Random Notes and Errata – Page 4

{& more personally, etc.}

January 22, 2014

9:28 am

11 Comments on {& more personally, etc.}

There is something quite wrong with a January in which the trees downtown are in bloom. Everywhere else is fifty feet of snow, and we have… what? Decided to abdicate Winter for Spring?

Dear California, get with the program. It is winter. Please act accordingly. We are beginning to envy Glasgow…

There’s a certain lack of glee in being able to read the seed catalogues on the porch and not whilst shivering and bemoaning the puddles. It almost looks like I could just step out and start pitchforking up the soil… but I just keep my fingers crossed and pray for precipitation. Sure, sure, California dreamin’ on such a winter’s day, blah, blah, blah, but I am getting allergies already, which is just horrible. I’m not ready for this! I need some rain, first…

Thanks to all who asked about my sister – she’s had an incredibly good experience so far – to the extent that they’re thinking of kicking her out early! If you know anything about organ transplants – and I didn’t before last week, really – the whole thing is kind of a trip. They call you, if you have a cadaver donor, and tell you to get to the hospital, pronto. When you have a family member on the donor list, they have the phone numbers of the entire family – house, cell, and on down. They called my mother at a quarter to eleven on the house phone, it went to voice mail, and she ended up dumping her purse on the floor to find her cell, because she was listening to the message whilst trying to struggle upright. (These are the things one does when one is nine-tenths asleep.) Nobody could sleep after that. They raced to the hospital at 5 a.m…. and proceeded to not get prepped for surgery until 9 p.m.! Of course, the medical team wasn’t twiddling their thumbs all day, as they do one final test to assure that the donor is a match – but she basically watched movies all day while my mother (who never did get back to sleep) dozed. By midnight, she was in surgery, and by 3 a.m., it was a done deal.

Further details, in case you were wondering: it’s typical to leave failed organs in a body during a transplant, so that there’s less chance of rejection. I didn’t know that! So, now my sister has three kidneys. We have started calling her Tripod and 3PO, because we are tasteless and awful like that. She has promised to clobber us all upside the heads as soon as her side doesn’t hurt so much. It’s incentive to get well, I say.

The real trial is the enforced isolation. She’ll not be returning to school until… April. Or church. Or any public place like a post office, a grocery store, God forbid the mall. No bowling, either. Humanity is a germ factory, and to prevent rejection and infection and all sorts of other -tions, she has to be protected. All guests to my parent’s home have to use the big bottle of Purell by the front door, and if they even have a sniffle, wear a mask or stay home. My sister joked she’d require them to walk through the car wash at the gas station off the freeway, which is only the slightest exaggeration.

And, did you know that people who are transplant recipients are at higher risk for — well, everything? All those immunosuppressants they give patients so the organ doesn’t reject mean that the immune system goes on vacation. If you sit in an airplane or a movie theater with the rest of germy humanity, you’re likely to be plagued with viral, bacterial and yeast infections, including shingles and herpes. You might just die of it. Thank God for movies on laptops, eh? Further, some people experience elevated blood pressure as a result of transplant, and still others become diabetic — all because of the transplant and transplant drugs.

And the darned thing still might decide to wither and die inside the patient, because the body finds a way to attack it and kill it.

o_0

And yet, it’s worth it. I talked to my sister on Google’s chat thingy and she was chirpy and funny and snarky, and I realized I haven’t seen her like that in about a year and a half. She had lost so much of her spark in a gradual erosion that I hadn’t recognized how much of her had slipped away. She’d become fretful and sickly and sarcastic instead of energetic and witty. How could I have forgotten who she is? That’s the horror of long-term illness for you, though – it takes you \away from yourself, and turns you into the Endurance Version of you, and sometimes we just don’t endure well, especially when we’re teens.

So, it’s not over – it’s just beginning, but at least there’s something to begin with, something to go on. The seed of health has been sown — all we need to wait on is the rain and the sun, the natural processes to bring everything back in balance.

Here’s to the rain.

{the cold-bright brilliance of our days…}

by Tanita S. Davis

December 10, 2013

12:32 pm

4 Comments on {the cold-bright brilliance of our days…}

Random Notes and Errata

So, I’ve proven myself to be brilliant by donating three puffy coats from my UK days to a coat drive… just before temps plunged into the twenties here. BOY, am I feeling smart.

In the other category of Brilliant – and I mean SERIOUS, real brilliance – is the tumblr site, People of Color in European Art History.

I remember being at the ALA in 2010 and seeing a pile of bookmarks with this medieval chick in green on the cover. I didn’t know what the book was about (or, sadly, where the image is found – still researching!), but I took a stack of those postcard/bookmarks, because GOOD GRIEF. I hadn’t seen a whole lot of medieval depictions of people of color, and I wanted to keep this one like wow and oh-my-word,-really. Cartoonist Kate Beaton often links to this tumblr, which is how I found it, and I have to admit that I’m tempted to get a tumblr account just to join in the discussions. (Although: Flame Wars and Correcting the Internets and Better Things To Do.)

Two recent posts from POC’s tumblr are about what gets left out in art history books. Most of what we saw in Survey of Art was excerpted… and, until I went to the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam to see the grand old Rembrandt, Night Watch, in person…? I didn’t know that. Well, sometimes MORE than background gets excerpted… in a bizarre kind of sideways whitewashing. For instance, there are portraits of our first president… sans the staff and slaves and servants standing next to him, who are of African descent. I suspect that’s to make him look less like a loser slave-owner, but come on. The father of our country was, a., a great man, and b., a slave owner, not necessarily in that order, either. Accuracy in history is important, for more reasons than just accuracy. As you might expect, the person uploading these images is having SEVERE backlash from closet-and-not-so-closeted people whose racist baseline beliefs are being shaken. Though she is just scanning pictures she’s found from books and digital library/academic journal sites that the average person is unable to access, she’s catching a lot of flack. A TON of flack. But, she’s responding with grace — and with double-barrels of history, which in this case is the best defense.

In more brilliant news, thanks to Kelly Jensen from STACKED blog who moonlights at Book Riot, I’m on a flowchart! Or, MARE’S WAR is, anyway. Thanks for the shout out, Book Riot!

A brilliant Jama celebrates an adorably demented eleven-year-old on the publication of his first book, a SFF epic called THE ADVENTURES OF TOMATO AND PEA. It is about aliens who crash land on EAR-TH. He puns, he writes, and the boy can COOK, too.

In more BRILLIANT news, one of my favorite naturalist/environmentalist/artists, Rosemary Mosco, has suggestions for Christmas trees. I’d love this artist to make holiday cards; she makes science comics instead, and that’s more than okay, too. Do poke around her site – some fun stuff.

Daddy, artist, mathematician and pancake artist (?) Nathan Shield has already shown himself to be seriously brilliant, what with his Liver Fluke and Hobbit pancakes. (No, not at the same time. Pay attention.) Now that he’s gone through book characters and disease vectors, he’s doing… Fractals. No, seriously. Check it out.

Aaaaand in the category of Somewhat Less Than Brilliant: have you heard that there are world-eating octopi out there? No? Well Now You Know. There are. The Office for the Director of National Intelligence, which is a kind of umbrella organization over groups like the NSA, is being really serious about the fact that our country has SUPER good intelligence. So much so that this is their new logo and tagline… for serious. As in, not a joke. Especially ironic because international papers revealed this week that the NSA has been spying on online gamers. Apparently, there was a need for undercover … orcs. On one hand, that made me laugh at first, but then, I got depressed. The War of the Worlds/Cthulu/Bond movie ties are not amusing.

Others don’t find it amusing as well. Scottish author Charles Stross blogged this week that he’s going to hit a pause on writing near-future stuff, … because the NSA keeps stealing his plots. No, seriously: his stuff is starting to be predictive. Which is scary.

I feel his pain a tiny bit, because almost three years ago, I was working hard on a space opera/sci-fi novel and used a planet that would work to support human life… you may have heard of it… Glise? Yeah. Just as I’d written an entire deep space station, school, students and drama, I was hit with reality. I know, I know. There are something like forty billion planets that are vaguely Earth-like, but I’d done all this research and supposition about how the settlers would arrive, their path from Earth, the tech which would make this possible (not FTL drives, just fyi), and I was faced with starting again — and feeling oddly exposed, like the universe was reading my drafts… so, that one is sitting on a To Be Rewritten pile, and we’ll see what happens.

For some reason, this weather makes me long for instant camping foods that can be eaten, hot, with a just-add-water motif. Hot chocolate, ramen, soups… Totally nasty, most of the time, as well as bad for me, but maybe it’s because it’s camping temps in my frigid cold office? Ah, well. Still must work, and still must find more gems and lights in this season of wonder. Cheers for now.

{clothes. class. hair & nails}

by Tanita S. Davis

October 31, 2013

10:44 am

Leave a comment on {clothes. class. hair & nails}

Essay Musings, Intellectual curiosity, Musings on Extemporanea, Random Notes and Errata, Web Wanderings

There was more than a little contempt in the name we gave her. “Hair & Nails” was a code signalling what we thought of where she placed value, what we thought of her priorities. She hadn’t read great books, she hadn’t had great thoughts, but she had a fiercely claw-like manicure and went to a shop to see to a tinted/braided/straightened/shellacked coiffure at least once a week. We – my intellectual sisters and I – were better than that.

In my quiet heart of hearts, I also looked askance at my gnawed down nails and fuzzy caterpillar brows, and knew that I wasn’t polished, wasn’t well put-together, and didn’t have it within me to care – as maybe I should have? – about externals. I looked at my frumpy outfits, my run-down flats, and my pudgy figure, compared them with her pricey Louboutins, her big Chanel bag, her firmly Spanxed thighs. I resented her, a little, and she, me. I excused myself my inability to compete, and told myself she looked like a pricey streetwalker. She seemed to look at me pityingly, as if my frizzy frumptitude was inexplicably disappointing, as if I were letting down the race.

Gah. The silent conversations we have, where our looks and our clothes shout. The silent competitions, and the signalling we do, with our clothes, our hair, our selves. I mentioned earlier this month that my writing group was exploring this topic. We argued the point (boy, do I disagree), and talked about whether or not a lack of emphasis on clothing meant that different people – of varying classes – were now the speakers for the culture, and the writers. (This is what we miss, when we deny diversity in literature, by the way — the deeper shadings of a life that most people of color live, but don’t talk about. This, too, is cultural diversity, this exploration of class and clothes…) We came to few conclusions, until a more recent news cycle.

Like others, I was wearied by the tale (and its subsequent iterations) of the nineteen year old Barney’s shopper who went after a $350 belt, bought it, and was subsequently led away in handcuffs, because surely it was a scam, and he couldn’t afford it. The clerk who made the value judgment of the boy’s prospects took his race into account – and nothing more. Black people cannot afford to spend large sums of money on mere belts, ergo…scam. I am sure his bosses are even now quietly patting him on the back. “Okay, you screwed up this time, but…” The bottom line is, stores don’t want to lose money on assuming that everyone can afford their wares. Everyone, meaning, people of color, who may not speak Standard American English, whom they may not really want to be buying their wares. There’s a lot of subtext there.

And, then, there’s the matter of the belt. Did you, like I did, wonder, “Dude?! $350 for a belt?! What else did it do, organize your closet???” I thought that briefly, yes, but I also thought, “Well, it’s your money, to spend for whatever ridiculousness you’d like – good for you for having the discipline to save up.” It’s too bad that bigotry and institutionalized corporate nastiness also played a part in this growing-up, learning experience.

U Penn’s Wharton School of Business reported on a paper a couple of its students did called “Conspicuous Consumption and Race.” It talked about the fact that ethnic minorities often spend more on high profile, high ticket purchases – the SUV in the run down neighborhood with the gold grille, the big-ticket basketball shoes, pristine in their boxes, the iPhone/iPad/Xbox, the showy Chanel bag – but it talked about reasons. It’s not just about “keeping up with the Joneses” – unless the Jones’ are of the Price-Jones’ and of the dominant culture. It’s cultural signalling – “We’re okay. We’re not poor ghetto people you have to fear. We have money; we aren’t trying to hustle yours.” Status signalling, not necessarily fashion. Mutual funds vs. Manolo’s. One’s a lot harder to show off than the other.

That begins to shine a different spotlight on Hair & Nails.

A much-linked piece by Emory PhD sociology candidate and Graduate Fellow at the Center for Poverty Research at UC-Davis, Tressie McMillan Cottom, takes this even further. She speaks candidly about her own experiences in The Logic of Stupid Poor People, talks about a family who gets ahead by lump sums of insurance when someone dies, and disability payments. We could be cousins; much of what she says makes me flinch in recognition. She talks about a family which encouraged especially its female members to do well in school, to go further, making the females the keepers of the educational flame, the ones who could “talk like White people” and help the community out. My family exactly, a generation removed. I hope you read her entire essay — it has much to say on signalling and privilege, and what we trade on, unknowingly, to make our way through the world.

Thinking back to Hair & Nails, the differences between us were starkest in what we thought we had to trade on. She, her aggressive beauty, her polish and her purchases, I, my academic standing, and effortless Standard American English, a quiet manner in school, the acceptability of being a “good” girl, from a “deserving” family. This carried me far further than any actual true intellect – I’m not as smart as I could have been, because I wasn’t pushed, and didn’t receive extra help. I wasn’t a squeaky wheel. Quiet and compliant was “good enough;” sounding like I belonged was sufficient to pretend.

Something else I read in Hair & Nails’ condolence glances was pity for my perceived inability to rise to the challenge of beauty. Sociologists assure us that we all signal, that, to a certain extent, we all perform cultural respectability in return for whatever intangible rewards. But, what about us slobs? What am I signaling, with my refusal to spend salon time, by turning up my nose at the claw-tipped manicure and the bling and the Hilfiger? Certainly, that I am possibly a snob who thinks I can trade higher on my perceived intellect, on my ability to ape the dominant culture well enough to not just fit, but to thrive – I’ve certainly been told that one often enough. But, now I wonder if it’s not something more.

Candidly, I have this… figure. When I was younger, I buried it in baggy sweaters and shapeless trou, and about a hundred pounds of concealing pudge. I wrapped it in duffel coats and knee-length cardigans, and didn’t acknowledge it, past middle school, really, for various reasons. I was wildly signaling to the judging, cultural gatekeepers that I was a sexless, marginally unattractive, smart, safe individual. I wasn’t slutty. I wasn’t man-bait. I was neat and scrupulous and conservative — and really, middle-aged, in my dress, even in college. Regardless of my signaling, my parents scrutinized and micromanaged my every male friendship, and I got used to my father glowering and scouring my journals if I so much as spoke to a member of the opposite sex. My mother graduated from high school pregnant, and her failure was imputed to be my own – despite my just being “one of the boys” for most of high school. And, in spite of the baggy clothing and the frumpiness, I still captured negative attention. I signed myself jokingly “Vivanna, Temptress of the Night,” because when they found out we were even casually friends, my future in-laws offered their son a vasectomy, told him when he was done “dipping his wick” with me, or whatever truly classy phrase his father used, that they would help him disentangle himself from my succubus tentacles. “Those people” entrap you with children, he was told. Regardless of signals, in spite of the performance of acceptability, I was repeatedly judged as oversexed and dangerously distracting – the more drab I became, the more of the life of the mind I tried to cultivate, the worse it seemed to get.

Try harder. Work harder. Be more. Do more. These are the messages young people of color receive from the older generation, with a continued pressure to perform. Dress for the job you want tomorrow, not for the paycheck you have today. Dress up. Look up. Aim higher. Dress for success. Send the right message. Perhaps these are some of the ideas behind student loan debt – behind a willingness to pay for the next thirty years for the dream of the upwardly mobile…

Maybe Hair & Nails’s pitying looks weren’t mere contempt for differences. Maybe she, with her rhinestone nail tips and extensions, knew something that I did not – that it’s useless to think that our appearance doesn’t tell a tale of us. And, that maybe it’s not a $350 belt or $2500 purse we’re after, but we’re all trying to find out some way to belong…

As I sit at my desk in my ponytail and plain cardigan, it’s something to think about.

{granny panties}

by Tanita S. Davis

June 26, 2013

11:32 am

10 Comments on {granny panties}

Essay Musings, Random Notes and Errata

It’s the best kind of summer morning – where the green smell that follows a good, soaking rain hasn’t yet dissipated, where there are all manner of things peeping, and chittering and tweeting in the yard. The sun is shining, although the keyboard is oddly sticky under my fingers; a remnant of a strange humidity which has wrapped our town in strangely balmy climes. It’s a morning to sit out on the back stairs, indolently reading the paper, with only a short terry bathrobe thrown over my granny panties and camisole, just warm enough, and just dressed enough.

Thrifty and practical, my grandmother provided matching camisoles and panties to me, from the time I was big enough to see over the edge of the table. Every birthday and Christmas, with unfailing regularity, a plain, brown-wrapped package would come in the post, containing the sprigged camisoles with the teeeeensy satin ribbon where my someday cleavage would live, with plain pastel cotton briefs. The Sears catalog provided these serviceable small-clothes, and, later, Walmart, when the sprawling megamart came to the tiny town of Patterson. I imagine her in her hard pink rollers, snapped into a sleeveless seersucker housedress, hunched over a cup of black coffee with the thick Sears catalogue before her, tracing with an arthritis-bent finger the tiny order numbers, and reading them carefully into the phone.

These were the clothes I lived in. Each night after my bath, I would choose a fresh set of underpants and pair it with a stretchy, cotton camisole, some scattered with tiny pink roses, others with blue, and be as dressed as I needed to be to run around the house and play. I remember my siblings in matching camis and briefs so clearly – they were the clothes I wore while drawing boobs on my Raggedy Ann, or watching my sister feed her Baby Alive while I tried to comb the hair on my Baby Fred (Yes. Fred. Poor Fred was a girl, but plastic hair does not take well to the pilot light on gas heaters, and my sisters renamed her Hard Head Fred, since her hair was a solid mass of burnt plastic. It’s a wonder I didn’t kill myself with the fumes. Do we sense a Doll Destruction theme? Another blog post, that). As I grew older, the granny gifts stayed the same – only their size increased. Surely I was the only fifth grader not wearing days-of-the-week underpants, or lace-trimmed, Strawberry Shortcake hip-huggers. Nope. I was still in my granny panties, hardly seeing anyone’s underwear other than mine and not knowing there was much else out there.

Up until junior high, anyway. By then, I had outpaced my grandmother’s ability to buy me camisoles, as she could no longer, at a glance, judge my size, and I had outpaced my desire to wear prim pastels which covered me from belly button to thigh. And yet, she still sent them. And, slips. Half slips, actually. The sort with scratchy lace on the bottom, which could be cut away, for the perfect length. I left them uncut, and mostly, unworn. I wanted underpants with stripes and contrasting piping. I wanted screen prints and ironic Wonder Woman symbols. Later, I wanted satin and silk and bikini cuts and bows and stars and stripes, bells, and whistles, and words on my unmentionables. And still, my grandmother kept sending those plain Jane, unexciting, unimaginative, flat cotton granny panties.

Even my mother had a collection, but her plain-wear expanded to include slips and nightgowns. Undyed, serviceable things which arrived each time she’d been sick, or feeling a little blue after a hospital visit. My grandmother wrapped her daughter’s frailties in strong cotton, enlivened with scraps of satin – a testament of a life filled with needful things, with little room for extras – simplicity with *ouches of beauty all the same.

Well past the time I should have lost my faint disdain for her gifts, my grandmother lost the ability to send them. She had never been wealthy, and after my bon-papa died, and her health declined, everything went toward keeping her tiny boat afloat. By then, her sharp memory for the birthdates of all twenty-seven plus grandchildren, not to mention greats, had faded a bit. My every birthday was no longer heralded by her scratchy, nearly monotone singing voice wishing me a happy birthday, and “May the Good Lawd Bless you,” her own invention for the second verse. By then, my life was full of other things, and other people, and the loss of those little brown-paper packages didn’t register as much. Until the first time I had to buy my own underwear. My own camisoles. My own nightgowns and bathrobes. And then, I realized there was one less person in the world who cared if I was properly covered, and who, if, God forbid, I was in an accident, would share a concern that I had underwear with tight elastic, no holes, and perfect seams.

I miss that.

So, in memory of my grandmother, I let Victoria keep her secrets, and buy my granny panties. Plain white cotton, some boy-legged, and much bigger than the current fashion. They’re no longer plain white – I tie dye them, I have to admit. From time to time, I even live a little, and buy black ones. I still don’t wear a slip – ever – and rarely a camisole, but I now have in my possession a tank with a scrap of lace at the neckline and the hem, and I feel just a little girlier to wear it. For me, that’s as good as it gets. I will never be the type of woman my grandmother was – fully starched, impeccably dressed, with her underpinnings all …pinned down – but at least I can embrace her simplicity, her lack of artifice, her straightforward, hard-knuckled, basic common sense, which, it turns out, is not all that common. Following her example, I can be myself from the skin out, and comfortable in the bargain. And really, that’s all that anyone can ask.

{discipline punishment details}

by Tanita S. Davis

November 6, 2012

1:09 pm

7 Comments on {~~discipline~~ punishment details}

Musings on Extemporanea, Random Notes and Errata

Aside from the fact that periodically I fail to dress myself appropriately, let alone make balanced meals, and let’s not mention my basic bone-deep laziness, I know I am not appropriate parenting material. I see the world through some strange angles and I’m not sure I could raise someone to fit well with society. Also, there is discipline. I kind of lack it, and, one of my students informed me years ago, I am also Mean.

When I was teaching, I was known for having a well-ordered, quiet, tidy classroom, because frankly, the times when it was NOT those things, the fangs started itching and the horns started to sprout through my hair. I used to tell my fifth graders that a classroom was a dictatorship, not a democracy, and that I was their Dear Leader for the day. I forced my kids into a semblance of order because I needed order to be able to teach them – and here’s hoping that they benefited from the order, and learned.

I admit that I was probably a little (way?) too strict, though my mother, who terrified her students for twenty-five years, and now her grandchildren (well, none of them were ever really scared, but all the Littles know without a doubt when Teacher/Grandma’s patience is at An End) thinks I was an excellent disciplinarian. I am uneasy with that label, though. My students only obeyed because of my draconian tendencies to take their toys and have them run laps around the building or the playground when they talked and fidgeted, or go a period standing, when they continually tipped back their chairs. I was very quick to bring consequences, I sometimes raised my voice (well, it was fifth grade – sometimes that was the only way to be heard), and sometimes, I was Scary, and did I mention Mean? In all seriousness, I sometimes wonder at the present-day effect of some of my disciplinary tactics from back then.

If you’re wondering what’s brought on this examination of past punishments I have imposed, it’s the case of the woman in Cleveland who drove on the sidewalk. She was in a hurry – every morning, apparently – and, every morning when the school bus stopped to pick up kids, she went around to the sidewalk to avoid stopping when the red lights flashed. The bus driver, aghast, filmed her little trick, and now:

The judge sentenced Hardin to pay $250 in court costs and suspended her license for 30 days and more.

Hardin must also stand at the intersection of E. 38th Street and Payne Avenue wearing a sign next Tuesday and Wednesday that says “Only an idiot drives on the sidewalk to avoid a school bus.” She has been ordered to wear the sign from 7:45 a.m. to 8:45 a.m. both days.

At first blush, this might seem a success. Everyone sees that Crime Doesn’t Pay. The kids see a person who broke the rules humiliated. The parents, other drivers who didn’t drive on the walk, and the bus driver all feel vindicated. Everybody wins!

Except:

Why the word “idiot?” Doesn’t the English language lend itself to other descriptors which don’t also double as name-calling pejoratives? And, sure, she’s lost her license for what is clearly a violation of the vehicle code, and she’s had a pinch in her wallet, but I’m a little surprised that no one is addressing the real issue: she felt her time and her life was more important than the safety of others. To me, that needs to be looked at. Is this lady just a traffic violator, or a sociopath?

As a deterrent – a threat – the sign probably works. People will think twice before attempting something so stupid. But as a corrective, redemptive device, it fails. Is this lady going to love her fellowman that much better, and place their safety above her own, after weeks of being mocked by school children and their parents? Is she learning more than just loathing for the judge who sentenced her? Is she actually examining how her choices brought her to this sorry pass? How is calling someone an idiot rehabilitative?

Do you see why I don’t have kids (and am not in the legal profession)? I’d be on the floor, every day, trying to figure out how on earth I was supposed to civilize the random impulses we all have to be idiots every day.

I hope this lady gets therapy, sensitivity training, anger management. I have a feeling she’s going to need all three.

{why i vote: the irrational season}

by Tanita S. Davis

November 2, 2012

10:45 am

3 Comments on {why i vote: the irrational season}

Musings on Extemporanea, Random Notes and Errata, Soapbox

Thursday, the downstairs sink flooded, twice. The plumbers – two men with big boots – tromped gunk on the stair carpet, which needs to be cleaned. Today, Maya Thompson, to use her Starbucks name, is coming by to stay until Monday. We still don’t have a washer (next week!) so I must schlepp loads of soaked towels to Mom’s; the last four Fuji apples are going slightly soft, which means they need to be diced and turned into a quick apple cake which is okay for the both the vegans and the omnivores, and there are four gigantic boxes yet in the garage to unpack, my fabric remnants – victims of the downstairs flood – to unbox and wash before they mildew. This is not to mention the other weekend chores of chiropractic appointments, choir rehearsal, raking the front, making an altar arrangement for church, and bringing cans to the food drive.

This is also not to mention the 143 books only read by one person on the Cybils list, plus the 95 books read by no one yet at all, plus my revision, on which I am slightly stuck, which I really need to finish by the 17th, latest. Which, with the aforementioned reading stack, I may not do. Which annoys me.

Oh. My. Gosh. I do NOT have time to sit down and decipher all of the electoral paperwork. I don’t have time to read the doublespeak and triple takes, and the dubious linguistic looping of proposition amendments and the perky bios on various district representatives, eager for my vote. I don’t have things to do. I don’t have time to vote. And, why should I? Psychologists tell us that voting is completely irrational. Statistically, an individual vote makes very little difference – and it’s personally time-consuming to register and do all of the rigamarole to get the right paperwork or the right polling place. I’m over-scheduled and grumpy, and I don’t have time…but I will make the time. Why? Well, I’ve given that some thought, and come up with roughly four reasons:

I vote, because…I can read. My literacy is an immense gift; in a state where once upon a time public school was the ideal so that everyone could learn, today there are so many impediments toward people getting to school that 14% of my community is lacking in basic prose skills. I didn’t receive my education in a public school setting, but I support the right and privilege of those who do. I also support libraries as bastions of public knowledge. My votes protect these things,
I vote, because…I can disagree with the way my country is run. I hate some of what is done, in the name of big, glad-handing, we’re-number-one, jingoistic American interests. We are the world’s scariest friends, the world’s worst bullies, the world’s nosiest neighbors (and if you tell me to take my opinion and go back to the UK, so help me). I have some very harsh opinions, I’m DEEPLY cynical and suspicious and judgmental and yet, I have the right to these opinions and judgements, because This. Is. My. Country. And it’s my right to love it enough to hope that it changes, and to speak up, and MAKE IT change in the best way I can. And I support your right to do so, too,
I vote, because…I can embrace our differences, knowing that we hold some truths that are the same. We The People are from various walks and ethnic groups and cultural backgrounds and ages – and thus we come at fact or falsehood or a piece of legislation (sometimes the same thing) from different directions. Our greatness is in shared perception, and shared participation. We are a unique voice because of the powerful societal norms which push us out of our comfort zones and into the arena of sometimes harmonious, other times fraught and dissonant opinion. Our very inability to walk in lock-step is what makes us a uniquely and intriguingly special group. It also makes us exasperating, obstreperous, faithful, thoughtful, dangerous, mouthy, brilliant, eager, impatient, and really, really emo. I see this now more than ever, having lived abroad for five years and been regarded as a crazy person for much of that time. We are a bunch of loose cannons pointed in sixty-million different directions, and yet we can live together without killing each other too often. Participation really does make democracy work – and Americans are all about getting in there, and getting our hands onto something, even if it’s the completely wrong end of a thing.
I vote, because…I can. Yes. I can. Voting is both privilege and gift, and obligation, for someone whose ancestors were slaves and Native peoples, and whose chattel status prevented them from being thought of even as human. It is a right that is too often taken for granted in my age group, and in my country. Somewhere, people have sent out the wrong dates and times or polling information, to communities filled with first generation Americans, because they don’t want their voices. Somewhere, those who haven’t paid their child support or back taxes are frightened into believing that their voices aren’t worthy to be heard. Elsewhere, women are silenced; in other nations, disputed religions or tribal affiliations are an impediment to voting polls, and in some places, there is simply dictatorship, and no choice. But here, in this country, we have the right to our speech, our choice, and our mistakes, and these amendments are written into law. Here we’re going to celebrate our Four Freedoms, and add eight more. It’s our privilege! But, more than that, it’s our right. Let’s step up and take our chances.

Perhaps these aren’t as patriotic of reasons, or as coherent of reasons as you would choose for voting. In many ways, democracy – politics – you name it – is both incoherent and unpatriotic – full of greed and bad intentions. However, in many ways, it comes down to that same irrational response psychologists warn us about – I just want to do my bit to change my world, to do my part to support truth and righteousness — which is a big laugh, putting those words in the same sentence as politics. But then, je suis American. Maybe irrational is as good as it gets.

This is a non-partisan party; others will be pondering and posting about this today. Colleen’s got the round-up @ Chasing Ray. Don’t miss Justin’s piece @ babble comics, which make me both snort-laugh and wince; also, Mr. Elzey is talking about the one time he didn’t vote, which takes a lot of courage, in a way – talking about it, I mean. Not voting is bone-headed, and he agrees. Anyway, more links as power outages and people’s thought processes make them available. Happy Friday; remember to vote.

{monday mishmash}

by Tanita S. Davis

October 15, 2012

1:54 pm

4 Comments on {monday mishmash}

Musings on Extemporanea, Random Notes and Errata

Monday, Monday. Jackhammers out front, trying to catch up with my brain, and expecting my internet to go out any second. New old house stuff continues, as today we get a new phone line dug. Apparently the last time it was done was when the house was remodeled, sometime near the year I was born… yeah. So, I shall enjoy a moment of time-wasting as I clear my ears from the sound of Driveway Destruction.

I try hard to avoid soda, but I love weird ones like this cucumber drink, which my mother gave me. Apparently someone gave it to her from a store called BevMo, previously Beverages And More, but those few extra syllables were JUST. TOO. HARD.

Since Tech Boy has now two jobs – one in the US and one in the UK (we are nothing if not happy with our dualities, apparently), I have a little extra time evenings on my own. Fortunately, there’s the Cybils which, at this time of year, means I have no free time anyway. Every year it seems such a decadent idea – books! Reading to my heart’s content with no interruptions! Because I have to! And then, when I see that I have to read ~~one hundred forty-seven~~ ~~sixty-five~~ two hundred and nine books between now and December 31st, decadent delight turns to, Aaaaaaaargh! Why did I say I’d do this again!?

(I need to photograph The Stack on my reading couch. Yes. I have a reading couch; what of it? Other people have eating tables and things… it makes perfect sense.)

We had thunder and a brief cloudburst on Thursday night, and I was at first convinced the sound was someone dragging their cans to the curb — until it sounded like herds of people drag-racing their cans around the block. It was so strange to hear the thunder rolling like a bowling ball bouncing down a lane. As it was explained to me, rolling thunder – as opposed to its more percussive explosion sounding cousin – sounds roll-y because it’s the result of cloud-to-cloud strikes. The sound differs because of the distance between clouds and the distances between US and the clouds – we hear the compression waves differently than we do for a cloud-to-earth, right-on-top-of-you strike. It’s like the difference between saying “Hello” in a crowded room and saying “Hello” over the Grand Canyon. More space, more room for sound to bounce. Anyway, it was really neat to even hear thunder – in our area of Scotland, heavy storms were not the norm. We’d have a real rattle-up periodically, but for the most part, the rain was just endless dampening – a middle-of-the-road, endless pattering. The dreich could be dispiriting, whilst an actual storm, with wind and hail and a real gullywasher bucketing down – those are rather exhilarating, and I’m looking forward to more of them, now that I don’t have to walk around in them!

Here’s this week’s Strange Discovery: it’s an Easter egg… which was stuck in a rose bush. We have a lot of roses which haven’t been well cared-for, so they’re growing out of control, out from the rootstock, etc. — it’s kind of a thorny mess. We’ve been systematically whacking them back, which is why it took us awhile to find this little bit of plastic wedged into the largest of the bushes. No, I am NOT opening it; I am saving it for Bean, since she feels brave. I’m sure it’s nothing but melted jelly beans and a puddle of chocolate egg… at least I hope it’s that benign. ::shudder::

BREAKING NEWS: Our possessions apparently will make it to a WAREHOUSE IN SF on Wednesday, at the latest. Hope springs eternal.

As for the Mr. Q. — it was a little sweet, a little fresh, and a lot cucumber-y. It was distinctly odd, in a good way.

{dreich. but not down.}

by Tanita S. Davis

October 17, 2011

5:18 pm

3 Comments on {dreich. but not down.}

Musings on Extemporanea, Random Notes and Errata

“Dreich” is a word which means what it sounds like – dark, dank, dull, dreadful. It describes this wet autumn day.

I love this picture, and the reflection of the sky from the puddle. It reminds me of the Oscar Wilde quote, “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” (Lady Windermere’s Fan, 1892). At present, we are all in the deep of the dreich, but if we look around, there are fantastic images in the drifting of the leaves, and in the bunching and rolling of the clouds.

Plus, occasionally there’s fancy snails.

My sister has a jacket with these same stripes on it. She is not amused that the snail wore the jacket first.

Two weeks ago, I contacted a friend, via LinkedIn, for her birthday. She wrote me back to tell me that her husband, at the age of thirty-eight, had unexpectedly died two days before, and she’d not known how to reach me. I was in shock, am still raw and bleeding for her. The following week, another school friend wrote to tell me how she was doing in her new city, and offhandedly announced her engagement. Shock again – but the good kind. Yesterday, a classmate from grade school found out that – surprise! – she was going to be a mom again in May. She’s a little panicked at the unexpected, but she is dealing – with courage, and with joy. Fortuna’s wheel continues to turn as out of work friends find jobs, and others find themselves trying to stretch and resize a budget that in nowise will take them through the winter. As we all face the dreich days together, surround yourself with friends and simple pleasures, and tell those whom you love that you do – and how much.

Invictus

by William Ernest Henley

OUT of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

Stand tall through the rain and wind. We get knocked down, but we get up again.

{a snarky question I was asked:}

by Tanita S. Davis

May 3, 2011

4:15 pm

1 Comment on {a snarky question I was asked:}

Random Notes and Errata

“So, if only one month a year is supposed to be for good mental health, what are the other eleven months for?”

My answer? Using what you’ve learned during this month.

Today’s learning tool: readergirlz diva and author Melissa Walker chats live with Blake Nelson, author of the fabulous YA novel, RECOVERY ROAD, tonight on Reachout.com’s Reach Out Reads. Starting at 5pm PST/8pm EST, it’s your turn to listen and chat about this great book, what the author was thinking as he wrote it, and what he hopes you get out of it. It’s young adult lit with an extra helping of MAD COPING SKILZ all this month, or as Reachout.com puts it, “Fiction to get you through tough times.” Tune in!

Nine, Maybe Ten Good Things

by Tanita S. Davis

February 11, 2011

2:43 pm

6 Comments on Nine, Maybe Ten Good Things

Author News, Book News, Literary Life Observations, Random Notes and Errata

The middle grade novel is done, at last, and out it goes, synopsis written, shoes tied, face washed, on Monday. Calloo, callay! O, frabjous day! Thank you, God. NOW I feel like my brain is back online for the first time since — sheesh, October? — and can resume revising my science fiction novel…
I am being interviewed by someone named Capillya. The name is undeniably awesome.
I SAW MY FIRST SNOWDROP TODAY. WOOT!
Yesterday, the sky was blue for seven hours straight.
The Little (Bro) got his passport this week, which means the week after his Senior Trip to San Diego, he’s going to come and slouch around my house and eat all of my food for a week. Nice, huh?
The Niecelet – whose Scottish name is Ms. McFlea-McFly, is coming with him. She explains that she does not slouch. Nor eat nearly as much. This is good.
Did I mention the snow drop?
Another good thing: plum-apple sauce. And the ease of making such. And eating it out of the jar, by the spoonful.
The CIA has pictures on their Flickr (Wait – seriously. Let’s take a moment. The CIA has a Flickr account!?!? …Because???) of something like the Bug thingies in my science fiction novel. Yeah, I know!! How cool is that?
Just…swimming. And indoor pools with foggy glass ceilings on a cold morning.

DID I MENTION THE SNOW DROP???