What you don’t know won’t hurt you. Right?

You may or may not know that there are protesters gathering in the streets of New York (and elsewhere) to protest the greed and corruption of the 1% of Americans who have the money and power.

The reason why you haven’t heard about it?

Your guess is as good as mine.

But it’s possible that those same people who control the money also control the media and don’t want you to know it’s happening. It doesn’t really even matter if you agree with anything about the protests. What matters is that you aren’t being given the information. You cannot form your own opinion about it if you don’t know about it.

Here is a link to their website.

In case you want to know.

https://occupywallst.org/

Banned Book Week

Today I was running around trying to get ready to go to school. We started up today. I was looking for a shirt that I like to wear, but I couldn’t find it. (In the time allotted. ) Failing to find that shirt, I decided to wear a shirt that was my mom’s. Luckily she liked to wear baggy clothes so some things fit me. I was looking for that shirt (which is black) when I noticed a black shirt on top of a stack of shirts on the shelf in the closet. I grabbed it thinking it was the shirt I was looking for. It was not. It was a different shirt of my mom’s.

Which reminds me:

It’s Banned Books Week!

September 24 – October 1, 2011

bannedbooksweek.org/

Thanks, Mom! I would totally have forgotten. ♥

I remember

I remember

I remember

I remember

I remember, like most of us do, where I was when I heard about it. On the radio in our truck on the way home from dropping off my husband at work. I went home and turned on the TV and watched the world as we knew it come crashing down.

I remember

I remember Carol Duvall coming on HGTV and saying that in light of what had happened, they weren’t going to keep frittering on about crafting and whatnot. Out of respect, they stopped broadcasting for a couple days.

I remember

I remember bravery. I remember heroes.

I remember sorrow.

I remember sorrow.

sorrow.

Most of all, I remember how tenderly we treated each other. For a brief window of time we set aside our petty squabbles with each other and came together to grieve and try to heal each other. There was an incredible outpouring of love and support toward each other. Even if you weren’t one of the many who volunteered, people just had more manners toward each other. In our daily lives in the aftermath of the attacks we were not so quick to respond negatively to every little transgression on the street. For a little while we were able to see the bigger picture.

Loss on such a grand scale (and on lesser scale as well) has the effect of putting things in their proper perspective. It’s a devastating, jarring realignment back to center.

And then, slowly, the tap, tap, tapping of the daily living starts to chip away at the focus. We look up and find that we are angry and hurting and somehow, somewhere, sometime, we loose our tender hold on each other. We let it slip away.

I hope that we can grab hold of each other and try to regain some of that love and support.

I remember the victims.

I remember loved-ones.

I remember the heroes.

Don’t lets let the terrorists and hatemongers win.

Let’s remember the love.

♥

Where there is hatred, let me sow love.” ~ Saint Francis of Assisi

Offerings

As we spend this three-day weekend camping and grilling, let’s take a moment to bless these animal sacrifices as offerings in honor of the sacrifices made for us.

I’ve been trying to reconcile the meaning of Memorial Day with the fun and frolic of the “official start of summer” and all that goes with that. This is what I came up with. In lieu of saying, ” Happy Memorial Day,” which I find odd to say, I think I’m going to say something more along the lines of: Hope your Memorial Day is Special. (I’m still open to suggestions on that. It’s the best I’ve come up with so far).

I believe that we, as a culture, as a species, need to be more mindful.

Mindful of our words.

Mindful of our food and food sources.

Mindful of each other.

and

Mindful of our history.

Oh, here’s another:

HAVE A BLESSED MEMORIAL DAY!

More Adventures in Synchronicity

In my Art History/Literature class we are reading Zoot Suit, a play about the 1943 Zoot Suit Riots in Los Angeles.

I had never heard of these riots and I grew up in L.A. But I guess I left before they got to the real history stuff–assuming they did. But it casts an entirely different light on the song Zoot Suit Riot by Cherry Poppin’ Daddies.

Who’s that whisperin’ in the trees?
It’s two sailors and they’re on leave
Pipes and chains and swingin’ hands
Who’s your daddy? Yes I am

Fat cat came to play
Now he can’t run fast enough
You’d best stay away
When the pushers come to shove

Zoot suit riot

throw back a bottle of beer
Zoot suit riot

Pull a comb through your coal black hair

According to the article on wikipedia

 ”The Zoot-Suit Riots sharply revealed a polarization between two youth groups within wartime society: the gangs of predominantly black and Mexican youths who were at the forefront of the zoot-suit subculture, and the predominantly white American servicemen stationed along the Pacific coast. The riots primarily had racial and social resonances although some argue that the primary issue may have been patriotism and attitudes to the war.”

My teacher showed a bit of the music video to show what a Zoot Suit looked like.

And that was my morning class.

So then I went over to my Dancercize class and we started our section on Swing dancing and guess what song we were dancing to?

Yep.

Zoot Suit Riot!

Now isn’t that a riot!

P.S. if you need a Zoot Suit

you can find some on this site that I found:

http://www.suavecito.com/

An Ode to Equality

I wrote this as my final “essay” for my Gender and Race class.

An Ode to Equality

As we draw down to the end of the term

It’s time to assess what we might have learned.

That can feel like a rather difficult task.

But here is a brief tour of our term that just passed.

What do you get when you take a book on race, another on gender

and add movies, discussions, personal experience and articles to the Blender

Then mix it around and shake it up a bit?

You get a whole host of new ideas and thoughts from it.

For me, the meat of the class was the emphasis on connective tissue.

We can draw a thread through seemingly disparate issues,

Sewing together this piece with that part

In order to create a new fabric, or paradigm, from which we can now start.

Start to move forward and onward and up

Away from the old ways; the unfair, the unequal, the corrupt.

Hopefully we take from this class a feeling for how very lucky we are living in this place, in this time, in this skin.

The challenge, of course, is to not get too comfortable in this privileged situation we’re in.

But, from my own perspective, and as pointed out in the class readings

Every person can probably find a minority and majority group in which to find seating.

I am privileged to be white in a system that favors the lightness of your skin.

I have the honor, but perhaps not privilege, to be a woman in a system that favors the brawn without over the heart within.

Perhaps we are short, when the world likes us tall.

Perhaps we are big, when our world favors the small.

Yes, the media and, by extension, our culture favors the tall, skinny, blond woman with big boobs and a small intellect.

But, more importantly our culture wants the woman to be quiet and unaggressive; circumspect.

If I speak out in favor of more equal distribution of this nations bounty of rights and riches,

Then you know I’m probably one of those FemiNazi Bitches.

I don’t have a daughter, but if I did I would teach her about strength of character, body and mind.

I would show her every strong female role model I could find.

If she wanted to be a princess when she grows bigger

Then I would show her examples of the depth of the job, the importance, the rigor.

Because the point is not whether you want to be a princess or not.

The point is when the one cookie cutter image of a princess is all we’ve got.

But since I had the good sense to create a tall, slender, white male child in this particular society,

I will just have to teach him to love and respect women and people of all varieties.

I’ll have to help him to see the fallacy of the media’s portrayal of masculinity as angry, violent, stupid, and muscle bound.

I will seek out other definitions of manly and strong wherever they can be found.

My plan is to teach him and help him to grow into a man who is strong, respectful, smart, considerate -worthy of

The strong, respectful, considerate, smart woman who would be worthy of sharing his life and love.

And then there’s the issue of race

That’s now, thanks to this class, staring us right in the face.

I’ve been exposed this term to some of the subtle discriminations that are hidden in our supposedly nondiscriminatory system.

These are the kind of things that are quietly subverting true equality and as a member of the white race it’s so easy to miss them.

Or even to dismiss them.

Because on the surface it appears that we have eradicated discrimination based on your skin color

And those of us who aren’t prejudiced are tired of being blamed for the actions of others

We are weary of hearing how it’s still going on even though we have made so many strides and come so far.

This weariness, I think, leads to a reluctance to honestly look at the way things were and still sometimes are.

Or maybe we do look and we get overwhelmed by the systemic codification of discrimination and stereotyping that is far too often present.

How can we possibly root out these subtle and pervasive inequalities? This feeling can lead to apathy and even resentment.

The problem stems mostly I think, from a lack of honest and frank conversation about race and discrimination.

It seems as though sometimes it’s hard to have a talk without fear of some kind of retaliation or recrimination.

But, the real solution for our racial situation and indeed, I’d hazard, pretty much all of our societal woes.

Is free exchange of ideas and the honest baring to each other of our souls

I really responded to the article we read describing the symptoms of Attachment disorder and its effects.

I believe that we as a culture suffer from a form of cultural attachment disorder that leaves us distrustful and treating each other as suspect.

We, as a group, are guarded trying to protect ourselves from some real or imagined hurt.

This is perhaps understandable, but doesn’t often work.

All that happens, really, is that we create greater divides separating us.

We create more opportunity for misunderstanding when we treat each other thus.

I hope that in the next little while (because I can’t stand to wait very long)

We are able to sing a new, brighter more positive song.

The trick to the writing of this brand new song is, however,

That we must find the harmony so we can sing it together.

There is room within the music for everyone to sing their individual parts.

And music is the language that speaks directly to our hearts.

I know many people are nervous to get up and sing.

But the best part of music is that you can come to it with your own thing.

Can’t sing a note? Perhaps you play an instrument.

Not that either? Just hum or clap along with it.

From the information in this class I could probably come away feeling sad and wearing a frown.

I choose not to focus on how far we still have to go, but instead on the fact that we are on the journey; and pretty far down.

Tender Feelings (and the healing power of YouTube)

So One thing I’ve noticed happening since my mom’s death is that it seared away a lot of the bullshit. I am in many ways stripped down to what really matters. But to go along with that part (which I guess you might call a benefit) is a feeling of being laid bare and raw. Those parts that used to have some sort of protection built up are exposed and unprotected from the battering of emotional weather that rains down on us in our daily life. I feel like I’m doing a fair job of working through the grief process. But I feel very raw.

So it is with these newly raw nerves that I entered into my gender and race class this term. Obviously there is nothing to bring you down when we are talking about gender and race equality and discrimination, is there? Yea, right.

So I am opened up and drawn down and I start reading about this little girl in Texas and the 17-24 GOD DAMNED FUCKING ASSHOLES who raped her. As if the act itself wasn’t BAD ENOUGH the reporting of it is implying as usually happens with rape cases that she asked for it. But the point here is that the GIRL IS ELEVEN and 11 year olds aren’t asking to be raped (as if anybody is).

11 year olds CANNOT consent.

and this may be the one time that those backward, old wild west laws in Texas may work out for the good. So there was a petition to get the New York Times to retract the article or something, They responded that the reporting “lacked balance” or whatever. A start, but a lame start toward apologizing for the shoddy reporting they did.

But they still hadn’t responded on Friday morning when I awoke to the morning news of the earthquake and subsequent tsunami including alerts here on the Oregon coast (and Hawaii and many other places)

and my heart couldn’t take any more.

source:http://www.flickr.com/photos/jhhwild/1738418016/

Especially when I was unable to reconcile the one side of my social media outlets which was devastated and hurting and tragedized with the other that didn’t seem to have heard the news yet and so continued to post about how to decorate for spring or save on this thing or whatever silly fluff piece was in the queue for that day.

I just couldn’t make it all jive together in my head and each fluffy little post on Facebook (mostly not by people, but by businesses or other “things” I’m a fan of) just made my brain twitch a little more.

So I signed off.

and jumped on You Tube to wallow around in some music and soothe my soul.

I ended up here:

This Girl Can SANNGG!

(She needs to leave that turkey!)

and then here:

Train rips out my heart and gives it back bigger

and here:

Uppity Blues Women sing my NEW THEME SONG!

There were a lot more, but I think this post might be long enough for today!

But if you are interested look up Nintendo Acapella and Kelley Mooney on You Tube.

By the end of it all I was feeling a little more( or less) human and able to face the day and the rest of whatever might be in store.

But, I’ve had to tone down my informedness in order to keep on keepin’ on.

Still Marching!

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/02/28/presidential-proclamation-womens-history-month-2011

Happy March!

The Melting Pot: Cheese, Chowder and Gumbo

Cheese, Gumbo and Chowder

Let us consider cheese for a moment. I happen to love cheese. I will put in on damn near anything. It is often how I make myself eat my vegetables. One of the best things about it is how it melts and drips into the cracks and crevices of the food you put it on. If you were to put it on everything on your plate (yes, let’s do!), they would all take on a similar look and color (cheddar!) and become relatively indistinguishable from each other.

This homogeneity is good in this case. It’s delicious, in fact (no biases here). But if you are trying to maintain the separate identity and integrity of all the parts in the meal, then cheese is not your guy. Cheese is not sturdy enough to withstand the heat of the cooking process without changing form into something he was not before. Cheese needs to keep cool in order to maintain himself. Even if we are only talking about mixing different cheeses together, at the end they will all have blended together to one uniform color and consistency. (Cheddar!)

Perhaps instead we might choose to make a gumbo. I’ve never made a gumbo, but from what I have seen and read, the parts are made of sturdier stuff. They are, of course, affected by the cooking process. Maybe they are softened a little; take on a bit of a different flavor. But, you can see that they keep their original identities throughout the heat fluctuations and the simmering that takes place. All of the ingredients in the gumbo are equally important, but they are their own selves. They are separate, but equal.

Hmm.

Perhaps we should make chowder instead. Somewhere in between a cheese sauce and a gumbo, chowder has distinct parts that maintain their integrity and individual identity mixed with a thicker broth that is made up of some of the ingredients that have been added, but adds a little something special of its own. There is more of an emphasis on the blurring of boundaries between the separate parts so that they become part of the whole while still they are recognizably themselves.

Of course, whatever the meal, we can all take part in breaking bread together. I think we can all take a lesson from the research that shows that families that eat dinner together regularly are stronger with demonstrable improvement in children’s school success. If we sit together for food and conversation, we build relationships, camaraderie, and we improve ourselves and each other.

What could possibly be wrong with that?

Let’s have lunch. I’m hungry.

Robots, Seals, and Chivalry! Oh My!

Another piece written for Gender and Race Class:

I do not want to be a seal.

A Navy Seal, that is. When the movie G. I. Jane came out, I was really excited about it. I felt like, finally, we were being shown in a tough role that broke down barriers that were holding us back. Or down. My mom, on the other hand, felt that it was showing us trying to be like men. She quoted the Feminist saying from back in the day, “If you’re trying to be like men, you’re setting your sights too low.” She was a pacifist and anti-war protesting hippie. She couldn’t see why a person would want to be a Navy Seal or any other Special Forces. From where she sat, it wasn’t a worthy goal for a woman to have.

She felt the same way about Beauty Pageants. Why on Earth would you want to participate in something so contrived? In something that focuses narrowly on the looks of a woman and only slightly allows that they might have talents other than filling a bikini? In something that seems to be moving us backward instead of forward?

Neither do I want to enter a beauty pageant.

What I do want is the option of trying to be anything that I set my mind to and to know that if that is my passion, then I can do/be that.

We argued a bit about it. Eventually she came over to my side. It’s not about wanting to be that. It’s about being told that you can’t. Because you’re a woman and women can’t or shouldn’t do that.

This is what I was reminded of when our gentleman friend in class was questioning whether there isn’t some validity to gender roles and/or stereotypes. He wanted to know what’s really wrong with wanting to protect your woman. Nothing is really “wrong” with it. As long as you know that she’s not actually yours and that she wants protecting.

It is a challenge to balance our chivalric ideals with gender neutrality and equality. I understand that it can be a challenge for a man to figure out when it’s appropriate to protect and shelter a woman as our public chivalrous, gentlemanly code dictates he should and when it is chauvinistic.

My husband and I have assumed fairly traditional roles in our household. Much of that is due to our skill sets and preferences. Which I have to assume comes from how we were raised and society. He has a lot of “masculine” skills. He was raised on a ranch, joined the Marines, and then was a heavy equipment mechanic. He likes to hunt, enjoys sports and cars, competition and adventure/thrill seeking.

Most of that doesn’t particularly appeal to me. So I am happy to leave him to it. This means, for the most part, that I get to do the more domestic duties like cooking dinner and doing dishes and laundry. Of course, I have an eye toward one day being able to afford to have someone do the cleaning for us, so no one has to do them, least of all me.

Maybe we can change chivalry to include good manners toward men and women and loosen our gender roles enough to include everyone’s strengths and weaknesses without regard for gender. Maybe we can’t in our current culture. But, I hope that is not the case.

I suppose I’ll have to wait for robots to eliminate the need for humans to do many of the chores of daily living. Perhaps when we are freed from the “heavy lifting” of life we’ll be able to more readily turn our gaze to loftier goals.