nov. 11

Everything old is new again, even hearts.

nov. 4

Friday fell
finally.
But you, my dear friend,
have been haunting me for many fridays,
and even once on a Tuesday, if memory serves.

My skull has cracked in the very best way
and has been pouring out both treasures
and mud.
Your poems were in a red folder
and you drew a clock, once.
probably in your yellow John-Lennon glasses
and exquisite handedness.

Thank you for the hours past,
Thank you for the hours past,
and forward
and back again
in my ruminations of stories and bananas and
late-night alarms.
We could sweep up typhoons with our words
meeting fronts of the other and making storms real
and in parallel worlds. I will hug Reagen for you. I have been flirting with Jill, and getting ready to dance.

I miss you sometimes.
in my piano room on wednesdays and in certain hours of my days.

Nov 3

So, deep breath
and the floating particles
make an X-ray of my soul

Here I am
On tired feet
and far-flung hay
(long story).

my 2012 ticket

My 2012 Ticket

Hillary

Obama

I shit you not,

Seriously, what were their latest approval ratings?

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s Approval Rating Near Career All-Time High

Time to let the well-seasoned women give it a go, plus

healthcare

Internationalism

Bill?

I see Barrie as the Secretary of State.

and one more thing VP Michelle.

She is smart and sassy and transcends class in a way

recently shaken (Maundy Thursday)

Hilary is impressive as a working mother, and is relate-able to all, having been humbled

and risen again.

And I was honestly peeved when Michelle gave up formal work to nest her girls. She showed some teeth with fresh foods but then went on vacation. (sigh.)

Frustration is showing in the the folks-geist of working mothers and caregivers–we want action. We need jobs, safe places for our kids to play, and a dedicated line to the Oval office.

Perhaps I am a dreamer–but why not resurrect the ancient tradition of letting women man the stores. I do not agree with the usual panarama of trepidatious females in the shadow of spear-holding (hmm, hmmph) males.

I have read for 125+ hours on the subject and I have a Husserl-ian feeling that women invented language. We are tracing the tree, and I have an armchair-philosophers account of baskets and bargaining that says the parts of our brains that can help us sort it out with language and such

makes us pretty good candidates.

Olympic-Sized Women

It has warmed my cockles to see women being celebrated in these Olympics games. Women have shown their toughness, which many in the world seem surprised by, and have carried the hopes and glories for their countries. Unlike in the usual soup of male-driven sports being widely watched in the US professional sports arena; Canadians watched their women hockey players with full attention.

And then comes the cigars.

NPR’s coverage before the bruhaha started was just about right for me. Athletes can be athletes! And if Canadians are partying, we shouldn’t the triumphant heroes?

Oh right, the have to be lady-like to satisfy some. And I am reminded of a woman I learned about in a Women in Latin America seminar who shocked the parlor-set by smoking a cigar. If memory serves, she also boggled their minds by showing that you could almost balance a scale with a unlit cigar on one side, and a closed case holding a burnt cigar with the mass of the ashes and smoke accounted for.

She mystified by showing that women do not have a mystique.

Women athletes are made of muscle and bone and I am sure the athletes of Greece reveled with Bacchus in their triumphs.

I remember the women of U.S. Soccer shocked the world by ripping off their sweat-soaked jerseys in their celebration.

And I have been following closely the first female skier from Iran. Here because they powers that be in her country deem the skin-tight suit covered enough, and thank you for that small miracle. I heard she finished last, and I am grateful that she was not in a sliding sport. I am usually glued to the television this time of year. The Olympics have always been a beacon for me, but I had the misfortune of tuning in the night they covered the two-woman bobsled and watched the event (LIVE). Uck, poor Vancouver. It is not their fault that this Olympics has resembled a slowly un-folding and mosaic snuff reel.

I did revel in the Men of figure skating finally getting their due. But Johnny Weir was robbed. His crown of roses was for bronze, which he justly deserved. Evan was wonderful. And as your probably heard the Russians threw a hissy fit and threw in a dash of misogyny for good measure. Evan skated like a man, a powerful graceful man, and Yvgyny skated like he was scared and wobbly, you know like you Russians would call “a girl.” I think Yvgyny’s comeback has been gutsy and I wish he has spent more time developing his grace, because you know we are talking about figure skaiting.

And the women skaters were also great, and awe-inspiring.

and tough.

As were the women skiers. Tough and unlucky.

Which brings me to my other meditation of the week. Healthcare.

I propose that women are especially suited to certain tasks and preoccupations with life and death issues. If there had been more leadership in the denominations around the world (religious and governmental), I believe that the world would be a better place right now. We are the whistleblowers and the big-picture people. We have a tendency to stay grounded in the non-abstract. In most family constellations we are the default caregivers and we often watch the succession of generations as we hold the hands of both the babies and the dying.

I can say of my own career, that it was interrupted by my need to care for my families small and large. I have been affected by Katrina, and I have thrown my dwindling  resources behind access for the disabled and equal rights for other the last classes of human beings left out of modern civil rights.

Why weren’t Michelle and Hillary at the healthcare table?

The next roundtable discussion must, must be about education.

And I hope to see Laura Bush there.

This is my one womans-eye view of the present policy need commonalities:

Childhood obesity = need for higher-quality foods in schools and communities

Republicans want food-stamp reform = restucture WIC and foodstamps to include bonus dollars for fresh produce and high-nutrition foods.

And while we are at it: Put the republicans to a moral test on their want of family values:

Propose more flexible FMLA to include short-term extensions of paid benefits for any kind of caretaking in modern families to include male and female duties and leave for:

• veterinary emergencies
• parent care
• child sick leave (the CDC issued guidelines on this too late and the Department of ED, or at least my local school district seemed to have problems providing good guidelines for illnesses and did not accommodate any of the real-life issues of single-mothers without leave benefits.)
• wellness time for self-care
• matched leave for volunteer work for federal and state employees

I also think and believe that the government should spur job-creation by creating jobs with health benefits right now.

How do you defray costs by including young workers who are healthy by employing and training the young in professions such as

• caregivers for the profoundly disabled
• translators and interpreters
• web-designers for public, interactive and accessible websites
• upgrading federal databases
• planting and maintaining community garden spaces and finding underused public lands for new ones
• delivering CSA-modeled boxes to under-served local food districts
• distributing knowledge and food at local libraries or community centers with extended operating hours for English-language classes and computer access
• working at small respite-centers for community members who need resources (small, emergency packets of diapers, hydration support support, and information on local and state resources available to them.)
• Public art works projects a la New Deal, and please, someone employ the writers and the recorders to go and catch America at this moment like they did before–it was a good idea.

Thanks for listening to my rant.

I do have one more peep.

How would I find the money…well, because I am a taxpayer.

The administration of public-health services needs a spruce up.

If an efficiency expert were to be set loose on the place, I think she would find that managers are over-paid and under-supervised.

I had the pleasure of sitting through the recent public hearing on the 5% cut ordered by the governor.

First of all, there was precious few public there, and the first speaker was a man who argued that we are in end times. Most of the speakers were contractors of the state, whom I would categorize as special-interest groups. There were  a few speakers who are consumers of public health services, many in wheel chairs, who also spoke and touched me deeply. They were accompanies by their caretakers, who were all female and as they described, have children without health insurance and they, themselves have no sick leave.

There are so many jobs that should be federal jobs in my humble opinion:

• Early Childhood Intervention workers
• All security personnel at federal and state and city offices, as well as computer support personnel
• Under-paid caregivers of the disabled and the elderly who often have children of their own
• Public daycare centers with educational benefits (a la GI Bill) for workers
• Maintenance workers responsible for common areas and general decay in their areas
• Workers for expanded free Summer recreation and food programs
• SAT tutors, coaches, mentors, and nurses-in-training
• Internet access specialists
• Workers to refurbish donated computers to needy schools and students
• Communications specialist to add accessible content and enhanced feedback functions to local schools web-sites and serves as hubs for health alerts and disaster preparedness
• I could go on, but….you get the idea.

We do not have to create these systems form scratch, we just have to support the people who have already answered the call.

There is a business bent in my state, and the use of contractors has become the efficiency straw-man.

We have been told to prepare for health-care benefits cuts. State workers have been asked to sacrifice the entire human staff of our human resources, no merit raises for three years, and we still come to work everyday. We have planes flown at us; but, there is an army of good people (with new jobs) ready to set loose through the US Census on the streets to count us.  I am still excited about the future, more or less.

But let us seize this moment, ladies AND gentlemen.

Please, pick one thing you’d like to see changed and write a letter.

If you are like many, un- or under-employed, then consider yourself deputized.

By the powers vested in me by absolutely no-one: go and do good.

Feed someone, turn off the video game console, and do a google search of mentoring or volunteering opportunities in your area. Act local and move the global. Even you Ron Paul boys, c’mon. Start the seeds of business in places that need them desperately. If government is the thesis and business in the antithesis, then can we not agree that the synthesis is a better place for everyone?

Best,

M

this week in feminism (are you listening Jon Stewart?)

The IOC ruled (need reference) that female athlete’s reproductibe health disqualified them for competing in a high-impact sport.

and one luger complained that the new “ladies” starting point was you know for the ladies, and boring.

I don’t remember who complained on Slate that people bothered by Vonn’s SI cover in the tee-hee F me pose should grow up.

I’ll grow up when you stop turning

ipads into something dirty and snickering

and start doing more housework.

Another tidbit from my dig-dug path:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_sexes_%28game_theory%29

If I were more of a gender warrior I would say that the outside set

is women who keep the world going, cooking, nursing, shaping

and men when they participate

and when they are not lost to video games and their own

abstractions.

No one wants to do the shit work, my friends.

no one.

I am glad to see that women can have conversations with experts, who happen to be women

and we don’t have to keep score.

My week in feminism is the sad demise of that one writer who graced and surprisedf me with the

most well-written lines in Spartacus: blood and sand. It was episode 2, I think. Lucy Lawless one of many busty and driven women.

Yes, it is skinemax, but he are the lines.

flirtateously: that is not proper:

Xena: proper is a word invented by men who try to use it to control us (I may be paraphrasing)

It is really the poor treatment of the men that pushed me over the edge

gladiator = yell and scream when blood is spilled or we see the big whip

There has been other tidbits, some a little too close to home.

But it is the year of the Tiger,

and I do believe in new moons and new beginnings.

We need more humor.

We need more help.

This is what I remember of Richmond

http://abcnews.go.com/US/charged-california-gang-rape-plead-guilty/story?id=9219171

I taught in Richmond a few years ago when I was underemployed and perched on a hill above the Berkeley campus.

It was science and I arrived each week with a giant purple tub of science fun.

It wasn’t always fun, or course.

But what haunts me even today is the streets. I would drive on am eight-laned highways, past a Rosie the Riveter, and exit. Withing 1 mile of the exit, there were deep craters in the streets of Richmond. Once, I drove in and all of the streetlights were out. Not blinking like you and I think of, but just dark.

The kids were sweet and curious. I did see a teacher sleep through now and again, but there was a sweet spirit about the man who guarded the door. I remember I was on high alert because someone snatched a girl away from a school somewhere in the metroplex.

So, yes thank you Michelle Obama for looking awesome the other night and being straightforward and accomplished in your own right.  How about a dollar-for-dollar challenge. Every dollar spent in foreign aid and wars are matched by new domestic spending on healthcare, rural renewal, urban literature and arts seeding, education, and infrastructure?

Ode to Austin

A wise man once said that

(of the people who get bored of Austin’s small-citiness; or lose too much time as it slip slides away, and leave)

if you open you mind then you can see that Austin is many different places, all at once, and through the days and years that flow.

This, or course is true of any real city.

…or so it seems.

But Austin opened her petals for me tonight, and I saw such an array of good ness, sweetness, and curiosity.

I say, long live all real cities everywhere.

I am officially registering these to the universe:

R.U.S.T.
R.U.S.T.

M. U. S. T.

Mothers Urban Survival Technologies

N. E. S. T.

Not East Studio Tour

June 2009

-M

The Violence that Men Do, The Violence that Women Do

http://www.slate.com/id/2216236/

I appreciate the spirit of this article immensely, but I have one bone stuck in my craw.

Mr. Saletan writes, “The new problem is too few girls. Without enough girls, the boys become unruly. So the government, following the same collective logic that inspired the one-child policy, has become the world’s biggest promoter of sexual equality.”

So, the political crisis of gender inequality is because boys get too rowdy when there aren’t enough girls about to keep them in order? Perhaps I am being too literal, perhaps the author meant that if men grow up with the real possibility of not being able to have a family because the female sex is in short supply may get a little disaffected and rock the totalitarian boat. I just suppose I wanted a little more in the “describe the inherent value of women” column.

I too find it ironic that China finds itself in such a position, facing the increased value of women by a simple supply and demand shift in the economy. Perhaps the “Care for Girls” campaign will gain traction, and I suppose it would have been too much to ask for it to be called what it really is the “Let Girls Live” campaign.

This article stirred up something I have been pondering for awhile, that is the difference and relative acknowledgement of the Violence that Men Do versus the Violence that Women Do. This is what we know; men can be rapists, serial killers are usually men, and if you could quantify the units of man on man violence in all of the world’s conflicts throughout history…Well, it would be staggering. Women are the gentler sex, and so most often the victims of domestic violence, sexual violence, and in parts of the world like China, the most likely sex to be left out in the open to die, or aborted as soon as the sex organs can be identified.

But, the world is changing, as the laudable Mr. Saletan knows and is kind enough to take notice of. Women are now much more likely to strap on bombs or pick up guns, or take part in our all-volunteer military. But this is not the violence I have been pondering, although I think it is important and noteworthy and I can only hope that there are dissertations on the subject being born.

But, I believe there are forms of female perpetrated violence that the world is reticent to acknowledge, and I think it’s high time. If we are to be treated as equals, in all spheres, it is time to give up our place on the pedestal of moral high ground. Not only do women participate in destructive societal structures, but do you like me not know a man or two who has been laid desolate by a woman? Sometimes they leave, sometimes they choose abortions with no consultation, sometimes they hold such tight reign on the children the fathers become strangers of villains.

It is also my experience that if you have a school-time story of a friend who decided one day that you weren’t cool enough anymore and publicly humiliated you, then that fickle friend was probably a girl. If you have a story about being out with your newborn and your egg-shell sleep-deprived psyche and was accosted by someone who felt you were failing at some basic motherhood responsibility, then your accuser is likely to be a woman.

If the Victorian age cemented a model of society split into the male-driven outside sphere, and the female-driven domestic sphere, then who can say that there has been more violence in one sphere than the other?