Jan-Jan and R-Pea Explain It All For You

A facet of the immigration debate that tends to be overlooked is the impact on families when half the people in a household are citizens or legal residents and half are not, and the undocumented half get deported--specifically, when the undocumented people are parents, grandparents, or other caregivers and the citizens are minor children who were born here. It's such a problem in Tucson that the Sunnyside Unified School District has joined a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of SB1070, Arizona's "papers please" law that compels municipal law enforcement to determine the immigration status of anyone they stop who they think is Mexican may be in the country illegally.

State Senator Russell Pearce (R-Fuck Mountain) and Governor Jan Brewer (brrrrrrr) floated competing solutions in which they both attempt to be Solomon, but without getting that Solomon wasn't really serious with that whole chop-the-baby-in-half thing. Brewer--who, by the by, has perfected the facial shrug like nuthin' you've ever seen over the past couple of months--says that deported parents should just take their kids with them back to Mexico (cannot embed; go watch) Problem solved!

It is illegal to trespass into our country. It has always been illegal. And people have determined that they want to take that chance, and that responsibility, it's not gonna tear them apart. They can take their children back with them.

We are a nation of laws. That's why we are America.

Of course, this is the same Jan Brewer who explained her refusal to sign a bill banning texting while driving this way:

"You can write all the laws that you want," Brewer said. "But it sometimes doesn't make a whole lot of difference. People don't follow them."

O_o.

Pearce, on the other hand, thinks the best way to alleviate the problems faced by mixed-status families is to eliminate them altogether. What's that you say? 14th Amendment to the what? I do declare, sir; you may force me to brandish my cane in anger! Jesus.

Pearce needs a civics refresher--preferably in any state other than the 50th-ranked for education, of course, so OMG ROAD TRIP TIME--if he really doesn't understand the Constitutional issue in play here.

First of all, that's not the law. It's an unconstitutional declaration of citizenship for those born, uh, in the Wong Kim, uh, decision before the Supreme Court, it made it very clear in the statements from the senators at the time that the 14th Amendment was written, made it clear it did not pertain to aliens and those we did not, who did not have legal domicile in the United States. It's the most irrational and uh, uh, self-defeating provision you can have.

True, the 14th Amendment was written specifically to ensure that the children of freed slaves would be automatically accorded citizenship, without thought to waves of people coming to the US from points south 100 years later, but, just as the 1st Amendment has been interpreted to apply to forms of speech media and the 2nd to high-power firearms that were inconceivable when the amendments were originally penned, the 14th is interpreted to apply to all people born within our borders. In fact, that interpretation comes from the very Wong Kim decision Pearce erroneously cites as proof that anchor babies are really alien babies who should be sent home on the next saucer outta Roswell.

The 14th Amendment's citizenship clause, according to the court's majority, had to be interpreted in light of English common law tradition that had excluded from citizenship at birth only two classes of people: (1) children born to foreign diplomats and (2) children born to enemy forces engaged in hostile occupation of the country's territory. The majority held that the "subject to the jurisdiction" phrase in the 14th Amendment specifically encompassed these conditions (plus a third condition, namely, that Indian tribes were not considered subject to U.S. jurisdiction) - and that since none of these conditions applied to Wong's situation, Wong was a U.S. citizen, regardless of the fact that his parents were not U.S. citizens (and were, in fact, ineligible ever to become U.S. citizens because of the Chinese Exclusion Act).

Pearce appears to be construing "subject to the jurisdiction" as "have a green card in their pocket," which isn't mind-bogglingly narrow and stupid (although it is) so much as it is so incredibly transparently hypocritical as to barely merit a response. Because, in Pearce's book, undocumented people are double-dog subject to every other jurisdiction in the US, especially the ones that are now empowered to dump them on the other side of the fence from the Nogales Burger King if they don't have their birth certificates on them when they're pulled over for a busted taillight.

So there you have it. Pack up your kids and walk away from the better life you came here to give them, or... well, or forget about the better life thing altogether, because the Constitution only applies to people we think it applies to. And there's no point in writing laws, because people ignore them, unless, of course, it's a law that white people don't need to worry about, in which case WE ARE ALL ABOUT THE LAW, PEOPLE. Oh, Arizona. You never fail to disappoint.

An Addendum.

One indelible memory of my buddy Dave, and then we move on.

Waaaay back in the day, a bunch of archaeologists would hit the bar by the office on Friday afternoons for a beer or three over an hour of bullshitting. My son was tiny then, and liked coming along because the bar had a nice walled patio with a koi pond and room to roam, and on one particular Friday--he was three years old--he hopped up into Dave's lap for a while while we drank and yapped.

The next morning, he climbed into his seat at the breakfast table.

Boltgirl: Oatmeal? Cheerios? What sounds good?

Boy: All I need for breakfast is a cup of coffee and a cigarette.

Boltgirl: O_o

Boy: Well, that's what Dave says.

Boltgirl: Um, whatever Dave says, you just do the opposite of that, okay?

The man was the embodiment of if you can't be a good role model, be a dire warning. And now we move on.

And We're Done

Dave was a bastard.

He was brilliant, but had a quick mind and a quicker temper. He did not suffer fools, gladly or otherwise, and had little patience for people who were slower on the uptake than he was, or for people who he thought were lazy, either intellectually or physically. A fierce intellect in a tempestuous man. Many people loathed him, several feared him, not many liked him.

But he liked me, and somewhere underneath that writhing mob of demons he wrestled daily, I saw somebody I could connect to. I did the analysis for a couple of his projects and spent occasional weekends working on papers with him at his cabin in the White Mountains. For all his failings--and it would take a separate blog with its own server to catalog them all--he was unfailingly generous with me, unfailingly kind and nurturing with my son. We fished, he cooked, we talked, I learned how to be rigorous in thinking about archaeology.

About nine years ago, after an adult lifetime spent alienating colleagues and screaming, drunk, at underlings in the field, he hit bottom. It wasn't hard enough to either kill him or render him amnesiac, but, as he put it, the inter-ocular impact was fairly high, so--with the help of our boss, who is the finest human on the planet--he started to work on getting his shit together.

And in doing so, he gave me the courage to get my own shit together.

He got serious about finishing the cabin, so I lugged tools up over the Rim and hammered floorboards into place and stained paneling and raked cinders. We fished. He cooked. He delighted in my son. He started finishing projects that had languished for years, and started making amends with people he had insulted and abused in the years when the drink and the hot temper and the unbalanced brain chemistry had the upper hand. He wanted to know what I was working on, and was excited to collaborate on new research with a colleague who not two years ago was ready to shoot him on sight. He was slowly turning things around.

But all the years of booze and cigarettes won out in the end. The last five years brought multiple heart surgeries, each leaving him more debilitated than the last. I visited him in the hospital and found a hollowed-out shell with a rat's nest for hair and the sunken, glittering eyes you see in daguerrotypes of Civil War soldiers. He had lived for field archaeology and walking his dog in the woods, but his now-trembling legs and failing eyes kept him from all but largely ceremonial trips out to stumble around Las Capas, where he no longer terrified the workers but instead mostly left them wondering who that shaky old man was. Two weeks ago he went under for a final time to correct a kink in his gut. He went septic and then he went comatose. He finally died last night. He was 61 years old. He leaves behind no family except a Rottweiler named Lovey.

Dave was a bastard. But he was my bastard, and he loved me unconditionally and believed in me when I didn't believe in myself.

Rest well.

In Which Afghanistan Suddenly Becomes Far More Interesting

This could go one of two ways.

The United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself, according to senior American government officials.

I wonder how long it will take to find out which way our road will fork.

La La La La Football

It is World Cup time, people.

La Familia Bolt hit Trident Bar & Grill this morning at 6:20 to secure a table and get a breakfast order in before the rush. Which was a good thing, since the place was packed by kickoff.

Breakfast of champions. Eggs may also have been involved.

The first three minutes had me expecting an ocho-zero blowout for Mexico, but the Bufana Bufana shook off the early pressure--thanks in large part to their 22-year-old keeper, who stuffed one shot from a yard away and brilliantly parried a long-distance strike--and built a steady head of momentum on midfield possession leading to clever through balls. South Africa scored first on an excellent counterattack and crazy-angled shot to the upper corner, far post, and then Mexico put in 90-year-old Cuatehmoc Blanco and we figured it was all over, but then four guys busted into the six yard box uncovered and there wasn't much the keeper could do about it. Game 1 final: 1-1.

And we're off!

Cooties.

My new go-to video.

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Oh, if you want the whole thing, it's here.

For Damien

...and for everyone else who is being driven to despair by the news of the day, a stop-the-presses moment that doesn't involve catastrophe: I like something David Brooks wrote.

Yes, I know. Take a moment to absorb that little bit of oil-water interplay, and then trundle over to read Brooks' thoroughly pleasant defense of the humanities.

In other happy news, the start time for the World Cup can be counted down in double-digit hours now, and both Jozy Altidore and Gooch Onyewu have been declared fit for the US, meaning we might make it out of pool play after all. And--and--the completely civilized +10 time difference between Tucson and South Africa means we will not need to drag our sorry carcasses out of bed at two in the morning to watch the matches. Indeed, not only will we be awake, but we can have breakfast! And breakfast beers. Vladimir Weiss, Jr. (Slovakia) is my player to watch in Group F; you heard it here first.

And Now for Something Not at All Different

Do you need a break from reading about the Gulf of Mexico and weeping? Well, go read this and continue weeping for what we have become. Or maybe for what humanity has always been, what we were supposed to leave behind when George Washington built that city on the hill, but what we have been unable to escape.

Physicians for Human Rights has released a 27-page report which clearly documents what we already know: The Bush Administration tortured detainees. The more startling conclusion is this: The Bush Administration experimented on those detainees in order to refine, define and justify their torture regimen.

Nothing like setting the bar, jumping over it, then defining that bar for everyone else as some sort of standard. Yet that's exactly what they did.

We're not supposed to overreach in our metaphors, in our stark comparisons, for fear of understating the horrors of the Inquisitors and the Nazis while simultaneously overstating the evils perpetrated by our government, in our name. Because we're not that bad. We can't be that bad and still be us, because Americans don't do those things. Except that they have, and they do, and it's been utterly without hesitation or reflection beyond wondering exactly how much shit they--we--can get away with before the stench becomes so bad that even the most resolutely entrenched-in-denial among us can't look the other way any more.

This is not what my grandfathers fought for in World War II, to borrow a meme that's currently popular among right-wing Arizonans aghast that their forebears sweated and bled to allow Mexican gardeners to prune the oleanders in Scottsdale for three bucks an hour. That aside, this is not why they fought, not why my great-uncle Jim was shot down and killed over Hildesheim, not why my grandfather's friend Virgil took a bullet in the spine at Anzio and came home in a wheelchair. It's also not why my brother left the better part of his spirit in Baghdad and not why his best friend bled out in Kandahar. Unfortunately, his buddy's death and the rest of the deaths and maimings he saw on a daily basis mean torture is simply, to him, justified retribution. The rage and hatred of war left him not giving a rat's ass about torture as long as it happened to the bad guys.

Our leadership is supposed to rise above the blood in the eyes of the guys on the ground. It didn't.

I Stand Corrected

In the last post I waxed concise about being able to write about the human condition due to a fundamental belief that bullshit is not immutable.

I apparently forgot I was living in Arizona.

A group of artists has been asked to lighten the faces of children depicted in a giant public mural at a Prescott school.

The project's leader says he was ordered to lighten the skin tone after complaints about the children's ethnicity. But the principal says the request was only to fix shading and had nothing to do with political pressure.

The "Go on Green" mural, which covers two walls outside Miller Valley Elementary School, was designed to advertise a campaign for environmentally friendly transportation. It features portraits of four children, with a Hispanic boy as the dominant figure.

R.E. Wall, director of Prescott's Downtown Mural Project, said he and other artists were subjected to slurs from motorists as they worked on the painting at one of the town's most prominent intersections.

"We consistently, for two months, had people shouting racial slander from their cars," Wall said. "We had children painting with us, and here come these yells of [epithet for Blacks] and [epithet for Hispanics]."

Thanks, I guess, to K for the Wonkette tip; the comments there are the only thing keeping my gallows humor over this fucking state alive, which in turn is about the only keeping me sane.

On a Particular Silence

I have written maybe five words about the oil spill. Not because I love lightly regulated offshore drilling leading to the destruction of an entire ecosystem, but because I just can't do it. I can write about human rights abuses and injustices and crap Supreme Court decisions like the inversion of Miranda because they are, at least in theory, reversible.

I'm not sure the apocalypse in the Gulf is. And I can't deal with that much sadness.

Rachel's on it; go there and weep.

Conflicted

Raging atheist here, recovering Catholic, lapsed Catholic, collapsed Catholic, Imagine No Religion, the whole deal. Every time Pope Palpatine and his minions make a new pronouncement about Teh Ghey being the biggest threat to humanity since ebola and Hitler combined, I think my jaw can't drop any farther through the floor, then Papa Ratzi flaps his yap one more time and I resign myself to losing my lower mandible until the Deepwater Horizon relief well hits it sometime this coming August, we hope.

For some reason, though, I can't shake the hold some of this stuff has on me. Way back when, I went to the 10:00 Smells 'n' Bells mass (at Sacred Heart Basilica on the campus of Notre Dame) every damn Sunday, always sat in the same spot next to the second column from the sanctuary on the right, next to Emil Hofman, and soaked up the incense and stained glass and the incomparable sensation of being surrounded by the biggest fucking pipe organ on the planet and 1,200 voices raised in song, led by the forebears of these kids.

So yeah. Today I racked up all the YouTube videos of the Lit Choir I could find, and spent the day writing archaeology against the background of the voices of angels, while from time to time mulling the latest bit of WTF sent along by K. The source of solace is simultaneously the source of so much pain. Well, I guess that's Catholicism in a nutshell for you: on the one hand being so enraged and bitter that this had me delightedly snorking coffee out my nose, and on the other hand having a part of my heart so deeply tied to place and past that this brought tears to my eyes.

And our hearts, forever.

Uhhhh.

Well, this is lovely.

Nowhere to go. Nowhere! Won't someone please think of the oppressed white people for a change?

Geek Week Highlight

And now, a bit of sunshine. I will most likely never get on the Maddow show, but at least now I can say I know somebody who did, and he rocked it. Or pooped it, whatever.

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And While We're Discussing the Catholic Church in Arizona

Remember the nun who got booted from the Mother Church for having the audacity to value a woman's life to the extent of authorizing an abortion to end a pregnancy that was virtually guaranteed to kill both the woman and her 11-week-old embryo? Nothing new to report except that a pro-life group in Virginia is asking people to send letters of support to fucktard Phoenix Bishop Thomas Olmstead.

Olmsted has come under criticism for his swift excommunication of Sister Margaret Mary McBride, a longtime administrator at St. Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix after she authorized an abortion for a 27-year-old woman.

McBride apparently had learned that the pregnancy would be fatal to both the woman and the baby if carried to term. The woman was 11 weeks pregnant. The abortion occurred in December 2009.

Critics have noted that none of the Roman Catholic priests in Arizona who have been disciplined and/or defrocked for sexual abuse (including rape) have been excommunicated.

I got nuthin' else to add. Oh, except that the Arizona Daily Star has some of the most vile commenters on the planet. Almost as vile as the Church's apologists.

"The direct killing of an unborn child is always immoral, no matter the circumstances, and it cannot be permitted in any institution that claims to be authentically Catholic," the Population Research letter says.

The Catholic Physicians Guild of Phoenix is also backing Olmsted's decision.

In a question and answer press release distributed by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Phoenix, diocese officials say abortion is never permitted "as an end or as a means."

Sister McBride, "automatically excommunicated herself from the church," Phoenix diocese officials say.

Can the rest of us would-be escapees get in on that action?

And Here We Go

Not sure how this slipped past me the first time, but, um, pardon me; are you one of the people who thinks physician and pharmacist conscience clauses aren't a big deal because you can just go to some other pharmacy, some other hospital? Yeah, sometimes the Catholic Church takes over the only hospital in town, as it did in Sierra Vista, Arizona, and it suddenly becomes a very big deal.

Southern Arizona's Carondelet Health Network is about to join forces with Sierra Vista Regional Health Center.

The two health-care providers will execute an "integrative network agreement" April 17, which will allow them to share resources, officials from both say.

Trustees with Sierra Vista Regional Health Center say one of the major concerns has been a prohibition on sterilization procedures that will occur at the hospital as a result of the agreement. They say the prohibition is part of the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services used by Carondelet, a Catholic, nonprofit network.

And there you have it. Well, maybe it's not all that bad, right?.

On Sunday, the Sierra Vista hospital ran an advertisement in the Sierra Vista Herald that says the only services that will be discontinued are direct sterilization procedures and IUD insertion, except for directly therapeutic purposes.

The hospital will continue to treat ectopic pregnancies and will still use Plan B (the morning-after pill) for rape victims, says the advertisement, which was signed by hospital President and CEO Margaret Hepburn and board of trustees chair Larry Kope.

Abortion for ectopics and Plan B for rape is great, although I'm not sure why I should be turning handsprings for legal procedures and medications remaining accessible to women who need them, but abortion and emergency contraception for people in different circumstances? It's difficult to conclude otherwise that the level of specificity in the hospital's statement is intentionally exclusive. And that's just fabulous news for the women of Sierra Vista who don't have the means or time to drive the hour and a half to Tucson.

It's a two-year agreement. Maybe the economy will improve enough in that time to allow the Sierra Vista hospital to get back on its own feet and go back to operating under a general humanist code of ethics, not one dictated by the Catholic Church./p>

Archaeology Interlude

Sometimes there are no more compelling explanations for chronological trends.

Click to embiggen.

Geek Week Is Upon Us

And here we go!

Other highlights of “Geek Week” include: Robert Wallace, a former CIA agent who reveals the secrets of a once-classified CIA manual written by a former magician; a tour of the Iwo Jima helicopter carrier in honor of Fleet Week here in New York City; a geek-level tour of the massive rebuilding project underway at Ground Zero; geek-rapper Baba Brinkman, whose most recent project is “The Rap Guide to Evolution”; Infrastructure! - a trip underground with the sandhogs to tour the construction of the Second Avenue subway line, an infrastructure project more than 50 years behind schedule; and Dr. Jim Mead of East Tennessee State University, who oversees the largest collection of prehistoric dung in the world.

One of these segments involves a dear member of la familia Bolt. Living vicariously FTW!

At the End of the Day

When I am woman king of the universe, utterances of the phrase "at the end of the day" will bring a $1000 fine for the first offense, with Fibonacci-ally increasing fines for each subsequent use when the speaker is not talking about about something that is actually going to happen at the end of the current day.

Let's review.

At the end of the day, we will stop by the bar for a beer and then go home. ==> dandy.

At the end of the day, it will come down to who wants it more. ==> $1000, please, plus $50 for "who wants it more" because I don't like that either.

At the end of the day, I decided I had to stand up for the people of Pennsylvania, the working families... yes, I stood up to the party establishment when I thought they were wrong for you, and I just want to re-emphasize, at the end of the day, I'm like all Pennsylvanians, pretty independent-minded. ==> that will be $3000, Rep. Sestak, since you've been warned and the first thousand is just assumed to kick-start the fine escalation.

Drives me fucking insane. At the start of the day, and in the middle, and even at the end. Of the day.

You have GOT to be Fucking Kidding Me

Okay. If you're a semi-regular reader of this blog, you may have noticed that I have a mild fixation on someone who may or may not be named Rachel Maddow. Just search for posts tagged "squeeee" and you'll get the picture. I have so many things to offer, so many brilliant insights, and she's never called me! Not even once!

So my girlfriend did call me this afternoon, and told me she'd gotten an e-mail from her ex. That in itself is no more unusual than the sun coming up in the east; they're still very close and I consider him my brother-in-law, in some weird lesbian extended-family sense. He's a scientist with a fairly significant reputation, rightfully so, and elements of his research have landed him in Popular Science and on the National Geographic channel from time to time. No stranger to the media, this one; Nature Valley Granola even considered using him in a commercial that scheduling conflicts nixed.

Anyway, the e-mail. It seems he'd been contacted by some TV producers for the Geek Week segment their boss wants to run. They're showing up in his town with a live remote crew next week. So he can be interviewed.

By. Rachel. Maddow.

Excuse me while I go shoot myself now.

It's the dung. He has amassed the world's preeminent collection of ancient dung, and Rachel wants to talk to him about it. My son asked me what the chances are that she might want to talk to me sometime, and I said, zero. But aren't you the world's leading expert on some archaeology thing, he asked? Yeah, I said, but nobody cares about Empire points. They care about giant sloth dung. Huh, he said, so that means your work isn't worth shit?

Ha. Ha ha. He'll be here all week, folks; don't forget to tip your waitress.

The Boltgirl Typing Primer

I did not take typing in high school. I'm not even sure if they offered typing at my high school. So I hunted and pecked well into grad school, and even though I (mostly) type now without having to peek at the keyboard, certain words just refuse to come out right every goddamn time. Especially archaeology words, which is troublesome given that archaeology is necessarily the number one subject in my work writing.

Here is a handy translation guide, should you ever find yourself editing one of my chapters.

1. steon. This actually is supposed to be "stone," and since my specialty is stone tools, it's a problem.

2. Cieneha. Looks plausibly Southwestern, but should be Cienega. It is the name of one of the more significant time periods I study--lots of fascinating steon tools going on, of course--so, again, needs some help.

3. poitn. Uh, "point." As in projectile points, which, alas, were typically made of steon, and there were shit-tons of them in the Cieneha phase.

4. preshitoric. Need I say more?

So apparently the left hemisphere of my brain is rebelling against my career choice. I'm amazed sometimes to get to the office and find that they haven't changed the locks overnight.

As Previously Reported

Arizona joined several other states in collectively punching women in the ladybits when Governor Brewer signed SB1305 (previously noted here).

An obscure part of the law allows states to restrict abortion coverage by private plans operating in new insurance markets. Capitalizing on that language, abortion foes have succeeded in passing bans that, in some cases, go beyond federal statutes. "We don't consider elective abortion to be health care, so we don't think it's a bad thing for fewer private insurance companies to cover it," said Mary Harned, attorney for Americans United for Life, a national organization that wrote a model law for the states.

Not content to be bandwagon-jumping posers, our legislature managed to set us apart by not including the usual sops to what passes for reason--you know, the holy triumvirate of exemptions (rape, incest, mother's life) that let the misogynists behind this tripe convince themselves they're not being total bastards about things. Those exemptions are for pussies, apparently, and Arizona's not having it.

Exceptions are made only under extreme circumstances in which the procedure saves the life of the woman or will "avert substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function of the woman."

No rape exception here, bucko! Unfortunately, Tennessee promptly trumped Arizona by making their insurance law completely void of exemptions, meaning that if you're a Volunteer female you'll need to set up and pay for a separate rider covering the possibility not only that you'll be raped, but that a pregnancy might kill you, and since that last bit there about the potential for maternal mortality applies to every pregnancy across the board, every woman in Tennessee will need to pay extra for essential coverage that had been included in her insurance right up until this moment. Tell me again, Mary Harned, how abortion is not healthcare?

One more question, this one for Governor Brewer. Is my uterus state-owned property? No? It isn't? Then stay the fuck away from it. And everyone else's.

Graduation Day

When I learn from my son the lesson I spent his lifetime to this point trying to teach, I know I did my job.

His team went into the state volleyball semifinals on Friday as the number two seed, riding a 24-match winning streak, and five sets later exited the gym as moderate upset victims. They took the first two sets reasonably handily, but in the third fell behind early and lost their momentum, started hitting serves wide and long, started letting balls fall in bounds, failed to cover on tips. The fifth set went back and forth, with neither team pulling out more than a two-point margin, and his team fought off match point three times before finally succumbing.

Great, I thought, he's going to be a mess for a week. This is a kid who was devastated as a freshman when he missed a must-convert penalty kick and his soccer team lost a tournament championship, a kid whose confidence took a kick in the gut when he didn't make varsity volleyball as a junior, a kid who spent his entire junior season grabbing his head when he missed a hit and fighting back tears when the missed hit came on match point. He made varsity this year but didn't expect to play, and I spent the first half of the season watching him ride the bench and holding my breath the few times he got into games because I knew a mistake would mean he was (1) back on the bench, (2) with his head in his hands.

But after the halfway point stuff started to change. He wasn't hanging his head, even if he messed up, and he worked his way into the starting lineup and stayed there.When the last ball on match point fell short of the kid who dove for it in vain, they left the floor and huddled under the bleachers with the coach for a long time, and when they started trickling back to their parents I took a deep breath. And was pleasantly surprised. Despite the red eyes and the long hug, he was okay. They were all okay.

They got on the bus and headed back to Tucson, and when he got home he told me everyone got over it on the ride. He wished things had gone differently, but he was happy about specific things that had been a problem for him in the past, that he had done well in this match. He hit every one of his serves in, and returned every serve hit to him the way he wanted to. His Facebook update just said guess you can't win them all.

Acknowledge the bad and leave it behind, take the good with you and move on. He's doing it now, finally  not letting small slips morph into capital-eff Failures that keep spiraling. Finally doing as I say instead of as I do.

And in doing so, he becomes the teacher. My work here is done.

Uh, No.

Not me, Bucko. And I fucking live here.

As calls spread for an economic boycott of Arizona, the state’s governor enlisted the help of former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin on Saturday to defend a new law cracking down on illegal immigration.

Brewer and Palin blamed President Obama for the state law, saying the measure is Arizona’s attempt to enforce immigration laws because the federal government won’t do it.

“It’s time for Americans across this great country to stand up and say, ‘We’re all Arizonans now,’” Palin said. “And in clear unison we say, ‘Mr. President: Do your job. Secure our border.’”

And with that, the We Are All _______ meme mercifully croaked away its last breath and disappeared forever. What? A girl can dream, can't she?

Never-ending Nightmare Never Ends

Ever had a nasty 24-hour stomach bug? The kind where you feel increasingly miserable and then puke and feel much better, but then have your blissful, blessed relief cut short by another wave of nausea, and then another, until you are certain that you will be vomiting every 20 minutes for the rest of your life?

Welcome to Arizona, where the legislature and governor have just heaved our collective shoes into the bucket with a prohibition against ethnic-studies curricula that don't meet Tom "the most fun chant for me was 'drill, baby, drill' used by three separate speakers" Horne's approval.

Gov. Jan Brewer signed a bill limiting what kind of courses schools can offer in the name of cultural diversity Tuesday.

Without comment, Brewer signed the controversial legislation, which declares students "should be taught to treat and value each other as individuals and not be taught to resent or hate other races or classes of people.''

The law, aimed specifically at the ethnic studies program at Tucson Unified School District, is far more complex than that goal.

It makes it illegal for public schools to have any courses or classes that promote the overthrow of the United States government or promote resentment toward a race or class of people. It also bars any programs "designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group."

My 7th grade social studies teacher would be in deep shit on this one, given how his World War II lectures made me resent the hell out of the Nazis. And my son's Native American Literature teacher made the class read Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee this semester, which left him feeling not that great about--gasp--the United States government! Well. That's a bit of hyperbole. Tom Horne isn't going to march in and string up teachers who might give white students a moment of pause when they consider the atrocities perpetuated by governments on this continent and in Europe, but if you get the Mexicans riled up, you're toast. Oh, and by the way, if you're trying to teach the Mexicans to speak English, make sure your accent isn't too thick. Because Arizona doesn't like that either.

You'd be perfectly justified, at this point, to ask who the fuck thinks all this is a good idea. There's an obvious and troubling answer, and now, this morning, a less obvious and possibly more troubling answer. First, the no-brainer: the white supremacists, of course, think this is all kinds of awesome. But it's more than just them, and that keeps me from my rest. Large chunks of the country are going nativist now, or at least large chunks of slightly more than a thousand registered voters with landlines who happened to answer their phones and take part in a poll are, and that should give us all pause.

A strong majority of Americans support Arizona's controversial new immigration law and would back similar laws in their own states, a new McClatchy-Ipsos poll found.

A separate Pew Research Center poll on the Arizona law released Wednesday found similar sentiments.

In the McClatchy-Ipsos poll, 61 percent of Americans - and 64 percent of registered voters - said they favored the law in a survey of 1,016 adults conducted May 6-9.

Strikingly, nearly half of Democrats like the law, under which local law enforcement officers are tasked with verifying people's immigration status if they suspect them of being in the country illegally.

Swell. And here's the best part:

In addition, about 69 percent of Americans said they wouldn't mind if police officers stopped them to ask for proof of their citizenship or legal rights to be in the country; about 29 percent would mind, considering it a violation of their rights, and about 3 percent were unsure.

Hell no, I wouldn't mind if a nice police officer stopped me and asked me for proof of citizenship! People who say this are people who have never been hassled by a cop in their entire lives for having the wrong skin color or wrong kind of clothes for the neighborhood they're walking in or the car they're driving. It's very, very easy to hit play and blast out the title track from Unexamined Privilege's Greatest Hits, Vol. 1: If You're Not Doing Anything Wrong (You Don't Have Anything To Worry About), until the day comes when you really aren't doing anything wrong and get busted anyway. If you're white enough and not screaming in Farsi at the top of your lungs, no, you probably don't have to worry about it, and if for some unfathomable reason you were stopped and questioned and didn't have your ID or birth certificate (long form, please) on you, you could talk your way out of it. And hey, if you don't have to worry about it on a personal level, you get a pass from having to worry about it on a conceptual level. It's not just the Arizona way any more. It's the American way, bucko, and don't you forget it.

Pass the pepto, if you please. Every time I think it's got to be over, another wave comes.

Mid-May Panic Attack

Oh Christ. Things we are panicking about, in no particular order:

(1) Did the boy choose the right college? Should we have pushed for Gonzaga?

(2) Elena Kagan? Who's correct here, Greenwald or Lessig?

(3) Maggie Gallagher is spewing her anti-gay venom over on the west side tonight! Is asphyxiation likely if I stay in midtown? How sure are you? I am fresh out of plastic sheeting and duct tape.

(4) Cubs, 6 1/2 games back and in 5th place.

(5) The ability to string more than two archaeology-related sentences together has deserted me just in time for being over budget on the current work project.

(6) Is it payday yet? No? Crap.

NOM Descends on Tucson

Oh, this is exciting. The National Organization for Marriage's own hellhound-in-chief and all-around horrible person Maggie Gallagher is coming to Tucson tomorrow night.

What: Same-Gender Marriage and Religious Freedom: A conversation with Rev. Dr. C. Welton Gaddy, president of Interfaith Alliance and Maggie Gallagher, founder of the National Organization for Marriage. Rev. Gaddy is the author of Same-Gender Marriage & Religious Freedom, which argues that discussion of this issue should be rooted in the Constitution rather than in scripture. Maggie Gallagher has been a longtime and vocal opponent of legalizing same-gender marriage.

When: Tuesday, May 11, 2010
7:00 P.M. – 9:00 P.M.

Where: Berger Performing Arts Center
1200 West Speedway Blvd.
Tucson, AZ 85745
(located on the campus of the Arizona State Schools for the Deaf and Blind)

I can't go to the "conversation," unfortunately, due to a prior commitment, but my friend Homer will be there in full force, and I will be very anxious to hear about the evening and her responses to the questions he plans to ask. Gaddy should mop the floor with her, although, as I mentioned to Homer, the woman wouldn't recognize a rational thought if it bit her in the ass. And, frankly, being both deaf and blind is about the only way I would be able to spend an hour in her presence without ending up in a holding cell.

Stop the Presses

Frank Antenori and I fully agree on one thing. I may need to lie down for a while.

Under current law, residents and visitors in Arizona can buy beer, wine and liquor every day beginning at 6 a.m. through 2 the following morning.

At one time there were no sales before noon [on Sundays]. That was changed to 10 a.m. more than a decade ago to accommodate demands by Bill Bidwill who had brought his Cardinals football team to Arizona and wanted to be able to sell beer in the stands when games had to start early because of TV schedules.

Antenori said he doesn't buy the argument that the rules should be different on what some people believe is the Lord's Day.

"For a certain specific religion you can't carve out a special exemption,'' he said. "I don't think that's right.''

Knock me over with a feather, and then hand me an IPA if you'd be so kind. It'll be after 6 a.m.--we do not get up that early on Sundays for anything--so we're golden. I'd even think about buying Frank a beer, except that his pesky state-funded insurance plan prevents me from buying him alcohol just on principle. But hey, it was close for a second there.

Geek Orgasm

Ion fucking propulsion, bitchez!

"Standard orbit, Mr. Sulu." Captain Kirk barks out the order with such confidence. He knows the USS Enterprise can slip in and out of planetary orbits with ease. But it's only easy in the realm of science fiction. In the real world, such maneuvers have been impossible --until now.

Enter Dawn, NASA's cutting edge mission to the asteroid belt.

Powered with a futuristic sounding new technology called "ion propulsion," this spacecraft will perform space moves rivaling those of the Enterprise.

Ion propulsion! Woot!

(via Americablog)

Another Kind of Migrant

I can't tell you how many times I've heard anti-immigrant (read: anti-Mexican) people in Arizona complain about the immigrants' refusal to assimilate into mainstream (read: white) America. These people, they come into our country and still speak Spanish and wave their Mexican flags and eat at taco trucks and play their goddamn mariachi music full blast and have fucking picnics in graveyards and this is AMERICA goddammit so why don't they act like Americans?

I'm not from here either. Well, I am from the US, but I'm not from Arizona. I'm from the midwest, Illinois and Indiana, mostly the greater Chicago area. I spent my middle school and high school years in South Bend, Indiana, and grew up with the grandkids of Polish immigrants. When the Poles came over, they built their own parish church a block away from the existing church so they wouldn't have to go to mass with all those annoying Irish people, lived in their own neighborhood, and ran their own grocery stores and butchers, some of which were still operational enough in 1984 that if you went in and asked the butcher in Polish, you could get the quart of duck blood you wanted for soup. Now those folks have retired to Phoenix and brought as much of the midwest with them as they could cram into their Winnebagos, but since they're saying ya hey dere and flying a Packers windsock instead of si se puede and El Tricolor, no one notices a thing.

My midwestern grandparents spend the winters in one of these Phoenix-area giant senior citizens' communities, surrounded by fellow snowbirds from Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin. They frequent the Hoosier Cafe, decorated with Indiana University and Purdue memorabilia, and another cafe that is named Red Mountain but might was well be U.P Michigan Central, this one plastered with Packers, Vikings, and Proud to Be a Yooper flags, and order coffee from waitresses with unmistakable upper midwest accents and look at the Michigan license plates on the wall and wonder why the Mexicans won't just try to fit in.

Meanwhile, fifteen years and counting in the desert and my wardrobe still consists mostly of t-shirts proclaiming my allegiance to various Chicago sports teams and Notre Dame. My license plate and the Cubs magnet on the back of my car scream Chicago. When I go hiking here I seek out running streamcourses that are lined with trees, and in the springtime long to hit the higher elevations of the Catalinas just so I can see some familiar wild geraniums and smell damp rock and feel, for a moment, that I'm back home. The pens on my office desk sit in an ancient beer cup from the Taste of Chicago. Steve Goodman, rest his soul, headlines my iPod; WGN News at Nine is not an infrequent visitor to my living room; about once a week you can find me clutching an Old Style at Rocco's Little Chicago in the booth under the CTA centennial poster.

For good measure, Boltgirl's office ceiling decoration.

In short, I in many ways--unconscious, conscious, sometimes downright gleeful--have stayed within the cultural milieu I grew up in instead of completely assimilating into my new home. My right-wing fellow Arizonans probably just haven't really noticed, or, if they have, haven't taken offense at my Loop-centric tastes because they aren't terribly far afield from their own. I'm allowed my trappings of home because home's on the right side of the Rio Grande. The Mexicans who want to do the same? My stars, what a terrible affront to Arizona sensibilities.

Wait, I Forgot One.

Have you ever stood up at a political convention, a rally, or in front of your TV whilst watching coverage of the same, and gleefully chanted, "Drill baby drill!?" Fuck. You. That goes for allegedly progressive political candidates who, once in office, fall over themselves to be as Republican as possible too.

Christ, what a week.

Emily Litella Day in Arizona

After basking in the national spotlight for the better part of a giddy, sniggering week, maybe the legislature decided it's not that much fun being a pariah after all, or maybe they were running low on noses to cut off to spite all those socialist secret Muslim faces in Washington. Whatever the cause, the paper was full of interesting news this morning.

The biggest news is that the language of the immigration law has been scaled back from compelling the police to question the immigration status of any person they suspect is in the country illegally during any lawful contact to determining said status only of the person in question is being stopped, arrested, or detained, and that reasonable suspicion can't be based on race, ethnicity, or national origin.

The relatively reasoned explanation--as far as anything related to this law can be reasonable--comes from Jan Brewer's spokesguy Paul Senseman:

Senseman said both charges are designed to undermine lawsuits seeking to have the law overturned on the premise that it allows officers to stop and question anyone who looks like an illegal immigrant.

He said the secondary enforcement language strengthens provisions in the original bill designed to reassure illegal immigrants who are crime victims or witnesses that they can call police without being asked about their legal status.

The bitchery comes from the original bill's sponsor, Russell Pearce:

Sen. Russell Pearce, R-Mesa, defended the original provision as being relevant, saying 90 percent of those in this country illegally are from Mexico and points south.

What the change does, Pearce said, is remove a target for foes, both those in court and those criticizing the measure in speeches and demonstrations.

"I'm just tired of the games played by the left," he said. Pearce said making the change and leaving pretty much everything else the same "strengthens the bill's ability of being enforced without letting the left leverage bad stuff."

I suspect the left will take a break from all that leveraging just so we can sit back and watch with great interest exactly how the cops will decide who to demand papers from without recourse to race. The original language allowing people to sue agencies or officers who adopt or implement a policy of lax enforcement remains unmolested, however, and while I assume the racial profiling prohibition extends to private citizens who want to sue Officer Friendly for not clapping that obvious Mexican in leg irons, well, this is Arizona, so who the hell knows. After all, the senate amendments to HB2162 include this little gem:

Of the monies appropriated to the department of public safety for the gang and immigration intelligence team enforcement mission in fiscal year 2010-2011, the sum of $200,000 shall be distributed to the Cochise county sheriff's office for border security, including the costs of equipment related to a pilot program to dispatch a volunteer security force to the United States-Mexico border.

The Minutemen ride again! Swell. The guys at Sportsman's Warehouse must be totally stoked. How will this play out in real life? Probably a lot like George Bush claiming that America doesn't torture, because torture is illegal, and whatever we're doing is legal, so it can't be torture.

Back to the noses and faces, remember the 300,000+ low-income people Arizona kicked off the state Medicaid rolls, and the 36,000 kids they were set to kick out in June? Yeah, somebody noticed that doing so would make AZ forfeit close to $8 billion in federal healthcare reform cash, so the legislature backed up that truck in a hurry.

Finally, and most deliciously, the birther bill had to slink out of the side door of the senate committee room when not even all the Republicans involved wanted to have anything to do with it.

Sen. Jack Harper, R-Surprise, said Thursday not enough of the 18 Republicans in the state Senate support the House-approved measure. And with all 12 Democrats opposed, Harper said it makes no sense to force the issue to a vote.

But Harper defended the merits of the change, rebuffing claims by critics it is silly.

"It's not about Barack Obama," Harper said. "He has shown his birth certificates and birth announcements, from the time he was born, in Hawaii newspapers."

What it is about, Harper said, is "states' rights."

States' rights. Still meaning the exact same fucking thing it meant back in 1861 and in 1964. Does it still count as a dog whistle when everyone can hear it and can tell it's not really Fido you're calling for?

Final tally: Birther bullshit, check; poor people's healthcare, check, at least until the legislature decides to balance it with $7.8B in corporate tax cuts; immigration law, very slightly better in letter, still repugnant in spirit, still unworkable in practice. Still out there menacing the populace: permitless concealed guns, the gay marriage ban, the closed parks, and, oh yeah, the squintillion-dollar cuts to education and social services. But we might be a little closer to Sunday morning liquor sales. There's some hope for you.

Oh. And By the Way?

Fuck Florida too.

Want More to Chew On? We Provide.

Well, "we" here means our excellent friend K, who keeps us busy thinking about the real world when we should be thinking about archaeology. Go here and read this, right now, and then show it to everyone around you. Especially if you're in the vicinity of an older white Republican male who just. wants. his. country. back, with or without Beckian tears.

Let’s play a game, shall we? The name of the game is called “Imagine.” The way it’s played is simple: we’ll envision recent happenings in the news, but then change them up a bit. Instead of envisioning white people as the main actors in the scenes we’ll conjure - the ones who are driving the action - we’ll envision black folks or other people of color instead. The object of the game is to imagine the public reaction to the events or incidents, if the main actors were of color, rather than white. Whoever gains the most insight into the workings of race in America, at the end of the game, wins.

Well, except that we all lose, but yeah.

And While We're At It

Fuck Oklahoma too.

Posting from the Last Bastion of Hope in Southern Pariahstan

Dude, the rest of the country hates us now. Well, at least the parts of the country that have yet to be overrun by racist, anti-government gun nuts, that is, and that hurts me where I live. Fuck. Since I can't go more than a few sentences at a time on the Brown Star Law without completely losing my shit, here is Jon Stewart to lose it for me in a much more controlled and constructive fashion.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Law & Border
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

Further required reading is available at the MaddowBlog; to wit:

But if you want to meet the guy who's taking credit for writing the new law, that would be Kris Kobach, a birther who's running for secretary of state in Kansas. His campaign Website brags, "Kobach wins one in Arizona." He's also an attorney for the Immigration Reform Law Institute, the legal arm of an immigration group called FAIR, the Federation for American Immigration Reform.

FAIR was founded in 1979 by John Tanton, who's still listed as a member of FAIR's board of directors. Seven years after he started FAIR, Tanton wrote this, "To govern is to populate. Will the present majority peaceably hand over its political power to a group that is simply more fertile? As whites see their power and control over their lives declining, will they simply go quietly into the night or will there be an explosion?"

For nine of the first years of FAIR's existence, the group reportedly received more than $1 million in funding from something called the Pioneer Fund. The Pioneer Fund describes itself as based "in the Darwinian-Galtonian evolutionary tradition and eugenics movement." For the last 70 years, the Pioneer Fund has funded controversial research about race and intelligence, essentially aimed at proving the racial superiority of white people. The group's original mandate was to promote the genes of those "deemed to be descended predominantly from white persons who settled in the original 13 states prior to the adoption of the Constitution."

Arizona has turned into the wettest of right-wing dreams. A bona fide problem (drug smugglers--hello, US drug habits and drug laws--and human traffickers--hello, US economy--kidnapping and shooting people) has become prima facie for every nativist, supremacist, exceptionalist fantasy they can cook up. No no no, the tea partiers have protested, it's not racism, we just want to take our country back. Well, hell yes they do. They fucking want to take the country back to April 12, 1861, and the pretenses are fast falling away.

Epic spiderwebs in Casa Bolt.

The spiders have been busy over the past few months, building haunted house-worthy webs high in every corner. We have been infested with gnats, so I'm letting the spiders stay, only occasionally brushing the outer extents of the webs away when they threaten to eclipse the light coming through the windows. The spiders need the web-building exercise anyway to work off all the annoying-flying-insect calories they've been ingesting.

This is how I ignore Arizona for a few minutes. I write about the desultory state of my housekeeping.

Bruce Wheeler came by this afternoon for me to sign his petition to get on the ballot for state representative. I happily signed and gave him five bucks and asked him to kick Russell Pearce in the balls when he gets to Phoenix.

Sunday in Southern Racialprofiletia.

Nicked from a friend's Facebook, offered without comment.

Another Morning in Lower Wingnuttia Province, Southern Jesustan

Fuck.

Ignoring warnings of illegality from their own secretary of state, most House Republicans voted Wednesday to require him to verify that presidential candidates on the Arizona ballot are, in fact, born in the United States.

SB 1024 would require political parties to submit to the Arizona secretary of state "documents that prove that the candidate is a natural born citizen, prove the candidate's age and prove that the candidate meets the residency requirements for President of the United States."

But the measure, approved 31-29 with no Democratic votes, goes even further. It gives the secretary of state the unilateral power to keep a candidate off the Arizona ballot if he or she has "reasonable cause" to believe the candidate is not qualified.

There really isn't much more to say about a state that recently, sort of in order:

1. Kicked over 300,000 people off the state-subsidized healthcare rolls, including 31,000+ children from the CHIP program.

2. Made drastic cuts to public education in response to the state's budget disaster, to the extent that school districts are laying off hundreds of teachers, schools are closing and merging, and librarians, counselors, and even full-time principals are things of the past. Shall we talk about what it's doing to the state university system? That's a whole 'nother post.

3. Enacted legislation preventing unmarried (read: gay) couples from adopting unless absolutely no one else wants the children in question.

4. Closed all but four of the 17 rest stops on the highways in our rather large state. Take a leak and a nap at McDonald's if you need a leak and a nap that bad, bitchez!

5. Closed numerous state parks, including some containing prehistoric ruins that will now be wrecked by pothunters in the absence of ranger patrols.

6. Made it illegal for anyone receiving subsidized healthcare--state employees, that means you too, not just the poor folks--to get an insurance-covered abortion, unless the woman's life is in danger.

7. Made it legal for doctors, nurses, and pharmacists to refuse to dispense emergency contraception, even to rape victims, and also made it legal for the same to refuse to refer said victim to a healthcare provider who will actually do his or her job. Want Plan B, you slut? Get it off the internet. No internet access? It's your own fault for taking such a low-paying job.

8. Made it illegal for anyone to provide a minor with a prescription for contraception, or perform any mental health screening or treatment, or provide comprehensive sex education, without parental permission.

9. Made it legal for anyone over the age of 21 to carry a concealed weapon without a permit and the training that such permits require.

10. But has a governor who vetoed a bill that would have ended the state ban on 4th of July sparklers, because she thinks they're too dangerous.

11. Passed a law requiring law enforcement to demand proof of citizenship or legal residency from anyone they arrest who they suspect might be Mexican in the country illegally.

12. Decided to allow the citizenry to sue any cop they see not being rigorous enough in demanding papers from a Mexican person they happen to be questioning.

And now (13) the fucking birthers have managed to tack a giant birther turd onto an unrelated piece of legislation that got through the state House. No way in hell will it withstand a challenge from even the night janitor at the Supreme Court, should the state Senate pass it, but that's immaterial. With this latest variation on the dog whistle, Arizona has officially wrestled the Dumbfuckery All-Around Championship from previous titleholders Mississippi, Alabama, and South Carolina.

It's not even much of a dog whistle any more. It is more of a train horn blasting at different intervals and varying decibel levels, but the message is the same. ZOMG BLACK GUY IN TEH WHITE HOUSE!!11!!!1!!! Just come out and say it, fuckers, and save yourselves some breath and time spent typing amendments to every House bill that comes down the pike.

Seriously, just hammer this one out and append it everything else you fucking do up there in Phoenix: Whereas, Barack Hussein Obama is the 44th President of the United States, therefore, be it resolved by the House of Representatives of the State of Arizona, the Senate concurring, that: ZOMG BLACK GUY IN TEH WHITE HOUSE!!11!!!1!!! SOCIALISM!!!!! SAUL ALINSKY!!!eleventyone!!!!

It's very easy to say oh my god I'm moving to Canada, or Massachusetts, or Washington, but it's not very easy to actually do it. My partner and my job--I still have one--and my friends and my son's roots are here. So we stay and watch the state, and sanity, crumble around us.

Note: should you find yourself in need of a birther takedown, I suggest this.

Well, That Explains *That*

Why didn't I think of this? JordanCornblog has sussed out the ultimate cause of Iceland going kablooey in such dramatic fashion.

You know how when they are electing a Pope the black smoke indicates a failed ballot … while white smoke means that a new pope has been elected? Well, isn’t it pretty obvious that God is telling old Benedict that there’s been a big mistake? Good grief – today is even the 5th anniversary of his election … and he was born on April 16th!

Could it be any clearer? Black smoke … God is telling you to step down, Ratzo … seriously. You need to listen!

The elegance of simple, clean logic--ain't nuthin' better.

O_o

What. The. Fuck.

Mexican educators and officials defended the country's public school sex education Friday from criticism by a Roman Catholic bishop who said such teachings make celibacy vows more difficult for priests to keep.

On Thursday, Bishop Felipe Arizmendi said that "when there is generalized sexual licentiousness, it is more common to have pederasty."

"In the midst of the invasion of so much eroticism, it is not easy to remain faithful in celibacy, or in respecting children," Arizmendi, the bishop of the San Cristobal de las Casas diocese in Chiapas state, said at a meeting of Mexican bishops.

Wow. Really? Do I really need to point out to this fine Man of God^TM that despite having gleefully sought out the invasion of eroticism since I was a teenager, I have never once felt the urge to, you know, go out and rape a child? Because that's not eroticism. That's predation. Conflating the two is to conflate singing with screaming, and for the Church to continue to insist that it really can't see the difference is beyond sick. And beyond redemption.

Postcard from South Teabaggeria

Oh, Arizona. Is there no new low to which you just won't sink?

The past week saw the legislature decide--without a single word of debate--that open carry is just too restrictive, and concealed weapons are now fine and dandy without a permit. Are you a grownup? Get down to the gun store, Elmer! Because the governor's set to sign this puppy into law, so cram as many pieces into your pockets, waistband, and asscrack as you can fit, and don't worry about taking a silly class--education is for socialists and Muslims, after all--that will teach you how to handle a gun safely and discern when the use of deadly force is legal.

Now for Act II, the legislature is crowing about having passed the toughest immigration law in the nation, which both empowers local cops to arrest people who are in the country illegally, and compels said cops to investigate the immigration status of anyone they suspect might not be a legitimate Real American. So if you're here on a visa or a green card, you will have to carry those documents on your person at all times, because if Officer Friendly hears your funny accent and surmises that skin tone isn't just from staying out in the sun too long, he has to ask you for your papers. Seriously, he or she has to do that, because the law also allows upstanding Real American citizens to sue law enforcement agencies whose officers do not demonstrate significant rigor in questioning every guy running a leaf blower in the Circle K parking lot.

So not only do we have a genuine police state brought to us courtesy of the same faction that howled about fascist government takeover of the country when healthcare reform was enacted, but we have a police state with heat-packing citizen snitchery built right in! Who says Republicans don't really care about infrastructure?

Meanwhile, the state's budget disaster is claiming victims from the school districts at an alarming rate. Hundreds of teachers and support staff are being axed, programs are disappearing, and the president of the University of Arizona is threatening to cut financial aid if a one-cent sales tax fails on the ballot next month. Of course, even if the temporary sales tax passes, the legislature is casually mulling enacting corporate tax cuts that would offset most of the revenue gains the sales tax would provide. Because nothing lures businesses to a state like the promise of a grossly undereducated labor pool.

But don't worry, Arizona parents who are concerned with the quality of public education here and the amount of cash you'll have to shell out for niceties like having art class, or sports teams, or keeping the school library open--the legislature has you covered! Just keep the brats in school through tenth grade, and if they can pass a standardized test, they get to "graduate" early with something called a "Grand Canyon Diploma," which really ought to be printed with quote marks around the word "diploma" on the parchment too, since its relationship to actual academic achievement will be on par with the relationship of a giant bowl of Cap'n Crunch to "this complete breakfast."

Life will continue here in the Wild Wild West, but it isn't going to be pretty.

Oh.

My son signed the official papers for his university of choice tonight, fresh out of the shower and smack dab in the middle of Lost, leaving me simultaneously insanely proud and profoundly sad and preemptively lonely.

This is what I raised him to do and who I raised him to be. Independent, inquisitive, confident, eager to go out into the world and give of himself to make it a better place.

Sixteen and a half years ago his father let him go from his hands and he stood there by himself for a moment before taking his first teetering steps toward my waiting arms. Tonight at seventeen and a half he hugged me for a longer moment than usual, playfully punched me in the head, and took his first firm stride toward the rest of forever.

I do not know what I will do without him.

Quick Review Monday

Jordy asks, Jordy receives.











Hummmmm baby!

In a nutshell, la familia Bolt were formerly Alltel customers who then got switched over to Verizon and were due for phone upgrades. Verizon knocked fifty bucks off the price of the phones to entice us to stay, and it worked. Forthwith, the Droid Eris review:

The short version: LOVE.

Care to expand on that? Yes. Disclaimer: I am a complete geek from way back in the day. No, really. Like at the level of maybe having been a member of the Star Trek Club that met in the basement of the South Bend Public Library on Thursday evenings in 1978. But hey, I'm not embarrassed to admit that any more, because now I have a goddamn fucking tricorder in my pocket! W00t!

I used the Eris over the weekend to check Google maps for the route to a volleyball tournament in Phoenix, find the nearest branch of my bank for an ATM run, check the Cubs score (Cubs lose again on a bases-loaded walk? There are, regrettably, about a million apps for that), read and respond to e-mails, send texts, play a fishing game (uncannily close to real life; not a single bite), and even make some calls.

Best bits: I am still new enough to the magic of touchscreens to still squeee a little every time I flick menus up, down, and sideways. The lack of a physical keyboard was initially daunting, but I got the hang of the touchscreen QWERTY keyboard pretty quickly. You have seven screens you can customize by parking widgets all over the place, if you want. I have only scratched the surface of the available apps, but so far am completely enthralled with Google Maps, Google Sky (a star chart that works off GPS to show you the constellations you would be seeing RIGHT NOW if you lived in a dark place), and the ability to speak your search terms and have Teh Almighty Google take care of the rest. My Tracks is a nifty app that plots your runs/hikes/bikes onto a map, recording distance, time, and elevation gain, and then twangs them into a spreadsheet if you want, or uploads them if you'd like to share favorite routes with friends. I haven't tried it yet but am excited about using it on the next hike.

The downside: Battery life sucks with the factory settings, but there are things you can do to improve it. Disabling data synching, turning off the mobile web and WiFi when you don't need them, and several other tricks you can find online help a lot. If you rely on mobile access to your e-mail on a constant basis during the day, this may not be the phone for you, but if, like me, you just like having the option there to access mail and the web on an on-demand basis, it's probably not a problem. I ran the battery all the way down and charged it overnight two days in a row, and then with the WiFi and mobile network only on when I needed them over the weekend, I got almost two full days of battery life with my usual amount of texting and calling (and occasional checks to see what Alfonso Soriano's latest mishaps in left field have done to the baserunning situation).

Also, the tiny touchscreen keyboard means drunk texting or even tired texting is really not an option. Then again, maybe seeing wtyshgf on the screen when you thought you were typing hello might come in handy when you're wondering if you've really had as many as maybe you think you have but aren't sure.

And now, the inaugural WPS Game of the Week Review. Carli Lloyd was essentially invisible for Sky Blue? I'm stunned. Despite no longer having Lloyd on the roster (and forcing 15-odd corners), the Red Stars failed to score a goal? Shocked. Still wearing my Red Stars scarf, but looking forward a little more to next week to see my second team and pretend soulmate in aging knee troubles Kelly Smith take on the new Philadelphia Independence.

One-Handed Typing

No, not like that. Too many years of weightlifting have left my right elbow in tatters, meaning tomorrow is a cortisone shot and the weekend will be lost to fairly intense pain and the next month will be lost to any kind of meaningful movement on the starboard side.

Grumble.

Meanwhile, the boy is down to the wire on a college choice, and I'm down to the wire on a new cellphone choice, and the nerves from the former are wrecking the fun of shopping for the latter.

I have lots to say, but it's going to have to be in spurts over the next few weeks.

A Day Late

And now, on Dyngus Day, our Easter Message for 2010:

Let’s see let’s see let’s see THINK GODDAMMIT what’s a good term to use when you’re defending an actual NAZI in a Pope Hat over his role in defending and protecting Catholic priests all over the world who rape little boys? How about “anti-Semitism.” Ha ha, Jesus may have died on Good Friday but irony sure didn’t.

The full deal is over at Wonkette.

Firelight Blogging

It has simultaneously felt like a month that they've been here, and a day now that they're leaving. The family left me alone by the backyard fire about ten minutes ago. Tomorrow they head home to Flagstaff and Chicago, and life returns to the normal routine.

I miss them already.

The week was a mixture of familiar (Sweetwater Wetlands, Sabino Canyon) and new (San Pedro Riparian Conservation Area, Pima Canyon Trail) hikes. Birding took most of our attention, but other natural wonders couldn't be ignored.

Cooper's Hawk chowing down, Catalina State Park.

View across the arroyo from Romero Ruin, Catalina State Park.

Beaver attack, San Pedro National Riparian Conservation Area




























Cottonwood by pond, San Pedro NRCRA




























Bullfrog, SPNCRA

Snowy Huachuca Mountains over a pond, SPNRCA

Highlights included a Scott's Oriole on the Pima Canyon Trail, American avocets at the Sweeetwater Wetlands, and a yellow-rumped warbler on the San Pedro. And food, oh my goodness.

When my dad walked out the door tonight I hugged him and said you're the best, which here means I know you try your best and sometimes that doesn't even come close to being enough but I love you anyway. And they all hopped into cars and drove off.

They'll be back in December. I hope I'm rested up.

Post 1,111: Strange Days

Today the little facets of my world were in flux. Enforced left-handedness, a snowstorm in the mountains above Tucson on the first day of April, the realization that we will be able to pay for the boy to go far away for college after all, his sudden decision that the Pacific Northwest is calling.

I am in Bizarro World.

Image > Rotate Canvas > 180, in Photoshop-speak, wreaks havoc with my pathologically right-handed equilibrium, puts knots in my back, pulls at my hamstring. The sun and blue skies visiting relatives came seeking have evaporated into raggedy clouds and cold breezes. The indisputable forward motion of time, stubbornly ignored for day after just one more day, asserts itself in a thick and difficult mixture of pride and excitement and quiet sadness.

Random words fall wrong and land badly. And on we go.