I watched the Cheney family asininity unfurl with just about as much pleasure as anyone who enjoys a good public life versus private life train wreck. For those who don't follow these obscure tidbits (& I grant you, it is obscure or at least deserves to be) one of Dick Cheney's daughters is gay & the other one is running for public office on a party ticket that explicitly does not support marriage equality.
This is not the first time a Cheney has been gay & another has run for public office on a party ticket that is described as anti-gay by everyone except the party themselves. I know, they claim they are inclusive & maybe they really believe it, but as a straight person affiliated with neither party I promise you aren't. "God wouldn't like it" is not a good reason for doing anything & certainly doesn't undo any harm you do in insert-deity-of-choice's name. I'll stop ranting now. Because I like to offend as many people as I possibly can, I am going to call them Gay Sister & Party Sister.
So, Gay Sister has been trotted out for previous elections to wave to the crowd & maybe you think she could have taken the opportunity to denounce her family's values, but she didn't. She is not the first person to be exploited by her family for their own gain & she won't be the last. However, what a person will take from her parents is a helluva lot more than she will take from her sister & way-way more than her spouse will take from same.
In short, Party Sister went on the public record saying she did not believe Gay Sister had the right to marry a woman, should have the right to marry a woman or was even already married to a woman & then Gay Sister's wife told her to shut her yap. She was much more eloquent than me (who isn't) & wrote a lyrical list about joining in celebration & enjoying hospitality etc. but I will paraphrase: Wow, what a hypocrite you are. Either you know you are wrong & you're pandering for votes or you really are a douche. Scratch that, either way you are a douche.
Party Sister entered the race with a lot more support than she has now. That fishing license gaffe didn't help (Party Sister applied for a fishing license as a state resident but did not meet the one year residence criteria that defines state resident for the purposes of applying for a fishing license. She apologized, paid the fine & then blamed the CLERK WHO SOLD HER THE LICENSE for not defining the terms properly). Her know-it-all swagger probably is not helping much either. & maybe, just maybe people who pride themselves on "Equal Rights" are not all that keen to be told who is more or less equal than anyone else. It is the state motto, after all.
Anyway. Today in 1867 Wyoming granted women the right to vote. Yes, you read that right, more than 50 years before the same was a twinkle in Washington's eye (the 19th amendment was PROPOSED in 1919, a handy little mnemonic if you want to dazzle with dates), before Wyoming was even a state, the women of Territory of Wyoming had been casting ballots. Wyoming might be big on beef/moose/deer/let's just say meat eating, gun toting & letting sleeping dogs lie but that doesn't mean they are completely backwards. At least once, they were decades ahead of their time.
For the record, Party Sister's opponent (her political opponent, not the one that is married to her sister...& her sister) is also against marriage equality. So maybe that state motto is just for the license plates. Nope, not even there.
We (my physicist/farmer husband & me & the dogs & the cats) moved from sprawling Houston, TX to a small, but useless farm in Florida. Then the donkey moved in. He was lonely, so the goats came. & then some horses, some more dogs, chickens, cockatiels, more cats, new horses. You get the picture.
Showing posts with label GLBT. Show all posts
Showing posts with label GLBT. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 10, 2013
Saturday, March 9, 2013
More than I can chew
I have been compulsively working on Bird Trap Blocks for weeks now & trying so hard to keep from blogging about it every day. Because I cannot stop thinking about Bird Traps, I cannot stop talking about Bird Traps. You people are lucky, anyone I can get on the phone not so much. All my waking hours, some part of my brain is arranging, re-arranging; I rotate them, I imagine different parts coming together, I cannot stop.
Because the Bird Trap Blocks are improv (I like to call it jazz piecing), there never was a set of directions. One of the guidelines is a plank round of 1/2-square triangles. In short, I am cranking through 1/2-square triangles. & the big question everyone who asks about this block is where did they all come from?
In the other side of this post, Block Lotto's week-end update this week is all about How-To's. So this is my How To tip. How to take a bit of extra time & build up a supply of random 1/2-square triangles that you might never use...unless you decide to make Bird Traps along with me.
& now for the meat. A couple of years ago I made a quilt top of rainbow colored rolling stone blocks. I was approached by a friend who was looking for a rainbow themed quilt for a regional GLBT fundraiser. I made the top in a bit less than 5 days. That's soup to nuts, telephone call to mailing the top off. I never took a picture of the original & the pics I got of the completed quilt were not digital or I would share, but I loved the top & have been thinking about making one for myself ever since I made it. So here are the blocks I have made so far for the quilt for myself; the fabrics are different, but the color-concept is the same.
What does that have to do with anything at all? am glad you asked. See those on point squares at each corner? Well, each one of them began as a 4.5" square & then had little squares added, flipped, pressed & clipped to make them what you see. This means that every single rolling stone had 16 orphan, 1/2-square triangles cut away as scrap. & all it took was an extra swoop in the chain piecing to gather them together. This quilt top (& the original) is a 4x4 pattern, at 16 leftover units per block, that means a total of 256 1/2-square triangles going spare.
If this all sounds a little bit compulsive, I hear you. & after all I had no idea I was going to be Bird Trap Block possessed when I started down this road. On the other hand, without that cache of trash I probably would never have thought improv block design was an option.
Besides, this random piecing has served me well before. One of my favorite quilts began as the same 1/2-square triangle leftovers from a very large churn dash block table runner. One of my go-to baby gift quilts (& grown-up quilts) begins with strings. & I have never been put off just because none of the pieces really fit together.
So my tip? Uhm. I guess, if you are already sitting there, piecing & cutting, what's one more for the pile?
Because the Bird Trap Blocks are improv (I like to call it jazz piecing), there never was a set of directions. One of the guidelines is a plank round of 1/2-square triangles. In short, I am cranking through 1/2-square triangles. & the big question everyone who asks about this block is where did they all come from?
In the other side of this post, Block Lotto's week-end update this week is all about How-To's. So this is my How To tip. How to take a bit of extra time & build up a supply of random 1/2-square triangles that you might never use...unless you decide to make Bird Traps along with me.
Besides, this random piecing has served me well before. One of my favorite quilts began as the same 1/2-square triangle leftovers from a very large churn dash block table runner. One of my go-to baby gift quilts (& grown-up quilts) begins with strings. & I have never been put off just because none of the pieces really fit together.
So my tip? Uhm. I guess, if you are already sitting there, piecing & cutting, what's one more for the pile?
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
It takes more than one to tango
Since 2006, And Tango Makes Three has been our most challenged book according to the American Library Association, who tracks these things, except in 2009 when it was the second most challenged book, making it overall the most challenged. Think about all the other books that have been published since then & the biggest threat to our society is...penguins?
The gist of the challenges is that the story (which is based on two male penguins who, after attempting to hatch a rock together were given an extra egg which they did hatch) 1-promoted a homosexual agenda & 2-does not tell the rest of the story when one of the father penguins leaves & forms a nesting pair with a female penguin.
It is hard to know where to begin. So lets start with the whole gay agenda thing (after all it is the real reason for all the objections that follow). There are slews of books about gay families, & a good chunk of those are picture books; there are picture books about living with gay parents, gay adoption, the AIDS Memorial Quilt, & so on. What makes And Tango Makes Three so much more objectionable than others which are patently about gay families? To put it in a nutshell (eggshell?), these were actual, observable penguins & penguins don't make "choices"; they operate solely on their godgiven wiring.
Next, the complaint a picture book does not tell the whole story...specifically events that happened after the book was published. Was the publisher really supposed to recall all the books & add that paragraph to the end? Would the adverse be true? Is anyone recalling the King James Bible to add the note by the by King James himself had sex with men to the biography bit with the frontispiece? This particular complaint has kind of faded away after Tango (the baby girl penguin with two daddies) has herself hooked up with a female penguin; I guess they don't want that particular footnote added, although since it reinforces some prejudices I really don't understand why not.
Also published in 2005 (& protested & banned & all that) was Harry Potter & the Half-Blood Prince. All the Harry Potter books have been listed as unacceptable by one person or another, although it amuses me to learn now that the whole series is in the world (& there will be no putting that genie back in the bottle) some groups are suggesting the whole thing is a christian allegory à la The Lion, The Witch & the Wardrobe (also challenged by a christian group for mysticism et al although if you cruise a few forums more than one person who says Harry Potter should be banned because those books ARE evil floats the idea that the reason Lewis was banned was because he was so very christian). I guess if you can't beat him, pretend he joined you.
The gist of the challenges is that the story (which is based on two male penguins who, after attempting to hatch a rock together were given an extra egg which they did hatch) 1-promoted a homosexual agenda & 2-does not tell the rest of the story when one of the father penguins leaves & forms a nesting pair with a female penguin.
It is hard to know where to begin. So lets start with the whole gay agenda thing (after all it is the real reason for all the objections that follow). There are slews of books about gay families, & a good chunk of those are picture books; there are picture books about living with gay parents, gay adoption, the AIDS Memorial Quilt, & so on. What makes And Tango Makes Three so much more objectionable than others which are patently about gay families? To put it in a nutshell (eggshell?), these were actual, observable penguins & penguins don't make "choices"; they operate solely on their godgiven wiring.
Next, the complaint a picture book does not tell the whole story...specifically events that happened after the book was published. Was the publisher really supposed to recall all the books & add that paragraph to the end? Would the adverse be true? Is anyone recalling the King James Bible to add the note by the by King James himself had sex with men to the biography bit with the frontispiece? This particular complaint has kind of faded away after Tango (the baby girl penguin with two daddies) has herself hooked up with a female penguin; I guess they don't want that particular footnote added, although since it reinforces some prejudices I really don't understand why not.
Also published in 2005 (& protested & banned & all that) was Harry Potter & the Half-Blood Prince. All the Harry Potter books have been listed as unacceptable by one person or another, although it amuses me to learn now that the whole series is in the world (& there will be no putting that genie back in the bottle) some groups are suggesting the whole thing is a christian allegory à la The Lion, The Witch & the Wardrobe (also challenged by a christian group for mysticism et al although if you cruise a few forums more than one person who says Harry Potter should be banned because those books ARE evil floats the idea that the reason Lewis was banned was because he was so very christian). I guess if you can't beat him, pretend he joined you.
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
It's okay to be Takei
Maybe you know (maybe you don't) but June is National Gay & Lesbian Pride Month. & completely without irony it is also the traditional month for getting married. & National Candy Month. & National Dairy Month. As you also may know (& again, maybe you don't) late last month Tennessee passed a law (A LAW) making any discussion regarding homosexuality off limits for elementary & middle school students.
More than one person has asked "should they really have that conversation with students that young, anyhow"? But this ruling does more than clamp down on a health & sex education class that was not taking place. This means when homosexuality comes up in the course of a student's life, & since currently almost 15k foster children nationwide are in gay homes & not less than 300K children- again nationwide- have a gay parent, chances are good it IS going to be relevant even in Tennessee; it is off limits. When it comes up in current events, say when the next politician is on the news explaining they were just friends (or my favorite how he happened to hire a guy who only advertises on a rentboy website to not help him with his luggage because of his bad back), the teacher is to ignore any story no matter how far reaching & talk about something else. If asked what does that mean, the answer is "I am not allowed to say."
Pretending something does not exist & banning talk in the classroom is how Tenneessee traditional alters the transfer of information (think Scopes Monkey Trial).
But it turns out a traveler across space & time has a solution. This is how it goes: when you might say "gay", say "Takei" (which rhymes with gay; I had no idea-ay). Then let whomever is policing your vocabulary infer what you mean from context clues, if they don't have their hands full with other problems in their school, say sexual predators or domestic violence or bullying or drugs. It is so bend-over-backwards absurd that it does take some of the pressure off. At least until the Tennessee legislature rises up & bans Star Trek in the classroom. Or until they grow up, whichever comes first. Given that it has been almost 100 years since the Scopes Monkey Trail, I would not hold me breathe on that one.
Just for fun, I went looking for other things banned in Tennessee, just to see what's up. In Tennessee it is illegal to possess synthetic herbs that provides the same high as pot. You cannot produce porn in the state but you can possess it (so, careful where you point that camera; don't worry about the dirty pictures though). & apparently it is illegal to be an illegal alien in Tennessee. Seems a duplication of effort to me but whatever. Tennessee did manage to lift another local ban on bringing handguns to local parks. Also, apparently Jack Daniels had been playing fast & loose with some obscure law since the 1930s & they are trying to fix that. Leaving us with this memorable quote:
More than one person has asked "should they really have that conversation with students that young, anyhow"? But this ruling does more than clamp down on a health & sex education class that was not taking place. This means when homosexuality comes up in the course of a student's life, & since currently almost 15k foster children nationwide are in gay homes & not less than 300K children- again nationwide- have a gay parent, chances are good it IS going to be relevant even in Tennessee; it is off limits. When it comes up in current events, say when the next politician is on the news explaining they were just friends (or my favorite how he happened to hire a guy who only advertises on a rentboy website to not help him with his luggage because of his bad back), the teacher is to ignore any story no matter how far reaching & talk about something else. If asked what does that mean, the answer is "I am not allowed to say."
Pretending something does not exist & banning talk in the classroom is how Tenneessee traditional alters the transfer of information (think Scopes Monkey Trial).
But it turns out a traveler across space & time has a solution. This is how it goes: when you might say "gay", say "Takei" (which rhymes with gay; I had no idea-ay). Then let whomever is policing your vocabulary infer what you mean from context clues, if they don't have their hands full with other problems in their school, say sexual predators or domestic violence or bullying or drugs. It is so bend-over-backwards absurd that it does take some of the pressure off. At least until the Tennessee legislature rises up & bans Star Trek in the classroom. Or until they grow up, whichever comes first. Given that it has been almost 100 years since the Scopes Monkey Trail, I would not hold me breathe on that one.
Just for fun, I went looking for other things banned in Tennessee, just to see what's up. In Tennessee it is illegal to possess synthetic herbs that provides the same high as pot. You cannot produce porn in the state but you can possess it (so, careful where you point that camera; don't worry about the dirty pictures though). & apparently it is illegal to be an illegal alien in Tennessee. Seems a duplication of effort to me but whatever. Tennessee did manage to lift another local ban on bringing handguns to local parks. Also, apparently Jack Daniels had been playing fast & loose with some obscure law since the 1930s & they are trying to fix that. Leaving us with this memorable quote:
"Today, if a 13-year-old started making whiskey, they'd chop up his still, send him to reform school and arrest his parents," Niceley said. "That's our biggest problem today - overregulation."On the other hand if today a teacher were to say maybe you shouldn't pick on that other student because you think he acts gay, is gay, his parents are gay, his parents might be gay, his parents are not gay but the 13 year old cooking up whiskey in his spare time cannot think of anything else to hit him with well it is not overregulation to stop that conversation, it is just good common sense...in Tennessee anyhow.
Friday, March 25, 2011
What would Anita do?
As we s*l*o*w*l*y come up on the end of Florida's gay adoption ban (& yes, I do consider this one of the silver linings of our tanked economy; it is hard to justify spending $100,000s defending a policy that is just not going to to stand up at the next judicial tier no matter how moral you might think it is), I thought it would be a good time to take a little look at today's birthday girl: Anita Bryant.
Anita's parents divorced when she was quite small, & Anita was sent to live with her maternal grandparents. I don't know if it was a happy childhood, but it looks like a successful one: she began her musical career with their encouragement, she graduated high school, was crowned Miss Oklahoma 1958 & made it to the final four in the Miss America Pageant. Shortly after this she made the Billboard charts with one of my favorite songs (although I do prefer the Beatles version & even better Miss Peggy Lee; what can I say, I just love The Music Man). She also got a college scholarship but I cannot see that she attended or graduated (it can be hard to find this information about those pre-Google days in the time I am prepared to look for it, which is almost none). In 1960 she married a Miami disc jockey & they had four children...& twenty years together.
All that time Anita was singing, wedding, birthing, she was also preaching, kinda. I confess "preacher" is a lot like "imam" to me. Anyone with the inclination seems able to break into the biz; I am very unclear as to the qualifications (although I am fairly certain the position does NOT come with health insurance). Anyway, Ms. Bryant declared a fatwa on anything she saw as a threat to her vision of family.
One of her early targets was......divorce. & then she got one. Let me go on record as saying I am a HUGE fan of divorce. As A says, divorce means all those people who cannot stand the sight of each other can get away without killing each other. Neither of us has ever been divorced...so far (I also say the same thing about rape; I haven't been...so far).
Which means I really am happy for Anita's divorce. If she would go through with it despite the disapproval of some of her followers, she must have really needed it. What is damn shame is she never stopped to think if she was wrong about this, what else might she have been wrong about? Because it was her group that reversed local laws protecting homosexuals in Miami & went on to inspire (& bankroll) similar movements across the country. & while her movement had a far reaching impact, it also reached around & impacted her. The divorce, yes, but her wholesome spokesperson career was over. It turns out homosexuals drink as much orange juice as anyone & homo-phobes won't buy orange juice just because Anita Bryant is on the poster, especially a divorced Anita Bryant. & a handful (her description) of protesters getting coverage outside of her other venues helped the invitations to those venues dry up.
So she picked herself up, dusted herself off (after a flirtation with prescription drug abuse) & looked for a niche within her niche (divorced, jonesing homo-phobes!) & opened a theater where those who wanted to could hear her sing & minister. Alas, her flock was only getting smaller, as evidenced by the extremely low attendance at her performances, until finally even the most devoted were completely cashed out & broke & then Anita left town...to rise again-again.
More recently Anita Bryant was singing the national anthem at the 2011 Oklahoma Gubernatorial Inaugural Ball. Which brings us to what would Anita do? From here, it looks like she would count on almost everything old being new again & what isn't old/new being overlooked. What it seems she won't be doing is considering there might be more to the human condition than forgiveness for only the transgression she has made. Happy Birthday Anita. You remain for me a shining example of how a bright & pretty cover can disguise a shallow, spiteful story....but only for so long.
Credit: Free images from acobox.com
Anita's parents divorced when she was quite small, & Anita was sent to live with her maternal grandparents. I don't know if it was a happy childhood, but it looks like a successful one: she began her musical career with their encouragement, she graduated high school, was crowned Miss Oklahoma 1958 & made it to the final four in the Miss America Pageant. Shortly after this she made the Billboard charts with one of my favorite songs (although I do prefer the Beatles version & even better Miss Peggy Lee; what can I say, I just love The Music Man). She also got a college scholarship but I cannot see that she attended or graduated (it can be hard to find this information about those pre-Google days in the time I am prepared to look for it, which is almost none). In 1960 she married a Miami disc jockey & they had four children...& twenty years together.
All that time Anita was singing, wedding, birthing, she was also preaching, kinda. I confess "preacher" is a lot like "imam" to me. Anyone with the inclination seems able to break into the biz; I am very unclear as to the qualifications (although I am fairly certain the position does NOT come with health insurance). Anyway, Ms. Bryant declared a fatwa on anything she saw as a threat to her vision of family.
One of her early targets was......divorce. & then she got one. Let me go on record as saying I am a HUGE fan of divorce. As A says, divorce means all those people who cannot stand the sight of each other can get away without killing each other. Neither of us has ever been divorced...so far (I also say the same thing about rape; I haven't been...so far).
Which means I really am happy for Anita's divorce. If she would go through with it despite the disapproval of some of her followers, she must have really needed it. What is damn shame is she never stopped to think if she was wrong about this, what else might she have been wrong about? Because it was her group that reversed local laws protecting homosexuals in Miami & went on to inspire (& bankroll) similar movements across the country. & while her movement had a far reaching impact, it also reached around & impacted her. The divorce, yes, but her wholesome spokesperson career was over. It turns out homosexuals drink as much orange juice as anyone & homo-phobes won't buy orange juice just because Anita Bryant is on the poster, especially a divorced Anita Bryant. & a handful (her description) of protesters getting coverage outside of her other venues helped the invitations to those venues dry up.
So she picked herself up, dusted herself off (after a flirtation with prescription drug abuse) & looked for a niche within her niche (divorced, jonesing homo-phobes!) & opened a theater where those who wanted to could hear her sing & minister. Alas, her flock was only getting smaller, as evidenced by the extremely low attendance at her performances, until finally even the most devoted were completely cashed out & broke & then Anita left town...to rise again-again.
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Credit: Free images from acobox.com
Sunday, October 31, 2010
A better class of ghost story
Yup, it's that time of year again. I will buy buckets of candy & we will get nary a trick-or-treater. Because we live on an unpaved(1), unlit(2) country road with no neighborhood children (3) except M*** & those little boys across the street from the Rock family (4). So besides our house being spooky-ooky, most of the local kids (the very few local kids) are unlikely to observe All Hallows Eve in any form & most especially not on a Sunday. Even if I have to give half the candy to M***, that still means more for me. I hope he likes Butterfingers!
This year, I will be spending my day wrapping up a regularly scheduled quilt block swap, cleaning up the tail end of a swap gone-too-long, while A scrambles to complete his monthly reports, etc. before the new month ends & he has to get started on those. That's right, in this scenario October is the "new" month. That's how things have been around here for a while now. Still, I would not want the day to go unobserved (except for the bit about my getting to keep all the Hallowe'en candy) & so I am thinking of revisiting one of my favorite ghost-movies: Blithe Spirit.
First let me say that as a girl I had a huge crush on Rex Harrison. Are you scared yet? I think it started with Henry Higgins & all that Gregory House drama but about grammar instead of medical diagnostics. C'mon, a little chill just ran up your spine, right?
From My Fair Lady, I graduated to The Honey Pot, (how often do you hear a straight man say"piffle", outside of Bertie Wooster, that is), then took a giant step backwards to Doctor Dolittle. My brother K & I recently had a nostalgic moment about how as children we loved this very bad film. I still get chills when the doctor throws Sophie the Seal off the cliff. By the time I got the The Ghost & Mrs. Muir (another excellent choice for the day) it was all over for me & american boys.
Still not scary enough? Hmmm, well, lets push on. The play Blithe Spirit on which the movie Blithe Spirit is based (& by based I mean they used more-or-less the same script) is about a marriage. Actually, it's about three people & two marriages. In one of them, one of the spouses is dead. & then... but I wouldn't want to give it all away. Keep in mind, the playwright was a technically in-the-closet homosexual who still managed to flesh out female characters, even the dead one. The man that wrote Blithe Spirit also wrote so much other stuff, including but not limited to propaganda. No really, he wrote propaganda for the british government during WWII. Some where in there he wrote several "fight" songs, including one of my favorites: Don't Lets be Beastly to the Germans. For the record, the Nazis hated Coward; he was high up on the list of people to be shot once they invaded (along with Virginia Wolf. Imagine al-Qeada targeting the editors of the New Yorker, see even the villains were classier). What else..oh there always Mad Dogs & Englishmen. & who could forget We All Wear a Green Carnation.
Where was I? Oh right, trick-or-treaters. So, do yourself a favor, turn the outside lights off, get on your Netflix -Watch Instantly page & find Blithe Spirit. If you would rather spend the evening a decade or so closer to this century, you could try Bell, Book & Candle but it isn't as good (although I concede the music might be better).
This year, I will be spending my day wrapping up a regularly scheduled quilt block swap, cleaning up the tail end of a swap gone-too-long, while A scrambles to complete his monthly reports, etc. before the new month ends & he has to get started on those. That's right, in this scenario October is the "new" month. That's how things have been around here for a while now. Still, I would not want the day to go unobserved (except for the bit about my getting to keep all the Hallowe'en candy) & so I am thinking of revisiting one of my favorite ghost-movies: Blithe Spirit.
First let me say that as a girl I had a huge crush on Rex Harrison. Are you scared yet? I think it started with Henry Higgins & all that Gregory House drama but about grammar instead of medical diagnostics. C'mon, a little chill just ran up your spine, right?
From My Fair Lady, I graduated to The Honey Pot, (how often do you hear a straight man say"piffle", outside of Bertie Wooster, that is), then took a giant step backwards to Doctor Dolittle. My brother K & I recently had a nostalgic moment about how as children we loved this very bad film. I still get chills when the doctor throws Sophie the Seal off the cliff. By the time I got the The Ghost & Mrs. Muir (another excellent choice for the day) it was all over for me & american boys.
Still not scary enough? Hmmm, well, lets push on. The play Blithe Spirit on which the movie Blithe Spirit is based (& by based I mean they used more-or-less the same script) is about a marriage. Actually, it's about three people & two marriages. In one of them, one of the spouses is dead. & then... but I wouldn't want to give it all away. Keep in mind, the playwright was a technically in-the-closet homosexual who still managed to flesh out female characters, even the dead one. The man that wrote Blithe Spirit also wrote so much other stuff, including but not limited to propaganda. No really, he wrote propaganda for the british government during WWII. Some where in there he wrote several "fight" songs, including one of my favorites: Don't Lets be Beastly to the Germans. For the record, the Nazis hated Coward; he was high up on the list of people to be shot once they invaded (along with Virginia Wolf. Imagine al-Qeada targeting the editors of the New Yorker, see even the villains were classier). What else..oh there always Mad Dogs & Englishmen. & who could forget We All Wear a Green Carnation.
Where was I? Oh right, trick-or-treaters. So, do yourself a favor, turn the outside lights off, get on your Netflix -Watch Instantly page & find Blithe Spirit. If you would rather spend the evening a decade or so closer to this century, you could try Bell, Book & Candle but it isn't as good (although I concede the music might be better).
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Free to be not-so-much you
I might be alone, but I was appalled APPALLED when Target rolled out Free To Be You & Me as their back-to-school shopping theme song. It had nothing to do with Target, I just did not think of that song as being for sale exactly. I remember listening to an interview with Paul Simon & he was talking about John Lennon. Specifically he was talking about how John Lennon asked him how he knew not to sign away the rights to his music. Paul Simon's answer was "well, I'm from New York". I also remember when Them There Eyes was used to sell color film (yes, I am that old). My mother was very upset over I'd Like to Buy the World a Coke. We both moved on & have lived happy lives since then. It rankles, but it is not worth getting bent about.
Around the same time that Target rented Free To Be You & Me to sell their stuff (which I have been known to buy; I will not tell a lie) they also made a donation to a group supporting gubernatorial candidate -not in my state- that is anti-gay rights. As it happens he is anti a lot of things that I am pro, but again not my state (we have plenty of anti-candidates here, they just aren't getting Target money...that I know). It made me want to take back the crockpot I bought for C****** & give "Target is a hypocritical bastard" as the reason. I did not, of course, but I also have not been through the doors since.
I know there has been some backlash to the backlash: that it isn't fair to the employees who have no control over where company money gets spent, but will be the ones who lose their jobs OR that private companies like private people should be able to spend where/when/how they want without third parties getting involved. I think you could make a god argument for a past&potential customer being not-so-much a third party myself, but that does not seem to be where this one is headed. Instead, it seems headed for if you do support candidate X & his message of non-inclusion, you should do MORE shopping at Target.
None of this solves my problem, of course, because mine is unsolvable. How can I unring that bell in my head that now marks the moment when another large corporate entity carved off a piece of my history in the hopes of making me associate their products with whatever good feeling I had about a particular piece of music? I guess I can't. But I can find Boy meets Girl on YouTube, which makes the whole donation thing just more glaring.
Around the same time that Target rented Free To Be You & Me to sell their stuff (which I have been known to buy; I will not tell a lie) they also made a donation to a group supporting gubernatorial candidate -not in my state- that is anti-gay rights. As it happens he is anti a lot of things that I am pro, but again not my state (we have plenty of anti-candidates here, they just aren't getting Target money...that I know). It made me want to take back the crockpot I bought for C****** & give "Target is a hypocritical bastard" as the reason. I did not, of course, but I also have not been through the doors since.
I know there has been some backlash to the backlash: that it isn't fair to the employees who have no control over where company money gets spent, but will be the ones who lose their jobs OR that private companies like private people should be able to spend where/when/how they want without third parties getting involved. I think you could make a god argument for a past&potential customer being not-so-much a third party myself, but that does not seem to be where this one is headed. Instead, it seems headed for if you do support candidate X & his message of non-inclusion, you should do MORE shopping at Target.
None of this solves my problem, of course, because mine is unsolvable. How can I unring that bell in my head that now marks the moment when another large corporate entity carved off a piece of my history in the hopes of making me associate their products with whatever good feeling I had about a particular piece of music? I guess I can't. But I can find Boy meets Girl on YouTube, which makes the whole donation thing just more glaring.
Thursday, May 6, 2010
I stand corrected; investigative journalism is not dead
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Wednesday, May 5, 2010
National Lab Day
I know you have been looking forward to it for months & months: National Lab Day. No, not labrador retrievers, science places.
When is National Lab Day exactly? Well...apparently that is a secret. & I am sorry to say secretiveness is a big part of what keeps citizens away from science guys. They have a reputation for liking to make things harder to understand just for the sake of it & I am here to tell you some of them do do that. Most of the time though, it is because it is just that hard, the first time. & so it was with National Lab Day, once I tooled around the sight a few times I found a link that implied it was May 5th, but then I found a sentence that stated it was May 12th.
Thus we have a window into why science education is falling behind in the country. No I do not put the blame on the guys who thought up National Lab Day, I put the blame on the guys who are responsible for the marketing & administration of science. & no I do not think marketing &/or administration are evil or bad; I DO think they should be subordinate to the actual mission of science, but they never are. Frankly, I think marketing might be the reason science has any life left; English took the academic high road & has not been heard from since.
I recently sat through almost the whole speech by a state legislator bemoaning the fact that USschools in general & Fladidah schools in particular are unable to keep the science teachers they have, never mind acquire the teachers they need for the future. I had so many problems with this speech it is hard to know where to begin. I should perhaps start at the outer rings & work my way in:
Even if Fladidah had science teachers camping out overnight for the chance of a job, they could not hire them-the schools have no money. In addition to having no money, they DO have a myriad of hoops that a potential/current/future teacher needs jump through every day (more on specific hoops in a moment) that make the job very, very unappealing.
Once the science teacher does get hired, there are the third party requirements (& no I do not think the legislature should dictate the standards because they pay the bills, they don't pay the bills. I don't just mean that in a leaving a check on the table kind of way -which happens- I also mean it in a it is not the legislators' money kind of way. They are the trustees, not the beneficiaries). This is all before the teachers even make contact with their students.
Let me give you an idea of what these requirements involve: physicists are being asked to include creationism in their teaching of the physical world & laws; biologists are being asked to compare & contrast evolution with creationism; ditto botanists; & so on. Is it really such a surprise that hoards of individuals that hold the tenets of their fields close to their hearts are choosing not to teach in Fladidah public schools? I would like to see classes in evangelical schools interrupted & the instructor asked to give equal time to animism; to compare & contrast funereal rites of ancient Egyptians with our own (after all we have no proof they were wrong, do we?), etc.
Actually what I would really like is an explanation of how homosexuality is decried by the bible & therefore evil, despite references being subtle & few, but money lending has apparently been rehabilitated. Every bible I ever came across was clear-as-crystal on money lending being a bad thing; money lenders were driven from the temple remember? There is no passage describing driving all the single adult men with exquisite fashion sense from the temple. I am not saying I am going to give up credit cards, I just do not understand how they are not an abomination but gay marriage is; I am quite sure credit card debt ruins more families than same sex marriage ever could. But I digress....
Where was I? National Lab Day, that's right. Well today might be National Lab day or it might be next week. In this house, every day is Lab Day, so it is hard to get all that worked up. Also I am not sure the cookie-cutter day adored & reviled by secretaries, wept over by mom's, acknowledged by dad's....& who ever else gets singled out for a "day" is really the way to attract people to science. but unlike almost everything else being done, it can't hurt. At a minimum, it might help science teachers feel less alone.
When is National Lab Day exactly? Well...apparently that is a secret. & I am sorry to say secretiveness is a big part of what keeps citizens away from science guys. They have a reputation for liking to make things harder to understand just for the sake of it & I am here to tell you some of them do do that. Most of the time though, it is because it is just that hard, the first time. & so it was with National Lab Day, once I tooled around the sight a few times I found a link that implied it was May 5th, but then I found a sentence that stated it was May 12th.
Thus we have a window into why science education is falling behind in the country. No I do not put the blame on the guys who thought up National Lab Day, I put the blame on the guys who are responsible for the marketing & administration of science. & no I do not think marketing &/or administration are evil or bad; I DO think they should be subordinate to the actual mission of science, but they never are. Frankly, I think marketing might be the reason science has any life left; English took the academic high road & has not been heard from since.
I recently sat through almost the whole speech by a state legislator bemoaning the fact that USschools in general & Fladidah schools in particular are unable to keep the science teachers they have, never mind acquire the teachers they need for the future. I had so many problems with this speech it is hard to know where to begin. I should perhaps start at the outer rings & work my way in:
Even if Fladidah had science teachers camping out overnight for the chance of a job, they could not hire them-the schools have no money. In addition to having no money, they DO have a myriad of hoops that a potential/current/future teacher needs jump through every day (more on specific hoops in a moment) that make the job very, very unappealing.
Once the science teacher does get hired, there are the third party requirements (& no I do not think the legislature should dictate the standards because they pay the bills, they don't pay the bills. I don't just mean that in a leaving a check on the table kind of way -which happens- I also mean it in a it is not the legislators' money kind of way. They are the trustees, not the beneficiaries). This is all before the teachers even make contact with their students.
Let me give you an idea of what these requirements involve: physicists are being asked to include creationism in their teaching of the physical world & laws; biologists are being asked to compare & contrast evolution with creationism; ditto botanists; & so on. Is it really such a surprise that hoards of individuals that hold the tenets of their fields close to their hearts are choosing not to teach in Fladidah public schools? I would like to see classes in evangelical schools interrupted & the instructor asked to give equal time to animism; to compare & contrast funereal rites of ancient Egyptians with our own (after all we have no proof they were wrong, do we?), etc.
Actually what I would really like is an explanation of how homosexuality is decried by the bible & therefore evil, despite references being subtle & few, but money lending has apparently been rehabilitated. Every bible I ever came across was clear-as-crystal on money lending being a bad thing; money lenders were driven from the temple remember? There is no passage describing driving all the single adult men with exquisite fashion sense from the temple. I am not saying I am going to give up credit cards, I just do not understand how they are not an abomination but gay marriage is; I am quite sure credit card debt ruins more families than same sex marriage ever could. But I digress....
Where was I? National Lab Day, that's right. Well today might be National Lab day or it might be next week. In this house, every day is Lab Day, so it is hard to get all that worked up. Also I am not sure the cookie-cutter day adored & reviled by secretaries, wept over by mom's, acknowledged by dad's....& who ever else gets singled out for a "day" is really the way to attract people to science. but unlike almost everything else being done, it can't hurt. At a minimum, it might help science teachers feel less alone.
Monday, April 12, 2010
Yom Hashoah
Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day. What with all the "he's the new Hitler, she's a Nazi, all of them are Fascists" talk in the media lately it is hard to imagine forgetting the holocaust, but it does seem a few salient points have slipped peoples' minds. A lot of jews died: everyone seems to remember that. Even the holocaust deniers focus their attention on all the jews that they are quite certain did not die, more or less. I don't mean to be disrespectful, but there it is.
I think this might be a good time to take a look at another statistic holocaustian: an estimated 100,000 homosexuals were arrested by the Nazis. & homosexuals sent to prison camps died at a roughly the same rate (60% is the standard estimate) as the other much larger, much better documented group. Prior to the 1930s, homosexuals in general & gay men in particular enjoyed a fairly "out" lifestyle in urban Germany & an estimated 1.2 million men were documented, one way or another as homosexuals at one time. When things changed, homosexuals were the first group specifically & openly targeted for persecution. They were aggressively "re-educated" even before the prison camps were established & of course men who were not yet out never came out, what with not wanting to be re-educated. This was considered to be a measure of the success of re-education.
I am going to stop here & tell you an old joke. A group of scientists measure the length a frog can jump. They put the frog on a table with increments marked out, make a loud sound behind the frog & it jumps five feet. Then they cut off one leg, repeat loud sound & the frog jumps four feet. Then they cut of a second leg & the frog jumps three feet. Cut off a third & the frog jumps two feet. Finally the last leg is cut off & no matter how much noise they make, the frog does not jump at all. The conclusion: a frog with no legs is deaf.
Back to the Nazis: once homosexuals were identified as un-German & largely eradicated, they moved on to other un-German groups & most of us know more or less how that went. Then when the war ended, while other prisoners were treated, released, repatriated, whatever,, homosexuals were often re-arrested for the crime of being homosexual. Did I mention the Nazis believed homosexuality was contagious?
Enough with the Nazis! Tomorrow Gainesville, Florida concludes a mayoral run-off election between two very different candidates. One of them has been involved in local politics for years, as a citizen activist, served on the town council up until this election & served as mayor pro-tempore at one point previously. The other candidate has not served on any public boards or chairs that I could find, but has instead made the arrogance of city government a major talking point. One candidate talks about protecting the communities diversity & financial stability while the other has platform of lowering taxes, lowering utility costs (Gainesville operates their own power plant) & increasing police presence.
I went to their websites to be sure I was pulling accurate information (to the degree I was not attributing the either of them any ideas they would not have attributed to themselves). Now let me give you my two cents: the second candidate uses a sizable amount of web space, front & center complaining about how the other side is persecuting him, criticizing him for using graffiti in a public space to promote his campaign, later having same public space painted over his name in a less-then-flattering manner, names his rival as a promoter of dirty tricks, etc. & therefore fair game for any mud he wants to sling back. & the first guy is gay. This is not on his website, of course, because the only people who care about that are voting for the other guy.
I think this might be a good time to take a look at another statistic holocaustian: an estimated 100,000 homosexuals were arrested by the Nazis. & homosexuals sent to prison camps died at a roughly the same rate (60% is the standard estimate) as the other much larger, much better documented group. Prior to the 1930s, homosexuals in general & gay men in particular enjoyed a fairly "out" lifestyle in urban Germany & an estimated 1.2 million men were documented, one way or another as homosexuals at one time. When things changed, homosexuals were the first group specifically & openly targeted for persecution. They were aggressively "re-educated" even before the prison camps were established & of course men who were not yet out never came out, what with not wanting to be re-educated. This was considered to be a measure of the success of re-education.
I am going to stop here & tell you an old joke. A group of scientists measure the length a frog can jump. They put the frog on a table with increments marked out, make a loud sound behind the frog & it jumps five feet. Then they cut off one leg, repeat loud sound & the frog jumps four feet. Then they cut of a second leg & the frog jumps three feet. Cut off a third & the frog jumps two feet. Finally the last leg is cut off & no matter how much noise they make, the frog does not jump at all. The conclusion: a frog with no legs is deaf.
Back to the Nazis: once homosexuals were identified as un-German & largely eradicated, they moved on to other un-German groups & most of us know more or less how that went. Then when the war ended, while other prisoners were treated, released, repatriated, whatever,, homosexuals were often re-arrested for the crime of being homosexual. Did I mention the Nazis believed homosexuality was contagious?
Enough with the Nazis! Tomorrow Gainesville, Florida concludes a mayoral run-off election between two very different candidates. One of them has been involved in local politics for years, as a citizen activist, served on the town council up until this election & served as mayor pro-tempore at one point previously. The other candidate has not served on any public boards or chairs that I could find, but has instead made the arrogance of city government a major talking point. One candidate talks about protecting the communities diversity & financial stability while the other has platform of lowering taxes, lowering utility costs (Gainesville operates their own power plant) & increasing police presence.
I went to their websites to be sure I was pulling accurate information (to the degree I was not attributing the either of them any ideas they would not have attributed to themselves). Now let me give you my two cents: the second candidate uses a sizable amount of web space, front & center complaining about how the other side is persecuting him, criticizing him for using graffiti in a public space to promote his campaign, later having same public space painted over his name in a less-then-flattering manner, names his rival as a promoter of dirty tricks, etc. & therefore fair game for any mud he wants to sling back. & the first guy is gay. This is not on his website, of course, because the only people who care about that are voting for the other guy.
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Bigotry don't come cheap
I am a big fan of the upside of everything. I understand it often does not counterbalance the downside. All too often the upside could have come about without the downside at all, but somehow sometimes it just doesn't.
Last week one of those "if not for slavery, we wouldn't have all that fine gospel music" moments opened up here in Fladidah. This state, if you do not know already, is one of the harder hit by the losses in the market. Many tough financial decisions had already been avoided for decades; I used to marvel at the legislature preaching the badness (?badity?badhood?) of the "tax & spend" minority party without recognizing that not taxing but spending anyway was likely to be more of a problem down the road. Guess where we are now-the end of that road. Because this same state also relies almost wholly on sales tax to generate income, we are double screwed: when no money gets spent, no sales tax gets collected & everything slows to a crawl.
One of the things they did love to spend that not-taxed money on was fighting the rights of homosexuals to adopt children. Special needs children. The children the state likes to throw under the bus when times get tough...or even might get not-so-tough. When a special needs child is adopted by a straight person or couple, the child remains eligible for certain benefits, mostly of the Medicaid variety, but others as well. The idea was to get special needs kids into permanent homes that wanted them but could not pay the extra health costs (because in Fladidah universal healthcare is of the devil). & it was a great idea. & it worked, well, great. If these kids stayed in state custody, DCF would have these expenses plus all the others, room & board & so forth. Everybody was winning.
Then in 2008 an activist judge ruled that Fladidah had no grounds for denying a gay man's adoption of the boy that had been in his care for SEVEN YEARS, five as a foster child & two as a permanent ward. The short version is if the state could leave the kid there for such a long time without having cause to remove him, they had no grounds for denying an adoption (little FYI: adoption of special needs foster children for not-gay parents can take less than a year; DCF's own website estimates about eight months). So DCF decide to wash their hands of the whole affair, including the very services they provided every other child in exactly the same circumstances...except the adoptive parent is not gay. Because not-gay parents never have to seek the "guardianship" which was all homosexual foster parents were allowed & this same guardianship was the reason DCF considered itself off the hook.
Would you believe a guy who will take DCF to court once will take them to court twice? It seems like a no-brainer to me, too. Last week DCF gave up. The most recent case had just gone against them, but there were more tiers left in the appeals process. What there wasn't was the cash to pay for them. It is very very very hard for even the most conservative representatives of conservative districts to learn that 100s of thousands of dollars have been thrown down this hole & that it will NEVER END.
The good news is other cases are queuing up & it looks like the days of Fladidah's endless wrangling over anti-homosexual legislation is at least temporarily halted because they just cannot pay the wranglers.
Last week one of those "if not for slavery, we wouldn't have all that fine gospel music" moments opened up here in Fladidah. This state, if you do not know already, is one of the harder hit by the losses in the market. Many tough financial decisions had already been avoided for decades; I used to marvel at the legislature preaching the badness (?badity?badhood?) of the "tax & spend" minority party without recognizing that not taxing but spending anyway was likely to be more of a problem down the road. Guess where we are now-the end of that road. Because this same state also relies almost wholly on sales tax to generate income, we are double screwed: when no money gets spent, no sales tax gets collected & everything slows to a crawl.
One of the things they did love to spend that not-taxed money on was fighting the rights of homosexuals to adopt children. Special needs children. The children the state likes to throw under the bus when times get tough...or even might get not-so-tough. When a special needs child is adopted by a straight person or couple, the child remains eligible for certain benefits, mostly of the Medicaid variety, but others as well. The idea was to get special needs kids into permanent homes that wanted them but could not pay the extra health costs (because in Fladidah universal healthcare is of the devil). & it was a great idea. & it worked, well, great. If these kids stayed in state custody, DCF would have these expenses plus all the others, room & board & so forth. Everybody was winning.
Then in 2008 an activist judge ruled that Fladidah had no grounds for denying a gay man's adoption of the boy that had been in his care for SEVEN YEARS, five as a foster child & two as a permanent ward. The short version is if the state could leave the kid there for such a long time without having cause to remove him, they had no grounds for denying an adoption (little FYI: adoption of special needs foster children for not-gay parents can take less than a year; DCF's own website estimates about eight months). So DCF decide to wash their hands of the whole affair, including the very services they provided every other child in exactly the same circumstances...except the adoptive parent is not gay. Because not-gay parents never have to seek the "guardianship" which was all homosexual foster parents were allowed & this same guardianship was the reason DCF considered itself off the hook.
Would you believe a guy who will take DCF to court once will take them to court twice? It seems like a no-brainer to me, too. Last week DCF gave up. The most recent case had just gone against them, but there were more tiers left in the appeals process. What there wasn't was the cash to pay for them. It is very very very hard for even the most conservative representatives of conservative districts to learn that 100s of thousands of dollars have been thrown down this hole & that it will NEVER END.
The good news is other cases are queuing up & it looks like the days of Fladidah's endless wrangling over anti-homosexual legislation is at least temporarily halted because they just cannot pay the wranglers.
Saturday, October 10, 2009
What would Zora do?
Did you know that October is GLBT History Month? Me neither, but it segways so nicely into Hallowe'en it seems obvious in retrospect. Quite by accident (thanks to The Bilerico Project) I learned that the website has been highlighting a personage a day & today was Zora Neale Hurston's day.
Zora Neale Hurston has actually come up in this blog before, because I have in the past been not miffed but mystified that the state of Florida choose to honor the author of Old Folks at Home with a cultural center etc. despite the fact he did not actually live here while completely missing Miss Hurston just down the road. & being ignored was just not her forte.
There are not many more dead-end places to grow up than rural Florida, even today. Being black in a black community is probably good for the residents but makes things harder with the neighboring towns, just ask Rosewood. Being a woman probably did not give her a leg up over the competition & being gay, well, outside of right-wing revival meetings, no one believes that anyone becomes gay to help a career in the arts. Finally there is that quality for which she has since become admired but was no doubt hard to take in person: her extremely short fuse.
By all accounts, Zora Neale Hurston was a my way or the highway kind of person. She was not afraid to throw a punch & I do not mean that euphemistically. She was not afraid to sacrifice a collaboration to her temper, just ask Langston Hughes.
Hurston also worked her fingers to the bone. The arguably best known African American writer at the middle of the 20th century died poor in a welfare home in Fort Pierce, Florida. While her friends were trying to raise funds for the funeral, her most famous book Their Eyes Were Watching God was making its way onto school reading lists across the country.
But I have said before I think looking at the end of a person's life, or any particular moment, is hardly the best measure of that life. Or maybe it is: if Zora Neale Hurston had never tried to beat the crap out of her new step-mother, she might have been welcome to stay in her father's house. If she had been an easy-going collaborator, she might have never made it to that moment to tell Langston Hughes where he could get off; on a broader scale, easy-going women do not do graduate work in anthropology no matter what color their skin is. Finally, if Zora Neale Hurston had not been willing to give us one of the masterpieces of American Literature for next to no compensation, it never would have existed at all.
So the answer to the question: what would Zora do? is succeed beyond wildest imaginings. Succeed in living her own life, succeed in capturing a way of life most authorities were trying to erase & those that were not were romanticizing it to the good & the bad for their own agendas. Succeed in documenting & then becoming history.
//true confession time: I have never read Their Eyes were Watching God. I have tried, my mother tells me I need to but I am defeated by the dialect. I am often defeated by written dialect; I had to get The Yiddish Policemen's Union on disc (the reader is Peter Reigert) & it is now in my personal top ten favorite books. While researching this I discovered that there is an audio version read by Ruby Dee. I will definitely try again.
Zora Neale Hurston has actually come up in this blog before, because I have in the past been not miffed but mystified that the state of Florida choose to honor the author of Old Folks at Home with a cultural center etc. despite the fact he did not actually live here while completely missing Miss Hurston just down the road. & being ignored was just not her forte.
There are not many more dead-end places to grow up than rural Florida, even today. Being black in a black community is probably good for the residents but makes things harder with the neighboring towns, just ask Rosewood. Being a woman probably did not give her a leg up over the competition & being gay, well, outside of right-wing revival meetings, no one believes that anyone becomes gay to help a career in the arts. Finally there is that quality for which she has since become admired but was no doubt hard to take in person: her extremely short fuse.
By all accounts, Zora Neale Hurston was a my way or the highway kind of person. She was not afraid to throw a punch & I do not mean that euphemistically. She was not afraid to sacrifice a collaboration to her temper, just ask Langston Hughes.
Hurston also worked her fingers to the bone. The arguably best known African American writer at the middle of the 20th century died poor in a welfare home in Fort Pierce, Florida. While her friends were trying to raise funds for the funeral, her most famous book Their Eyes Were Watching God was making its way onto school reading lists across the country.
But I have said before I think looking at the end of a person's life, or any particular moment, is hardly the best measure of that life. Or maybe it is: if Zora Neale Hurston had never tried to beat the crap out of her new step-mother, she might have been welcome to stay in her father's house. If she had been an easy-going collaborator, she might have never made it to that moment to tell Langston Hughes where he could get off; on a broader scale, easy-going women do not do graduate work in anthropology no matter what color their skin is. Finally, if Zora Neale Hurston had not been willing to give us one of the masterpieces of American Literature for next to no compensation, it never would have existed at all.
So the answer to the question: what would Zora do? is succeed beyond wildest imaginings. Succeed in living her own life, succeed in capturing a way of life most authorities were trying to erase & those that were not were romanticizing it to the good & the bad for their own agendas. Succeed in documenting & then becoming history.
//true confession time: I have never read Their Eyes were Watching God. I have tried, my mother tells me I need to but I am defeated by the dialect. I am often defeated by written dialect; I had to get The Yiddish Policemen's Union on disc (the reader is Peter Reigert) & it is now in my personal top ten favorite books. While researching this I discovered that there is an audio version read by Ruby Dee. I will definitely try again.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Innie outie, innie innie, outie outie
My bookclub has just wrapped up Trans-Sister Radio by Chris Bohjalian. It seems that gay was in the air for me generally, as I also just finished Haven Kimmel's The Used World (which I picked because M****** has often recommended the author & it looked like a painted lady on the cover). I found the latter slow but the former grueling in its detail. I do not mean the details of transsexual male-to-female surgery which at least had the grace of being new-to-me details. I mean 2+ pages on which student may or may not have slipped something into a pile of in-class workpapers on the teacher's desk. It was almost more than I could cope with.
But they were both interesting.
Just this past election (& by that I mean March 2009), one town over voted on a re-write that would have disenfranchised a large group of people including gays, transgenders, et al by removing protections against discrimination based on sexual orientation. The focus of the campaign literature (but by no means the campaign agenda) was drag queens in public restrooms. I do not have to make this sh*t up, people.
& because the re-write progenitors were fond of using children to illustrate their ends, I started breaking it down into sound bytes a child could understand. My take on the re-write adverts was if you CAN pee standing up you MUST pee standing up.
Naturally, all sexuality roads lead to gay marriage. I freely admit to being confused, flummoxed & generally broadsided by the idea that two men or two women being married to each other has anything at all to do with me. Unless they make it mandatory, because to paraphrase Jon Stewart, my husband would not like that. I think I am always so surprised (& I really always am; I am blonde that way) because while sex is important, it is hardly all that makes a marriage. I can only speak for my marriage, but it is about food & television & laundry & bad running inside jokes & so many other things not germane to the in & out bits.
& I am often sucker-punched by the idea that while kids can be trotted out to hold signs & sit at the petition-signature gathering tables, the real reason mommy & daddy are doing this is because they want to keep their children safe from the awareness of gay marriage. After all, what would happen if we had to explain what gay marriage is? It would burst their little brains. Well, I think I might be able to help with that:
While I am part of an innie outie marriage myself, I know people in innie innies & outie outies, too. These three camps are a lot like Trekkies, Lord of the Rings enthusiasts & Star Wars aficionados. Everyone is aware of the other camps & sometimes some of us even visit them, but as we grow up we all realize which sci-fi/fantasy genre is best for us. Oh sure, there are the occasional deviants; those Hitchhikers Guide people are a bit off, but we try to love them anyway. Those outright pervs, the Gormenghastians need to be avoided, though. & Dune! Do not get me started on Dune.
I agree, it needs some work. Also, I have completely left off Red Dwarf & the hero of the transgender: Kryten. & it was from him that I ripped off the whole in&out bits bit. Isn't that just the way these things go?
But they were both interesting.
Just this past election (& by that I mean March 2009), one town over voted on a re-write that would have disenfranchised a large group of people including gays, transgenders, et al by removing protections against discrimination based on sexual orientation. The focus of the campaign literature (but by no means the campaign agenda) was drag queens in public restrooms. I do not have to make this sh*t up, people.
& because the re-write progenitors were fond of using children to illustrate their ends, I started breaking it down into sound bytes a child could understand. My take on the re-write adverts was if you CAN pee standing up you MUST pee standing up.
Naturally, all sexuality roads lead to gay marriage. I freely admit to being confused, flummoxed & generally broadsided by the idea that two men or two women being married to each other has anything at all to do with me. Unless they make it mandatory, because to paraphrase Jon Stewart, my husband would not like that. I think I am always so surprised (& I really always am; I am blonde that way) because while sex is important, it is hardly all that makes a marriage. I can only speak for my marriage, but it is about food & television & laundry & bad running inside jokes & so many other things not germane to the in & out bits.
& I am often sucker-punched by the idea that while kids can be trotted out to hold signs & sit at the petition-signature gathering tables, the real reason mommy & daddy are doing this is because they want to keep their children safe from the awareness of gay marriage. After all, what would happen if we had to explain what gay marriage is? It would burst their little brains. Well, I think I might be able to help with that:
While I am part of an innie outie marriage myself, I know people in innie innies & outie outies, too. These three camps are a lot like Trekkies, Lord of the Rings enthusiasts & Star Wars aficionados. Everyone is aware of the other camps & sometimes some of us even visit them, but as we grow up we all realize which sci-fi/fantasy genre is best for us. Oh sure, there are the occasional deviants; those Hitchhikers Guide people are a bit off, but we try to love them anyway. Those outright pervs, the Gormenghastians need to be avoided, though. & Dune! Do not get me started on Dune.
I agree, it needs some work. Also, I have completely left off Red Dwarf & the hero of the transgender: Kryten. & it was from him that I ripped off the whole in&out bits bit. Isn't that just the way these things go?
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