The "Super Bowl of Debates"?

That is how wannabe California Governator Arnold Schwarzenegger labelled last night's lively forum featuring the so-called top candidates vying for Gov. Gray Davis' job in the re-rescheduled Oct. 7 recall election. ABC News reports that the debate was quite lively:

The moderator at one point said he was dizzy from the quick, loud and aggressive banter.

Schwarzenegger was criticized for supporting a divisive ballot initiative nine years ago that would have prevented services for the children of illegal immigrants.

Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, a Democrat, came under fire for taking millions of dollars in Indian casino money. Republican state Sen. Tom McClintock was told he had the facts backward on the economy, and independent Arianna Huffington was hit for barely paying income taxes.

Meanwhile, Green Party candidate Peter Camejo stayed above the fray, saying, "I'm trying to be respectful to everyone here."

The debate ranged from questions on balancing the budget, whether the car tax should be repealed and what to do about health care. The answers provided few surprises since the candidates have all staked out positions on the major issues.

But the diversity of views among the major candidates was amply displayed from Camejo's demands to tax the rich to McClintock's pledges never to raise taxes; from Bustamante's plea for driver's licenses for illegal immigrants to Schwarzenegger's insistence those licenses endanger California because they don't include background checks.

You can read a transcript of what what was said, courtesy of the San Francisco Chronicle.

To many, the fun -- or frightening -- part of the event was Schwarzenegger's attack on Independent candidate Arianna Huffington. As ABC News reports:

At one point, Schwarzenegger took a shot at Huffington for targeting the Bush administration as the source of the state's problems.

"If you want to campaign against Bush, go to New Hampshire," Schwarzenegger said.

The tension between the two peaked when Schwarzenegger began to cut Huffington off and she said, "This is the way you treat women, we know that. But not now."

Schwarzenegger replied, "I just realized that I have a perfect part for you in Terminator 4," getting laughs from the audience but a rebuff from the moderator.

After the debate, Huffington said the "Terminator 4" comment was an offensive reference to a scene from "Terminator 3" in which Schwarzenegger's character stuffs a female robot's head into a toilet.

"That was such a clear and ambiguous indication of what he really thinks of women," she said.

At Blogcritics, filmmaker, playwright, and former California gubernatorial candidate Brian Flemming (rightly) takes issue with Ah-nuld's scary show of misogyny:

I'm on record as not being too terribly concerned about Arnold's past orgies with men and/or women. As a former candidate for governor, I wouldn't want people to hold my past sexual excesses against me, either. Some stuff I don't even remember, but I'm pretty sure someone took pictures, so there's a glass-house thing going on here.

And in fairness, I'm sure lots of people at one point or another have wanted to shove Arianna Huffington's face into a toilet. And I'm not saying these private fantasies are, per se, wrong, in one's own head. There are no thought crimes. Whatever floats your boat, as long as it stays in your boat.

But this guy wants to be the governor of California. And he said this during a public debate.

Even if you find Arnold Schwarzenegger's casual misogyny amusing (I personally find it frightening), isn't there a fatal judgment problem here for a would-be governor?

I surely do. More frightening is the notion that this revolting movie star is one of California's top candidates for its top political job. My respect for Maria Shriver is at an all-time low.

"Super Bowl of Debates"? Nah. But let's hope the event brings some Californians to their senses. (NO on recall! NO on 54!)

from all facts and opinions

Binding and Beautiful, if Not Legal

Mazel tov and infinite happiness and blessings to singer Melissa Etheridge and her longtime partner, actor Tammy Lee Michaels. Earlier this year, the couple announced their engagement, and unlike Bennifer, they actually made it down the aisle. On Sept. 20, Etheridge and Michaels tied the knot, exchanging vows in a California ceremony.

The official statement from the brand-new Mrs. and Mrs.:

"We are so grateful for the blessings from our friends and family as we commence our vows, and begin the rest of our lives together."

Sounds like love and commitment to me. (Paying attention, Ben and Jen? How 'bout you, reality-show knot-tiers?)

A wee bit more on the star-studded nuptials from RainbowNetwork.com:

The ceremony attracted Hollywood`s A-list. Guests included Steven Spielberg and Kate Capshaw, Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson, Al and Tipper Gore, Jennifer Aniston (Brad was invited but is on location with Troy in Malta and couldn`t make it), Helen Hunt, Mike Myers, Sally Field, Ellen DeGeneres, Sheryl Crow, Christina Applegate and Kathy Najimy.

Etheridge wore a "candlelight pantsuit of a linen jacket with beaded accent and crepe trousers," while Michaels was attired in a lace coat "crystal embellished scalloped trim over a white matte jersey gown."

The duo exchanged matching, custom-made platinum and diamond bands designed by jeweller to the stars Rafinity.

Because Etheridge and Michaels got married within the US, and despite the fact that California now has a domestic-partnership law in place (which still denies "marriage" to queerfolk), the union means nothing in the eyes of the federal government. True romantics and decent humans have got to be happy for this terrific, loving pair, who indeed call themselves "married." After all, when two or more are gathered in God's name, there is love -- whatever the 'phobes and supremacists have to say about it.

Still, I would love to see them make it legal. Perhaps their next stop will be Canada... But whether the Etheridge-Michaels family takes a trip to the Great White North, ultimately, one of our best defenses against opponents to marriage equality for all is to ingore 'em and, if we so choose, to get married anyway.

from All Facts and Opinions

Labels

Did I ever mention how much I hate terms like 'depressive'? As in 'she's a depressive'? No? Well, consider yourselves told.

I have a disease called depression. But I am not that disease.

Let's imagine for a moment that I do accept the label of 'depressive'. There is something that acceptance which implies that I am my state of depression. The sentence 'I am a depressive' becomes as fundamental a statement about myself as 'I am a woman'. My depression becomes not a disease that I have or a state of mind, it becomes me.

I bought a book about depression yesterday with the intention of releasing it through BookCrossing. It was written by a doctor as a self-help book; something for people who are depressed to use as a guide when they are lost and in pain and unable to work out the first step to obtain help. Most of the information in it was well-written and would be helpful to the people it is trying to reach. But (and it's a big but!) there are 3 or 4 instances in the book where people describe themselves or others as 'depressives'.

Alison: My mother was a depressive. She was always, always in a bad mood. She was always snapping at us kids, always irritable... When I started developing symptoms... I finally understood what my mother had gone through, but at first I thought, 'Oh, no. I'm turning into that grouch.'

'Depressives' are grouchy, irritable and self-absorbed. They don't do anything to help themselves. They are miserable, and misery loves company. They are going to be depressed and miserable forever. They make the lives of those around them hell. 'Depressives' hang their head in shame, because they know that they have a character flaw. 'Depressives' use anti-depressants as 'crutches; if they really wanted to, they could pull their socks up, change their attitudes and get on with life. 'Depressives' are hopeless cases.

Depression is a difficult enough disease to cope with, without lumping all that shit on yourself. Why do it? Why allow yourself to be weighed down by labels?

I am not my depression. You are not your disease.

Depression is not a character flaw. Depression is bloody hard. Seeking help is not a weakness. Depression is not forever; it can be treated. Depression can be a hard slog. Living through depression takes endurance and strength.

update

Yeh, I finally deleted that rather unsightly post about me. I was going to leave it. I left it for a while so I could give it some serious thought. On further reflection, I decided to delete it. And so I did.

Jenna turns six in a week.

Onward.

McEwan's In Between the Sheets: Short, but strong, stories

The title of Ian McEwan's collection of seven short stories can be interpreted two ways. 'In between the sheets' could refer to what goes on between lovers or people involved in some other form of sexual congress. But, a writer almost automatically thinks of another kind of sheets -- paper. The title can also evoke what writers put on and between the sheets that lurch or pour from our computers. The book supports both interpretations.

Several of these short stories feature writers involved in the fight to write. One of the oddest is told from the perspective of the pet ape and former lover of a woman writer. She has achieved the kind of notoriety that sometimes strikes once for mediocre writers of pedestrian fiction. Her novel gave voice to the timely issue of infertility among otherwise healthy, middle-class couples. It became a flash-in-the-pan success in the market for commercial fiction. Her challenge is to write another book without the help of exceptionally good luck. As she slouches toward a return to obscurity, the writer briefly attempts either a diversion or the embrasure of a different kind of muse. She has a sexual relationship with her chimpanzee. The episode lasts only a week, but is the most important event in the intelligent animal's life. His inability to give voice to his desires becomes as suffocating as hers in "Reflections of a Kept Ape."

There isn't a writer in one of best of the seven selections, "Two Fragments: Saturday and Sunday, March 199-." However, the story is revealing of what a virtuoso like McEwan can do between the sheets. An unspecified apocalype, perhaps a nuclear war, has occurred, leaving British society bereft of housing, transportation, food and even water. Henry, the narrator, has managed to retain a low-level job as a government functionary, but society is degenerating into mayhem all around him, as people struggle to survive. Among his experiences is observing a man exploit his teenaged daughter to earn a few coins. Himself the father of a toddler, he is forced to consider just how far he will go to keep bread on the table and a roof over their heads. But, McEwan is too fine a writer to focus exclusively on the bleakness of life in a post-apocalyptic setting. He dares consider what people can risk doing for each other even when there are few resources and little chance of recompense.

In "Psychopolis," we are in the head of another writer. The British narrator is visiting the United States. He decides to explore what he has heard is one of America's most fascinating cities, Los Angeles. He lives a borrowed life there, from the flat he sublets to the friends he acquires, but feels ambivalent about. He finds the metropolis an exercise in excess and boredom. However, some of the people he observes and associates with catch and hold his attention. There's Mary, his immediate lover, who insists he chain her to his bed and not let her go for a weekend. George is the manager of the shop across the street, which specializes in party goods and rehabilitative care items -- wet bars and bedpans. Relationship-obsessed Terence is so malleable he will do anything to please the women he pursues, including urinate on himself in a public place. The protagonist decides L.A. is a city that represents the contemporary psyche gone awry. He experiences an epiphany -- rather than allow his life to become mired in the illusions and delusions he is observing, he must break away from the pattern of avoiding change he has fallen into.

Ian McEwan won the Booker Prize for his novel, Amsterdam, in 1988. His longer fiction benefits from the same unblinking observation of not so much what people say as what they do, that makes In Between the Sheets a book a reader will think about long after she has finished it. McEwan offers us a smorgasbord of stories that shows his range as a writer and whets one's appetite for more. His works are sometimes described as dark or even freakish because they intertwine the stuff of nightmares, daydreams and reality. McEwan is a British heir to Sherwood Anderson. If you find grotesquerie disturbing, he is not your cup of Earl Grey.

I acquired this book in one of the best ways possible. A pal who had read and enjoyed it passed it on. However, even if it means parting with a few dollars, I believe you will find McEwan's short stories worthwhile.

My civil rights blog, where I write about some of the books I've read, is Silver Rights.

the way I see it.

The legal disclaimer on this blog is good. You know? It's a good one. Elaine and I got feedback in developing it. We thought it spoke well to our mission while giving us some legal protection. We felt good that it protects children and minors most of all.

What it doesn't account for are those other areas, those greyer areas, like online harrassment.

Those essentially fall on our shoulders, and I guess ultimately my shoulders.

So this post is about me.

It's my responsibility to keep this blog a place safe for voice.

Safe. Huh. Talk about grey areas!

Does that mean we don't argue? Hell no. Does that mean it doesn't heat up? No way.

But it does mean we don't slander or harrass. Period.

When you know the laws, and when you know factually that someone posting here has violated those laws and seems to be making inroads toward re-violating them, you have to make a decision. You'd like everyone to think you made the decision not based on your own experience, but in regard to the bigger picture. The truth is, most will think what they want to think.

Ultimately, that's not the point.

The point is that I do care about this blog, and I do care about protecting my own ass legally as best I can out here in the land of little-knowns-for-certain.

That's the way I see it. And that's the way I'm making decisions on posting-privilege haves and have-nots on this blog.

Hope that sits well with the sisters.

Take a deep breath; exhale slowly; let it go.

Some people take to each other like oil and water; some like oil and flame. Even here on Blog Sisters. I've had a few conflagrations and confrontations myself. I'm a scrapper at heart and tend not to run from a good fight.

But sometimes it gets to the point at which I take a deep breath, exhale slowly, and re-read my favorite translation of #8 of the Tao Te Ching:

The highest good is like water.
Water gives life to the ten thousand things and does not strive.
It flows in places men reject and so is like the Tao.

In dwelling, be close to the land.
In meditation, go deep into the heart.
In dealing with others, be gentle and kind.
In speech, be true.
In ruling, be just.
In business, be competent.
In action, watch the timing.

No fight. No blame.

I don't practice Zen or anything close to it. But sometimes you just gotta let yourself exhale and let it go.

Eldest Williams sister murdered in California

The oldest of the five successful sisters from Compton, California, has been shot to death. Her two youngest siblings, Venus and Serena Williams, are known world-wide for their exceptional skills as tennis players. The older three girls, also tutored in tennis by their father, Richard, chose other professions.

COMPTON, Calif. (AP) - An older sister of tennis stars Venus and
Serena Williams was shot to death Sunday following a dispute in
suburban Los Angeles, authorities said.

Yetunde Price, 31, was with a man in a sport utility vehicle
shortly after midnight and ``somehow they had become involved in a
confrontation with the local residents,'' said Los Angeles County
Sheriff's Deputy Richard Pena.

Sheriff's deputies searching for three people believed to be
involved in the shooting surrounded a house in Compton at about 6
a.m., but it turned out to be empty.

No arrests had been made by midday.

WTA Tour spokesman Darrell Fry had no immediate comment.

Price was shot in the upper torso. Deputies on patrol heard the
gunshots and found Price, who was later pronounced dead at a
hospital. The man who had been with her in the SUV wasn't injured
and was being interviewed by authorities, Pena said.

Price was one of five Williams sisters who spent their early
years in Compton, a crime- and poverty-ridden community where gang
fighting has claimed many lives. Serena began playing tennis at age
5 1/2 on the neighborhood courts in Compton, coached by her father
Richard.

The family later moved to Florida, where Venus and Serena live
in Palm Beach Gardens. Richard and their mother Oracene are
divorced, and Price used her mother's maiden name.

Just last month, the young female African-American murder victim being discussed across the country was one of poet and critic Amiri Baraka's daughters, Shani. Deaths like these invariably send a chill through me because they remind me of the low value placed on the life of a woman of color in America. That includes the lives of women of color from prominent families. So far, none of my siblings have died violently. But, I know it could happen any time.

Note: My blog is Silver Rights.

Dear Lindsay,

oh, baby sister, i read your blog today.

fired from your job for your voice!

no one told you, did they? a clear, powerful, female, voice, is a threat to the status quo. and the status quo has a rather large army.

lemme tell you a story.

this is the story of a grrl who wandered onto a list called the EGR-Irregulars-she's pretty sure she got the address from 'The Cluetrain Manifesto.' she was shy, passionate, intrigued, invited, and naive. at first, her posts were timid; she was so afraid of her own voice. then, she started to laugh and cry. then, she left her job before she was fired for the fun she was having on her company's website, inspired by Mr. Locke's EGR list, and by Mr. Locke, and by her own sense of truth.

she fell in love. she took exotic trips to distant islands. she played, she wrote, she broke free of all the restraints. her posts became like gasoline, at times, with matches in the attachments. some loved her. most hated her. she didn't care. she had a voice.

she took another job. menial, some would say, at Walmart. she still had no idea that voices carry. management at that job read her postings regarding her new position in the toy department. they didn't know what to do with her. she summed up the corporate situation rather quickly and signed a forbidden union card and hell was unleashed on her.

of course, originally, they only knew of her union affiliations because of her postings to EGR-Irregulars. after they knew, she figured it didn't matter who knew, and she went on a full blown campaign to bring Walmart to the union.

somewhere in the middle of this, i remembered something Chris posted about having made his own mistakes and...'you have to make your own..." and then much later, on the phone, (how i hate the phone!) he said, "i can't help you."

he was correct; he couldn't help me. only i could.

now, where was i going with this, Lindsay? oh, yes. so far, i haven't made any mistakes out here on the net, despite what it may look like on the outside.

but you have.

in your blog you said, "Good bye."
++

While Waiting

Except for books and maybe music, I don't like shopping for anything. One reason for my dislike is the fact that I have to carry everything back home. Even if I take the bus (only run on the weekdays, darn it!) I have to walk several blocks. It wouldn't be so bad if the buses ran on the weekends and after 6 PM and if I didn't have the penchant for shopping in bulk--but there it is. Out in the middle of nowhere with the threat of winter hanging over your head (I saw an ominous sign proclaiming "Prepare for winter!" outside one of the newer grocery stores even though everything is still quite green) it's quite foolhardy not to be stocked up with the necessities.

"Not having a car sucks," commiserated a fellow bus passenger. He's absolutely right--with the way cities and towns are planned, everything spreading out thinly like an oil slick on water, it's impossible to get anywhere without some sort of vehicle. I could mooch off somebody else and hitch a ride with a friend but that strikes me as too dependent and freeloading. So I use what's available to me.

But cutting out the bus waiting would also cut out something else that is perhaps more important than convenience. Waiting is a forced time-out from the rest of the hectic world and for a couple of moments, I can take stock of myself and watch the world go by. Necessary stuff for the soul.

While I was waiting I observed some interesting people. There was an older woman dressed in trendy teeny-bopper clothes which exposed her midriff--tanned, wrinkly, fatty. A rather large young woman in a red blouse, black skirt, and blue shoes came by asking if the bus had passed by yet. She sat down on a bench and took out a wad of bills and began counting it with her brightly colored (and sharpened) nails. When she was finished, she showed pictures of her seven-year-old brother to the chain-smoking employees of the nearby store who were on break.

I saw two military men. Soldiers or marines or another division, I wasn't sure. They wore white caps and navy pants with a red stripe running down the sides. Their jackets were of a darker hue with gold buttons on the front. A white belt cinched the waist and yellow chevrons (denoting their rank?) decorated the arms. They looked so out of place in the busy parking lot with harried mothers, bouncing children, smirking teenagers, and old men carting out the latest power tools. Then I remembered there was a veteran's hospital nearby--ten, twenty minutes--and some news on public radio. An unscrupulous man had conned the hospital using someone else's identity, the identity of a man who had served during the Vietnam War, a man who was already dead.

Riding the bus isn't "cool", but then I would have missed overheard conversations. Another man lamented about his crumbling love life to some of his friends. His former girlfriend had taken up with a rival. "I think she's falling in love with him." Cynicism, dejection, resignation laced his voice. "But at least I get to see my two month old daughter whenever I want."

Cross-posted at Syaffolee.

DiVERSiONZ: Dionysus Jagger--It Has A Certain Ring To It

DiVERSiONZ: Dionysus Jagger--It Has A Certain Ring To It


There's a great story at Diversionz about Mick Jagger comparing himself to Dionysus. The Goddess is not surprised...she knew it all along!

In memory.

sex and the signifier

The slender Girl Power so agreeably shrink-wrapped by the Sex and The City phenom isn’t exactly the latest news. Since Candace Bushnell’s virtuoso dish debuted in 1994, gals in strappy sandals have wrecked a million bachelors and at least as many critics have popped their corks to toast this fashionable froth. Sex scribe Carrie Bradshaw, her genuine mink eyelashes and ravenous friends have fluttered into plain view and show every sign of remaining at least as culturally relevant as the Atkins Diet.
Scheduled to visit my country this month to promote her latest work “Trading Up”, Connecticut-bred Bushnell hit an eager feminine nerve when she began journeying through heartbreak, celebrity and uncomfortable footwear. Her clubby New York Observer column spawned both a book and an award winning television series. Candace and Carrie had the first, and arguably the most definitive, word in a feminism that waggled its hips to a mambo rather than a manifesto.
The Girls’ Own Manhattan described by Bushnell is burlesque, cheesy and broadly condemned by serious critics who own less than ten pairs of kitten heels. It is of course, not difficult to find fault with Sex and its satellites. Carrie, Ally McBeal or Renee Zellwegger’s recent turn as a Helen Gurley Brown type in Down With Love are well-dressed heroines who might do well to wise up just a little. How these uber waifs manage to hold down a job when each of them spends so much time hunting for shoes and unsuitable men is anyone’s guess.
If one uses popular culture as a guide, it seems that the aughties girl like to collect men, money and Manolo Blahniks. The post-modern Miss is shallow, neurotic and buoyed only by her attachments to other shallow and neurotic women. The new sisterhood is one entirely staffed by petty princesses with platinum credit and is really not the kind of female bonding you might imagine the suffragettes originally had in mind.
Surely all that marching, bellowing and brick throwing generated more than a woman’s right to whine.
Despite accusations that Sex and sisters is feminism turned bad, the sassy new man-eater has developed from fiction to fact.
An armada of “self help” books for women has followed in the wake of Ally, Carrie, Bridget et al. Sex and The City’s Executive Producer Cindy Chupack has her “Between Boyfriends” book of comic essays just released in the US. Publishers clamour to sign works with a similarly sassy failed-relationship edge.
Reality TV Programs like The Bachelor, Joe Millionaire and Australia’s own fabulous dorm room disaster Single Girls are all driven by the anguish of gorgeous girls who fail to find and please their Mr. Big. It’s the disasters in love, not the heartening successes, which entice a large, primarily female audience to tune in and, presumably, gloat.
The spectacle of couples breaking up is now used to market everything from noodles to furniture to the yellow pages. The message is clear: getting dumped or staying single sells. Particularly to women.
The Fashion-forward, elegantly unhappy sexpot crawled out of early nineties newsprint and now, it seems, she is everywhere. She can be easily viewed as a stubborn challenge to feminism and as one who inanely measures her self-worth by proposals of marriage and Balenciaga gowns.
Bushnell’s creation has often been called post-feminist. It is also possible to view Sex and co as a retort to other forces entirely. Rather than post-feminist, the momentum and success of the series could be equally viewed as Post-Meaning, or even Post-Prozac.
Carrie Bradshaw is wildly materialistic and boy crazy. That’s not her problem. Her real flaw, and her real appeal, is her melancholy.
Carrie displays problems with intimacy, hostility without reason and the inability to concentrate for a period lasting longer than fashion week. If Vogue Living selected a poster-child for mild clinical depression, it would be Carrie. Bushnell seized upon all the symptoms for which anti-depressants were devised and has transformed them into a heroine for our chronically cranky age.
In the bleak Bradshaw Manhattan as in a great deal of current pop culture, sign-posts are regularly upended. There is no reliable road-map to happiness and a boyfriend has as little chance of surviving a season with his status intact as any other trophy.
Everything is disposable, everything is interchangeable and everything is destined to leave the new Heroine relatively unmoved.
Sarah Jessica Parker’s Carrie may very well spend most of her screen time chasing men, alienating men and flouncing about in brief tulle outfits that men might find appealing. The true Carrie aficionado knows, however, that no man can boast an appeal or longevity that beats a pair of new season Jimmy Choos.

Study shows environment trumps genetics for poor kids

George Kelly of All About George, a supporter of Silver Rights from its very first week, alerted me to some good news this week. New research reveals poor black children are impacted more by their environments than by genetic endowments, something I've believed all along.

Back-to-school pop quiz: Why do poor children, and especially black poor children, score lower on average than their middle-class and white counterparts on IQ tests and other measures of cognitive performance?

It is an old and politically sensitive question, and one that has long fueled claims of racism. As highlighted in the controversial 1994 book The Bell Curve, studies have repeatedly found that people's genes -- and not their environment -- explain most of the differences in IQ among individuals. That has led a few scholars to advance the hotly disputed notion that minorities' lower scores are evidence of genetic inferiority.

Now a groundbreaking study of the interaction among genes, environment and IQ finds that the influence of genes on intelligence is dependent on class. Genes do explain the vast majority of IQ differences among children in wealthier families, the new work shows. But environmental factors -- not genetic deficits -- explain IQ differences among poor minorities.

Eric Turkheimer, a psychologist at the University of Virginia, decided to look beyond the conventional wisdom and lack thereof. He wondered if the bleakness of many poor children's environments might need to be addressed before jumping to conclusions about their innate ability -- a rather obvious inquiry if one is not blinded by bias. He concludes "the influence of genes on IQ was significantly lower in conditions of poverty, where environmental deficits overwhelm genetic potential." The study will be published in the November edition of the scholarly journal Psychological Science.

A colleague of Turkheimer's explains why this research matters.

"This paper shows how relevant social class is" to children's ability to reach their genetic potential, said Sandra Scarr, a professor emerita of psychology now living in Hawaii, who did seminal work in behavioral genetics at the University of Virginia.

Specifically, the heritability of IQ at the low end of the wealth spectrum was just 0.10 on a scale of zero to one, while it was 0.72 for families of high socioeconomic status. Conversely, the importance of environmental influences on IQ was four times stronger in the poorest families than in the higher status families.

"This says that above a certain level, where you have a wide array of opportunities, it doesn't get much better" by adding environmental enhancements, Scarr said. "But below a certain level, additional opportunities can have big impacts."

Those of us who grew up among the disadvantaged already know that neither poor children nor low-income adults are stupid in general. Instead, their skills tend to fit their surroundings and what society suggests they are capable of. A boy who could just as easily have become an engineer with adequate educational opportunities and encouragement sets his eye on the unlikely goal of basketball stardom instead. A girl of modest vocal ability develops an unrealistic notion of becoming the next pop diva, though her real strength is empathy for others and she would make an excellent nurse or social worker. Many of the people in the demographic simply become inured to academic failure early and stop trying, as Dr. Benjamin Carson, one of the most respected neurosurgeons in the world, says he did for a time.

Fortunately, most people in Bloggersville are not so insecure that they run screaming from the thought of black people being just as intelligent as any other group.

Tapped gets it:

Stated simply, the study found that environmental factors loom much larger in the development of children when they have a low socioeconomic status, and much smaller when they have a high one. What this suggests is that for people on the lower end of the totem pole, a bad environment -- that is, high rates of crime, concentrated poverty, crumbling schools -- can overwhelm those otherwise predisposed to high achievement, while people born into a more positive environment, with a wide array of opportunities, are more likely to get a chance to express their natural gifts and abilities. This makes sense intuitively, but it also has some precedent in the natural world.

Rick Heller of Smart Genes, also a strong supporter of this blog, suggests additional reading on the topic of heritability, H. Allen Orr's review of Matt Ridley's Nature via Nurture: Genes, Experience, and What Makes Us Human.

Part of the significance of Turkheimer's study is that it will lead to others which will hopefully bolster the realization that tangible intervention in the lives of poor children can improve their lives for the longrun. Contrary to the delusional thinking of white supremacists, a child who reads well at seven will not have forgotten how at 27 because of the melanin content of his skin. When I was a poor child in Lumbee land, my third grade teacher, Ms. Ross, took it upon herself to supply me with books for the rest of my elementary school career. Though I learned to read at four and had jaw-droppingly high IQ scores, our home held little that was stimulating for bright children, as all five of us were. I believe that kind of intervention, on a large scale, and not out of a schoolteacher's wallet, can make a difference. If real reform comes, the entire society will reap its rewards.

Note: A longer version of his entry originally appeared at Silver Rights, a weblog focusing on civil rights and related issues.

I Kissed a Girl

A wee bit belated, to be sure, but family matters have kept me occupied of late.

All around the blog world, folks expended much energy commenting about the display of three pop divas -- one mature, the others comparative young'uns -- at the recent MTV Video Awards. Apparently, a lot of people were grossed out, amused, and/or turned on by the sight of Madonna snogging Britney Spears and "Dirrrty" Christina Aguilera. Frankly, I found the Madge-Brit kiss pretty hot; the other liplock less so. Whatever, it was harmless -- harmless, people! A kiss is just a kiss, you know.

But a couple of thoughts:

1. Can you say "publicity stunt"? Shame on MTV for exploiting the God-given beauty and dignity of women-loving-women for filthy lucre, ratings points, and media mentions.
   
   
2. Real women don't kiss other women for the purpose of arousing men.
   
   
3. That said, I loved the stony expression on Spears' ex Justin "No comment!" Timberlake's face. Didn't he cry himself a river? Isn't he over Britney and rocking his body with movie star Cameron Diaz now? Man, was that funny.
   
   
4. Did I mention that the Madonna-Britney buss was hot?
   
   
5. Next time, I suggest JT and Nelly pucker up. Now, that would be must-see teevee.

But good old-fashioned ignorance and squeamishness motivated many of those who freaked out at the "shocking" sight of the internationally broadcast girl-on-girl smooches. Case in point: The Atlanta Journal Constitution.

The Associated Press reports that the AJC is now apologizing for running a tiny photo of the Britney-Madonna buss on its front page. Sounds like a combination of right-wing sucking up and homophobe coddling to me.

The picture, not much bigger than a postage stamp, was near the top of Friday's front page. It showed Spears and Madonna in an open-mouth kiss they shared at the MTV Video Music Awards the night before.

A larger version of the picture appeared in the Living section.

The sloppy kiss picture elicited a deluge of complaints to the newspaper. In Monday's editions, managing editor Hank Klibanoff apologized and said the picture should have run, but not on the front page.

Klibanoff compared the picture to graphic images from the war in Iraq and said sometimes the significance of an important event can justify publishing a photo that may offend some readers.

But Klibanoff said the kiss photo did not meet that standard.

I agree, the MTV awards are not significant. But thumbnail photos are often used on front pages to tease feature and entertainment stories contained within the newspaper. Fact is: The MTV broadcast was news. The prime interest in the story (even for homo-haters) was the kiss (lord knows MTV shows precious few videos anymore), so teasing a much-talked about story using the story's main "grabber" makes sense. As for editor Klibanoff's comparing two women kissing and Dubya Bush's murderous invasion of Iraq in terms of gross-out quotient, well, this embarrassment to journalism and humanity must be losing his flippin' mind. I'd rather my kids see love rather than "war" any day of the week.

I wonder: Would he have made the same move had the kiss photo featured Britney and Justin or Madonna and spouse Guy Ritchie? I doubt it. So again we see a media outlet singling out same-sex-issues for separate-but-unequal treatment. Now, that's sick. Agree? Send a letter to AJC's editor.

appeared in slightly different form on all facts and opinions

Freedom and Safety

In a neighborhood near you, Attorney General Ashcroft preaching the virtues of fascism. Well, not exactly, but might we say the march towards fascism?

Follow this link to read more then draw your own conclusions.

Buy Drugs, Get Deported

slide

after a week of playing like children, and eating like children, and crying like children, giggling like children, and kissing behind doors like children, they were alone.

he extended a glass of champagne to her, offering, "salut. you survived the playground."

she reached for the flute as the little strap on her shoulder slid down close to her elbow before she caught it, knowing that in a moment, her clothes would be quickly undone by those masculine hands.

she stopped him, "you know, you have never removed my clothes, proper."

"'no, i haven't," he laughed, "and i am not about to start now."
++

Laptops: The best of the batch

I purchased my first laptop, an Apple PowerBook 165c in 1995. I moved to laptops full-time in 1999. Except for a brief romance with an iMac, I haven't been tempted to return to the ball and chain known as a desktop computer. During that eight-year period, I've usually had two laptops at a time, often a Mac and something Wintel.

As a somewhat petite woman, I found early laptops heavy and sometimes developed an ache in my shoulder. However, current models, which can weigh as little as four pounds, have solved that problem, along with backpack and shoulderbag carrying cases that are more ergonomic.

Currently, forty percent of purchasers of new computers buy notebooks. Laptops constitute the only growing segment of the market. If you are interested in scoring a first -- or second or third -- laptop, now is as good a time as any to buy.

This month's edition of Laptop Magazine rates the top WiFi embellished notebooks, i.e., those that come ready for use away from a phoneline out of the box. The winners are:

Apple 12-inch PowerBook G4

Averatec 3150P

Compaq Business Notebook nc4000

Dell Latitude D400

Fijitsu LifeBook P5000

Gateway 200XL

IBM Thinkpad T40

Sharp Actius PC-MV14

Sony VAIO PCG-TR1A

Toshiba Portege M100

The Dell Latitude D400 and the Gateway 200XL were selected as best buys. There is considerable variation among the computers, though most boast large hard drives and reasonably fast CPUs. Some are the current standard 802.11b compatible. Others, such as the Dell Latitude D400, come with 802.11g. Since most access points have yet to be updated, bleeding edge WiFi users will often find their speeds throttled back to 802.11b's. I was pleased to see the Apple PowerBook G4 included on the list, since Apple products are often overlooked in the general technology press, though it is lauded mainly for style, not utility.

Note: A version of this entry appeared at Mac-a-ro-nies.

funeral for a friend

in approximately seven days it will be September 11, 2003. two years ago, on that day, a wife lost a husband, two boys lost a Father, and i lost a life long friend.

his name is Christopher Newton.

today, i finally did it. i searched google for Chris. i searched once before, but couldn't bring myself to read what i found. today, i read. today, i mourned. just like i mourned on this day in 2001, knowing what was coming down. oh god. why didn't my government stop it? why didn't their government stop it? if i knew it was coming, why didn't they? ask anyone around on the net. i predicted it with horrifying detail. ask Bird. ask Lars. ask ChrisJ.

i am still so devastated because i knew and no one would listen and it could have been prevented and Chris would still be alive. i have nightmares about him on that plane. i knew him. he was only helping other people. he was holding their hands and praying and 'loving them home.'

god this hurts. goddam motherfucking moronic governments! i no longer believe in you. democracy is a school child's fable.
++

p.s. to President Bush and his allies in this treason against humanity, i forgive you. i hate you, but i forgive you. FWIW-i call myself a Christian. what global law will eventually do with you is out of my sphere...
++

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

this is an excerpt from the first novel by Mark Haddon. he is fifteen years old. he is an autistic. he is 11th on the NY Times Bestsellers. he really gets inside my head. if you're interested in the life and times of an autistic, i have a new blog-smartretards.blogspot.com. i also highly recommend the current issue of Newsweek regarding autism.
++

AND ONE DAY Julie sat down at a desk next to me and put a tube of Smarties on the desk, and she said, “Christopher, what do you think is in here?”
And I said, “Smarties.”
Then she took the top off the Smarties tube and turned it upside down and a little red pencil came out and she laughed and I said, “It’s not Smarties, it’s a pencil.”
Then she put the little red pencil back inside the Smarties tube and put the top back on.
Then she said, “If your mummy came in now and we asked her what was inside the Smarties tube, what do you think she would say?” because I used to call Mother Mummy then, not Mother.
And I said, “A pencil.”
That was because when I was little I didn’t understand about other people having minds. And Julie said to Mother and Father that I would always find this very difficult. But I don’t find this difficult now. Because I decided that it was a kind of puzzle, and if something is a puzzle there is always a way of solving it.
It’s like computers. People think computers are different from people because they don’t have minds, even though, in the Turing test, computers can have conversations with people about the weather and wine and what Italy is like, and they can even tell jokes.

But the mind is just a complicated machine.

And when we look at things we think we’re just looking out of our eyes like we’re looking out of little windows and there’s a person inside our head, but we’re not. We’re looking at a screen inside our heads, like a computer screen.

And you can tell this because of an experiment which I saw on TV in a series called “How the Mind Works.” And in this experiment you put your head in a clamp and you look at a page of writing on a screen. And it looks like a normal page of writing and nothing is changing. But after a while, as your eye moves round the page, you realize that something is very strange because when you try to read a bit of the page you’ve read before it’s different.

And this is because when your eye flicks from one point to another you don’t see anything at all and you’re blind. And the flicks are called saccades. Because if you saw everything when your eye flicked from one point to another you’d feel giddy. And in the experiment there is a sensor which tells when your eye is flicking from one place to another, and when it’s doing this it changes some of the words on the page in a place where you’re not looking.

But you don’t notice that you’re blind during saccades because your brain fills in the screen in your head to make it seem like you’re looking out of two little windows in your head. And you don’t notice that words have changed on another part of the page because your mind fills in a picture of things you’re not looking at at that moment.

And people are different from animals because they can have pictures on the screens in their heads of things which they are not looking at. They can have pictures of someone in another room. Or they can have a picture of what is going to happen tomorrow. Or they can have pictures of themselves as an astronaut. Or they can have pictures of really big numbers. Or they can have pictures of Chains of Reasoning when they’re trying to work something out.

And that is why a dog can go to the vet and have a really big operation and have metal pins sticking out of its leg but if it sees a cat it forgets that it has pins sticking out of its leg and chases after the cat. But when a person has an operation it has a picture in its head of the hurt carrying on for months and months. And it has a picture of all the stitches in its leg and the broken bone and the pins and even if it sees a bus it has to catch it doesn’t run because it has a picture in its head of the bones crunching together and the stitches breaking and even more pain.

And that is why people think that computers don’t have minds, and why people think that their brains are special, and different from computers. Because people can see the screen inside their head and they think there is someone in their head sitting there looking at the screen, like Captain Jean-Luc Picard in “Star Trek: The Next Generation” sitting in his captain’s seat looking at a big screen. And they think that this person is their special human mind, which is called a homunculus, which means a little man. And they think that computers don’t have this homunculus.

But this homunculus is just another picture on the screen in their heads. And when the homunculus is on the screen in their heads (because the person is thinking about the homunculus) there is another bit of the brain watching the screen. And when the person thinks about this part of the brain (the bit that is watching the homunculus on the screen) they put this bit of the brain on the screen and there is another bit of the brain watching the screen. But the brain doesn’t see this happen because it is like the eye flicking from one place to another and people are blind inside their heads when they do the changing from thinking about one thing to thinking about another.

And this is why people’s brains are like computers. And it’s not because they are special but because they have to keep turning off for fractions of a second while the screen changes. And because there is something they can’t see people think it has to be special, because people always think there is something special about what they can’t see, like the dark side of the moon, or the other side of a black hole, or in the dark when they wake up at night and they’re scared.

Also people think they’re not computers because they have feelings and computers don’t have feelings. But feelings are just having a picture on the screen in your head of what is going to happen tomorrow or next year, or what might have happened instead of what did happen, and if it is a happy picture they smile and if it is a sad picture they cry.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” by Mark Haddon, Copyright © 2003 by Mark Haddon. Excerpted by permission of Doubleday, a division of Random House Inc.

© 2003 Newsweek, Inc.

Learning from our elders

I had something of an epiphany today when following a link from sysrick.com that led me to a post on Italian living.

You must read the article to be able to put this post into context, but it makes me realize that 1) America does not have a monopoly on escapism; and 2) it actually could get worse here without life on Earth coming to an end.

It could just get worse, and worse, and worse, for thousands of years. We could just stay in an ever more drunken stupor, with more alcohol and heroine and crystal meth, plus think of all the new drugs we will create to soothe an ever more despairing public. We will get TV that is even more flashy, more exciting and violent, with quick cuts that only require we be able to follow a thought for 1 second instead of 3. We could ...

Oh, gee. Please people, let's not. Let's figure out a new way to combine the tribal wisdom of community and present-centerdness with an expanded modern appreciation for planning ahead. Let's wed peace of mind with running water. Let's balance individual freedom with collective responsibility and its cousin self-restraint. Having done this, let's create a revolution without guilliotines in which the regal sovreigns of the invisible global wealth "nation" are finally removed from power and the will of we common people guides our destiny.

that man pleasing siren!

today i tuned in again to The View with Barbara Walters et al. I've been thinking alot about Elaine's comments regarding male beauty ideals and her opinion that Ms. Walters serves to fulfill them.

i just don't see it. Ms. Walters is dressed conservatively, albeit prettily. certainly she has the right to choose colors that flatter and please her, just as a man chooses his ties for the same reason. for a person on television, she doesn't wear very much make-up; there are younger women on news shows wearing far more paint and far less clothing.

nor do i see that she rivals Joan Rivers for...facelifts or whatever. i see a woman who takes good care of herself, seems to be in great physical health, and is an example of the energy and vitality a woman is capable of at any age.

if i look that good, stand up as straight, and carry myself with such dignity when i am seventy years of age, i will no doubt be taken to task for my man pleasing ways, and happily so! if i do fulfill a male ideal of beauty, it is only because i please myself first.
++

gun for hire

tonight i lost my virginity. i was blushed in the cheeks, and soft in the eyes, but i did it.

i held a Colt 45 Revolver, c. 1965. a new friend of mine named Tim is the owner of this exotic, untouched, fear of mine.

i volunteered for the experience after he promised me that there were no bullets in his house.

Tim revealed the empty chamber of the gun to me, and placed the Colt in my hands like a baby.

it was heavy! the mother of pearl handle was pristine and inviting to hold, but the very idea of holding a weapon sorta freaked me out.

Tim instructed me to hold the barrel to the floor even if the gun isn't loaded. loaded! i was holding an instrument of violence. my stomach turned. me, the peace monger, with a gun in her hand.

i asked academic questions about velocity and the kind of metal used in the gun and the heritage of owners, never feeling okay with the weight of destruction in my grasp.

finally, after Tim showed me how to raise the weapon and aim, i begged release from the experience, and he understood. i talked with him about being a citizen of the world and he talked with me about the right to bear arms.

a peace talk. an investment in the future.

after my heart returned to my body, we conversed about a great many things. education and drugs and farming and the economy. we shared a glass of wine and we began to trust one another.

and then i returned to the fortress i share with Roberto where the knives are barely sharp enough to slice into a watermelon.
++

flattery will get you.....

Roberto and i had such a fun day! he took a day off and we went to our local mainstreet where i could hit the vintage and thrift stores!

bliss.

while i rummaged for treasures, he watched the U.S. Open at the best Italian place in town, chomping on freshly made pizza and drinking cerveza.

back home, i modeled my fall fashion finds. a pair of slim black pants and snug black turtleneck with little ballet flats. for the show, i slid a bit of red lipstick on.

"Audrey Hepburn!" Roberto exclaimed at my entrance. mmmmmmm. Audrey Hepburn. who cares if it isn't true. it's the thought that counts.

i slipped into a deep brown wide whale skirt from J. Crew. and a perfectly matched turtle. mmmmmm. "Grace Kelly!" Roberto exclaimed, pulling me down on the bed. who cares if it isn't true. it's the thought that counts.

i look at his brown skin. i look into his eyes. i ask him about the suffrage. is that spelled correctly? we relate. the Mexican- American man and the 'white' woman.

why are we invited to the game so late?
++

Equality, Hell - how about Reparations?

I found the following statistics on The Feminist Majority Foundation site today

On this planet, right now:

1,500 women die from causes related to pregnancy and childbirth every day

A woman's risk of dying in childbirth: 1 in 25 to 40 in developing countries,
1 in 3,000 in developed countries.

Source: 1994 World Survey on the Role of Women in Development


75% of refugees and displaced persons are women and children.

Source: Wistat, 1994 & UNHCR

Out of 1.3 billion people living in absolute poverty, 70% are women.

More than one million babies die each year from malnutrition, neglect and abuse who would not have died if they had not been born girls

Source: Education Working Group, UNICEF

In America today:

One woman is physically abused every eight seconds
One woman is raped every six minutes .

Source: National Center on Women and Family Law, USA, 1988/New York Times, 19 October 1994

Domestic violence is the number one cause of serious injury to women ages 18-49.

At the current rate of progress, it would take 475 years for women to reach equality with men as senior managers.

Source: 1994 World Survey on the Role of Women in Development, United Nations 1995

US Bureau of Labor Statistics:
Women constitute almost 47 percent of this country’s labor force,
There are only six Fortune 500 women CEOs

According to statistics released by the US Census Bureau on September 25, 2001

For every 1 Dollar earned by White men:

White women working full-time earn only 73 cents
African-American women earn only 65 cents
Latina women earn only 53 cents

So on today, Women's Equality Day, I'd like to make a modest proposal. Since our society can't protect us - 1 in 3 women will be victims of sexual abuse in their lives; and won't promote us; and most of all isn't paying us for the work we do, why not cut to the chase. Instead of proclamations and pats on the head and the kind of placating that Bill Maher calls "making women nod", how about one simple concrete solution. I want reparations.

Now, the African-American community has talked about reparations for a while. The problem with paying reparations for slavery is that the people who were enslaved are no longer alive, so even if we all agree that reparations are in order, there's a very real difficulty in figuring out how much to pay and to whom. Not so with Gender Gap Reparations.

I propose a two step plan. First, take all of the Social Security records for every living woman in the United States and get her total lifetime earnings. If she's white, add 27%; Black, 35%, Hispanic, 47% and for those of us who don't fit into any of those categories - Native Americans, Asians, etc - we'll take the Latina rate of 47%.
Take the money out of the bloated, bullshit defense budget, and pay us . I mean send my check right now. I've worked with defense contracts, and believe me, there's more fat than fight in that budget. You could do twice the work for half the money with a bit of common sense and some basic good business practices. Tighten your belts, boys - we've been doing it for years.

Ok, so Step One is done and no one is the poorer for it. Step Two is going to be a little harder. Well, not really harder - just unpopular. Step Two is simply give every woman currently employed a raise in the percentage already discussed for each group. Business is not going to like this idea, so let's put it into perspective:

If the minimum wage had risen at the same level pace as executive pay since 1990, it would be $25.50 an hour, not $5.15.
http://www.raisethefloor.org/press_bostonglobe.html

So you can pay our girls the $6.67, 6.96, and 7.58 (based on $5.15 minimum wage) and yes, for Goddess' sake round up or you can pay us all the 25.50 an hour we'd be making if you corporate raiders weren't skimming off the top. We're willing to be reasonable, and frankly, it's more than you deserve.

So what do you think?

Peace.

Arnold in the nude: Bonus or bane?

Filmmaker and blogger Brian Flemming has posted a picture of California gubernatorial candidate Arnold Schwarzenegger in the all-together on his weblog. Brian believes that posing nude contradicts Schwarzenegger's conservative political views. Pollsters say the candidate has a gender gap problem, with less support among women voters. I am wondering what, if any impact, publication of the photo in the blogosphere and elsewhere, and discussion of Schwarzenegger's allegedly racy ways with women, will have on this candidacy or future runs for office. Though I disapproved of Bill Clinton's sexual irresponsibility, it didn't make me less of a supporter of him politically. Will the same reasoning be applied to Schwarzenegger?

Since women are the demographic he needs to attract, let me know what you, members of Blog Sisters, think.

Oh, feel free to sneak a peek.

Note: I publish Silver Rights, a blog focusing on civil rights and related topics.

Spreading Democracy - one voice at a time

A week ago Arab music lovers got to take their turn at the American Idol craze and for many of them exercise their first right to vote. As reported by the BBC, millions called in to vote for their pick for a singing superstar.

Now that these millions have gotten their first taste of the thrill of selecting one's own representatives, albeit pop cultural not political, I think we can anticipate a much stronger hunger for increasing democratic progress than was achieved by any of Bush's military bullying.

Let's see, bombs or telephones? Hmm. Tough choice.

- - Originally posted on Indigo Ocean

the lady is a grrl

suddenly i am the victim of one of those silly summer colds that makes no sense given the bright blue sky, warm breezes, and late sunsets. Roberto stocked me up with all the usual suspects. juice, water, aspirin, tissue....pringles...red licorice.

but enough about me.

i am watching my favorite grrl, Barbara Walters, on "The View," and as always, i am just good-old-fashioned impressed.

as a young girl, i watched her venture out into the field, conducting interviews no other journalist could get. i watched her as she was hammered for earning a decent paycheck. and perhaps most importantly, i watched her face her critics with dignity, and dare i say in this modern world, the manners of a true lady.

'The View' today was a repeat. Bill O'Reilly was on, and there was Barbara challenging him in her quietly intelligent, carefully considered way, never becoming flustered or attacking. her calm and poise encouraged the other women on 'The View' to challenge him as well. O'Reilly came off as emotional rather than thoughtful.

the amazing thing about Barbara now, is her willingness to support and cheer other women on. well, there is one more amazing thing. damn, she looks good! is she really seventy years of age?
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Baghdad Burning

Riverbend describes her experiences of how fundamentalist Muslims are taking life back to the Dark Ages for women in Iraq. An extremely interesting blog, already publicized by the infamous Salam Pax, it's worth a regular read for anyone interested in what's going on during the occupation/reconstruction by the U.S. from a female perspective. The post illustrates how bringing peace, freedom and propserity to a country is often much more complex than simply removing an evil dictator from power.

Fathers and mothers are keeping their daughters stashed safe at home. That’s why you see so few females in the streets (especially after 4 pm). Others are making their daughters, wives and sisters wear a hijab. Not to oppress them, but to protect them.

...Men in black turbans (M.I.B.T.s as opposed to M.I.B.s) and dubious, shady figures dressed in black, head to foot, stand around the gates of the bureau in clusters, scanning the girls and teachers entering the secondary school. The dark, frowning figures stand ogling, leering and sometimes jeering at the ones not wearing a hijab or whose skirts aren’t long enough. In some areas, girls risk being attacked with acid if their clothes aren’t ‘proper’.

'Missing' part of King's speech recalled

Yesterday, many Americans went to our nation's capitol to honor one of the finest orations in American history.

Thousands of people gathered in Washington Saturday to mark the 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King's I Have a Dream speech, a defining moment in the struggle for civil rights and racial equality in the United States.

Forty years ago 250,000 people marched on Washington, calling the nation's attention to the injustice and discrimination black Americans faced because of the color of their skin.

Standing below the towering statue of the Lincoln Memorial, Dr. Martin Luther King delivered an eloquent call for equality at a time when blacks in the United States were banned from many public schools, forced to eat in separate restaurants and had to pay taxes and pass literacy tests to vote.

Comedian and civil rights activist Dick Gregory has a novel view of Dr. Martin Luther King's famous speech, according to columnist Clarence Page.

WASHINGTON -- I am more than halfway into ABC News anchor Peter Jennings' excellent documentary on Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream" speech when I hear comedian-activist Dick Gregory get to the real reason why millions of TV viewers watched King's speech: A lot of people feared there was going to be "trouble."

"And why did white folks look at it?" Gregory says. Not because they wanted to hear what black people had to say. "They thought it was going to be a bloodbath. They thought it was going to be violence and so they listened all the way to the end."

According to Gregory, the networks probably would not have gotten much of an audience if they simply announced that "we have a very eloquent Negro that's going to give a very eloquent speech, we want you to listen."

I was not available to record anything at the time, but Page was, and he vouches for the at least partial accuracy of Gregory's observation. The entire country was on edge and there was even talk of declaring martial law. Many African-Americans, in both the North and South, were just plain fed up.

All three networks covered the speech live. I was a high schooler in southern Ohio and did not have a huge interest in world events. But I watched every minute of King's speech. Racial segregation was still legal. My parents could not take me to certain amusement parks, hotels or restaurants. When we traveled far, we slept in our car. The only difference for us in the North was that we could ride in the front of the bus and we didn't have "white" and "colored" signs.

Page asserts that King's own mood in the speech encompassed that anger and disgust, though it has receded from memory in subsequent years. The great man wrote, unabashedly, of African-Americans as a group of people cheated by America -- sent a check not backed by funds.

The columnist observes that the second, more optimistic part of King's speech is what is usually applauded by Americans, including those who oppose most mechanisms to achieve racial equality, now.

And it is King's vision of a better society that Americans and the world remember today far more widely than they remember the sense of debt and "obligation" that he references in the early part of his speech. Everybody, it seems, would like to see a free, just and equalized society. We only argue about how to get there.

That tendency leads some people to speak of ways to achieve King's dream that run precisely counter to what King actually wanted. The fight for "color-blindedness" should not make us blind to reality.

. . .In fact, King believed Americans would have to be quite color-conscious in order to achieve his dream. Otherwise, we would have no way to measure our progress.

I find Page's interpretation of King's I Have a Dream speech convincing. To have championed equality while ignoring the work needed to achieve it would have been stupid and Dr. King was not a stupid man. I believe he envisioned a future in which people of color would finally receive payment of the debt owed them, instead of being cheated again by by a society that pretends to be color-blind, but is not.

A year after his original speech, Martin Luther King won the Nobel Peace Prize and the U.S. Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The law made segregation in public places illegal, required employers to provide equal work opportunities and protected every American's right to vote.

In 1968 Dr. King was assassinated as he stood on the balcony of a motel room in Memphis, Tennessee.

All these years later, the debt still remains unpaid.

Read Page's column and form an opinion of your own.

Note: A version of this entry was published at Silver Rights, a weblog focusing on civil rights and related issues.

Solitaire's the Only Game in Town

Cross-posted on Dervala.net. On a wilderness hike last week I was struck by the reaction of women tourists I met along the way. They seemed to be alternately drawn to and fearful of the prospect of being alone in the woods for a few days. Is solitude really that scary, or is it just the bears?

5pm, Day Four of the Coastal Trail. I am limping towards the old Agawa Lodge by the mouth of the Agawa River near the highway. A few more hours before I reach my cabin. A blond family comes out of the trees. They've been down on the riverbank and are heading back to the SUV. Mum interrogates me as we share the path.
  “Are you hiking the Coastal Trail?”
Yep. I shrug awkwardly to shunt my pack around on sore shoulders.
“The whole thing?”
  “Yes, except for the bit north of Gargantua.”
  “How long has it taken you?”
  “This is day four.”
  “And you're by yourself?”
I want to say, not any more, but instead I grunt again.
  “And you're not lonely or scared?”
Nope.
  “Do you see that, girls?” she says to her tweenies. She turns back to me. “We think you're very brave.”

There were just two other hikers going my way on the Coastal Trail that day. At several points, the trail crosses touristed day-use areas, mostly beaches. I dreaded them. These were the paradise days at Lake Superior--85°F, no humidity, lapping, lappable water. People stretched out like cats on a car bonnet, warming themselves at last in Northern Ontario. I was a curiosity, stepping out of the woods, picking my way across boulders to get to the beach instead of strolling in from the car park. Burdened and sweaty, wearing boots on fine sand. And alone.

I was stopped every time by people--mostly women--who wanted to confirm I was really hiking alone. Once a man on a deckchair shouted “Hey, the guys you're with are way ahead. Did you arrange a meeting spot?” I may be looking for the wistfulness behind the questions. But after a few days it seemed strange that women who had experienced so much more than me--childbirth, childrearing, passing a driving test--could hardly dare imagine spending a night alone in a tent in the wilderness. Was it physical fear, of bears, attackers or getting lost, or breaking an ankle on a mossy rock far from help? Fear of not being able to heft a pack, climb a boulder, build a fire? Fear of solitude and silence? Fear, or hope, that families or lovers could not survive without them?

  "You're so brave." This embarrasses me. I'm not brave at all. I'm a fearful chicken who screams at loud noises. Truth is, a blazed North American trail with pit toilets and neat backcountry campsites is not all that intrepid. You'd have to be inventive to die of thirst, hunger or cold in the bounty of a Lake Superior summer.

But I wouldn't have considered a hike like this two years ago. How could I? I didn't know to string food up in a tree or pick a good campsite or build a driftwood fire. It is too physically tough to count as the kind of relaxation I used to need: who wants to hobble back to the office after a 'rest'? Like most workers in America, I had ten or twelve days off a year, from which I was to allot time with family 3000 miles away and also somehow foster a marriage otherwise based around 70-hour work weeks. How could I take five days to walk alone in the wilderness?

I didn't know it, but I needed it then more than I do now. Our culture does not want us to spend that kind of time alone. We might get to like it. I was lucky; I tripped and fell out of the corporate world, and flat on my back I found the time to try things I thought I might hate.

Great religions understand the power of solitude. The Catholic Church sends the faithful on retreats and pilgrimages. Buddhists spend days or months in silent retreat. African rites of passage send young people alone into the bush. Woodsier types have their spiritual equivalent: Wordsworth's "natural piety". But many secular, city people are going to die too fearful to have ever spent real time alone in case their demons came out to do battle.

I'm an extrovert, but I've like my own company. Seek it out. I would do this every year if I could: five days or five weeks alone, preferably in the woods. I don't think you need to haul a backpack, though it helps: you're slow as a snail, but my God, carrying your house on your back bestows a sense of independence to make you yodel. (I'm surprised snails don't yodel.) But you could as easily experience your own thoughts in a canoe, on a bike or even in a suburban house with the TV, internet and phone switched off and books and magazines out of reach. Solitude is there to be taken. You might even like it.

I don't know what I did to deserve this...

I keep getting emails with viruses in them that I never sent bounced back to me from email addresses that are total strangers to me. Does anyone know how this happens and what I can do about it? I'm afraid that my emai address is going to wind up on those anti-Scam lists. Now who hates me enough to do something like this? Or am I just the victim of some randomly executed plot that someone thinks is a fun thing to do?

netwoman again

well, it helps if i post the information about the site!
Have a look at netwoman.
regards

New Blog: netwoman

I have been blogging on for eight months, but I decided yesterday to start a new blog that focuses on my research interests - gender and the internet. I came across this blog and thought what a great network - and here I am.

What I found interesting was the lack of blogs on gender and the internet - or technology. Where are the people researching this stuff? Is gender dead? I don't think so. But there are some people who think this is not worth studying. After all, the stats show that women and men are online in equal amounts....but what does this really mean?
If you are interested in my work, have a look at my site and research.
regards,
netwoman

A Marriage Proposal
I've been thinking about this for a long time, but with the new attention given to Gay Marriage and Civil Unions, it's time to put this idea out there. We need to decide as a culture whether marriage is a religious sacrament or a legal arrangement.

In our current system, it is both. The problem is that the religious side wants to control who is allowed to participate. The State has an obligation to provide equal protection under the law. Those two views simply are not compatible. So, is it a religious institution? If it is, then the government should not be involved at all and there can be no restrictions on marriage except the individual's religious beliefs. If it is a legal arrangement, then again, it has to be provided fairly, so you can't really restrict the form that it takes. Either view dictates that people be allowed to define marriage for themselves within the structure of their beliefs or choices.

Our attitudes toward marriage make very little sense. You can't enter into a binding contract until you are 18, but some states will let you marry legally at 13. Apparently, someone decided it was more difficult to get a rent-to-own dishwasher than it is to choose the person you'll spend the rest of your life with. How the State can approve a match that would under reasonable circumstances be considered child abuse, I don't know. Consider the Mormons.

The Mormon faith is perhaps the largest religion of purely American origin. In its original form, it encourages polygamy. In order not to be driven into the sea, the official church agreed that they would not practice polygamy, and those who do are excommunicated. According to our Constitution, the State did not have the right to impose that restriction. As a result, certain renegade Mormons do practice polygamy, with Utah officials mostly looking the other way.

I respect the Mormons because they take their faith seriously. They study hard, they walk their walk, and they seem to be nice people. I think that we should honor our Constitutional spirit of plurality and let them marry as they please. One problem, though, is that in the current underground of polygamy, girls in their early teens are being forced into plural marriages by their families. Of course, if they had to be 18 to get married, and if polygamous marriages were legal, this wouldn't be a problem. See where I'm going with this?

If marriage is such an important institution, let's reserve it for responsible adults. Among consenting adults, let's have fairness in the Law and therefore equal access to insurance, inheritance, healthcare, parental rights, tax cuts and the other privileges that are currently reserved for "Husband and wife". As an American citizen, I am quite capable of deciding to whom I will or will not commit. It is not the government's role to parent me. My religion of choice has no gender restrictions, or quantity either. If I want to be monogamous, polygamous, polyandrous, or just plain plural, that's my right.

America is about freedom, above all. People are fond of saying "it's not in the Constitution" - usually where privacy rights are concerned. What they forget is that the Constitution, in its wisdom and beauty, specifically reserves to the People all rights and liberty not delineated therein. In other words, if it doesn't say so, it's your right.
They didn't have to mention privacy for us to have privacy rights. They simply did not restrict those rights.

To love whom we love is the most basic of rights. It makes us human. It improves our lives and by extension, the society. No one has the right to infringe on this liberty.
It's only fair.

Amendment IX

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Amendment X

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.

My apologies to Dharma Girl

Last week, I suggested to Dharma Girl that she post here her piece on Love and Attachment -- a piece that, IMHO, was an authentic example of one young woman's struggle to voice an important part of her journey. Yes, she was critical of women she saw as dependent etc. etc. etc. But she didn't name names or target any one individual. I saw it as a very personal essay worth sharing.

I know that the blogosphere is an open forum. I also thought that Blog Sisters was a good place for Dharma Girl to get some insightful feedback, especially from some of us older folk who have gone through the same relationship challenges and have come up with different solutions. However, her post from Blog Sisters was forwarded to someone who successfully managed to shut down Dharma Girl's voice, with a heartlessness that I, for one, do not want to ignore. You can go here to read and link and try to understand the whole sad, sad story. I'm really sorry Dharma Girl. What happened is a good example of one of the worst blogging practices. I thought the blogosphere had more heart than this. Too soon old; too late smart.

Losing Her Religion

The faith journey of Laura Schlessinger -- self-proclaimed talk-show "doctor," virulent anti-gay and anti-choice conservative, and her kid's mom -- has taken a surprising turn. On Aug. 5, the nagging advice-giver announced that she is no longer practicing Judaism. Schlessinger, a longtime atheist who was born to a Jewish father and an Italian mother, had converted to the Orthodox Jewish faith in the 1990s.

Her statement came on her nationally syndicated right-wing radio show: "I still see myself as a Jew," Schlessinger said. "But the spiritual journey and that direction, as hardcore as I was at it, just didn't fulfill something in me that I needed." It probably didn't help that many (though certainly not all) Jewish people didn't like Schlessinger's views, her rigid "morality," or her harsh, unforgiving tone -- and told her so.

I pray this will be a healthy, positive move for her. Assessing one's spiritual path is a difficult, often painful process; I know, I've been there. If the non-doctor sees this as doing the right thing, more power to her. Let us hope she finds the road to self-enlightenment and spiritual fulfillment soon.

In the meantime, we're stuck with, in the words of Susan Weidman Schneider, executive editor of Jewish feminist quarterly Lilith Magazine, another "garden variety, anti-choice conservative.".

Oh, goody.

from All Facts and Opinions

a shout out to the Blog Sisters...

This Article from the Sunday Times Online gives a shout-out to BlogSisters and a mention of yours truly.

I would link to the actual article, rather than the 10-pound (as in money) version I paid to download (can't download individual articles--only in multiples of 10 at a minimum). However, my emails to the editor who contacted me back in June about the story went unanswered once the article appeared. So I never saw it. Never knew when it came out. And now it is, of course, in big-media fashion, behind the pay-to-play firewall.

Obviously, given context clues, my photo made it in, but I'll never know which photo since they asked for a few and since archived articles appear sans photos. Sans personality. Let's see, remove the layout and design, remove the photograph, and charge for it. Um.... okay. That's one way to do it.

If I had time, I'd launch into a rant about big media and its cluelessness as to things even beyond blogging, as in: pulling content behind the magic curtain where people--even the people who contribute to stories, people who are quoted or featured in stories--need to pay for the privilege of reading them.

But I don't have time this evening. So I won't. I'll just bask in another five seconds of fame, which in the end, cost me somewhere close to the tune of $20.

Reason 567 why we'll be here long after they go away.

Cross-posted on Allied. Thanks to Elaine to sending the editor my way. If nothing else, the notice by mega-media boosts our visibility. Write on. --j.

Homegoing

My childhood pastor and lifelong friend, the Rev. Monsignor Henry F. Zerhusen, passed away last Saturday after a long illness. He was 78 years old -- almost reached the four-score mark -- and the life he lived was full and meaningful, so there is every reason to celebrate his homegoing. But after hearing the news of his death, I was left with a deep sadness.

As you know, I left the Roman Catholic Church about a decade ago. The reason: the denomination's leadership and its obvious (to me) lack of concern for the full humanity of women, gays, and others. My departure was difficult for me -- I grew up in a wonderful, liberal, social-justice-focused Catholic parish that was part of the Catholic Worker tradition. When my mother taught catechism to people or attended parish-council meetings (the laity had a voice at Baltimore's St. Ambrose Church when that sort of thing was unheard of), my brother and I ran around the rectory and saw what it was to minister to people and love them unconditionally firsthand. And being the joiner and doer that I am, I got involved: singing in the choir, performing in plays, attending the parish school, spending time with the priests and nuns, hanging and helping out at the rectory. It was grand.

A big part of that was Father Henry. He presided over most of the sacraments I received in the church. He, along with my fifth-grade teacher and social-justice hero (to this day) Sister Charmaine Krohe, passed their commitment to love and justice along to me and to many others. Back then, I harbored a secret desire to become a priest. Once it was expressed aloud, many people berated me for wanting something so unthinkable. But not by Sister Charmaine. And not by Father Henry, who told me that this pull I felt could not be fulfilled at present. "But you never know how hearts may change in the future," he told me as he dried my tears. Indeed, one never knows what the future may bring.

St. Ambrose was that magical parish one recalls when thinking of Catholic communities. In the '60s and '70s, it welcomed more and more African-American members. (My family moved to the 'burbs in '73, but we continued to attend St. Ambrose until 1976, when the commute became untenable.) New modes of worship started being assimilated into the church's celebrations, and a ministry to the area's increasing number of poor and needy residents became the parish's hallmark. Father Henry and Sister Charmaine -- he always treated her as an equal in every way, despite the church's mandate that women be relegated to second-class duties -- led the way.

What I remember is that when parish membership became darker in hue, Father Henry didn't seem to notice. He just loved and welcomed everyone. He gave everything he had to anyone in need -- money, food, time, smiles, hugs, acceptance, love.

And his love was what filled my mind and heart when I visited St. Mark's Church, his last parish, for his wake and funeral. At the wake Tuesday night, Sister Charmaine, who to this day runs the St. Ambrose Outreach Center (an awesome place that does immeasurable good for God's children), gave a stirring eulogy chock-full of wonderful reminisces of Father Henry's funny foibles and wondrous works. And when she was done, all in attendance -- representatives from all the parishes at which Henry had served -- laughed and cried and shared their own remembrances. It was a night I will always remember.

The funeral Mass was also wonderful, but in a different way. Henry was a monsignor, so his send-off was a big-deal for the Archdiocese of Baltimore: Dozens of priests were in attendance, as well as bishops from various parts of the country, the retired archbishop of Baltimore (a wonderful liberal -- meaning out of favor with the pope), and the reigning Cardinal Archbishop (an arch-conservative, very ambitious man who presided over the coverup that led to Baltimore's part in the horrid sex-abuse scandal, William Keeler is also my former boss and present nemesis). It was awesome to see and hear the ritual and the pomp and circumstance Catholics love. Father Henry would have hated it -- and he would have been sad that because Sister Charmaine is female, she would not be allowed to speak, since the Cardinal was in attendance -- but it was enthralling to see the priests all taking part in the communion preparation and hear them speak of Jesus' last supper in unison (so cool; it was the transubstantiation of all transubstantiations!). I suppose you can take the girl out of the Catholic Church but you can't take the Catholic out of the girl...

It also reminded me of the differences that exist between the church leadership and the people who really are the church. The Cardinal made those differences clear; his comments positioned "the bishops and leadership" as being quite distinct from we, the people in the pews. Not that the rabble went unheard: As the Cardinal spoke, progressive Catholics in the audience (myself included) would add "and Mother" to every instance where the Cardinal referred to God as "father"; when he would refer to "men," we would append his phrase with "and women" (much to the Cardinal's visible, though well-contained, chagrin).

I couldn't help but compare Father Henry (none of that "Monsignor Zerhusen" nonsense for him) with the red-hatted man at the altar. Keeler's actions before and during the scandal showed that his priority was the perpetuation of the church; Henry's was about loving God's people. (Sister Charmaine mentioned yesterday that she recalled a liturgy where a grinning Henry, that adorable cherub, folded his hands, looked heavenward, and prayed, "Oh, God, please let the church allow women to be priests. We need them.") And as these thoughts ran through my head, I knew I had to give Keeler a break. Whatever he has done or will do, while holding him accountable is a good and right thing to do, I must respond to him not with anger, but with love. That is what Father Henry did; that is what he would want me to do. Sitting in a pew at St. Mark's, I decided that this was a challenge I would have to face.

An opportunity to put myself to the test presented itself in the final hour of the funeral Mass: My left-wing writings and outspoken criticisms of Keeler and the church have not made me popular in archdiocesan circles. (Many tell me that I am persona non grata there.) So I went back and forth on whether to take part in communion, given everything that has happened and my relatively new status as a non-Catholic. I ultimately decided yes, because I knew that Father Henry would want me to -- he would never turn anyone away.

With great trepidation, I stepped into the line for Eucharist and realized that I would have to partake it from Cardinal Keeler. Anger flooded my body at the thought, and I reminded myself again that the most important thing Henry taught me was to love everyone no matter what. So I went up to Keeler, looked him dead in the eye as I took the communion wafer, and gave him a genuinely warm smile. Felt it too. He smiled back. And I lived up to my challenge and the shared mandate of Jesus and Father Henry, the person from whom I learned the most about Jesus' love.

Henry Zerhusen was all about love. He was all love. He was described as a "humble giver of gifts," someone who gave all he had to the needy and poor and never expected anything in return. He judged no one. Period. I know Father Henry was disappointed when I left the Church, but he understood and stayed steadfast in his love for me. He remained an important part of and influence on my life anyway, and will remain so until I die. And he cared for people, giving special attention to the sick, the lonely and lost, those in mourning -- even after his own age and infirmity caught up with him. When my grandpa died three years ago, he showed up to comfort us and say wonderful words at the service -- which was not held in a Catholic church -- despite his illness.

And he was courageous, unafraid to speak openly about how he wanted everyone -- regardless of color, gender, orientation -- equal in the church. That cost him when Rome took a strong stand against Baltimore's growing liberal Catholic ethos. Henry didn't get his monsignorship until he was nearly 70, after popular-with-the-pope conservative Keeler swept into the archdiocese and brought a wave of darkness with him that still hovers malevolently over progressive Catholics here. (And Henry received the promotion, I suspect, only because he was so beloved throughout Baltimore and beyond, and because it was impossible to ignore the many good works he had done and was doing.) Not that he even thought about any cost -- he once told me he didn't give a rat's behind about being a monsignor; he was just a priest. Interestingly, the only times I saw him in his monsignor's robes was when he was lying in state. But he was wrong about being "just a priest." He was the finest priest I have ever known.

And he was just a great guy -- a little clumsy, a bit goofy, very funny, super sharp, always kind. He adored his family and they adored him. He never took himself seriously and was famous for his good-spirited self-deprecating comments. He had been a straight-A student at Catholic University and Villanova, but never lorded his intelligence over anyone. And he just loved people. I recall him coming over for dinner, dressed in street clothes, and just hanging out with us like the regular guy he was. He bowled on the church leagues (he was really good), take us on outings (he would always get lost; riding in a car with Father Henry was almost always a comedy of errors), and hide sweet treats away (he had diabetes -- not a good choice). A typical exchange:

"Father? What's this behind your bookcase? It's cookies! Henry..."

"I don't know how that got there, but they're delicious. Would you like one?"

Father Henry treated everyone in such a way that he would bring the Christ in them outward. He didn't deign to be Christ for people; he saw Christ in all of us, in everyone. He worked to convince every person he met that he or she was the likeness of God, because that is what he believed. And he was mentor to everyone, certainly to me. Whatever dilemma you'd face, be it a problem at home or school, or a moral dilemma like treating gays or women equally (but the bible says...) or dealing with 9/11 perpetrators, his message was the same trite, but true one: "What do you think Jesus would do? Do that. In other words, err on the side of being loving." I am not saying he was in favor of legalizing gay marriage; that question never arose between us, so I do not know that. I am saying that Father Henry loved people, not rules and not hierarchies. His unconditional love and acceptance was a most precious gift I will always treasure.

He even gave me a gift on the day I said goodbye to him: Cardinal Keeler did horrible things, and yes, I believe he needs to be held accountable. But I can still love him and treat him with kindness. And I did. So I know Father Henry was proud of me.

I know few people who are truly saintlike, people I am certain have a direct shot to a seat next to the Almighty. My late great-grandmother Genevieve was one. Father Henry is another. He was my pastor, my mentor, my inspiration, and, for my entire life, my friend. Even as the darkness grows, I do know that surely I have been blessed.

How appropriate, in a way, that Henry died on the anniversary of Jerry Garcia's death, Aug. 9. The former Grateful Dead guitarist sang some words that feel appropriate now:

Fare thee well,
Fare thee well,
I love you more than words can tell.

Safe journey, Father Henry, and thank you. And thank you, God.

from all facts and opinions