was the next best thing.

We all completed the same worksheet, so Ms. Break-It could call out the correct answers. We, using the crayon-color-of-not-my-choice, marked our incorrect answers. We had been instructed not to erase. On problem number 5,678, I noticed my numeral two looked like a "Z." Because my brain is so big, I was anticipating algebra before I even knew what it was; I could not let the "Z" stand because we were subtracting, not "solving for." I used my bla...I mean...blue crayon to make the "Z" more clearly into a two. Then I realized I had "corrected" a correct answer...Ms. Break-It would be confused...she would take points off a problem I had triumphantly and with great effort gotten right!

I erased.

Goddamit, I tried to erase the crayon without erasing my answer, which is physically impossible, but I irrationally held on to the belief it could be done.

And then the weasel pointed at me and shouted, "She's erasing! She's erasing!"

I remember being called to Ms. Break-It's desk and everything goes blank after that.

Flash forward and Ms. Break-It offers us this crumb of wisdom: "Little boys are better at math and science, and little girls are better at writing and art." I guess that was supposed to make me feel better. I don't know. I wasn't the only girl in the class; there were quite a few of us...I'm guessing we made up 54% of the students? So why Ms. Break-It felt the need to proffer her newly gleaned knowledge, I'm not exactly sure.

But I was a precocious child. I remember "teaching" my mom about socialism with a chalkboard and drawings in the dining room of our home...how hard it must have been for her to hold back the laughter every time I said, "the means of reproduction." But I got it: our work is our life. To value some work as worth more than other work seemed unfair to me. The ditch digger makes clean running water possible, without which there would be no surgeons and CEOs. (Full disclosure: these lectures were prepared with the aim of increasing my allowance.)

I also knew that I couldn't name a single famous woman author or artist sitting in that classroom on that day. Every artist and writer I knew about was a man (Michelangelo, Shakespeare, KISS). And I wanted to raise my hand and ask, "If that's true, if little girls are better at art and writing, where are all the women artists and authors? I want to know about them," but I didn't know how to ask that question.

At that time, the only famous women I knew were models and actresses, and I can't even remember who they were. There was no Sally Ride, no Hillary Clinton, no Alice Walker, no Tina Fey, no Madonna, no etc. There were only a few women, like Madame Curie (Mrs. Curie), who seemed to pop up in history and then fade away as some sort of anomalous event.

So, yes, my first brush with patriarchy came when I was seven or eight years old, and, while I didn't have a name for it, I understood its message: "Women have never accomplished very much." And I figured I wouldn't either...especially since I could not fucking subtract. (Sorry, Mom.)

"Can't subtract." I feel certain this was written on my 2nd-grade report card, and I have allowed it to characterize me for 40 years of my life.

"Can't subtract." I was revising a 50-page grant a few weeks ago and I ran into a table that basically showed we intended to increase the rate of X by 10% each year over five years. I looked at it and looked at and looked at it: "That's 50%." I did the math: "We're going to increase the rate of X from 57% to 93%? That's going to be challenging. Actually, I don't think that's possible." So I knocked it down by half, still challenging but at least do-able. As I finished revising the table it dawned on me: I recognized a statistical conundrum, and I solved it. With math.

"Can't subtract." The one thing I would never say to my daughter, the thing my dad would have told me wasn't true, the thing I've said to myself a million times, is the one thing I haven't said so far, and I'm not going to say it.

Instead, I'll say, "I'm good at math. I may need my fingers to subtract, but I know how to do it."

And to all the daughters out there I didn't have...don't ever let someone else define you or what you can do.

Lessons I Learned from Family and Friends #1: The Wedding Cake

2015-06-02T20:31:00.000-05:00

Courtesy earth_photos on Flickr, 2003, some rights reserved.

My friend (actually one of the most eloquent, elegant women I know and one of my undergrad profs) and I were in stop and go mode in rush-hour traffic after the second day of a workshop on race and social-justice consciousness raising. We had left about the same time the day before and were sure our moment of departure was the perfect window for avoiding traffic. Alas, we were not aware it had been storming during the workshop. We walked out of the building...the rainfall visibly evaporating from the parking lot asphalt as we walked to her car.

We left the Central High National Historic Site's visitor's center exhilarated and exhausted. We had been surrounded by young people of many races, religions, creeds, and it was exciting to know they had volunteered to be part of this experience. But opening up, telling our truths, being put on the spot...even though we put ourselves there...was scary. My friend and I, representing a project about the desegregation of Central High by the Little Rock Nine, are pretty white. She confessed that growing up in SoCal was hard because she couldn't spend more than five minutes in the sun. I confessed that rather than trying to tan (i.e., getting a sunburn), I sat in the windows of my parents' Victorian house identifying birds with binoculars. Both our families hail from middle-class Indiana, where "corn rows" has never been used to refer to hair. Telling black people, Asian-Americans, Jewish people the story of my life seemed silly. While I may be a woman, which gives me some insight into the "savage inequalities" Jonathan Kozol discusses in his book of the same name, I'm still the color of privilege. Why should anyone "of color" care about me? Of course, that was the whole point of the exercise: be uncomfortable until you find a place of comfort with the group you will spend this time with, recognize each as a person and not as somehow a representative of a color or a belief or a generation or a place.

But when I'm tired, I can't help but grouse: I wanted my pajamas and my K-dramas, and some slow-moving moron, jerk who refused to learn merging etiquette, or inconsiderate speeder caught by a cop were keeping me from my routine.

So my friend told me a story.

When my friend's older sister became engaged, she decided to have the wedding on her fiancée's farm in the Hoosier state, and she enlisted my friend, who was in college studying *mumble something that will give her identity away* to bake the cake. My friend had never baked a wedding cake in her life...but I could have easily guessed this part of the story: she researched the subject like the scholar she is, studying piping, stacking, accoutrements, mixes, recipes in the months leading to the production of the masterpiece.

The morning of the special day turned out to be warmer than usual. So when my friend set out to bake the cake...in the kitchen of a farmhouse...with no air conditioning...it didn't take long to realize the "icing on the cake" would be problematic. Calls were made (I imagine, having grown up in that time and close to that same place myself, on rotary phones), and the baked parts of the cake were moved to the home of a relative who had air conditioning...in the living room only. I can imagine my friend running back and forth to the kitchen as she stacked and piped, her fresh sunny face full of optimism and confidence.

But then she had to transport the finished cake back to the un-airconditioned farmhouse over several miles of dirt road.

She told me how she drove five miles an hour, clutching the steering wheel, scouting for every pothole while checking the cake's safety in the rear-view mirror.

She and the cake made it, and that's a story of true sisterly love. But it isn't the moral.

That person in front of you? The one taking up all your time, annoying you, making you question the intelligence of humanity?

The saying goes, "Every one of us has a burden to bear." We nod and believe we understand. But when that "burden" becomes tangible...a cake, a bad tire one can't afford to replace, cancer treatments that cause dizziness...when the reason is real, only then does the saying become truly meaningful. The person's race, ethnicity, age...none of it matters...just the burden.

So from now on, I'm going to believe there's a teetering wedding cake, loving months in the making, in the backseat of that person's car. I don't want to think about the other possibilities, and being angry for trifling reasons never gets us anywhere.

Dead in D.C.

2015-02-24T19:32:00.000-06:00

It's a little-known fact (or maybe a well-known one) that a lot of people die on the toilet, Elvis Presley being, possibly, one of the most famous examples. I know this because I am a dry cleaner's daughter and was intrigued by an article in the New Yorker or the Atlantic (can't remember which) about the real cleaners...the companies that specialize in taking care of the messes left by the dead. By the way, getting smashed by objects falling from high rises is also not that unusual in New York City, and I imagine that kind of cleaning takes a special sort of skill set I do not possess.

At any rate, I went to Washington, D.C. for a conference on Tuesday.

D.C. isn't really a high-rise sort of place, so I wasn't on the lookout for falling pianos. I also wasn't paying attention to possible airborne pathogens, but they're a lot harder to see. And I'd had my flu shot. So when I developed a cough Friday afternoon, I was sure it was from smoking a cigarette with a friend after dinner and a couple drinks (don't scold, I maybe smoke once a year). When I woke up Saturday morning to fever, chills, and muscle aches...well, you can't blame that on half a cigarette. My thought was I needed to get home ASAP. So I picked up my phone to call the Hubs regarding my condition when I noticed the tiny blue dot was blinking, indicating I had a pending message.

What could it be?

Yeah, flights cancelled.

Thanks, Obama.

So I went downstairs and extended my stay by one day, telling the front desk person I was sick and preferred just not to be disturbed.

At the Sofitel (where they answer the phone, "Bonjour, you have reached le Sofitel"), "Do not disturb" means something quite different than at the Super 8. At the Sofitel, it means call Ms. Le Nom to make sure she doesn't need towels, tea, orange juice, sparkling water, oatmeal. And ring her door bell (yeah, the rooms have door bells) to see if her mini-bar needs restocked. (Seriously, Nikita [names changed to protect the innocent] and I are on a first-named basis now; I have half the hotel management's business cards.)

That was extended day one. Flash forward to extended day number three (EXD#3)...that's six cancelled flights...and I don't know whom to thank ironically because the weather problems were in Dallas and Little Rock, not D.C.

I know the good people of Sofitel were truly concerned for my welfare, and I appreciated the complimentary trays that kept coming to my room. But I was starting to feel like I was in the hospital...a super pleasant-smelling hospital where all the food (if you actually feel like eating) is along the lines of steak tartare and escargot and no one sticks you with needles...and you feel like you are never going to get better despite how lovely the place is (some of you will get that allusion).

Begin TMI Statement::

At 3:00 a.m. on EXD#3, I awoke hacking so hard I nearly coughed up a lung. That lasted about 10 minutes, and then I decided I needed to pee. It's no surprise, really, after all the tea, coffee, orange juice, grapefruit juice, San Pellegrino, and Perrier that served as the hotel equivalent of an IV drip...and the obvious pressure coughing would put on my bladder...nature would naturally call. So I got up, went to the bathroom, sat down, finished. And then I kind of looked at my reflection in the glass shower door and thought, "I think I'm going to throw up."

I haven't thrown up in a long time, so I had kind of forgotten the feeling...I reflected on this looking at my reflection. But then when the water came to my mouth, I was like, "Yep, flush, pull up the jammies now: this thing is happening."

I barfed twice.

End TMI Statement::

And then I sat back on the cool marble floor (the hotel is next door to the White House, what do you expect?), sweaty and exhausted and waiting to see if I should expect another round.

That was when I realized I had run out of toothpaste the day before.

You would think life couldn't get any worse at that point.

Wait for it.

So I flossed and rubbed my teeth with my finger and went back to bed.

And then I had a little bit of a dream. Because I read so widely and variously.

I dreamt that I died in "le Sofitel" sitting on the toilet.

My body was hauled onto a gurney by a bunch of people I didn't know dressed in white who threw around words and phrases like "stat" and "Valsalva maneuver" (another good reason not to use Wikipedia as a reference), while the hotel staff...Nikita, Raj, Abdul, Djeynaba**...cried over me because I was such a wonderful guest. As everyone looked on, I worried I had never completely pulled up my jammies.

My body went off to wherever bodies go in D.C., but my soul stayed on at "le Sofitel."

And I had to wrestle with every new occupant over my rightful place in the king-sized bed (right side, next to the windows) over and over again. Sometimes I had to give in to couples and lie at the foot of the bed on the scratchy carpet with the extra blanket and no pillow. Other times I shoved the two chairs together to make a bed and used the cotton robe for cover.

I would make a great ghost.

This went on and on until I woke up in a sweat at 5:00 a.m.

I checked my phone.

And then I checked the bathroom to make sure I wasn't dead on the toilet.

Thankfully, I was not.

But when I came back around the corner, the clothes I had stripped off earlier when I went to bed looked shockingly like a dead body. I got down on my hands and knees and nervously went about feeling around for myself.

My hands felt nothing but cloth.

And the only reason I'm telling this story is because I'm sitting on the divan in my own damned house watching my two cats fight over who gets to sit next to my stinky feet.

That is the only way to be 100% sure I did not die on the toilet at "le Sofitel."

*Photo courtesy of Earthworm via Flickr's Creative Commons. Some rights reserved.
**While I did change the names of the staff I came to know at the Sofitel, I tried to retain their cultural identities. Before I got sick, we had some fabulous discussions about life in D.C., coming to the U.S. for new opportunities, and learning to embrace difference. I wish they had a position for a tech writer.

Shiny Happy People

2015-02-09T22:16:00.003-06:00

Confession...

I use the Internet.

I use it a lot.

In fact, I don't think my current job would actually exist without it.

So this post is about a trend I see happening on the Information Superhighway, specifically the street that makes up social media. (I'd like to explore which part of the Internet is not on Social Media Street these days, but that's a blog for another day.)

The trend has already been the subject of at least one research study, so I'm not alone in seeing this pattern of behavior.

The trend?

Everyone out there is so damned happy, it makes me want to open an artery...several arteries, in fact. (I promise that's hyperbole.)

On a daily basis friends and strangers alike (it depends on the particular social medium) post articles, memes, motivational "posters," suggesting that the key to happiness is being in the present, being mindful, slowing down. They brag about their five-hour meditation sessions or the retreat they took in the Rockies.

I don't mean any disrespect. I know it's well intentioned.

I also know that much of this is the curation of life that social media inspires ("Look, World, here are pictures of me with all my skinny, smart, beautiful friends!"). I started curating my own when we (and, by "we," I mean people few of us actually know) called it the ARPANET (yes, in all caps). That is, back in the 70s when I moved from my tiny girl bedroom into my much larger teenager bedroom and made all my own choices in furniture and decor straight out of the pages of Vogue, which was an excellent source of photos I could cut out and tape to my closet wall, photos of couture Lady Gaga wishes she could wear and major works of art I could only dream of one day seeing in person.

Yes, I am the original Pinterest (as were most of us...I won't tell who fell asleep at night gazing at Twisted Sister...I was totally into the Pet Shop Boys...so we're even).

But all this damned, curated happiness, this museum of bliss, is depressing me.

Okay, that's not what's depressing me.

My thyroid is out of whack. That's what's depressing me.

The doctor who originally diagnosed me (and for that I am thankful...the major symptom...the absolute lack of saliva production...isn't the one used as the "go-to" for suspecting hypothyroidism) stopped practicing medicine and sent me a polite letter two months after refusing to refill my prescription for the drug that treats it, levothyroxine. The pharmacist's guess was that the doctor felt I needed to be tested again, but I knew better: the final letter was the sixth time I had received communication about a reduction in the care being offered, and I had been tested the previous year with no changes to my TSH levels. (Yeah, I should have been more proactive.) I went on a search for a new doctor, and six months later, I now have an appointment. And I'm being treated in the meantime by my university's health service.

Unfortunately, it's still too little and too late, and I'm smack-dab in the middle of a thyroid-induced depression. The other symptoms (lack of saliva, weight gain for no reason, and complete exhaustion) just exacerbate the irrational sadness, the hollowness of everything, the "certain slant of light" that doesn't go away after winter solstice.

I've been through this once before. Two months before my diagnosis, the Hubs and I moved our bed into the living room so I could be close to the furnace (intolerance to cold is another symptom) and so the sounds of his getting ready for work could gently wake me up. Be still he had to bring me tea and pull me by the arms up away from the pillow. I didn't have the energy to do it myself. After treatment, I realized just how sick I had been to have made those kinds of adjustments to my life and routine. So I know this road.

But that knowledge cannot change what I feel. When people say, "Be present in the moment," I want to respond, "You be present in my moment for one minute and get back to me on that." When I hear, "Be mindful," I want to ask, "Of what? I know all about Buddha's 'right mindfulness.' How do I achieve that when my body is doing everything it can to conspire against me?" And when I'm advised to slow down, I want to yell, "That is the most unrealistic thing I have ever fucking heard; you've got to be kidding me right now. What life do you lead that makes slowing down possible?"

My reasons for this line of thinking are numerous.

First, I include myself among a line of thinkers from Nietzsche to Derrida (and probably well before...if one reads Plato ironically) who believe there is no possibility of being completely in the present. They would argue that the developments of language first and writing long after add two filters to our experience. Human thought is shaped by language (for example, many languages have words for phenomena English speakers are unfamiliar with and must, therefore, borrow...,and I'm not talking about the debunked myth regarding Inuit words for "snow," but words like "hominy," which is Powhatan for a particular type of processed corn you love, hate, have never experienced, or have never heard of). For Derrida's money, any thought possesses the potential for being written down and, therefore, must be maintained in the mind (a good reason for memory remaining one of the canons of rhetoric despite Plato's frequent admonitions...hence my ironic reading). In other words, we are in the constant process of interpreting our experiences rather than actually experiencing them. Maybe animals have a being-in-the-presentness, but given my cats' complete nightly freak out at 6:40...exactly 20 minutes before supper time, I suspect they can see into the future and think of it with craving...and without thought about being in the present. I've queried them, they've yet to comment. The Hubs says he has come close: climbing 14ers in Colorado, where every step in high altitude required utmost concentration. But he won't go so far as to say "always present." And before anyone jumps in with an explanation in the comments, I'm very familiar with Thich Nhat Hanh's "telephone meditation," an exercise in acknowledging the thought but letting it go as a state of being in the present. Still, I wonder, what's the difference between my not thinking about it and answering the phone immediately and my trying not to think about it and delaying answering the phone? Which action is more "present"? Honestly, if you know me, you're in my contacts list: I know who you are and, most likely, what you're calling about when you ring me. So again, which is more present? The ring tone? Or the actual conversation?

Second, why are unhappiness, sadness, anger, frustration...all the "negative" emotions...why are they now wrong? And understand I'm just interpreting what I get from media headlines and the posts I see on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram...all the social media I visit frequently. I'm not saying this seems to be the new wave of psychological understanding. In fact, some of my friends over in the psychology department at my university (as well as our friends in biology) are dumbfounded by the pseudoscience people are betting their health and well being on. Emotions serve a purpose. Case in point: I am working really hard to fund a project that will tell the story of an important moment in the Civil Rights Movement. Without anger, conscientiously directed anger, that event would never have occurred. In fact, the whole movement would not exist. And, hey, sometimes sadness leads us to do things to forget our sadness...like writing blog posts. I think happiness as some sort of desired constant is a bit overrated...and unrealistic.

Third, if you're feeling blue because someone close to you died or you didn't get a job you really wanted or someone took you to task over something that seemed unimportant to you, meditation may very well help you feel better. But if you have thyroid disease, insomnia, are taking certain types of medications, or are truly suffering from "clinical" depression, it probably isn't going to help you...it might, but "might" is the key word. Yet I get the feeling, especially after a day-long drive down the Superhighway yesterday, that if it doesn't work, it's because I'm not doing it right...because, if I do it right, it will ALWAYS work. Y'all, if you're doing something to improve yourself in some way, and it doesn't seem to help, please try something else. And I'm not saying this because I hate yoga pants (only when they're worn as outerwear and not actually for yoga). I'm saying this because I often feel pressured by well-meaning people to participate in activities that work for them: "Jazzercize saved my life!" That is so awesome, but I'm still imagining Olivia Newton-John's video "Let's Get Physical," and I'm actually just creeped out right now. It may work for you, and I don't mind the suggestion, but when you extol its benefits with hyperbole (the usefulness of which is limited to extraordinary circumstances, like my own) and ad nauseam in that sing-songy way people do, my mind (which suddenly becomes very much oriented to the present) is taking inventory of my arsenal for getting away from people. It's the reason I paid for the premium version of the Fake Call Me app I installed on my phone.

So this is my manifesto: I do not owe it to anyone to be happy.

Period.

Beautiful Dragons

2014-12-16T17:54:00.002-06:00

The perception of what is small is the secret of clear sightedness; the guarding of what is soft and tender is the secret of strength. --Lao Tzu

When I was very young, my mom read to me every night, and when I started first grade, she taught me to read. In essence, she gave me the gifts of life and literacy, yet while I have certainly enjoyed the former to its fullest (thanks, Mom!), I never became the "reader" I should have become. Don't get me wrong. During TV commercials and at the kitchen table I would read the newspaper, the dictionary, Encyclopedia Britannica, the TV manual, my dad's collection of off-color jokes, etc. I simply had no interest in age-appropriate fiction or poetry...even as a lit major in college, which is kind of embarrassing: I probably owe a huge apology to all my English professors for having read, at most, 20% of the literature assigned (and I'm being "generous" in my estimate because I'm a terrible person). This kind of begs the question of why I graduated with a degree in English in the first place, and the answer is because I thought that was how one becomes a writer.

I'm a little slow sometimes.

The truth is, though you might never catch me with my nose in a book (fiction or poetry, anyway), I love a good story. It's just that when my mom decided it was time for me to take over the bed-time ritual, I discovered that I preferred making up the stories in my head. It is a habit I have practiced nightly to this day.

Usually, it begins with a dream I find particularly compelling. As I lie in bed recalling the dream the next night, I work out its cast of characters, how the story should begin, and how it should progress. I am always the hero, and no story ever ends...it fades away when a new dream sparks a new story. That way, I can pick up an old story if I think of something new to add to it.

These days I'm Sans, dragon slayer. Except that's just my cover. See, back in the day, humanity saw the majesty, power, and intelligence of dragons and honored them with gifts, thinking this would bring them good luck. The dragons thought the gift giving was utterly illogical, wasteful even, because they had no use for gold, diamonds, crowns, or necklaces too small for them to wear. But they accepted these presents because it would have been rude not to.

Unfortunately, good luck doesn't actually exist, so when Jack lost his ass on a bad investment in a seed company and Peter's crop of peppers failed (the only thing he planted that year because "they were going to be huge!") and Hansel and Gretel were arrested for burglary and capital murder, they were a little nonplussed. Naturally, none of their problems were actually their fault. Oh, no, it must be the dragons, and just why were they expected to give dragons treasure in exchange for luck, anyway? Something had to be done.

So they began a smear campaign, and the persecution of dragons commenced.

That's where I come in. Admittedly, I haven't done much work on the back story (gotta leave gaps to fill in for tomorrow night) so I don't know how I got entangled in this mess, but I know right from wrong and I deplore injustice. So I went in search of the legendary Xpthxzyphnmcz to hatch a plan. Dragon language is unpronounceable to humans, we lack the proper vocal muscles, so you can call him Hughes.

Hughes is an electric dragon...his defense is lightning which strikes with surprising accuracy, and his serpentine skin pops and crackles with static. His strangely orange, soulful eyes are home to solar systems, and you can see them when he's curled up resting and at human-eye level to marvel that other sentient beings might be alive on the planets that dot his irides (sorry, can't go back on my Latin roots).

But plans are never easy in fairy tales. First, the hero has to descend into the underworld because stigmatized dragons aren't very trusting. They want proof you're legit. I had to do things...things you don't want to know about...things you shouldn't ask me about (because I haven't made up those parts yet, either).

I've got mad skillz. So once I had the dragons' trust, I turned them all into house pets (mice, hamsters, cats, dogs, hedgehogs, geckos...those things that are Lao Tzu small) and hid them from vengeful humans forever...right under their noses. How brilliant is that?

Hughes happens to be an orange and white cat. If you want to see the dragon come out, step on his tail. Actually, don't do that. And don't pet his long fur while you're sitting next to the furnace in the winter because you'll see what I mean by electricity and it won't be pleasant for either of you.

In exchange for protection, the dragons pay me a tithe every year, and I spend three months collecting it from their various lairs all over the world, which leads to all sorts of adventures. In one, I had to save all of y'all from a horrific creature far worse than a basilisk that was going to turn you into stone. You're welcome.

Sans is basically me: keenly fashionable but with messy hair, kind to animals, loyal to friends, and quick with a defense when wronged. But for a long time, Sans had something I thought I desperately needed.

Fearlessness.

She could hop on a dragon, fly all over the world, collect adventures like they were jewelry, slay demons, rescue kittens...all while I lay in bed in the safety of my little room thinking it all up.

I couldn't do the things Sans did for one simple reason.

Fear.

For 28 years, I couldn't get on a dragon or a plane, take the elevator above the 10th floor, step foot in a glass elevator, look out the window of any room above the 5th story.

I had lived that way since I was 19 and took my last flight from Cincinnati to Indy, vowing, during a short and uneventful trip, that I would never do it again. I don't know why.

Okay, that's not true. I DIDN'T know why. Today is my birthday, and the beauty of growing older is that we get smarter (well, most people do). I understand something I didn't understand mere months ago.

Fear is a choice.

Case in point. Several years ago, the Hubs and I were in a head-on collision. I remember every detail vividly. I saw the look on the other driver's face as he slammed on the brakes, causing his car to fishtail before it crashed into us. Bracing my elbows against the back of the seat. Thinking, "This is going to hurt." The feeling of the air bag punching me in the chest. My vision obscured briefly by the bag's fabric. The acrid smell of the smoke emitted from the dashboard. Rolling backward into a ditch. Quickly unlatching the seat belt. The man banging on the cracked windshield, telling us to get out because he didn't know where the smoke was coming from.

In all of that, I did not at any time experience fear.

I didn't experience ANY emotion because I didn't have time to.

See, I've come to think that emotions are like orchids that need a lot of tending: if you ignore them, they die.

On the one hand, that's a bad thing because if you forget to take care of your love, it can fade away. On the other hand, if you want to kill your fear, all you have to do is stop watering it.

And I should know.

I am no longer afraid of flying. It helped that I wanted to go to South Korea so bad that I was willing to do anything and that my university employs several personal counselors whose services are free. But, ultimately, what it really came down to was deciding that I wasn't afraid anymore.

So, thirteen flights later, I'm planning my next trip to the country I fell in love with, and I'm thinking about the beautiful dragon turning away from the terminal, firing up her jets, racing down the runway. And that miraculous moment when she leaves the earth...she has left fear behind, she has left what is known behind, she has left all that could weigh her down. She is in the sun rocketing ever closer to the future, to what can be.

She is Sans. She is Jennifer.

She is a dragon.

And a writer.

My Own Private Arizona

2014-01-16T18:11:00.000-06:00

My Version of a Post-It

My nearly next-door neighbor is a private college with a mission to promote its newly minted four-year degree status. With that in mind, they've taken an "if you build it, they will come" approach. And building it they are. Two academic buildings in two years and now a dorm. As required by the historic-district rules that govern my neighborhood, they issued a meeting notice to discuss construction of the all-men's dormitory which The Hubs and I figured would be built across the street because they own those properties. I mentioned to a friend that Hubs and I were concerned about declining property values (because "men" and "dormitory" and let's face it; they actually mean "boys") and were considering approaching the college about buying our property at current market value and moving elsewhere in Old Town. Her response was "You won't get anything out of that house." And her demeanor suggested that she was more than happy to share her opinion with me. So I mentioned my dilemma to a mutual friend and got pretty much a similar opinion. I understate. It was actually word-for-word what the other friend had said.

Whatevs.

I watched my dad make life choices out of a sense of obligation and then out of a need to remand the commitments he made to his sense of obligation. I have, as Exhibit A, a prime example. Dad became a dry cleaner because my grandfather told him to. No, scratch that. He didn't just tell him to. He pulled my dad, first, out of the Navy, and, then, out of college because he needed him back at work. Later, Grandpa "sold" the cleaners to my dad; Dad agreed to pay a certain sum to his parents every month until they both died.

Books and Other Paper Storage

Dad began dreaming of selling the business and moving to Arizona when I was 16. But my grandma had moved to be near us because of her poor health. After my parents finally sold the cleaners and later divorced, Dad ended up in Florida because his oldest brother needed him to start a new restaurant. (I think I see a pattern here.) Within a few months, the brother didn't need him anymore (let's just say he found something better than a business partner). So Dad pawned his Masonic ring (gold with a 1/2 carat diamond and two sapphires...he never took it off) to get back home...which was never Arizona. About six years ago, my uncle gave my dad $10,000...enough to cover (but not recover) the ring and not at all what my dad was owed, in my opinion. In 2010, I inherited that money and used it to pay for my father's funeral. As I wrote the check, I wished he had used it to spend some extended time wandering around the Grand Canyon.

I consider myself lucky that my "intelligence," which I've never considered innate, consists mostly of two skills: 1) a gift for rote memorization of facts and 2) the ability to extract the moral of others' stories, so I do not commit the same mistakes. (By my own humble reckoning, most people have to live the mistake before they actually learn to avoid it. Which is a good reason to pull one's head out of one's ass.) From my observations, I learned that our only obligations in life are as follows: 1) do our best to stay alive for the people we care about (you know, obtain food, shelter, clothing, and water when the going gets tough and avoid problematic behavior such as sticking our fingers in light sockets or sitting on the couch eating potato chips all day every day), 2) be kind, 3) make yourself happy every day (and it's an act of will...not a state of being).

Office and Art Supplies

That's it.

I think if my dad had lived up to this set of obligations, he would have finished out his service to his country, gone to college on the GI Bill, and spent the remainder of his life practicing law. And his dad would have been pretty proud of him.

When the people we care about are happy, we're happy, too.

So when I turned 18, I filled my '76 Buick Electra with all my stuff and took off across the country to the place I wanted to be (not Arizona). I went to a university my parents thought was a bit sketchy, eloped with a guy they barely knew, refused to have children, and generally did whatever made me happy. And my parents were (are) pretty proud of me.

From the picture above and the one here, you can see that our walls are composed of wood boards of varying widths milled from old-growth pines before 1900, when the house was built. They had originally been wallpapered, as was traditional at that time. Of course, the tongue and groove gaps meant that holes in the paper developed over time, so someone got the bright idea of throwing up particle board paneling (and I doubt the person saw the irony of the skeuomorph). We stripped it all several years ago. When we got down to the original layer, we were sort of "Hmm. What do we do with this?" Then we discovered that we liked the wood, especially the holes where knots have fallen out. I decided I'm going to put a coat of polyurethane over the new moldings because I like the chalk markings the lumberyard used to mark them, which remind me somewhat of a cross between graffiti and Dadaist collage.

The leather-topped desk you see has a story: My mom and I answered a classified ad and took a trip to Indianapolis Southside (a neighborhood you never want to visit, trust me). The house was stuffed to the gills with old crap and children. A man sat in a recliner in a darkened corner contemplating us with a bottle in his hand. After we had packed it up and took off, my mother grumbled, "He could feed his kids for a month with that $100, but I guarantee it's going straight to the liquor store." The giant "thing" that holds my office and art supplies is a homemade job (the dividers are cut from a tin sign). I bought it because I liked it, not finding a purpose for it until a couple years later. I'm pretty sure it's standing on its side.

We bought the place from my Great Aunt Jewell (her spelling) in 1995 when she was 84. I spent summers with my mom and my second cousin here. I remember the corner grocery store that's now demolished, the concrete posts that served as street signs, the Dog and Suds at the corner of Oak and Harkrider...across the street from Hiegel Hardware with its windmill, still intact but closer to us now.

When we were in the process of buying the house, I single-handedly painted the underside of the carport as per the bank's requirements for loan approval. It took five days, and I was covered in paint and mosquito-bite welts the size of Gibraltar. The day I finished, my aunt boiled a chicken...with the skin still on it. I was a picky eater back then, and the chicken looked revolting as it stewed in the pot. But I was so tired and so hungry and my aunt had done this thing for me. So I sat down in the dining room (which is now the study in the pictures) to a meal of boiled chicken and plain rice, took the first bite, and wept (my aunt had a peculiar habit: she would only eat standing up in the kitchen, so she never knew). Every bite was pure joy, the celebration of a little fat, a little water, a little chicken, a little rice, and my aunt's love coming together to soothe the mosquito welts and sore muscles.

Things I Love

When I made the 600-mile trek to settle here, people asked me where I was from (which is, for reasons I will never understand, more important to people than where one's heart is, but I'm sure it all goes back to that obligation thing...be true to your school). When I answered, they gasped in wonder, "What on Earth are you doing here?" Making myself happy every day.

By the way, that's the chair from my dad's study. My mom's dad bought the typewriter, used, when he went to business college. The phone's number is 317 UPtown 3 3144, which translates to 1-317-873-3144. The drawing is an original by Ken Gardner, a friend, titled Adam and Eve. Below the Magritte print is a picture of one of my great-grandfathers in a Bowler hat.

The Hubs and I decided against selling: it turns out my collegiate neighbor owns the whole block and is constructing the dorm on another street, the university where I work has plans to develop a retail, restaurant, housing corridor five blocks west, and the city will be establishing a high-end shopping center five blocks east.

"You won't get anything out of that house."

I've already gotten quite a bit out of this house. It is a provider of shelter, memories, and psychic warmth. It is one means of my personal expression. It is MY Arizona.

Yes, I think of cobwebs and dust as decorative accesories.

I don't vacuum much.

The shower needs to be ripped out and the kitchen completely remodeled.

But I only have three obligations: dusting, vacuuming, and renovations don't currently fall within their purview.

My bad.

I only have one question (and I direct it especially at those who offer negative unsolicited judgments).

How's the weather in Arizona?

The Word of the Day

2013-12-14T15:50:00.002-06:00

Today is my birthday.

I turn 46 officially at 11:04 p.m., which is uncharacteristic because that's way past my bedtime.

Last year I made a Facebook goof and threw a lavish party.

This year I'm spending a little less. My present to myself is this.

Right here.

A chance to sit down in a cafe on President Clinton Avenue and write for myself.

My mom will probably call any minute now to tell me the story of her martyr...I mean...of my birth. She will tell me how, when told it was time to go to the hospital, my dad jumped in the shower...because...you know...that was important. She will recount how, unlike most men of his generation, he waited in the hospital during the three hours of my delivery. That he hoped for a daughter and cried when the nurse brought out a baby girl. She'll remind me that she weighed 93 pounds that day in '67 and that she was supposed to have a C-section if I weighed over four. And she'll wonder what the hell I was thinking by clocking in at 8 lbs., 10 ozs. and 19 inches tall. Because it was clearly my fault. She'll talk about the number of stitches (over 100...and not across her abdomen, either...sorry if that's TMI). The three weeks of not bonding. The doctor who told her to stop waking me up for feeding because it's fairly senseless to feed a baby who clearly isn't hungry.

I'll say, "Mom, I think I was born on a full stomach."

And she'll laugh and say, "Yeah, I guess you were. And I don't regret any of it. You are so special to me."

And I'll cry a little bit as she tells me she loves me and hangs up the phone.

So many miles.

Several years ago I had a curious experience. I had a student who made it his mission in life to make mine miserable. It was a shortlived relief when he disappeared for 18 straight days.

Then out of nowhere, he showed up in my office wanting to know what assignments he needed to make up in order to pass the class. I wanted to ask him if he had completely lost his mind, but, instead, I explained that I had dropped him from the course to save him from getting an F and told him to meet with his advisor, which I had to look up for him because he had no idea who that was.

On the first day of classes the next semester, a different student walked into class 20 minutes late. He was the spitting image of that other student. They were twins! And he was clearly on the same mission as his "brother."

I was hopping mad, so, after the next class period, I made him sign a contract stating he understood being so much as five minutes late counted as 1/3 of an absence and that he would fail the course if he kept up this "pattern" of behavior. He explained to me later that he had gotten lost and apologized that he did not tour the campus to establish where his classes were (which was not something I had suggested he should have done). Over the course of that fall, I watched this young man write six pages when I asked for two, find self expression through the written word, pun (!), and blossom as a campus leader.

On the day of the final exam (my birthday, by the way...it never failed that I had to give an exam on my birthday) I could no longer see a resemblance between him and that other student. Nothing. No similarities at all. And I looked pretty hard for them as he wrote his final essay.

A year later, I spent the day I turned 30 in bed crying with my cat, Bart, and a box of tissues. Bart was actually a beautiful, loving, kind human being who happened to exist in a cat's body. He knew when I was down even when I wasn't in tears, and he comforted me all day long.

I miss him.

During my 30's I watched myself in the mirror as the first wrinkle limned my face. The first grey hair sprouted. And how dare the hair on my head become thinner and sparser and turn grey as I started sprouting hair on my chin? Why wouldn't it all just stay where it as supposed to? I was shocked and horrified and angry.

Really angry.

Really, really angry.

My face wasn't perfect. My body wasn't perfect. My life wasn't perfect. I didn't know who I wanted to be, how I wanted to be, what I wanted, or how to get it. I had a work self, a student self, and a personal self, and I didn't like any of them. I just wasn't me. And those damn lines kept creeping across my face to remind me that time was wasting.

Then I turned 40 in 2007. I celebrated it somehow because the Hubs gave me a pair of Tiffany blue turquoise earrings from the famed store. But it was, otherwise, unremarkable.

And now it's 2013. In six short years I've seen a lot of change...some good, some bad. I became the assistant director of my university's writing center, a job I loved. My dad, my cheerleader, my best friend, died in 2010. My mom underwent brain surgery to remove a tumor in 2011. Factions in the department I taught in declared civil war, or so it seemed to me, in 2012, so I Ieft the job I loved for a new job I also love. Then, someone I trusted and believed in...actually cared about...betrayed me (and many others) this year.

More wrinkles. More grey hairs. Rosacea. Near-sightedness.

But I'm not spending the day in bed.

I looked in the mirror a few days ago, and I liked what I saw.

I'm getting jowls, and I can kind of see where's that's going in a few more years. I've got a turkey neck.

But I think I'm kind of lovely.

I learned from the experience with the two students that what you see in people's faces is a reflection of your feelings about them. And, therefore, a person is made attractive or unattractive by their words and actions.

People's faces can become terrifyingly ugly in a single moment.

It is the same for your reflection in the mirror.

When I turned 30, I thought I was over the hill, getting old, past it, no longer cool. I know many of those feelings were handed to me by a Photoshop-happy U.S. media, which I have mostly abandoned. But I think, too, that I was not the moral and intellectual self I was striving for.

All of the loss and change I experienced in my 40's has revised my perspective. It has made me a better person. It has made me a happier person.

My face is full of flaws, but I like it...especially my smile because it comes so easily. In the mirror I see the reflection of someone I like, and so she is lovely to me.

You can love and be loved all of your life.

You can be lovely at any age.

Just lovely.

DIY Karma

2013-03-18T20:33:00.000-05:00

"Meanness is generally rewarded. With itself." --Sans

Yes I just quoted myself. I posted that on Facebook yesterday, the result of a long chat session on FB with a friend. I can't say anything about that here, but I can tell one of my favorite stories.

Several years ago, my mom got a call from a man she had gone to school with and who had lived down the street from her. I still remember the block of small-town row houses he came from: squat, run-down, four-roomed houses that might have been called shacks...if one weren't feeling very generous. That was the 70's, not the 50's when my mom was growing up. Maybe they had been cute, cozy little cottages back in the day, but they cast the shadow of a slum by the time I was old enough to remember. Her house was palatial by comparison: two stories with a full basement, a two-car garage, a barn, a chicken house and a huge yard all built on a hill overlooking everyone else. And, because she was also shy, her schoolmates thought she was stuck up.

I'll get back to the guy later, but now, time for a flashback.

My mom walked the railroad behind her house (which, by the way, was a private track built off the Monon so a very rich townsman could drive his own locomotive to the local train station, such was the eccentricity of small-town Indiana life) to get to the Friend's Meeting every Sunday (my grandparents weren't much on religion; she always went alone). To get there from the railroad, which passed by the Meeting House as it wended its way deep into the park-like grove of trees that surrounded the rich man's estate, she had to walk behind the row houses.

One Sunday, she walked past the neighborhood boys as they were playing baseball in their collective back yards (there were no fences to separate them). She went to the Meeting and then returned the same way. This time, however, the boys were waiting on the track. She kept walking, I imagine with her head down, and started to go around them. The oldest one held out a stick, threatening her with it, and calling her names. And then, just as she brushed by one of them, the rest grabbed her from behind, and the boy with the stick lifted her skirt. They all cackled as they made fun of my mother's underwear. She wrested away and ran home crying. I imagine her face was hot with tears when she burst through the screen door at the back of the house.

After Mom told her what happened, Grandma sent her to bed for a nap.

So flash forward to the guy on the telephone. He had run into the woman who used to babysit all of them and found out whom my mother had married (her high school sweetheart) and where she was living. And he called to tell her the rest of the story.

See, my grandmother was so typically a grandmother, even at that age (she gave birth to my mother, her first child, in her early thirties and, being, herself, the first born daughter of 12 siblings, had already raised quite a few children) that you might have mistaken her for sweetness and light. She loved to bake cookies and pies. She sewed her own fashions. And she was typically Ozark soft-spoken with the whispy Southern drawl of hill people from Arkansas. My grandmother.

MY GRANDMOTHER. She married at 15, suffered her husband's mistress, and rejoiced when he was murdered by the mistress's bootlegger husband. She picked whatever crop she could during the Dust Bowl and loaded explosives into bombs in WWII. I never knew her to be afraid of anything, and I'll tell you, I respected and obeyed that woman for as long as she lived. But then she told me things she had never then or ever after told anyone else, and I understood I was not to tell either. We were kindred spirits; I felt, and still do, the power no one else really saw in her coursing through me so pervasively that it continues to shock me.

This grandma, who was the Annie Oakley of grandmothers in my book, went to the neighbor boy's house and spoke with his mom. He was still in the backyard, the baseball game having resumed. His mother, apparently infuriated with her son, told my grandmother to take whatever steps necessary. So she went out to the backyard, jerked him up by the collar, and brought his face within inches of hers: "If you ever touch my daughter again, I will beat you so hard you'll wish you were dead. And that goes for all the rest of you, too." And then she let go, made a sweeping gesture, and then a fist. Having made her point, she walked stolidly out of the back yard. The boy's father came out with the belt...and, well, you know the rest of that.

So the boy, now well into middle age, called my mother to apologize for teasing her and lifting her skirt.

And to let her know that the boys involved had told the story all over town, and everyone knew to be nice to my mom because there was one bad ass bitch standing behind her.

The Metaphor of the Pot Lid

2013-03-06T19:54:00.001-06:00

I'm in the middle of a week's vacation I took to clean my house. Yep, a vacation to clean house not a vacation from cleaning house. I've gotten a considerable amount completed and the list of of the lost-then-found items continues to grow (the most important being a watch my dad gave to me before he died). But there's a moment in every room where I start to panic because I've just made the situation a whole lot worse...by pulling every single item out of every single drawer, cupboard, and closet...kind of like this:

It has to get worse before it can get better, right?

So what prompted this sudden outburst of uncharacteristic domesticity?

I volunteered my house for a photo shoot (a boudoir photo shoot, no less, because the interior of my home is so damned romantic that my 12-inch skillet ran off with my pair of pinking shears. I found the skillet in the oven and the shears under the bed; I'm afraid to ask them what happened or if I should be expecting the pitter-patter of...the feet of something I'm pretty sure I never want to see).
The Metaphor of the Pot Lid happened (which is way cooler than the Allegory of the Cave because I made it up).

"So what is this metaphor?" I know you're asking yourself that.

Well, I watch a lot of Korean TV. (That might be an understatement: At this point, my Korean is passable enough to get me around Seoul, and I've never been to Korea nor taken a single Korean course in my life. And I'm not even remotely joking. I can hail a cab, order soju, ask for the restroom, and give directions to Gangnam...because that's what's really important, right? )

One of my favorite series is Boys Over Flowers (Kim Hyung Joon is so pretty I want to kiss him all over the face, which I'm sure he'd find appalling, given the 20-year age difference). In one scene, the main character, Jan Di, has moved to a rooftop apartment with her younger brother in order to stay in the private school she has won a scholarship to attend while her parents take off for the coast to make money in the fishing trade to support their two children. The first night, she and her brother sit down to a pot of ramen, and Jan Di does something so remarkable it changed my entire life.

She ate her portion of ramen from the pot lid.

Yeah, you heard me.

I nearly wept.

Rooftop apartments (which have nothing in common with penthouses, in case that's the image you have in your mind) kind of sprang up as an afterthought among apartment owners looking for extra cash. Many of them are single-roomed, ramshackle, four-story walk-ups that look cold and dreary, but they do have a certain appeal: no neighbors except for those downstairs; a terrace with a view (it may or may not be an awesome view; it's still a view); an outdoor furniture item that looks like a dais but functions as a table, summer bed, and bench (I suppose you could soliloquize from it if you wanted to...it seems to be relatively versatile); clotheslines; and plenty of sunshine. The drawback is that the apartments are tiny.

Also, if Korean TV is to be believed, they come with nosy, unforgiving landladies, but that's beside the point.

If you live in a Korean rooftop apartment, you are on intimate terms with your floor because space is at a premium and you use the floor for everything you do: reading, watching TV, writing, eating, and sleeping. In fact, the dining table, which is basically an over-sized lap table that can accommodate four people, is put up after each meal, and the "bed" is "folded up" every morning. (It's actually called a "yo," and is basically a very thick blanket.) This is the reason why street shoes come off at the front door: no one sleeping on a yo wants to find her nose in contact with a floor covered in dog-poop dust. And that's probably the least offensive thing your shoes track in.

On the rooftop, ramen is common (tee hee) because it can be cooked quickly without a lot of fuss. And eating it out of the pot lid, an awesome innovation, makes it even less fussy because...one less dish to clean!

And that's the reason tears welled up in my eyes.

Iced-tea maker, ramen pot, rice cooker, steamer. Comes with handy-dandy bowl/plate/lid and insulated handle to keep fingers and counter tops from getting burned. Guaranteed to last the rest of your life. Never goes out of fashion.

So, I took on the task of perfecting my ramen-serving technique, and I learned that the Metaphor of the Pot Lid could be applied to other areas of my life.

First the technique:

Add water to the pot (it really doesn't matter how much, though I don't like to dilute the flavor and sometimes reserve the broth for other things...okay, I always reserve the broth for other things...rice, quinoa, bulgur wheat, millet...you can get a lot of mileage out of that stuff, plus you eliminate a lot of the sodium content by not actually drinking the sodium content).
Empty the packet contents into the water, bring to a boil, turn off the heat.
Place whole noodle knot into the broth (unless you truly enjoy chasing short noodles around with your chopsticks, don't break the noodle knot).
Empty crunchy noodle leftovers into mouth, enjoy; throw package into trash. Or make bracelets out of it or something equally useful/sustainable...I'm advocating a "waste not, want not" approach to life in this post, after all.
Turn the noodle knot over (after crunching down the short noodle bits but before making bracelets).
Cover.
Wait five minutes.
Serve noodles in pot lid.
To clean, empty broth, add water to the pot, turn on heat, cover, boil, then rinse. No dish pan hands!

And now for the lessons learned.

Let's think about the word "stuff." It has a number of connotations; one is "to stuff oneself," meaning "to eat to the point of being uncomfortable." It's also a vague sort of catch-all term for all the things we possess, and I don't think these meanings are coincidental. We are consumed by our consumption, and it's ubiquitous. On my counter, I could have (as the photo caption states) the following "stuff": an iced-tea maker, rice cooker, and steamer, and in my cupboard I could have a ramen pot. Four appliances/cooking vessels. Or I could simply have the ramen pot, which I'm going to have anyway and in which I can conduct many cooking acts. I could also have a food processor, mixer, and blender. Or I could simply have a bowl, spoon, sharp knife and mandoline, which I'm going to have anyway and which I could use for many cooking acts. So what's up with the space- and electricity-hogging appliances?

I'll tell you, but, first, a question: Have you ever seen a commercial for a simple pot? No, because it's simple, and it's something you're going to have anyway, like I said. No one needs to sell you the need for a pot. But you do see plenty of commercials for panini presses (really? a little butter in a skillet and hardcore pressure on the spatula will net you the same thing...without artificial grill marks, but does that actually change the taste?), iced-tea makers, popcorn poppers, espresso machines. Interestingly, you are never sold the thing-in-itself. Instead, you are sold promises: having this will make your life easier, you will look cooler, it will save you time, it will save you money, it will take a shower for you so you don't have to. And just like that very last promise, the things you are sold cannot do what they claim. In fact, quite the opposite.

I'm a little teapot...actually, I'm a cappuccino maker, coffee maker, and espresso machine. I'm also a mind reader: Sans is thinking, "Hmm, matcha green tea espresso!" This will be a fail, but she'll try it anyway. I run on propane, butane, natural gas, white gas, alcohol, wood, and a tiny amount of elbow grease. I do not come with an electric cord. I consider this a plus.

I have owned the pot in the first photo for over 20 years. It doesn't have a single dent, the lid fits as tightly as ever, it has never stained, and both handles are firmly in place. I can reasonably expect that pot to last another 20+ years, and it can fit in a cupboard...out of my way. Maybe a very expensive food processor will last as long as the pot, but I'll have to take it apart every time I use it and wash the pieces, wiping down the processor because it can't go in the dishwater (notice, dishWATER not dishWASHER) or be boiled clean (unless, of course, I want a piece of unusable melted plastic on my hands).

The food processor actually makes my life more difficult. It takes up more time and money than it's manual relations because it and its many parts require more washing time. No one sees it, so it doesn't make me look cooler. It takes up space and psychic energy by being in my line of sight every time I walk into the kitchen. And at the end of the day, it really only does one thing well. (And I'm not going to tell you what that is because it's one of my three secrets to making dumplings so pillow soft you could take a nap on them. So I won't be getting rid of it, but its friends Mixer and Blender have got to go because they've been a bad influence).

So what it boils down to (in keeping with our metaphor) is this. The pot lid now does double duty: It saves energy and time by concentrating heat in a small space, and it saves energy and time by acting as a plate/bowl. I think I should expect the same thing from all the other "stuff" in my house. If it doesn't chop, slice, dice, and so much more, I don't want it. If it has to be maintained, repaired, and handled with kid gloves, I don't want it. Unfortunately, I've spent the last three years, The Time of Troubles, engaging in retail therapy. So I find myself with a lot of one-trick ponies that have fled to the far fields in need of rooting out and then retiring (from me and onto someone else with the best sales pitch of all time: "ABSOLUTELY FREE!"). And not just in the kitchen but everywhere else. The vanity in the bedroom will learn tricks from the ramen pot, or I'm kicking it to the curb because I do not even use it to put on makeup.

And before you go all Norman-Rockwell nostalgic on me, remember that in the scene I described earlier, a sister and brother shared a humble meal, and she generously gave him the bowl to eat out of. While that is fiction, it's so much more true and meaningful than a huge family gathering with all the china, silverware, and serving dishes that are used, at most, three times a year and need to be washed before and after the big event. You know, those events where you'd like to crawl across the table and choke your mother-in-law? The ones where you excuse yourself to mix a vodka martini in the bathroom, pouring it into a Nalgene container and declaring that your New Year's resolution is drinking more water? Where you watch everyone sleeping to the rhythms of American football and wish you were in a hot lava field? Yeah, Norman-freaking-Rockwell moments.

Also, no matter how Zen someone tries to convince me the washing o' the dishes is...I'm sorry, it just isn't. My meditation on washing the dishes goes like this: "I hate washing dishes. Who dirtied this cup? Oh, The Hubs. Two sandwich plates? Where did those come from? Oh, The Hubs. Did I use all these forks? Oh, no. The Hubs. You know what I'd like to be doing instead of washing the dishes right now? Killing The Hubs." And The Hubs will laugh at this because I know he's thinking the same thing about me every time he washes the dishes. So let's do ourselves a favor. Let's find clever ways to avoid dishwashing. Let's save lives and eat out of the pot lid!

Post Script: The Watch. I know you're thinking it does only does one thing. Actually, it doesn't even do that. I took out the battery and set it to the time of my father's death, preferring my phone for telling the time. Yet the watch serves two very important purposes: 1) It exists to be beautiful, and 2) It exists to remind me, like the Metaphor of the Pot Lid, that time is fleeting. I really don't want to spend it washing dishes.

Bad Romance: Part II

2012-12-19T19:39:00.004-06:00

How to Sexually Harass a Woman (Or Anyone, Really) as Seen through the Lens of a Lady Gaga Video

If you've known me for any length of time, you are probably sick of hearing about Lady Gaga. I am a Monstrous Fan...for a number of reasons: she shares my lone superpower of wearing heels so high that we breathe clouds (not plain air like all you plebeians...I kid...mostly), she doesn't take herself very seriously (she falls down in those heels on stage all the time and gets up laughing), I find her songs imaginative, and, sue me, I love the added layers synthesizers can bring to a piece of music in the hands of the right musician. But I'm also a fan because of her videos, which are rich with complex meaning.

The video for "Bad Romance," however, has always stood out for me above all others, even "Born This Way," which is the video responsible for completing Lady Gaga's very own cosmology, another world that exists apart from the quotidian for the short bursts of time she performs live. There is something about "Bad Romance" that practically eviscerates me. After the news broke about my sexual Harasser being arrested for taking upskirt shots of women in a local big box chain, the first thing I did was watch videos of him taking videos in the store. Surreal.

Then, I watched "Bad Romance," and I realized what it is about the video that elicits such a visceral response, and it's the constantly shifting point of view. When the video begins, the person whom we call Lady Gaga is a sleeping queen on a throne—an example of "subjectness" although, a, perhaps, lax subjectness. In a plot twist, she touches a button on a console next to her (actually a Parrot by Stark speaker) and is shaken awake into a dream. The facts of this dream are what shock because as she morphs (the way I do when I'm dreaming) into the different people who populate the dream, she becomes a different example of the dark side of objectification (ending with the darkest of all). I realized that day, after seeing the news and subsequently watching "Bad Romance," that I was being shown a movie about my own existence. And this is where our instruction on sexually harassing a woman begins.

Step One: Kill Her
After pressing the button, the queen is projected into the Bath Haus of Gaga. Make no mistake: this is not a spa; it's a morgue. Gaga emerges from a sleek white coffin in the form of a ghost in white latex. In current popular culture ghosts possess two characteristics. First, watch any reality show that attempts to prove the existence of ghosts, and you will learn they don't speak. Second, they are beings whose ability to act upon the world is severely limited, if possible at all.

For the typical sexual harasser, who is a misogynist, to be successful at his project, he must first "kill" his victim, rendering her into a ghost-like figure. The guy at the table who talks over a woman trying to speak during committee meetings is a sexual harasser in the making if not one in fact. In my case, the harassment began discreetly the summer before the Harasser felt comfortable enough to make an open display of it. To recap, I was taking part in the professional development workshop that I would later help administrate. As part of that workshop we handed in pieces we had been working on that were in draft stage. I had asked that no feedback be given on my work. The Harasser's response was "Well, how are you going to improve if you don't receive any feedback."

True, but having taught writing for 17 years, I know there is a time when feedback is valuable and a time when it isn't, and the writer should be the one to decide when it's time. Additionally, verbal feedback is better because it tells the writer something about this one audience member's attitude, emotions, and frame of mind. Not only that, but I had a bad experience in graduate school with a male classmate who felt we were in competition and basically "ripped me a new one" in an attempt to eliminate me, and I still had that bad taste in my mouth.

So I asked, "Could you record your comments and send them to me?"

"No, that's not the way we do things."

When I got the comments back, I looked at the first page and threw the copy in the recycle bin. The feedback was not going to help me...and not because I planned to ignore it...but because the Harasser was responding to his idea of what the final product would be and not to what it was at the time, which was unfinished. I was becoming the ghost who doesn't speak or, rather, can't make herself heard.

The fatal wound occurred on the day I've described in "Bad Romance: Part I." Having given this a lot of thought over the last few months, I now understand that the harasser's ideal victim is the one who attempts to ignore the harassment, in other words, the ghost who does not or cannot act on the world. As I mentioned in Part I, this allows the harasser to fantasize that the victim is giving chase. In Lady Gaga's video for "Yoü and I," which is a retelling of the Pygmalion myth, she sings, "Something, something about the chase," and we all know the titillation of that game...those first few weeks of infatuation where the would-be lovers play tag like children. This is what the harasser seeks, except the chase isn't mutual, nor is it about infatuation, nor is it ultimately about the freedom to play and experience joy (a point I will come around to later).

There are other responses: I could have done as my friend advised and simply stood up, put my hand out, and said, "No." I could have reported it to his supervisor that afternoon. I could have "seen his 10 and raised him 20" by whispering, "Why is being married a problem?" And while my response was the worst possible because I allowed myself to be turned into a ghost thus giving him exactly what he wanted, none of the other responses really suffice. Saying "No" only sends him to some other victim. And I mean no offense to the director, who is still a good friend, but reporting it at that stage would have gotten him a slap on the wrist and me an apology of sorts: "I'm sorry; I really didn't mean anything by it." That's as far as any upper-level administrator could have legally gone. And reflecting his mirror image back to him may have made the situation worse, another point I'll return to later.

Step Two: Make Her into Your Own Image
In one short scene of "Bad Romance," Gaga is pictured standing in front of a mirror in a black dress, with that odd crown (this time in black) she's famous for, wearing black sunglasses. While singing "I want your drama, the touch of your hand, your leather-studded kiss in the sand," she reprises Madonna in her "Respect Yourself" parody of Michael Jackson grabbing his crotch. To me, this symbolizes the point at which, after having metaphorically killed his victim, the harasser must now make the shadow-self that is the object of his "affection" into his own hyper-sexualized image. In order to keep up the charade that the shadow-self is giving chase, she must want what he wants. It is also, of course, a way to justify actions he knows to be wrong. My Harasser has a wife and daughters; I'm 100% certain that if anyone did to them what he did to me, his reaction would have been similar to my husband's. But he felt no guilt because I was like him and, despite all evidence to the contrary, wanted what he wanted. However, this does not make me "one of the boys." In "Respect Yourself," Madonna is wearing pants when she grabs her crotch. In "Bad Romance" Gaga is wearing a dress, and I think this is intentional because she is not mocking a man in so much as she is questioning what happens when a woman in the garb of a woman makes the same gesture. In making the victim into his own image, the harasser does not confer male status onto the shadow-self, he makes her a slut...all the more worthy of harassing.

Step Three: Make Her Think She's Crazy
The scene of Lady Gaga in the insane asylum is so reminiscent of the bathtub scene in Valley of the Dolls that I'm convinced the director had it in mind. Tellingly, Gaga appears doll-like with curly pink hair and eyes disturbingly shaped like anime characters. She appears in a bathtub wearing earbuds and some sort of asylum-issued bath suit while being placated by the music she listens to like every stereotypical psychotic we've ever seen in a movie. She is unwillingly made to drink something by two nurses who force her mouth open and pour the elixir down her throat. Intermittently, the video flashes back to the ghost, and we hear the words "I want your love and all love is revenge; I want your love, and all your love is revenge." There are two psychical states being enacted here. The first is the deep anger a harasser feels over the lack of control over the "other" as evidenced by the lyrics, which switch point of view as often as the video, and the second is the age-old scheme of making the victim question whether what she believes to be happening is actually happening.

For the harasser, "love" is revenge.

I'm a technical writer and a rhetorician. It's my business to know the most efficient ways of communicating with people. So during the time I was working on the presentation submission form for the conference our organization was hosting, I often received e-mails from the Harasser about changes that needed to be made. Mostly, the changes took less than five minutes, so instead of initiating an unnecessary chain of e-mails, I took care of the problem immediately and assumed that, as happens with tech writers collaborating on a project, he was monitoring the document as the changes were being made, which I had shown him how to do. Instead, I got angry e-mails asking why I hadn't responded to his e-mails (which left me wondering why he hadn't just checked the document for the changes he asked for...as we had agreed). For him, this accomplished three goals: 1) it gave him further reasons to engage me, 2) it allowed him to assert authority over me (where he actually had none), and 3) it caused me to begin questioning whether the e-mails, which varied from sycophantic begging to acrimonious demands to obsequious apologies, were actually a form of sexual harassment. None of this behavior was described in the training I have to undergo every year as part of my position. My thought was "Maybe he is doing the best he can at his job and is truly stressed, and I'm the one being paranoid." Hell, he had me apologizing for things I didn't do wrong while dehumanizing me at the same time. His anger was a subterfuge designed to manipulate me into questioning my own sanity.

So when I saw two stills of him angrily stalking the aisles of the local big-box chain, I knew that the anger was part of the MO. Now, I don't know what he's angry about in those photos...maybe he's not finding a skirt-wearing victim quick enough for his satisfaction, maybe he and his wife got into an argument before he left for the store, maybe he's angry because he's disgusted by his own behavior. It doesn't matter, he's angry. And this brings me back to two points I promised to come back to earlier. First, his endeavor is devoid of joy. The way he approaches it, with that countenance of consternation, it's more like a job taken on strictly to make ends meet. Second, anyone who's angry is dangerous. I believe it was the b-movie The Seduction where Morgan Fairchild plays a newscaster who foils a rapist by returning his "advances." He later begins stalking her with vengeance in mind. And while that was fiction, the mind that objectifies others in "violent" ways (in my case the violence was purely emotional, but it was there) experiences an es muss sein, "this must be." He considers any alternative that does not put him in control a violence against his own psyche, and he will most likely carry out an act of retribution. Which is why returning the harasser's advances is not a good idea. He must be in control at all costs, and while he will generally walk the fine line between ignorance of wrong-doing and open transgression so as to get off the hook when called out, if the axis of his world goes off kilter, the power of that anger remains. Emotional violence can transmogrify into the physical.

There is no doubt that the man in the next scene of the video is the one responsible for sending Gaga 1) to the morgue, 2) to the mirror, and 3) to the asylum. Once this is a fait accompli, there is only one step left.

Step Four: Possess Her
I only want to touch on a few scenes in the final sequence of events in "Bad Romance." Lady Gaga is brought out against her will before a king who quite possibly now occupies her former throne and is made to dance for and then crawl to him for his pleasure. She is later shown frozen, as an object, in the middle of a circle of seated men as stocks in Lady Gaga, as a corporation and not a real person, continue to rise. We see her naked in a cage with monstrously huge vertebrae that force her spine to curve grotesquely. She has fulfilled the darkest stage of objectification possible: she has become a possession, a bauble, a sideshow freak, a slave.

This is ultimately what a sexual harasser, a child molester, a peeping tom, a rapist wants: to claim ownership of another human being because that is the ultimate source of power for him. I'm no psychologist, so I can't identify where their sense of self got stuck or what may have caused this to happen. I just know they have issues with power and control, which they can only regain by dominating those they consider weak.

In the end, Gaga tricks the new king and sets him on fire, Farrah Fawcett style, while he sits on his bed as she pretends she is about to perform for him and him alone.

Lucky her.

The article on "Sexual Harassment" at Wikipedia discusses how victims have coped in the past by taking on the personae of "the lady," "the flirt," and "the tomboy." The message is that we, as women, cannot be ourselves when being victimized by a harasser. It goes on to give the common side effects of sexual harassment, which include the following: stress, humiliation, being the subject of public scrutiny, decreased productivity, loss of support, etc. All of this says to me that I bear the burden for seeking counseling for and rectifying what was done to me. No mention is made of what someone who commits sexual harassment should do to make recompense. Is this an oversight? Or have we given into the idea that men simply can't control their sexual urges (to which I say, "Bullshit." I know way too many good men out there to buy into that load of hegemonical crap.)?

I'm enjoying the fact that my Harasser will live in ignominy for the rest of his life. But that's not enough. I've got a blog, a voice, two hands, and a laptop. And this, not counseling, is the solution that will finally have to suffice.

And to those who would lament the death of flirtation because feminists see sexual harassment around every corner, have no fear. There is a huge difference. Real flirtation arises out of mutual admiration and a respect for someone that goes beyond the sum of her/his parts. It is childlike and free of darker motivations. It is play and joy. And it is wonderfully summed up by the wink, which is always accompanied by a smile.

Interlude: Rhythm and Blues

2012-09-25T01:22:00.001-05:00

For the last five years, I've been working 8:00 to 4:30, and I've arrived at a decision:

I don't really give a fuck when I brush my damned teeth.

Before my dad got sick and left us, I had this idea in my head that I would eventually achieve perfection, and, in my mind, perfection meant that a grid would superimpose order over my life, neatly compartmentalizing it into flawless squares. (And by the way, that square puzzle that's making the run on Facebook right now? I'm counting 37, not 24, and I'm willing to bet there are more. So much for counting squares.)

At one point, (I was still in my 20's) I literally had my days down to fifteen-minute time increments. (And what is a calendar except for a bunch of squares?) I'm not kidding you when I say that I scheduled brushing my teeth into my...gosh...what was the system then? Stephen Covey? Then I got hooked on David Allen. Don't get me wrong, I could listen to him talk about getting my inbox to zero on CD in my truck on a blustery wintry day driving to Indy for 10 straight hours because it all sounds really lovely.

He reads with perfect rhythm.

But he doesn't live my life.

He's in some other realm where the world waits on him, and he does the world a favor by always being on time. Good for David Allen!

On the other hand, I've lived in a world where I'm waiting on everyone else, even when I was teaching, but especially now in my new position. For example, Think-a-Header X has a proposal due October 5th and started working with me in July. Procrastinator Y has a deadline of September 27th and dropped the proposal in my lap...yesterday, a Sunday, a day I don't check my e-mail because it's the weekend, and I'm not working overtime anymore, and you can't make me...state law!

If I were still teaching, I'd say, "Welcome to the real world: first come, first serve, baby. Suck it up." Except that actually isn't the real world. Procrastinor's research has as much merit as Think-a-Header's. And if either one or both of them get the grants, I look good. My institution looks good. So every morning of my life now I walk into work not knowing what my priority is. I feel secure in knowing that my inbox and calendar will tell me. Secure in insecurity.

There are only two things I can count on in my weekly existence (because I can't count on the day-to-day stuff): I'll be at happy hour Friday afternoon at 4:30 (and one of these days I'll beat my new boss) and Sunday brunch at 10:00 a.m. And even those aren't a given. Sometimes I go rebel and head out backpacking or canoeing. Sometimes I climb mountains. Sometimes I squeeze through tiny holes to find a cave that has potentially never been explored. Sometimes I stay up late at night and write. Maybe I'll feel like cleaning house some time soon or cooking (probably not). I just never know.

And maybe I don't want to know. Because the day I wake up knowing exactly what I have to do every minute of the day is probably the day I'll wake up shaking Satan's hand at the crossroads complete with his retinue of hell fire and pitchforks, time clocks and bells on the quarter- and half-hours. And that devil will be wearing a sharp suit and a fedora cocked at just the right angle, but I'm not giving up to his charms. Better to live in happy chaos than reign over perfect order.

Photo courtesy ĐāżŦ {mostly absent}, http://www.flickr.com/photos/darrentunnicliff/4469318003/sizes/m/in/photostream/

Bad Romance: Part One

2012-09-18T21:30:00.004-05:00

When my sexual harasser’s mug shot appeared on the front page of the local newspaper, I appreciated more than a twinge of schadenfreude.

In writing this post, I have experimented with several aliases for him. In the first draft, I called him Casanova, but then I decided that was unfair to Casanova. The Marquis de Sade won't do because he's my not-so-secret mentor. Don Juan? No. The only other analogies I could think of were to Jack the Ripper and Ted Bundy, but those seemed extreme (though, given the circumstances of his recent arrest, I'm not sure that's such a slippery slope). So I'll refer to him simply as "The Harasser."

I met him in the Summer of 2008. I had applied to participate in a month-long workshop delivered by an organization that used my university's facilities as an operating headquarters. I was accepted, and it was both the most invigorating and most enervating experience in my life: on the one hand, I left feeling like a new person, inspired to go forth; on the other hand, I also felt empty...wondering how to go forth. I had become close with one of the other participants and worried that we would go our separate ways (happily, we see each once every other month or so). I had also become closer to one of the team leaders, Liz, who had been, and still remains, a friend. And, yes, I even felt close to the other team leader, The Harasser. In fact, I believe it was because of that workshop that I "won" NaNoWriMo last November and now have a spiffy new job title in a position that fits better with my degrees and areas of expertise. Before then, I didn't have the confidence that my brain could connect with the fingers I placed on a keyboard to produce any kind of worthy text at all. But after the workshop was over, I worried that, without direction, I would lose that confidence.

So when I was offered a consulting position as the technical support person, I took it immediately. I could relive the workshop each summer, make a little extra pay, and enjoy doing what I love (mostly web development and troubleshooting recalcitrant laptops, networks, and media projectors). All while quietly going about my business with no one checking in on me (the way students did the day after all 50 of them had handed in a six-page assignment: "Ms. Le Nom! Do you have our papers graded yet?"

The next summer, the organization hosted another workshop for about 15 participants. Toward the end, we took everyone on a day-long retreat in the capital city. The Harasser, Liz, and I decided to have lunch separately to hammer out the schedule for the final week. Once that was nailed down and we had paid our bill, we stepped outside so Liz could have a smoke. We found a long, unoccupied bench near the trolley station. Liz sat on one end, near a grate where she could dispose of her ashes, and I sat near the other end...a distance of about three feet between us. What happened next runs like a movie in slow motion in my brain.

The Harasser squeezed into the small space between me and the other end of the bench.

He laid his long arm its entire length behind me (he's six feet, seven inches).

He rested his legs diagonally in front of me on the sidewalk.

He leaned into my face.

And he growled (that's the way it seemed), "If we weren't married, I'd be all over you right now."

My face flushed with embarrassment and pique as I stared down at his shoes, my head bowed, my hands underneath my thighs to protect them from the sun-heated wood of the bench. I remember feeling like a child.

Liz groaned, "Oh, Harasser, really?"

There is a picture on Facebook of all of us, participants and team leaders, in a semi-circle taken after the incident. In that picture, I'm as far away from The Harasser as I could get, and I have the expression of someone who looks stricken as if from a blow. Don't get me wrong, I was trying hard, but I can nearly see his shoes imprinted on my eyeballs in that photo.

Liz drove me home afterward, but neither of us mentioned what had occurred. She talked about typewriters and pens as my mind rewound and played, rewound and played the scene over and over again.

"All over me?" I imagined my knees and elbows scraping the pavement as he tackled me from behind and my cheek abraded by the cement as he forced my face into it.

"If were weren't married? What if we weren't? What difference would that make? I'm not interested in you. Are you telling me that your wedding band is the only thing keeping you from being 'all over me'?"

I told the story to my husband that night when he got home from work. To say that he was livid would be an understatement. He was ready to drive over to The Harasser's house to confront him in front of his wife. I begged him not to, persuading him that it was my battle. I didn't see any reason to use patriarchy to fight patronizing, which seemed a little like fighting a flood with more water.

So here's what I did.

Exactly nothing.

In my defense, I thought I was actually doing something.

A couple weeks later, as I was preparing for the next semester, going back and forth between G-Mail and Google Docs (now Drive), I heard the familiar blip of a chat box opening up. It was The Harasser. Instead of responding, I grabbed my purse and headed out the door, letting my status go from green to orange..."standby"...in hindsight, not the best message. When I got back, he was gone, and I set my status to invisible, blocked him from my personal G-Mail account, and e-mailed my dad to let him know that he should wait for me to contact him for our weekly chat because he wouldn't be able to see if I was online anymore. He wanted to know why. I lied, "Oh, my students have the address, and I don't want them barging in." I hated for my dad to worry about me because it made me worry about him. Besides, I could take care of myself and had my plan of attack ready, "Ignore The Harasser until he gets the message." This was my strategy.

The next three months The Harasser and I exchanged a few e-mail messages, mainly regarding how to contact people in the organization related to a conference we were attending. During that conference, it was announced that our organization would be hosting the next one. Once we returned, the e-mails started coming in earnest. He addressed me as "Wheels" because I beat him home as the driver of my van of conference attenders. But in meetings he started addressing me by the shortest diminutive of my real name. I love my real name though I don't use it here, but I really don't like either one of the diminutives associated with it. And I found it troubling...the familiarity and presumption were out of line.

At first the tone of the e-mails had been neutral, but, as their frequency increased, they changed. Some were pleading, "I hope you'll be at the next meeting because I really miss you." Some were aggressive, "I asked you for that update 20 minutes ago." Some were apologetic, "I'm sorry if I came across as curt in my last e-mail. I'm really stressed about this project." There was something almost bi-polar...or tri-polar...about them, so much so that I stopped responding all together except to provide links to the parts of the website he had asked about.

And, then, whether intentionally or not, he sabotaged a Google form I was working on. I was so infuriated, I wrote an e-mail stating plainly, "Stay out of the damned form. You don't know what the hell you're doing. Let me do my job and back off." Just as I was about to click "Send," a notification pinged the systray, "I see that you were working on the form as I was trying to edit it. Hope I didn't mess anything up." In fact, I had to build the entire thing from scratch, except this time I didn't give him editing privileges because I suspected his efforts to "help" had a darker motivation...a way of creating further association.

In legal terms, he had created a hostile working environment, and it had become obvious to me that my strategy of ignoring him was NOT working. He was looking for any and all excuses to contact me. I unfriended him and blocked him from Facebook and Twitter, and I no longer use Google+ because he somehow managed to plus me, even though I had blocked his e-mail address from G-Mail as previously mentioned. Seeking affirmation that I wasn't making too much over what was happening, I visited his blog posts through links on other friends' blogs. What I found was problematic. One post describes the nubile body of a college swim-team member whose suit had become caught in the cleft between her buttocks; another mentions the seemingly overt sexuality of the young people he worked with on a daily basis. And there were others that would be enough to incite a riot among the parents of the young women he described. (And I've got screen shots, so don't even try to deny it if you read this Harasser.)

I continued my work on the website and form, reporting to the director of the organization with a courtesy copy to him. He switched tactics sometime before the conference we were planning by making comments in front of my colleagues during meetings. The last one was "Gee, you look like a leggy supermodel in that skirt and those shoes." A few weeks after the conference was over, I quit...for reasons more than just the harassment...but that was by and large the bulk of it.

I confided in a wise friend about my reasons for leaving, showing him the posts, and echoing my plight. He sagely advised me that my attempt to ignore the advances was probably taken as giving chase. I had unwittingly egged The Harasser on. My friend taught me that the best thing I could have done that day back in the Summer of 2009 would have been to stand up, put my hand out in the universal sign that means "stop," and say, "No!" I thanked him and promised, “Mark my words, he will soon be caught for something worse.”

And was I right.

The Harasser was arrested and charged at the local Wal-Mart for using an iPod, disguised in one of the personal journals he ubiquitously carried around with him, to take "upskirt videos" of unsuspecting women.

I wish my instincts would fail me occasionally.

I felt vindicated for a time, until I learned of his response to his arrest...or rather his non-response. In an e-mail to a mutual friend he brushed the matter aside as media sensationalism. I'm sorry, but the security surveillance video aired on TV doesn't even need explanation. In fact, I can't stop myself from thinking that videos of my underwear are somewhere on his computer and the Internet.

In the weeks following, I have heard things like "Sure, I asked her to hold my hand and go to my favorite make out spot, and yes, she said she'd rather make out with a dead dog. But that's not harassment," "In cases of legitimate rape, a woman's body has a way to shut that whole [unwanted pregnancy] thing down," and "Why should women have equal pay?"

My Harasser did more to me than create a hostile work environment. Like tectonic plates, he shifted my paradigm, partially destroying the foundation of my home.

In "Bad Romance: Part Two" I will explain exactly all that he took from me and how I'm trying to rebuild the foundation in an effort to keep my house sound.

Going out of Business

2012-08-01T18:32:00.004-05:00

F-Bomb Alert: My mom should not read this post (she will anyway).

My teaching career is officially, finally, and irrevocably over. After 19 years in the biz, I've had enough. A few months ago, a friend of mine said, "You know, there are problems at every job; I just need a different set of problems." And I guess I kind of took her statement into my own heart.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized I, too, need a different set of problems. So I went out of business...mainly because I'm too tired to keep the store open anymore and because I'm not even sure how I went from being a teaching professional to a business owner.

"Delivering composition." It's the title of a well-known book in my former field, and it's the way many in that field refer to their work. Deliver stuff to someone. Like fucking UPS. It's the tabula rasa in make-up and high heels (because those who "deliver composition" are overwhelmingly female). Worse still, while every college and university across the nation considers composition a foundation of their educational program, it is largely taught by contingent faculty...mostly women...who are far too generous with their time in comparison to the pay they receive, which is among the lowest at any university. Darkness visible: importance undervalued.

I didn't actually sign up for a teaching career. Like most things in my life, it fell into my lap. My Pell Grant was suddenly cut off, and I was forced to graduate. I spent a summer wondering, "What the hell?" And then I got a call from a college friend. The Intensive English Program needed a warm body to stand in front of a class of international students. "Could you be that body?" I was desperate, so I took the job. I remember buying cheap "professional" clothes from Wal-Mart after I accepted my offer. They (the clothes, not the offer) were (a) too big and (b) so unfashionable even for the time that, if you tagged me in a picture of myself wearing them on Facebook, I'd have to unfriend and then block you (after untagging myself, of course).

The funny thing is no one in my new department wanted to teach writing. Being the n00b, I eventually became the expert in teaching writing to students for whom English was a second language...through experience and gut instinct...not through any sort of training. Sure, I read some articles, tried some stuff, and eventually disposed of it because it didn't really get at the reality of how people learn to write well.

You know, I've been writing since before I could write. I'd pen stories I spoke out loud as I wrote down chicken scratches that I thought looked something like the alphabet. I'd show them to my mother: "Sansy, you'll learn to write soon enough." She was wrong. In first grade, I was not taught to write. I was taught to copy. I was also taught that variation from the norm is forbidden. This set of rules for behavior was known as "penmanship," and it taught me that words ending in -ship are often not trustworthy: hardship, censorship, partisanship (not a real thing), membership (generally leads to responsibilities one does not want), kinship (backstabbing, in-fighting, general carnage), etc. So I took to my granddad's typewriter (a Remington that celebrated it's 92nd birthday in July) and did my own thing sans a fat pencil, a Big Chief tablet, or a template. (I'm going all Lady Gaga and seeing how many times I can work my own nickname into each post. See?). It also taught me that if you really want to learn to do something, you have to take matters into your own hands. That's how I learned to actually write, and it didn't feel soon enough. Even at that young age, I had something to say, I wanted to say it, and I felt like forces were holding me back.

My mom and I discovered, when I was in high school, that the reason I was never assigned homework is because I actually was. I just didn't understand the concept. The teacher would tell the class to read this and fill out that, so I did it when I was bored and waiting for everyone else to catch up with whatever the teacher was droning on about (which I had already read in the textbook). I thought that was what we were supposed to do...keep busy. I didn't know I was supposed to sit there quietly doing nothing while all that homework piled up for us to take home.

My bad.

At least I had glorious afternoons playing in the weird back yard that was designed by a concrete manufacturer in 1884: a reflection pool, a rock garden, an octagonal fish pond with island and bridge, a six-foot high bird bath, a wisteria arbor. Hell, the man even encircled the clothesline with sidewalk. My house was THE place to be after school. And when everyone got called in for supper and I had finished eating, I went to the typewriter.

One day, in fifth grade, I ran out of homework to not take home. So I wrote a poem about what was going on in the classroom. I observed things I had never noticed before; it made me pay attention (I even made it rhyme, and, yeah, I know, "E Gad!"). I copied it, by hand (I didn't have access to the lovely pasty smell of the ditto machine) and gave it to my teacher as a sort of present. She gave it to the school secretary, and thus I became a published author for the first time...in the school newsletter. Later that year, I was given an assignment to write a biography about someone famous (good grief, why do these subjects withstand the test of time?). I naturally wrote an essay about one of my ancestors, Benjamin Franklin, whom my dad was named after, and I got the highest grade of anyone for that assignment. I was only interested in my subject because my dad had studied Ben's life backwards and forwards, in all its tarnished glory, and had regaled me with the more kid-friendly of our progenitor's exploits. After I had written the paper, I asked my dad to check it. I don't know if he was laughing at my naivete or with joy that he had taught me something. Probably both. At any rate, he kindly and verbally corrected some parts and told me how proud he was of me. Through so many experiences like these, I learned the power of observation and that I was a WRITER.

If you want to write well, here's what you need to know:

If you want to write, just do it.
No matter how bad it's going, wait for the moment when it all turns right. It'll happen.
It doesn't hurt to share. Some will love you; others will rip you apart. Somewhere in the middle is the truth.
Motivation is key; you need to want something bigger than yourself and your own little world.
You'll mess up a lot (typewriters are good for reminding you of this).
Find a way in to every project.
It isn't cheating if you ask for help.

There, I bubble-wrapped it, put it in a cardboard box filled with Styrofoam peanuts, taped up the box, drove it to your house, knocked on your door, and handed it to you. Delivered.

There are several problems with this metaphor, however. Once something has been delivered, what happens to it?

What if the customer doesn't like it and wants to return it? (I thought I wanted Product X, but I've changed my mind.)
What if the customer wants an exchange? (I want a better version of Product X.)
What if he/she never opens the box (In one week, I'm no longer interested in Product X. In fact, I'm so uninterested by Product X, I won't even take the time to open the box or inquire about a possible return. I'm actually willing to lose money on it by not returning it.)
What if your consumer only consumes part way and gives up in frustration? (I can't understand the instructions; I'll just leave it in the garage half done.)
What if the product is a "gift" the consumer didn't want?
What if the product doesn't meet the customers expectations because they didn't understand the product's description? (Wait, I bought a hardware key logger so I wouldn't lose all my stuff in the event of the Zombie Uprising, and you're telling me I can't use it with a laptop?)

Begin digression. 4 That last one was oddly specific, wasn't it? 3End digression.

There are a number of problems with this metaphor. The first of which is that students are not consumers and teaching does not result in a product. Consumers are people who buy, let's be literal, food and eat it. I don't want the "products" of their consumption landing on my desk. And maybe that's why student writing is so often crappy...because we've adopted the wrong metaphors for understanding what writing actually is and we refuse to see that learning how to do it will be different for every single person. No method is prêt-à-porter. Also, you can't deliver learning and expect anything to happen. You have to create opportunities for people to learn, and the classroom is probably the worst place for opportunity with its hierarchy so obviously laid out in rows.

To make matters worse, if I were still in the delivery business, as a member of the contingent faculty, I would have the additional threat of being drawn and quartered hanging over my already taut nerves. The Four Horses of the Apocalypse who would ensure the failure of my delivery would be as follows:

My creditor: the person who renews my contract, i.e. my chair.
My landlord: the state that pays me.
My competition: the other composition programs out there who drive every program to act according to the same model.
My customers: the people I'm supposed to serve out of the goodness of my heart.

Let me break it down. My creditor wants me to maintain standards, which means certain grades should form a bell-shaped curve. (The books must be balanced!) My landlord wants me to concentrate on retention which means I should do whatever it takes to make sure students pass my class. (You must pass all regulatory inspections.) My competition wants me to stay within the accepted rules of how we deliver our goods; this doesn't affect me personally, but it certainly dictates the methods by which we assess our program. (We are the standard-setters for this particular business; never mind your unique circumstances. Our guidelines should be met by everyone.) And finally, there are the customers. The people I'm supposed to serve out of love for teaching. And if I could have gotten loose of my restraints, believe me, I would have made my getaway on their horse. Unfortunately, there's already a master holding the bridles, and that master's name is "Lottery College Scholarship."

These students have been told they stand a fighting chance, and they want it. We tell them that writing is about exploration, and they feel invited. And then we slap a grade on their fledgling attempts, and I'm sorry for the mixed metaphor (but, hell, I'm the queen of the mixed metaphor and there are so many in this text already, what's one more?), we expect them to fly?

This model is broken because it pits the teacher against everyone else.

Students want to maintain their scholarships; chairs want a bell-shaped curve. The legislature wants to move the college graduation rate above 18%. I'm not sure standards have ever actually entered the minds of any legislator in this respect. My imaginary elected official thinks something like this: "Give college students the Easy A, damn it! Knowledge-based industries like Google will never figure out how woefully inadequate our workers are until we've attracted them with our tax incentive packages, and then it'll be too late!" Beg your pardon, legislators, the information age is actively looking for brain capital, and they know we don't have it.

In the meantime, the Council of Writing Program Administrators (WPA) sets standards for class size and assessment guidelines that go against anything any administrator in this state has the money to agree to thanks to the legislature that subsidizes every public school of higher education here. This is the very same legislature that decided to award unprepared students scholarships for college with stipulations they can't meet.

And this is why everything must go. And by everything I mean grades, standards, enforced curricula (assignments, textbooks, methods of teaching, especially the tabula rasa model), and the disenfranchisement of women in the discipline.

Oh, and grading 640 papers a semester? That was the first thing I put into the trash.

Photo Credit: Bearfaced via a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-NoDerivs License. http://www.flickr.com/photos/bearfaced/5845467008/sizes/m/in/photostream/

Yes, I'm the Woman Judging Your Purchases in the Grocery Line

2012-06-27T13:27:00.009-05:00

Okay, so I challenged everyone to guess the three products whose ingredients I posted (ahem) SEVERAL weeks ago and promised I would reveal them the following week. However, I got busy writing something else instead. You get what you pay for.

I know how many of you visit this site (and where you reside...a big welcome to visitors from Australia and Indonesia), and yet no one wagered a guess. I imagine it was easy enough to surmise that one was a savory product and the other two were sweet, but, other than that, there aren't a lot of clues regarding the nature of the products in the ingredients lists. They are as follows:

1. "devil's food cake" mix,

2. "milk chocolate" icing,

3. a packet of "brown gravy" mix.

I put the food names in quotation marks because one cannot call any of these items real food. Having looked at recipes for the first product, I gotta say that I don't see the necessity of buying it "pre-made." There aren't a whole lot of ingredients in the homemade version. But let's suppose you work 40 hours a week (as I do) and want your evenings and weekends relatively free (as we all do). In a few minutes, you could mix the following ingredients together, put them in a sealable, re-usable container, and put them in the freezer (yes, I'm assuming a lot by assuming you have a freezer...you could keep it in the cupboard, just be aware that whole wheat flour goes rancid in high temps). You could even double or triple the batch for more cake later.

Healthier Devil's Food Cake PreMix

In one bag, mix together:

1 cup brown cane sugar

3/4 cup cane sugar

In another bag, mix together:

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup all-purpose flour

2 cups whole wheat cake flour (yes, there is such a thing)

1 cup unsweetened baking cocoa

1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda

Now, when you're ready to bake a cake, pull your two bags out of the freezer.

Remember the French saying, "mise en place" and get the following ingredients on the counter. Next to your mixing bowl:

1 1/2 sticks organic butter

4 large organic free-range eggs (if you can, look for someone who sells eggs from chickens who roam around eating insects all day)

Cream 1 1/2 sticks of softened organic butter with the sugars. Add four eggs to this mixture one at a time, beating well. Then add the rest of the mix. Stir a few times (just enough to get everything mixed). Pour half into two 8-inch cake pans. Bake 30-35 minutes.

You're done...well, unless you want icing on your cake, but there are a million recipes for it online, and it too is fairly easy to make.

Now, I also said I would explain how I came up with the total calories for the meal. If you'll recall, that was 1208 in toto. A serving of cake with icing and a serving of the brown gravy add up to 435 calories. I figured the brown gravy was probably for a pot roast; that's 334 calories for a single serving of beef. I also assumed that mashed potatoes were one of the most likely side dishes. That's another 237 calories. There would be at least one other side dish in the meal: how about green beans cooked down with a slice of bacon and some onion for 90 calories? Then add a King's Hawaiian sweet roll for 180 calories, and it actually comes out to more than 1208 calories. I picked King's because I see their rolls everywhere, so I'm guessing a lot of people eat them around here. A meat and two, plus bread and dessert seems like a fairly typical American meal to me. Unless you're at my house.

First, I became pescatarian (more or less) about two months ago (except for Sundays when the Holy Eucharist comes in the form of bacon and champagne...and unlimited opportunities for receiving the body and blood...at the Cathedral of St. Michelangelo on Toad Suck Square in good ol' Conwag). I did this for a lot of reasons: my health and the need to economize (my husband goes fishing seven times...no kidding...a week). But mainly I did it because I want to eliminate my relationship with the corporate food industry. I can't live with the moral questions raised by eating meat that comes from animals I know were inhumanely slaughtered by humans working in inhumane conditions. Not only that, the two main backbones of the convenience-food industry are GM soybeans and GM corn. I can't bring myself to support an industry (*cough* ~~Monsanto~~) that lies about its mission, which isn't to feed a projected 9 billion people in the future. Their true mission is what they tell their shareholders: to make money. And GM corn is what they feed to animals that did not evolve to eat it. And I want to ask, how well will ~~Monsanto~~ be feeding the world given the drought most of the country is in right now? Genetically modified corn might tolerate ~~Round Up~~, but it can't withstand Mother Nature any better than a regular crop.

Second, I'm picky. I don't like sweets, so the Western version of breakfast doesn't generally cut it. I often do as the Japanese and Koreans and eat the same things I eat for lunch and dinner: a bowl of soup, some tuna from a can, a little scattered sushi, some steamed vegetables. Except for the tuna (which I take no credit for), everything is made on Sunday. If I need something really quick, I make a single serving of organic popcorn and eat an apple or frozen berries. All things that, when they come out of their packages, are identifiable as food.

So, yes, I'm the one behind you in the supermarket watching every single item you put on the conveyor. But I'm not really judging you. I'm judging what corporations have done to our food system...eliminating the small butcher shop, the bakery store, the corner market in every neighborhood that you could walk to when you forgot the milk and eggs. I don't want you to buy the ground beef. I don't want you to buy it because it's bad for you, the environment, the animals sacrificed for it, and the economy of the middle class. I don't want you to buy the ~~Healthy Choice~~ cookies and ~~Lean Cuisine~~ entree because, despite all marketing implications to the contrary, they will not make you thin. I don't want you to buy convenience foods like brown gravy packets, cake mix, and ready-made icing because they will eventually lead you to heart disease, diabetes, and cancer.

That being said, would anyone like a free box of cake mix with a package of icing and a brown gravy packet? Anyone?

Photo credit: Patrick Hoesly via Creative Commons Attribution License. Some Rights Reserved. http://www.flickr.com/photos/zooboing/4473219605/sizes/m/in/photostream/

Guess the Product, or How I Learned to Love Pigweed

2012-06-20T07:32:00.009-05:00

I guess in the past two years I've become something of a Food Nazi...for good reason. I've read Fast Food Nation and Twinkie Deconstructed. I've watched Supersize Me; Food, Inc.; and The Corporation. And there's only one conclusion I'm able to draw: We're being poisoned...by a broken food chain (which we broke), a culture of convenience, and the greed of giant conglomerates that seem to be run by some inhuman(e) force. Whether it's in the form of e. coli, salmonella, or some other food-born pathogen or by toxic ingredients or methods of food production, poison is poison just like "a rose by any other name."

So after The Hubs and I got back from the grocery Sunday and I found a bag full of unlikely purchases, I was a little aghast. Apparently, we had accidentally picked up someone else's stuff. On the one hand, I feel a little guilty that they paid for something they didn't receive. On the other hand, no one should eat these things. See if you can guess what they are (no cheating by Googling them!):

Number One

Enriched and bleached flour, sugar, cocoa processed with alkali, corn syrup, leavening, corn starch, modified corn starch, partially hydrogenated soybean and/or cottonseed oil, carob powder, propylene glycol, mono and diesters of fatty acids, distilled monglycerides, salt, dicalcium phosphate, sodium stearyl lactylate, xanthan gum, cellulose gum, artificial flavor.

Number Two

Sugar, water, partially hydrogenated soybean and/or cottonseed oils, corn syrup, coca processed with alkili, corn starch, salt, mono and diglycerides, polysorbate 60, modified corn starch, citric acid, potassium sorbate, artificial color, soy lecithin.

Number Three

Enriched wheat flour, wheat starch, salt, beef fat, hydrolized soy protein, onion, caramel color, corn syrup solids, sodium caseinate, spices, garlic, natural flavor, disodium inosinate and guanylate, extractives of paprika, and yeast extract.

In exchange for the 435 calories, 31% of your day's recommended intake of fat, and 32% of your day's recommended intake of sodium per what the manufacturers consider a serving if you ate all three in a single meal, you get 16% of your recommended daily intake of iron and 8% of your calcium. So, virtually nothing.

And that's not even the whole meal. I'm guessing that the person who was thwarted in her/his attempt to buy these products probably eats from a lot of boxes. So I estimate, judging from processed food websites, that another 800 calories would go into the meal for a total of 1208 calories, and I tried to be modest in my assessment, choosing components of the meal that made sense to me based on cooking magazines and sticking to the serving sizes suggested by the company websites.

Now, for those of my audience who don't know me personally, I never touch anything that tastes remotely sweet (it's the reason I don't eat bread...too sweet), yet as far as your health and the health of the environment is concerned, sugar is the most innocuous ingredient in the lists above. However, at 39 grams of the stuff (the government has not established a recommended daily allowance for sugars), that's 156 empty calories, so I'm not advocating the liberal consumption of sweet stuff, especially if it's in the form of high fructose corn syrup for reasons I'll outline below.

4Backstory. The first time my parents allowed me to stay home alone was a Saturday when I was twelve and an apparent moron. They went antique shopping; I went on a Pepsi and candy bar binge. I remember that I drank twelve soda pops in the 16 oz bottles (yep, they came in glass back then, kids). I remember because I was pretty proud of having downed two six packs of Pepsi. I don't remember how many candy bars I ate, enough that at some point, my stomach revolted, and I was still barfing when my folks came home around supper time. My mom literally sent me to bed without any dinner...probably more to end the puking than out of anger. At any rate, that episode cured me of my sweet tooth. I switched to carrot and celery sticks. Oh, and apples. In fact, one time I ate 14 Johnnie apples in one day, and I was pretty proud of myself. Until I started throwing them all up...kind of like bobbing for apples in reverse. Yes, I might have OCD. No, I'm not a big fan of apples anymore, either. 3End backstory.

The four ingredients that are the worst in the product lists, in my opinion, are the flour, the soy (all the different forms of it, including soy lecithin), the cottonseed oil, and the corn (all the different forms of it, probably including the monoglycerides). Here's why.

Enriched white flour is pure starch and nothing else...until the millers add back all the vitamins they stripped out of the flour in the first place, which seems like a monumentally inefficient system. So you might be getting the same vitamins, but you're not getting any fiber (which helps you to poo, it's true). Worse, Americans consume far too much of this starch in pasta, bread, stuffing, cereal, cookies, etc., etc. Think about what grocers call "The Prison" section of the store (so-called because if you put a few carts and a 3-D display in the aisle, you're probably not going to get out alive or without making at least one impulse purchase). Most of what's contained in it are boxes, cans, and jars containing white flour. ("Jars don't contain anything with white flour in it," you say? How about Manischewitz matzo ball soup?)

Convenience foods.

I see flour as an important cause of our rising obesity rate, which, yes, is an incredibly complex phenomenon, and flour alone is not the culprit. But it didn't help that the USDA advocated 6-11 servings of grain-based foods a day in the outdated Food Pyramid. If I tried to eat grains to the exclusion of everything else, I still wouldn't be able to consume that outrageous amount every single day, and I'd probably lose all my teeth from malnutrition if I tried. Not to mention the fact that the encouragement to eat whole grains over the processed stuff that comes in your box of Fruit Loops was in pretty damned fine print. Also not mentioned on the Pyramid is the fact that there is fiber in beans, fruits, and vegetables as well as more vitamins, minerals, and phytochemicals. See, there is a Big Grain (think Archer Daniels Midland), but there is no Big Bean, Fruit, and Vegetable because the producers of onions, strawberries, and butter beans, etc. are largely independent (or worse, located in other countries which increases the carbon footprint of their produce). Big Grain has a big lobby, so they got a huge piece of the Pyramid pie where fruits and vegetables get less than half the space. And beans are inexplicably lumped in with meat. Beans contain virtually no fat, are practically free if you buy them dried, and they're damned filling. But my government is going to sit there and tell me I should be careful and not eat too much of them? That's just stupid. But it goes to show what happens when your crop doesn't have a lobby to advocate for it with the USDA (US Department of Asshattery).

We can lump soy, cottonseed oil, and corn all into the same group because, in my opinion, they're bad for you and the environment for the same reasons. Monsanto* started out as a seed company, switched to the chemical business, and then became a chemical and seed company. Some scientists who work for them got the idea to develop an herbicide from a chemical called glyphosate (far more environmentally friendly than atrazine, previously one of the more common herbicides, I freely admit). Then, they took their profits a step further by genetically modifying soybean, cotton, corn, and canola seeds. In the case of soybeans, for example, they splice the bean's genes (tee hee) with some genes from a bacterium that produces an enzyme that makes the plants invulnerable to glyphosate; hence, "weeds" die, crops don't. (N.B.: It's supposed to be a single gene, but my understanding is that it's impossible to remove the one gene without also removing a couple of others and these have become a part of the genetic material of the modified seeds. If I'm wrong on this count, you may leave a message in the comments with a correction. I point it out for informational purposes only.) And here's the deal: 94% of all soybeans, 73% of all cottonseed, and 72% of all corn (excepting sweet corn, which is a tiny crop in comparison to the stuff you see driving on the freeway) comes from genetically modified seed.

In an ironic twist, "weeds" have proven that natural hybridization can happen as quickly and efficiently as the brilliant scientists who work for the aforementioned company can come up with new ways to genetically and recklessly alter life. In other words, the "weeds" glyphosate is supposed to combat are quickly becoming resistant to it, to the point that 12 million acres¹ of U.S. cropland is overrun by Monster "Weeds." In the south it's pigweed, an edible, highly nutritious plant (which is why "weeds" is in quotation marks: one woman's "weed" is another woman's salad). The result of these Monster "Weeds" arriving on the scene is that farmers are either using more and more glyphosate on their GM crops or are applying atrazine as well as glyphosate.

Let's break it down: "herb," from the Latin herba meaning "grass" or "herb"; "-cide" from the Latin cidium, a form of the verb caedere meaning "to kill." These are poisons. Both the aforementioned company and the EPA have maintained that the product does not cause any harm to humans or animals, but the evidence is mounting that, in fact, it does².

4Sidenote. Linda J. Fisher, who was president of Monsanto from 1995-2000, worked as an adiminstrator of the EPA under George W. Bush. She is now a vice president of DuPont. Just thought I'd throw that in there. 3End sidenote.

There is the possibility that glyphosate is responsible for a wide number of negative effects ranging from birth defects to dilation of the heart. And it is definitely toxic to aquatic life, which is why products containing it state on their labels that you should not pour your leftover herbicide down the drain. And if you think that rinsing these crops with water removes the herbicide, you are mistaken. Research has shown that the majority of chemicals applied to fruits and vegetables remain...even after washing them with a produce detergent³. (You should still rinse your produce because it IS effective at removing pathogens.) For these reasons, it seems to me that more application of glyphosate is not a good thing. Any application of atrazine is definitely not a good thing. And if the Monster "Weeds" continue taking over cropland, countries around the globe that depend on the U.S. for much of their food supply could be looking famine straight in it's skinny little face. Starving to death is not very good for anyone's health.

So I challenge you. Guess the products if you can. More importantly, vote with your dollars. Stop buying over-processed food with ingredients whose name you can't pronounce. Grill a bunch of vegetables and a lean meat for dinner; have cut up fruit for dessert. Better yet, go pescetarian, vegetarian, or flexitarian (someone who eats meat only occasionally). Make it a game to figure out how to transform a food you generally don't have time to make into a "from-scratch convenience" food. Love blueberry pancakes? Triple the batter, divide it up, and throw what you don't eat into the freezer. Try to buy as many organic products as you can afford. If not, you'd better start looking up recipes for pigweed because you may be eating a lot of it in the near future...at least here in the sunny South.

I'll reveal the products and the imaginary meal I conjured up for the 1208 calorie dinner next Wednesday along with some suggestions for substituting "from-scratch convenience" foods. Oh, and pigweed. I'll have a recipe for pigweed...which will get you through the glyphosate catastrophe and the zombie apocalypse.

1. http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/05/superweeds-a-long-predicted-problem-for-gm-crops-has-arrived/257187/

2. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/24/roundup-scientists-birth-defects_n_883578.html

3. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2112767/How-pesticides-persist-wash-fruit-veg.html

*The company in question has a nasty habit of sending cease and desist letters to anyone who might exercise her first amendment right to express a negative opinion of said company. All views expressed here are opinion only.

Tyler Durden Is a Dear Friend of Mine

2012-03-22T09:42:00.005-05:00

So I've spent two mornings waking up at 4:45 to catch the suspect in my gaslighting case.

The first morning was a rainy one...very rainy. The entire state was under a flash flood watch and there was concern the Arkansas River would swell out of its banks. I figured the culprit wouldn't show up to tap on my window, and I was right.

I laid my trap last night by opening the curtains to the bedroom window and sleeping on the divan, just under the window the perp had tapped on Tuesday morning. I was awakened by my alarm at 4:45 and lay in wait to see if I could catch the tapper in the act. Fifteen tense minutes went by as I wondered what I would do if it were someone I knew. Should I call the police? Yell at her/him? What?

Then, at 5:07 on the dot:

Tap.
Tap.
Tap.

And both cats went running...

for their automatic feeder.

*cough*

Apparently it makes an occasional "ticking" noise before it advances which perfectly explains everything that happened: the 15 days between the two events, the consistency of the time, a 'Fraidy. Cat bolting off the bed...not in fear but in jubilation, cat paws running toward the kitchen (not under the bed...The Hubs heard it the 2nd time and says no vats came into the bedroom.

So, yeah, I've pretty much been gaslighting myself.

At least I'm not crazy.

And you're welcome.

Gaslit

2012-03-20T10:08:00.008-05:00

Yeah, it's been a while. *cough*

And now I'm only posting to complain of being "sort of odd in [my] mind."

If you've never seen the 1944 version of Gas Light starring Ingrid Bergman as Paula Anton, Charles Boyer as Gregory Anton, and Joseph Cotten as Inspector Brian Cameron of Scotland Yard, you should. But be forewarned; you'll never view anything that happens to you in quite the same way ever again (the only panacea I know is Witold Gombrovicz's Kosmos, which enacts the same plot while remaining the direct antithesis of Gas Light. But don't read it because you'll just hate me; it's one of those sorts of books that "Sanslenom likes").

At any rate, Gas Light begins when Paula and Gregory move back into the home where Paula's aunt was murdered by a burglar in search of the family jewels (literally...get your mind out of the gutter). So that Paula doesn't have to relive the memory of catching her aunt's killer rifling through drawers in search of the goods, Gregory has all the old furnishings moved to the top two stories of the house and all the entrances to them sealed. Everything is fine until brooches, watches, and paintings go missing; Gregory convinces Paula that living in the house is too much for her nerves and that she's gone all klepto as a result. She's not hard to convince, nor is anyone else in the household or among their friends.

What really drives her to the brink, however, are the incessant sounds of footsteps across the abandoned floorboards above her and the constant dimming of the gas lights that illuminate the house. There's a line in the script that has nothing to do with what's going on in Paula's head, but perfectly describes it: "I thought I heard the muffin man." I don't know exactly what a "muffin man" is, but I imagine his sweets are poisoned.

SPOILER ALERT! A good viewer knows what's going to happen in the end: it will be revealed that Gregory is Paula's aunt's murderer, and he's stowed the furniture so he can rummage through it at night in search of the treasure he was denied. It's not the "who?" that matters, really. The question that keeps us watching is "How will Paula manage to confront Gregory while convincing everyone else she is not insane?"

The concept of the psychological abuse taking place in Gas Light is so precise that it gave us the term "to gaslight," meaning "to intentionally drive someone insane by causing them to question their memory and perceptions of reality."

So, why am I writing about all this?

Because I'm being gaslit.

Think I'm paranoid?

Let me explain and you decide.

On Monday, March 5th, I awoke at 3:36 a.m. How do I know this? I'm a collector of strange times. See, I wake up after every dream, which means I wake up seven or eight times a night. Back when I kept a clock by my bedside, I would look at the time when I awoke from a dream. Inevitably, it would be something like 1:23 or 2:22 or 6:54. This became such a source of curious fascination (I gleefully...and wretchedly...I know...anticipated waking up at 6:66) that I finally had to unplug the clock and put it away. I've been waking up at 7:00 a.m. on the dot all my life...except when the damn time changes...so really there was no point in having an alarm anyway.

And, just so you know I am not as insane as I might sound, it wasn't really 3:36. The Hubs sets his clock five minutes fast, so the real time was 3:31 (which I don't find particularly strange, although I'm sure a mathematician would be able to root out some extraordinary calculus to make it unique). My point is that it's all arbitrary, and I know that. I don't assign any sort of significance to it; I just find it fascinating. Fascinating enough that I'll a) remember it and 2) lie back down and think about it for two hours, which is not conducive to my overall health. Now, 3:31 is not a strange time (unless it happens to be the date as well). 3:36 is. It's strange because three + three = six. It's got a mathematical fullness to it that makes it memorable.

So on the morning of March 5th I had to get up to use the restroom. Okay, so how do I know it was March 5th? Because of an appointment I had later and the events I'm about to describe, the day turned out to be unforgettably miserable. So on March 5th I got up and fumbled around for my robe while I glanced at my husband's clock. 3:36. Ugh. I went to the restroom, got a glass of water, and went back to bed.

So there I was, about an hour and a half later by my reckoning, lying in a heap of blankets, listening to my husband breathing, wishing I hadn't looked at the clock and seen the evidence of my strange timing. Still dark.

Tap.
Tap.
Tap.

Three sharp raps on my bedroom window, above the air conditioner, in quick succession. My eyes widened, attempting to get a glimpse of whoever was out there. Unfortunately, the shades and curtains were drawn, nothing to see. I waited for the person to knock again, but nothing. I was paralyzed in sheer terror, too afraid to risk the person outside knowing where we were inside to wake up The Hubs, who slept peacefully until his alarm went off at 6:00, frightening me all over again.

So how do I know I wasn't dreaming? The cat lying between us, terrified of strangers, bolted off the bed and into the dark recesses somewhere in the rest of the house. How do I know it was the window? Glass sounds different from wood. How do I know it was the window above the air conditioner? I tested it. It's impossible to tap on the windows through the screens and that's the only window on the south side of the house with no screen.

I told The Hubs about it the next evening, and he was insistent that we do a window and door check: "If it happens again, wake me up." I posted an update on Facebook asking if this had ever happened to anyone else in Conwag. No one. One of my colleagues later commented that it was probably a teenaged prank (I'm paraphrasing for both our sakes), which seemed reasonable to me. And so I forgot about it as a one-time occurrence.

Until this morning at approximately 5:00.

How do I know it was 5:00? The weather forecasters in this state are an excitable bunch and they tend to go a little overboard in their predictions. Two weeks ago, we were all supposed to be building an ark. I didn't bother and nothing came of it. Last night, we were warned to haul the mattress down the stairs of the cellar and sleep with the spiders. Sorry for mixing metaphors (you didn't get that little "overboard" and "ark" thing, did you?), but "Wolf" has been cried too many times this season, so I went to bed as usual. Not wanting to tempt fate too much, I shut and locked all the windows but the one in the bedroom and put my phone underneath my pillow. As luck would have it, at exactly 5:00 (according to my phone, anyway) my weather siren went off. I scrambled to find the phone and turn it off before the sound woke up The Hubs. I pulled down the notifications to stop the siren and see what was going on: "Flash flood watch." I thought, "For realz? It isn't even raining y'all!" Then, I put the phone back under my pillow and attempted to fall asleep. About 30 seconds later:

Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.

This morning it was five times in quick succession and on the living room window. Within milliseconds Fraidy Cat's paws speedily padded across the bedroom floor as she dove underneath the box springs.

Let's establish some facts:

Both events occurred around 5:00 a.m.
One occurred on the 5th, a Monday, the second occurred 15 days later on a Tuesday, the 20th.
There's enough business with the number five to unhinge me (15 being the product of 5 x 3 and 20 being the product of 5 x 4), but it's entirely possible the person behind the "rapping on my chamber window" did it on the 9th, 13th (which is a prime number, and, therefore, not strange), and the 14th as well, and I slept through it.
Regardless of my preoccupation with numbers, it seems this person may have a reason, other than gaslighting me, for being out at 5:00 in the morning which gives her/him legitimate cover: a paper deliverer? a runner? someone out walking the dog?
It's probably not someone I know because I can't think of a single friend...or enemy for that matter...who has the time or energy to get up that early to play a prank on me.
I'm not dreaming this: the cat heard what I heard both times.
Whatever the person wants, it is not to actually contact me or The Hubs. If it were, the person would knock a second and possibly a third time to try to rouse us.
The person responds to important changes in the situation. Remember, last night, because of the threat of rain, I shut all the windows, save one: the bedroom. Additionally, the curtains and shades of that window were open, so I might have been able to hear our perpetrator as he or she approached and I definitely would have been able to see her or him...especially since I was awake...so the person tapped a different window...one I didn't have a direct line of sight to.
And it's this last fact that sets me a little unglued. The Hubs never woke up, even through my phone's siren. But I did. I was awake. And that makes me wonder if this person heard or saw the commotion with the phone and knew better than to approach the bedroom window.

I lay there watching the street from my position on the bed ready to bound to the window if I saw anyone walking down the street. After about 10 minutes, I realized that the person knows where we sleep and wouldn't have risked walking past the bedroom window.

You may wonder why I didn't wake The Hubs.

What's he going to do? Go out and shoot someone? Or equally worse, get himself shot?

No, I've got a closed-off front porch with a wraparound view and a better idea.

So, you tell me...paranoid? Or justified?

Twenty Hours

2011-12-25T20:31:00.012-06:00

F-Bomb Alert^TM This post contains language that may not be suitable for all readers.

Since my dad died, I've been spending a lot more time with my mom because she's by herself. Unfortunately, she also lives 629 miles away, and my husband can only take off one week of work at a time, so I'm generally driving by myself. It's 10 hours one way no matter how I slice it. Twenty total. Twenty long hours to be completely alone with just me.

Twenty. Long. Hours.

One learns quickly just how fascinating one actually is in twenty hours of solitary confinement (not very, in my case). Here are some random thoughts from my holiday drive, "lovingly" hand-coded, by the way (and by "lovingly," I mean I cussed the whole time I coded this bitch).

THERE	BACK

Crap. I left the book I was going to translate at home. I wonder how many more things I'm going to remember that I forgot. I hate packing.	Eight whole days without dropping an f-bomb. "Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuckity, fuck, fuck fuck." Wow, I feel so much better now.
I am BYPASSING the entire drawn-out town of Vilonia. Woot!	People who are easily offended generally take great delight in it. They probably derive an equal measure of pleasure from being offended than people who enjoy being offensive. Hey, win-win!
Stupid people are REALLY into each other; hence, their numbers are growing exponentially...as demonstrated by all the idiots driving around me.	Whoa! The Led Zeppelin was in here the whole time. "Ah, caught you smiling at me/ That's the way it should be/ Like a leaf is to a tree, so fine."
Get your duct-taped hooptie out of my way!	If S...O...P...A passes, ~~Big Bro~~ is probably coming after me. I hope they aren't googling that acronym with my strategically placed periods of ellipsis. Note to self: Strike through ~~Big Bro~~ in case they're googling that.
Rice, rice, and more rice.	Three-quarters of a tank and I will pull over to fill up just before Illinois, thank you.
What I've learned from the Marquis de Sade: Know and embrace your inner beast and never apologize for your beastly ways.	Is this that place where I was followed by that creepy van? Thank the holies (the Marquis de Sade, Nietzsche, and Derrida...someday you will remember this) for those two truck drivers.
Cotton.	There is no right or wrong in nature. The ability to transgress is what makes us human. Acting on it probably also gives us humanity, empathy, and self-awareness.
This is the place where I rolled down the window and flipped off the dive-bombing crop duster who nearly caused a wreck on the freeway this summer. I wonder if he saw me?	Man, Illinois is boring.
I-55 exit to Portageville, MO: "Drug Check Point, K-9, 3/4 mile." Let me wrap by brain around this. Put up a sign that you're going to be searching for drugs...with trained drug-sniffing dogs...and it acts as a beacon for mules transporting the illegal goods to...gee...I don't know...St. Louis...Chicago? People are actually stupid enough to exit here with 10 pounds of ~~coke~~ in the trunk? Oh, wait...exponential growth in stupid people.	I can't believe I had to eat fast food to stay awake. Now I feel sick. I guess THAT will keep me from falling asleep.
"The Cleanest Restrooms in Fill in The State Here" usually means there is no toilet paper, no soap, and no paper towels. That's why it's clean.	Where's that confounded bridge?
The entire state of Illinois is one giant speed trap. I know this; you know this. Why do you speed? Why do you think you are pulled over? I pass you with a whiff of schadenfreude and a tinge of self-righteousness.	There's that confounded bridge. Just get me back in the South...and back up to 70 M.P.H.
Corn, corn, and more corn.	Surprise! Wrong exit. Oh, well, the Exxon Pit Stop or Reeves Boomland...six of one, half a dozen of another.
How many times can I sing "Femme Fatale" before I become hoarse? Hit the button again and let's see.	Hey, those restrooms really are clean...and well stocked. Maybe I should get gas here from now on.
They shut down seven miles of one freeway lane so two guys can watch another guy work at the half-way point. I'm amazed we even have roads in this country.	Damn CD-Player. I guess I'll have to listen to KGMO 100.7 while it cools off.
I have never seen a single person visiting the aluminum-sided Big Damn Cross since it sprung up by the side of I-57 south of Effingham, IL.	Thanks to the dick who nearly caused me to have a head-on. You were perfectly content doing 50 on 412 (which is a 60, BTW) when I started to pass you. What, you don't like being passed by a woman?
Time for something more sacrilegious. Oh, VU's Peel Slowly and See disc box set number four. That should do it.	If I concentrate, I can get to 67/167 before the last bit of sun disappears behind the Ozark foothills.
There isn't a whole Effing lot going on in Effingham except for the Big Damn Cross, and it isn't exactly happening. turns up volume	Woohoo! I'm burning up the freeway now! Look out fellow Arkies!
Thank everything I consider holy (the Marquis de Sade, Nietzsche, and Derrida), I'm in Indiana where they also appreciate guns and 70-MPH speed limits.	Surprise! Wrong exit again...in Beebe, Arkansas, population 5000 something. Seriously? I've lived here 25 years. I've been to Beebe a million times. I need to be home.
Arkansas smells like catfish and earthworms, Missouri smells like burning tires, Illinois smells like crude, and Indiana smells like poo. I can't decide which is worst.	Still loving the Vilonia by-pass.
Where's my ~~bootleg~~ Led Zeppelin? Crap. Another thing I left at home.	Gee, thanks for leaving the light on for me, Hubs. Damn, I need a drink. Fuck unpacking.

Photo courtesy Barb Henry through a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License via Flickr.com, http://www.flickr.com/photos/bhenry/124519641/.

Thousands of Words, Hundreds of Miles, and Seven Pounds Later

2011-11-28T15:06:00.009-06:00

Several of my friends have been using this month as a chance to reflect on the things they're thankful for. My mom and I conducted an e-mail exchange along those lines each November for a few years. But this year I spent the month winning NaNoWriMo (see badge at left). And when I finished that challenge, I realized the things I'm thankful for are things I made happen: I wrote a novel (no, it's not done and not even ready for revision), I became a runner, and I lost the seven pounds I gained after my dad died of cancer last year.

I celebrated these feats last night by drinking a couple glasses of wine and going to bed early. Hey, I know how party!

So let's start with NaNoWriMo: November is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). Anyone who wants to can sign up for an account at the NaNoWriMo.org website. Writers can then use a variety of resources to help them write 50,000 words by November 30: pep talks, a word count tracker, and merchandise like Chris Baty's book No Plot, No Problem! Writers who make it to the 50,000 word minimum "win" the contest. For their troubles, they receive a certificate and special internet badges that indicate they've won (see badge above). Yeah, that's pretty much it.

So now you may be wondering how I came to participate in the contest.

As with most meaningful things that have happened to me in my life, this one happened quite by accident. I woke up on November 1st, thought to myself, "Oh, NaNoWriMo starts today. Let's see if I can get 1667 words." And I did. Then I did it the next day and the next day and the next day until last night when I hit the 50,000 word mark and validated my word count on the NaNoWriMo site. Technically, I was supposed to have spent the month of October prepping, but since I wasn't planning to participate, I did no research whatsoever (which I'll come back to later on.) I had tried the contest a couple times before (never got past 6000 words), and then completely ignored it last year thinking that it just wasn't for me. So what was different this year?

First of all, I had a plot that included a beginning, middle, and end. Second, as I started writing, I either fell in love or in hate, as appropriate, with my characters. Third, the work is ultimately a discussion of some of my favorite subjects: art history, the Marquis de Sade, the link between pleasure and pain, the place of morality in the world, and what it means for something to be "beautiful." It also doesn't hurt that it takes place in Paris, the streets of which I can walk from the comfort of my home in Conwag.

And here's what I learned about life, writing, and teaching writing:

1) You have more time than you think. On Day Three, I had to respond to 35 student drafts while helping supervise the writing center where I am assistant director and attend two meetings. I figured I'd still have that night to write and was then that I had volunteered to act in a short film for my friend CEP. All the shooting was complete except for the green screen scenes, and he had reserved the screen room for that night and that night only. I asked if he didn't mind shooting everyone else's parts and then calling me when he needed me. No, he didn't mind (thanks, CEP!). So in the few hours between getting home and getting in costume, I managed my 1667 words. When I got to 35,000 words, my pace started slowing. I woke one morning at 3:30 and started feeling guilty. Then it dawned on me: "I'm just going to lie here tossing and turning feeling guilty. I'm never going to fall back asleep. Why not just get up and write?" So that's what I did. You've got five idle minutes? You gonna spend it on Facebook? Or you gonna write? Which will mean more to you in the end? Question answered.

2) This relates directly to number one: find people who support you because they'll make sure you've got the time. Leave behind those who don't support you because they'll only see your work as a frivolous excuse for turning down invitations and begging off extra work they've contrived for you to do. Facebook was instrumental in building a network of support. Posting my word count to strangers on NaNoWriMo didn't really mean anything to me. But posting the milestones on FB and receiving "Likes" and congratulations was a tremendous boost to my motivation. Which led me to another conclusion: psychologists say that if you tell someone you're going to do something, you're more likely to do it. That may be true, but if the people you tell start nagging you, you're going to dig in your heels and say, "Na, na, na, na, na, you can't make me." The reinforcement has to be positive. Also, The Hubs finally understands what I mean when I say, quoting Stevie Nicks, "I wanna be a star! I don't wanna be a cleaning lady."

3) Drafting and revising are separate activities. When you have a looming deadline for a rough, rough draft, just write the draft. It used to be that I had the leisure of writing from the beginning until I got stuck, at which point I'd go back to the top and start revising until I got unstuck. Then I'd begin drafting again until I got stuck and end up back at the beginning revising to "unstuck" again. I'm not sure that's the most efficient way to go about writing. I'm now convinced that just getting something down and often working on bits and pieces as the muse for that section calls is more efficient. Now that I've got a huge chunk of novel finished, I feel like I can continue moving forward without ever getting stuck again. And what's the point of going back to revise something that might end up cut from the original because of a plot problem? And this especially translates to teaching: why should a student revise a section of her research paper that may actually contradict her thesis or be completely irrelevant to her focus?

4) Sometimes you just need to write and fill in the gaps that need to be researched later. I could have spent the entire month reading about the philosophy of the Marquis de Sade, translating stories I wanted to use from Le Monde, etc. But I didn't have time for that. Better to get down the story line and develop the characters and worry about the details later. I used asterisks, blanks, and highlighting to indicate places I needed to develop through research, names I hadn't decided on, and fact and spelling checking I needed to do. I can now worry about those things during the December break. Le Monde is archived like any other newspaper; I can go back to the news that fits my story line and translate those articles later. And I get to keep Airaksinen's Philosophy of the Marquis de Sade until March, at which time I can certainly renew it from the library.

So that's what NaNoWriMo did for me.

I've written before about what running has meant in my life. I started the day my mom was diagnosed with a brain tumor (see post dated August 9). I had to put it aside when school started, but now that I've come to realize that I have more time than I thought I had, I've taken it back up again. Also, sitting in front of a computer for nearly a month has made me want to feel my whole body move again, not just my fingers as they glide over a keyboard. Funnily enough, it got a little cold yesterday, so I spent some time this morning doing research on technical gear for runners (that's backpacker/hiker/runner speak for clothes that keep you warm and dry) and discovered a new accidental challenge: the day I started running again (Thanksgiving), Runner's World started the first annual Holiday Running Streak: run one mile a day from Thanksgiving to New Year's Day. Pfft. That's nothing. If you're friends with me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter, you can be sure I'll be posting my triumphs daily, assuming this initial soreness doesn't put me in a wheelchair.

And as for the seven pounds...well, that came off without a hitch. I owe it all to single-serving bags of popcorn and Granny Smith apples for breakfast (because I don't like sweet stuff). If I lost a couple more pounds, I could easily rock a size two, but you know what...I'm pretty damn happy with what I've accomplished so far.

It's been a good year.