Reflections in Late May

 “I was raised by the military-industrial complex,” my mother would say.  It was an apology, in later years, for how long it had taken her politics to catch up to her morals.  I knew her as a righteous hippie: an artist, anti-colonizer, in favor of home rule and revolution; someone who threw rocks at tanks in occupied Northern Ireland and put her 5’3” body in the middle of fights and in between children and danger.  She taught art in the middle of South-Central Los Angeles in the end, loved by the neighborhood and the school and every dog for blocks.  She died shortly after organizing her fellow charter school faculty through hostile union-busting, and before she could see the fruits of a contract or retirement.

When I was a kid, she had been anti-union, inherited from her father who didn’t want to pay $15 an hour to machiners; she and my father worked for a defense contractor through the Cold War, fans of Reagan.  She blamed Clinton and his peace processes for taking her job.

“I was raised by the military-industrial complex.”

It was true.  Every man in my blood has gone to war for the United States for generations, until my own brother.  We’ve had bodies in every conflict; I can track it back 175 years.  My mother’s father manufactured specialized airplane screws, once he came home from the Navy and the Pacific in the second world war.  He brought back a hatred for Patton, and for an entire nation, which he fed to my mother through photographs of war crimes and narratives of inhumanity.  (She amassed a strange collection of books related to Japan during her life; ancient art, wartime atrocity, erotica, history, woodcuts.)

Her mother’s father had to do his service over multiple branches, never seeming to satisfy any but never quite reaching the point of dishonorable discharge.  The lore on him said he was sent to capture Pancho Villa and, being a sympathizer, declined to do so.  He maintained his disinterest in law after discharge, becoming a bootlegger, shacking up with a not-quite-divorcée who had slipped illegally into the country and fraudulently claimed a new birth year and birthplace.  Their curb was marked by the homeless during the Great Depression as a place to come for food and kindness; Alice couldn’t cook but kept chili or soup on the stove every day for years.  Her brothers trickled down from Canada after her to be drafted by the US for the Great War.

Generation after generation they enlisted or were drafted.  The bootlegger’s grandfather came from Germany with no wife and five children; Ohio sent him directly to the Civil War.

I was raised by the military-industrial complex, too.  Stories of my parents entangled with the three-letter agencies, of my mother working with satellite imagery fine enough to read the brand on the butt of the cigarette left in the footprint of a Russian boot in the snow, as far back as the early 80s.  She told us she had wanted to paint a giant red X on our roof for the Russians to aim at; the nuclear fallout at our distance from the Long Beach naval base would be torturous, she explained, full of sickness and rotting flesh, and she’d rather them take us out directly.  She laughed, baffled, when anyone was surprised about the NSA revelations of spying at home.  We grew up knowing any phone might be tapped at any time.  We knew security was an illusion, only a stacking up of layers of difficulty to make yourself harder to reach, to make other targets more attractive than yourself.  Our parents started a tiny self-defense supplies company from home, selling pepper spray and screamers I had to take with me to walk alone.  We kept big dogs; they don't stop burglars or murderers, but they do encourage them to try a different door.

My father came back from service with undiagnosed PTSD, a hatred for lamb and mutton, and a fear of rats.  And humanity.  His military activities were in special forces and by description certainly war crimes.  When I was about 8, he abruptly stopped a mysterious work activity that had had him flying back east regularly, which neither of our parents would explain, but he told my brother once he used to “pop people for the government.”  That night, he tearfully told us instead about what he had done in the Army, the people he had killed in their homes, in front of their children, in countries we were and were not at war with, while a soldier.  I learned a term for suicide I wouldn’t understand in specific for several more years, and was sworn to secrecy—eight years old and expected to carry the secret that could steal the pension from a desperate stranger’s widow and orphans.  He feared rats because he’d woken up with them eating his toes in the jungle.  He once strangled my mother in his sleep while she was 8 months pregnant with me, when she was coming back to bed from the bathroom; she managed to wake him from his flashback before he could kill us.  A closet at the end of the hall was filled with weapons of all descriptions; blades, firearms, ammunition.  Less deadly weapons decorated the walls.  His sister later told us she used to watch the Friday night news, “waiting to see if Bill would end up in a library tower.”  We mistook him for dead more than once, finding him unbreathing or passed out surrounded by blood and broken glass, before he died on the floor at 52.  

His brother came back from Vietnam just as gentle as he had gone, with medals for bravery for his willingness to be airdropped over enemy lines to cook for combat soldiers.  I knew him as someone who kept chickens and doves.  Some time after his return, at a baseball game (he lived for the Dodgers), the band played the “1812 Overture.”  When the canon fired he disappeared and wasn’t found until hours later when the stadium had emptied, hidden beneath the stands, sheltering from the shelling.

Their father survived Europe in WWII, but not without three false notices sent to their mother that he had—or that he likely had—died.  She hated the wistful Christmas songs from the 40s, “I’ll Be Home For Christmas.”  I wonder sometimes how long she lived with his false death each time, and whether after that many notices she could ever really believe he was alive when he came back to her.

All of my ancestors are dead.  They survived the wars they went to, after a fashion.

Humans in Society

Imagine three people naked and separate in the woods.  They have nothing with them, no one with them, no starting point.

One recognizes his coldness and gathers wood, and struggles for a spark, until he has a fire.

Another recognizes her hunger, sharpens a rock, and kills an animal for food.

A third recognizes his thirst, and searches far and wide for water, until he finds a spring.

The first is warm, but dies of thirst.  The second is full, but dies of exposure.  The third is slaked, but dies of starvation.

But if instead the three meet, and recognize what each the other can bring, what each the other needs, and what they themselves have and need, they can share one to the other and live.  The water carrier is fed, the hunter is warm, the fire-builder does not thirst: this is society.  

When humans come together and agree that they will do better together than alone, we build a social contract.  Perhaps I can build my own fire, grow my own food, and find my own water; perhaps so can you; but I will eventually sleep, and my fire will go out.  You will walk alone, and so you will meet the tiger alone.  The hunter who has fed herself will get too old to hunt.  So we agree: I will find food, and you will find shelter, and she will find skins, and they will keep watch in the night, and we will survive together.  None needs be starved or hunted or naked.

Thousands of years pass, and we find that you build homes, and I bake bread, and he raises chickens, and she weaves cloth.  And still later, she teaches, and he nurses, and I make machines, and he builds roads, and on and on towards finer and more minute actions.  The things we share one to another, the needs we have and things we can offer, are different now, and more abstract and separated, because there are thousands of us and millions of us, each with different needs, different skills, different knowledge, and the beginning absolutes of water and fire and food are very remote, now.  But we are still a society, still each putting in and taking out and absolutely reliant on the other.

It seems to me that now that we are so far from those absolutes, all so content and assured that we can turn the tap and have water, turn on the gas and have heat, and go to the store to find food, that we have developed the luxury of forgetting what a society is, what benefits we take from it, and what responsibilities we owe to it.  We have created an illusion of absolute independence, of solitary self-sufficience, because we make our money and pay for our goods and never need to agree to trade one service or one kindness or one promise to another human being who needs to do the same.  We come to a place and we are not naked, and we are not cold, and we are not hungry, so we can fail to recognize the person who sews as someone we rely on, the person who farms as someone we are beholden to, even though were we to suddenly be without clothing or food, we would just as surely die.  Our social contract has worked so well for us that now there are people who believe absolutely that they need nothing and owe nothing.

But I am not machining the factory that produces my heat.  And you are not paving the roads you drive, or that the trucks carrying your food drive.  Without those who are, we are cold and hungry.  So even though I don't give you fire for water, I do put a little in the pot so the water keeps coming from the tap.  And even though you don't build a roof for someone so that they will dig out a sewer, you put in a little so that the sewers keep moving.  Each of us benefits daily from utilities, from trade agreements, from infrastructure generally, so each of us gives a little back to maintain our utilities, make our treaties, and build our roads and schools and hospitals.  Otherwise, we are failing our side of the contract; we eat but provide nothing for the warmth of those feeding us.  We drink but provide nothing to the water-carrier.  In the short term, this is cynical exploitation of a society we rely absolutely on.  But in the long term, this destroys the contract, and consequently, the society - when we have no contract, we have no heat, no water, no sewer, no access to food and clothing, no one to watch for the tiger in the night.  

This is not a plausible system; this is not a livable world.  Without a society, we are all more or less doomed to die alone, whether of exposure or starvation or disease or attack.  So be wary of anyone who tells you that all will be well when we stop supporting our society; this is nihilism.  In the most basic terms, this is the end of civilization.  If they have already reaped enough benefit from the society that they have fire and meat and water to last them for now, they won't be the ones to suffer when the contract is broken--they may walk away without paying their due or owning up to their responsibility for the society that sheltered them so far.  But we are all only one cold night away from the fire going out, and one lonely walk away from the tiger.  The lines aren't as clear as they used to be, but we may still look face to face to face and see our survival in the eyes of the other. 

The righteous sleep worse than the wicked

I think about that moment when someone asks the bad guy, "How do you sleep at night?"  The person who is exploiting other human beings or outright endangering them for some gain or another; "How do you sleep?" the outraged dissident asks them.

How well?

Probably pretty well, is my guess.  Poor sleep is a sign of guilt or worry or that nagging voice in the back of your mind, or that upsetting confrontation replaying itself over and over; if you've made the decision to behave in a way that disregards human dignity, and to continue to behave that way, you've probably decided that (a) it's worth it, (b) they deserve it, or (c) that's just the way the world works.  You're satisfied with that answer and have abdicated any responsibility you might feel for it.  There will be nothing to trouble your sleep until something worms its way past the surface.  If anything ever does.

I think about the ethical repercussions of everything I do; my purchases, my causes, my behavior.  I have an idea of the world I want to live in, a few clear principles I value, and I make my decisions based on those values, on making that world come to be.  I behave as rationally and compassionately as I can.  I apply this as broadly as I can.  I try to respect my fellow human beings and take responsibility for my actions as they extend out beyond me to touch those fellow human beings.  And when I play out the repercussions of policies I think are destructive or inhumane, I also try to find a way to not paint someone who supports that policy with that color, try to give them the benefit of the doubt in considering what aims they might have or what different theories of behavior, of government, and so on they might ascribe to.  Or if that fails outright, try to believe they're still a good person--just one with some gaping holes in their understanding.

I'm the one who doesn't sleep at night.

I believe I'm right; I don't believe everyone who disagrees with me is evil; I satisfy myself that I am doing my part to make a better world and living up to my own standards, while still allowing myself enough slack to not go insane.  But I lie awake having imaginary arguments with people I believe are good people, trying to get them to understand a point of view I think is righteous.  I replay moments of people I know expressing some sentiment I think is abhorrent, and of me being too struck dumb to say anything to propose an alternative--and then imagine alternate endings, standing up to their ignorance or unkindness either destructively, by indulging my insult and taking them apart, or constructively, by starting a conversation, sharing information.  But I lie awake when I think I have managed to do that, too, dissecting the conversation, wondering about the fallout, wondering if I've done any good, and wondering whether I have lost a friend or failed a cause or both.  I look forward in fear to the next conversation, the next confrontation, the next election.

I wonder whether I have done any good at all.

I'm the one who doesn't sleep at night.

PSA on Women's Health and Bodies, Part 2

Birth control is for sluts? What if I said I wanted to be on birth control so that, if one of these guys hopped up on viagra (that his insurance provided him) assaulted me, I'd at least be protected from pregnancy?

(I like to hope this is paranoid, but it crosses my mind more than I'd like to admit.)

For the record, I'm in a monogamous marriage to a man with a vasectomy, but in light of my history, have been strongly encouraged by my doctor to stay on birth control indefinitely, to (1) lower my chances of getting another ovarian tumor (and possibly losing the other ovary with it), and (2) avoid losing a half pint of blood every month. This is good for them, too, of course; ultrasounds to follow the progress of cysts, surgery, bloodwork, and care for anemia cost them more than my birth control does.

PSA on Women's Health and Bodies

Before you shave your twat (or ask your special friend to shave hers), please bear in mind that the denuded vulva is essentially indistinguishable from that of a nine year old girl. Food for thought.

...Hrm.

I should have written this before, but:

California, plz to be remembering that all those rolling blackouts we had a few years ago? were the direct result of privatizing energy, NOT of the Democratic governor we got afterwards. The few areas with remaining public utilities did NOT lose power. In LA (with our public LADWP) we sat back on our laurels and didn't have to worry about energy strapped Edison and PG&E selling our short energy to their shell companies in other states and then buying it back at a higher rate from themselves, consequently cranking up rates to customers, and then not having enough to satisfy demands (in accordance with the scripture of profit maximization in the free market).

....You realize that's what Prop. 16 would encourage. Right..?

....That it means there would be overwhelming hurdles to switch any of the privatized districts back over to public utilities ever, and that it would likely be impossible to ever overcome that again...?

Plz to be considering. Thx.

Oh, for fuck's sake.

Dear California,

Please raise my taxes.

Sincerely,
Lauren





Update: letters to gov + senate/assembly reps.

The version for the governor:

Dear Governor Schwarzenegger,

Please raise my taxes.

Please.

A few percent off of income to spare devastating cuts to important social services and programs will cost us so much less in the long term; fewer disenfranchised and desperate people, fewer students without books, fewer elderly without care, and fewer people ill with no recourse is well worth a lot more of my money than I am currently giving to the state. I love my state and I owe her plenty for all she has given me; please ask for it. I will give it gladly.

Thank you,
[Name]
Life-long Californian


Version for Senator and Assemblyperson (altered because they're so publically committed to reducing spending to the exclusion of raising funding):


Dear Senator Denham / Assemblyman Berryhill,

Please raise my taxes.

Please.

For the sake of protecting our state, we cannot continue to reduce spending rather than raise income. A few percent off of income to spare devastating cuts to important social services and programs will cost us so much less in the long term; fewer disenfranchised and desperate people, fewer students without books, fewer elderly without care, and fewer people ill with no recourse is well worth a lot more of my money than I am currently giving to the state. I love my state and I owe her plenty for all she has given me; please ask for it. I will give it gladly.

Thank you,
[Name]
Life-long Californian

Some caveats.

I embarrass easily. Too easily. I am awkward and paranoid of upsetting or being upset. I second guess myself immediately when I've said or done something that could even POSSIBLY have potentially discomforted anyone in any way, or be considered unfair, and immediately work up a superficial case for proof that I have done so and that I should try to fix it.

That has some bearing on the rest of this post, so I figured I should mention up front.


First of all, I'm in LA. I don't ever mention that I'm going or that I've been, if it's going to be a short or busy trip and I don't have time to stop and see anyone non-familia down here. This is primarily due to the awkward, embarrassed paranoia. I hate the prospect of telling anyone I won't be able to see them. This potentially antisocial behavior will probably continue, and I am only mentioning it now because:

This afternoon we were in Long Beach, which is some 330 miles closer to Mexicali than Turlock is. And though we were still some 150 miles away from the epicenter, we still felt the earthquake significantly and for a long time.

BUT: we are all okay. Far enough away that it had left the jar-your-foundation-into-dust mode and gone right into roll-the-whole-area-like-a-tilt-a-whirl. ....It was really neat from Long Beach, actually, just lovely and big and rolling and lilting for a couple minutes. I love feeling earthquakes, but I know I'm really lucky to be away from the epicenter and without property damage (another caveat added due to paranoia).


Second of all, and unrelated to the earthquake, but related to my awkwardness/paranoia caveat and to my previous post:

I hope it was very clear to everyone that I did NOT mean that the lynch-ish racist segment of our population = everyone opposed to the health care bill, or even everyone into the Tea Party movement. (....You got that, right...?)

I think that that kind of hateful/fearful crisis fervor is clearly a core motivation for a significant number of people involved in these things (see also: the upsurge in Christian militia movements). But I DO know that people can have very different motives and lines of reasoning for being involved, completely unrelated to that. I may not agree with your position, but that doesn't mean I think you appreciate or condone what assholes are doing under your banner, or that you think the way they do.

Just... needed to make sure that was really clear.

Okay. < / paranoid clarifications. > (There are more, but there really is no place for them here.)


I hope everyone else is okay earthquake-wise, and that everyone you know is okay, and that our jokes about incoming tsunamis prove to be just that. I am going to bed, and then we're getting in the car and going back home. ...I am sad we will probably not feel the aftershocks. (Write your own caveat here.) Although after southern Chile, northern Chile, and northern Mexico, we kind of wonder if there's an arrow pointed up towards L.A. and San Francisco. We're going to lay by some water and cat food, just in case.

Because I haven't posted about it yet...

So Monday night, when Chris was driving home from class, someone pulled up behind him honking, then pulled up beside him, and flipped him off.

Chris went: ?
And then: Oh. Right. Obama sticker on the back of the car. (This sort of thing happens in Turlock.)

The articulate driver rolled down his window to engage in political discourse (i.e. yell at Chris while he was a captive audience at the light). Chris obliged by rolling his down, too.

The unhappy driver's irate contribution was, "You actually like what this guy is doing to the country?"

And Chris, though enchanted, just rolled back up his window and continued home.

It was sort of par for the day--light, for the day. Teabaggers were busy accosting Democrats in the House, spitting on and yelling ni**er at black congressmen, and otherwise clarifying their position. Health care reform opponents were also cutting propane lines, throwing bricks, and generally making threats to people voting for reform.

...Now I know there's such a thing as getting riled up. I know there can be a lack of discipline at rallies, and that people can act out. But you know what a lack of discipline looks like at the kind of political actions I participate in? Sneaking in a mismatched flag that's not part of the message. Or letting out a "Where the fuck's the funding?," or getting snarkier on a sign than is necessary. It does NOT look like violence, racial slurs, or an actual need for extra security.

Number one rule of protesting: You demonstrate the comparative righteousness of your position if--though YOU are nonviolent--the opposition's only way to deal with you is to become violent themselves. Violence towards protesters sitting in or blocking the way or just being there is an admission of having nothing intelligent to say on the matter, is an acknowledgment that your position does not hold up on its own. Violence is the recourse of badly seated power, because it cannot win an argument, cannot peacefully engage, cannot win its aims by legitimate means, but only by a show of force or intimidation.

The dynamic can be made just as clear when the protest is what turns violent and ugly in the face of attempts at peaceful discourse.

If there's going to be a total regression of a segment of our country into the old let's-lynch-black-people-and-socialists days, I hope that the nature of said movement will at least become a little clearer to the general public. Not much in the way of silver lining.

...But you know what is?

32 million newly insured Americans. People getting to actually go to the doctor when they have a stomach ache, rather than when their appendix is already septic and about to rupture (unlike my baby brother, who got dumped off of my mom's insurance just in time to need major surgery, instead of timely surgery). People getting vaccinations and preventative care cheap, before we get rampant epidemics from untreated diseases and have to pay several times more to treat them in ERs anyway. And just possibly, maybe a little lowering in the absurdly high infant death rates and deaths from preventable diseases. Oh, and a lowering in the deficit. Oh, and of the overall costs of health care. Improvements in the lives of EVERYONE in this country, not just the ones who were uninsured.

Getting honked at and yelled at really seems absolutely worth it. Once in a while, persisting peacefully in the right works out.

Hair

This is my fifth attempt at writing this post. I hope this is the healthier, happier, more positive version:

Hair can be healthy.

Hair on a female body is not more unclean than hair on a male body; women who do not shave are not somehow unhygienic, and will not smell any worse than anyone else who does not shave. Hair on a female body does not grow longer than hair on a male body; left unchecked, it will not dangle several feet or turn into an underarm fright wig. Like male body hair, it will grow, stop being stubbly, soften, and stop getting longer, just like all the rest of the hair on every other part of every other body.

It is not somehow natural or inherently right to remove hair: women have not been shaving forever, and in the US, shaving underarms started with ad campaigns in the 1910's, and leg shaving sometime during WWII. Hair has served an evolutionary purpose in our history; before it thinned out, it served to warm us, and it still makes us more sensitive to our surroundings. Thicker patches help regulate temperature and carry pheromones out to other members of our species, which those of us prone to smelling one another can find to be a positive experience.

Women who do not shave are not messy or lazy; they have a variety of reasons for not shaving, aesthetic, political, social, or sensual. They are not by some strange commutative property overweight and unattractive. They are not unmatchable, as far as mates are concerned, whatever their gender of preference. There are plenty of people who don't care, who don't mind, who come to understand, who slightly prefer, who appreciate, or who adore body hair. They have a variety of reasons for that, too.

Hair is not the enemy. Hair can be fun; hair can be pretty; hair can be sexy. Hair can be soft, gentle, and comfortable. Hair can be confident and strong. Hair can be wild and feral; hair can be demure and tidy. It can be feminine; it can be feminist. It can be sweet and it can be stubborn. Hair can be anything we want it to be, and we do not have to hate it or be afraid of it. It is ours to do anything we like with. If that happens to be removing it, then happy hunting. And if not, it is ours to keep in peace and pleasure and thrift and comfort and anything else we like.

Memo to Meg:

Your priorities are (according to your ad spots that I cannot seem to escape) to create and keep jobs, cut government spending, and fix education...

And you say you're disappointed to see how far California has fallen, in the 'many years' you've been here, and that you want to bring us back to where we were...

But I gotta' help you out with your California history, here. Or else with your connective logic; I'm not sure where the problem is.

Do you know when California had the best educational system in the country, Meg? With incredible access to higher ed and successful K-12?

When we had higher property taxes. Before we decided we needed 2/3 of the legislature to approve any tax or fee or pass a budget, rather than a simple majority, but that a simple majority could cut a tax or fee, or write in corporate loopholes. Before we started giving corporate welfare to Wal-Mart.

Yes, on the surface, our business tax is very high, in CA. Much higher than other places. But the effective tax rate - after all of the gaping loopholes - is one of the lowest in the country.

Yes, we had very high property tax rates, in the '70s. But now, they're (again) one of the lowest in the country.

Our spending per pupil has also dropped to 49th. We were first in the nation, when our K-12 was dazzling. You know what property taxes paid for in California?

Education.

Our budget crisis is not a crisis of excessive spending; there is no public spending left. Our budget crisis is a crisis of inadequate inflow.

So the second point is a point of connections.

Education--all education in California--is critically, criminally underfunded. Access has been destroyed, as individual costs have skyrocketed and funding has crashed. Education is a large part of the public sector - a little over half of our general fund goes there (which makes sense; we have 6,259,972 students in public K-12 alone - add in 191,000 in UC, and 417,112 at CSU, and around 2,500,000 students in our community colleges; around 9.4 million students all told.)

"Education" is government spending. It cannot be cut any further. Even Schwarzenegger has accepted this point. It's been cut too far; we cut so far we screwed ourselves out of stimulus funding, if that's not the irony to beat all ironies. We've cut so far that we've failed to follow our own laws about how great a percentage of high school students we will accept into higher ed.

So I guess what I mean to say is this: You cannot both cut government spending and fix education. You cannot both cut government spending and take us back "to where we were." You certainly can't create a corporate capitalist version of tax utopia and fix the schools.

And I'm so, so disappointed that you have so much money that I'm seeing YOUR ads all over TV already, and have yet to see a spot for Jerry Brown.

(Brown, by the way, was governor when we DID have a functioning educational system, when we were rolling in the fucking milk and honey. If you want things back "the way they were," maybe you should throw some funding behind him, hm?)




Now. Back to my Olympics (and consequently, my Ravelympics: I'm participating in Event WIP Dancing, though if I get far enough ahead, I may take up some Event Sock Hockey or Hat Halfpipe - wish me luck!). Just needed to get that out, first.

Perspective

I've been attached to CSU Stanislaus since autumn of 2001. I'm fast approaching a decade, although it looks like I won't quite make it, after all. But that's besides.

I have been here nine years, and I have learned a little perspective about this place. I have watched it change, for better and for worse, and I have watched it grow, and I have seen it cut back, and I have kept involved as intimately as I might. I mean to say that I have a depth of feeling about it and a breadth of knowledge about it, and given that, I just want to say this:

In my nine years here, I have met a lot of faculty, and I have met some of my favorite human beings among them--brilliant, humane, funny, kind, conscientious, beautiful, loving, committed, passionate people. And I knew my share of students when attending--of course--but it seems like the students I'm meeting these days are amazing human beings, people who are paying attention with care and wonder to the world around them, souls of peaceful, powerful principle, with energy and devotion and a fullness of love and spirit.

They are the best of this place. They are beautiful. I cherish these people. I know they are the best of us.

There are arguments to be had and fights to fight and slanders to be unwritten and misunderstandings to be reworked, but I have nothing productive to say for that, right now, and it's eating at me a little. I know I cannot by my useless and restless angst make anything better for these often maligned, much maltreated, roundly abused, often libeled, mistrusted, feared, and disdained. I cannot drag the community as a whole kicking and screaming and blinking into an understanding of what is happening here, certainly not by force or by derision or by woe.

All I can do is repeat this: this faculty, these students, they are the best of us. They are the hope of this community, of this state, of this country. They are thoughtful and they are precious, they are wise and they are righteous and they are humble, too. They are beautiful creatures and they deserve love. I love them, and I have loved them, and I will love them still and more and more.

-LOVE

Music and Arts demonstration; student rally

Bless our students at CSU Stanislaus. The arts know how to put on a fucking protest.

This carol came after about an hour of gorgeous, mournful, and sometimes seasonal music from the Chamber Singers (slated to be cut next year) and the Wind Ensemble (slated to be cut next year). Wore all black. Marching in and out, and in between songs, they were silent.

Chris said: "They're holding their own wake."

There is hardly a more beautiful sound in the world than this ensemble singing, and next year, if our cuts roll on, it won't be.



Definitely encourage you to listen/watch. Earlier on in their performance, lyrics included "Fare thee well, my own true love..." and "I am tired, I am weak, I am worn... Take my hand... lead me home," and other sounds of loss and homesickness - music is these students' lives, this school and these programs are their home. I wept like a baby.



Less heart-breaking and amazingly optimistic, here, is Chris (the eternal pessimist). The day before the arts demonstration, there was a huge walkout, rally, and march (couple hundred students), most of the speakers for which are posted online, too. So if you want to see my hot honey being a rabble-rouser, you can here, starting at 3:56. (He is also wearing the first thing I ever knit, that rainbowy scarf.)



(At 6:54, you he's moved just off screen, but you can see three of his students running through to blindside group hug him, which made my day. <3)

...And I'm replying to more innocuous email.

I just received an email from the Office of Alumni Affairs & Annual Giving, asking me to give them money.

The email begins this way:

Your gifts to the CSU Stanislaus Stan Fund directly benefit students in many ways:
1. By recruiting highly qualified faculty who excel as scholars and teachers and work closely with students in the context of a caring community...
(emphasis in original text)


...

...


...So I wrote back.


I appreciate the necessity of giving.  I am afraid I cannot give right now, as my husband is one of these highly qualified faculty, and is being eliminated for the next year--along with all other lecturers at Stanislaus and very likely some of our tenure-track faculty--so we cannot really spare any money at all, right now.

By the way: suggesting any money I gave could in any way go toward RECRUITING faculty any year soon, when the only movement in faculty is going to be outward, is disingenuous, if not an outright lie, and I would suggest you reword in future.

Thank you,
(name)
(major/grad date)



Also in the process of editing my earlier screed for mailing to my state reps, the board of trustees, and the chancellor. (Editing to add context, and, um, specific recommendations and information re: our campus president.) I'll post it (behind a cut, I suppose) when I have it in order and have sent it. I may look into sending a cleaned up version of the original to papers or... something?



UPDATE: I was sent a very nice note back in response by the head of that office, which was much appreciated. I know it's really hard for the staff in these offices, right now, too, and they're doing the best they can to try to raise money for CSUS in hard times - it was good to hear back.

A break in NaNo hiatus, because I haven't had the heart to write anything else but this, today.

How dare they?
A reflection on the likelihood we will have to leave our home after this year, if we want to eat.

How dare they?

This administration does not care about California. They do not care about the CSU, and they do not care about this school. This is a stepping stone, from the lower positions they held before to the higher positions or more prestigious universities they hope to join soon. Administrations come and go in three or four or five years; the faculty, the staff, the community, we are the ones who stay for ten, twenty, thirty years, as long as we are able, as long as we are allowed.

I am a third generation Californian, on both sides. My great grand-parents came from Ontario, Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, Beruit, many places far and wide, and set down roots deep in this promise land, and two of my grandparents were born here, and all of their children, and all of their children, and even most of theirs, after them. I'm the first on my mother's side to even leave spitting distance of the counties my grandmothers were born in before me, since they got here. I was born in this state, raised here, and wish to die here, when it comes to it. This is an amazing and precious place, a resource and a garden, fierce and beautiful.

The CSU is a treasure, too, that belongs to us, here, in California--a proud and lovely creation of our proud and lovely state, to be defended at all costs. Myself and my cousins, my mother and my aunts who were first generation college students, come down from farmers and sailors and soldiers who valued the educations they didn't get, and strove to learn, and impressed upon us all the value of learning, of schooling, we are all products of the CSU when we couldn't have afforded anything else and couldn't have hoped for anything as wonderful.

How dare they push me out of my home? How dare they push my family out of the CSU? We, who had California and the CSU in our blood and our bones before we could read, and who know in our blood and our bones what a treasure we have?

And more important than blood ties are the ties of choosing. My partner adopted California and the CSU, and now has come to love them, now that he has been here 11 years--twice as long as the President of the university, and well over ten times as long as the interim Provost, and three times as long as the Provost before him. Those who have settled here--have meant to make their lives, here--have learned the best of it, have learned the pride and wonder, have taken it up as surely as those of us who knew it all along. And those of us with California in our veins and in the sweet earth of our flesh who have chosen to stay, have learned such awe-filled love, cannot be uprooted. If my body goes, the best of me is still here, longing for the paradise that is this place.

We want to stay. We want to be let to cherish this state, this system, to feed it and better it and make it stronger, ever stronger, ever safer from assaults from the short-sighted and far-reaching. We want to guard it and let it bloom ever brighter.

How dare they push us out, these come-latelies and leave-soons? How dare they take that wicked sword and cleave us from our homes, maim and dismember our universities as if they were nothing more than paper accounts and spools of ugly numbers? How dare they attempt to destroy what has taken us so many generations and so many hearts and so many commitments to build, as if it was theirs to crush? How dare they not lay down their bodies and their swords and their money to defend this?

How dare they?

When they take the CSU--when they cut away the teachers, the programs, the connections we cling to--and force us out, cast us to the wind, tetherless, they destroy more than a tradition, more than some quaint way of doing things, outdated or perverse. They destroy wonders. They destroy monuments and lives and blood oaths and sacred connections to a precious thing far grander than they. When we find a new place to live and work, I will still be homeless, because I will have been cut from my home, the home of my blood and the home of my choosing, the home where my heart and my head and my body have found perfect place, my home of ages. And when they are gone, tired of their broken toy, eager to find new systems to "restructure" and "improve," their damage will lay bloody and mangled and glaring behind them in the sun, for California and her lost, scattered children, blood and adopted alike, to mourn.

How dare they?

At least we know.

So there are still plans in the works. But as things stand, Chris has no work for Fall. He's out of a job.

Which means, if he finds a new one, we have to go to it. Which would mean I would be out of my beautiful, wonderful, beloved (but definitely-won't-sustain-us) job.

I'd finally put some roots down in this backward fucking little town, and it was growing on me, backward and fucked up though it is. I have a knitting group. I'm in a choir. I love my job. My best friend is staggering distance from my front door. The area's finally nurturing the arts, a little. My garden is growing me flowers.

And the alternative: him NOT finding a job? is a hell of a lot worse than losing/leaving all of those things.

I've been feeling pretty fucking low, I gotta' admit.

It's been a few days, now, since we found out, and the worst of the depression (aided by a bout of gloom, rain, wind, and general storminess and lack of sun and my subsequent plummeting energy and instinct for hibernation) is easing up. I let myself have my beaten, dejected few days, let myself binge on comfort food and neglect work and mope and cry, and the worst of it, at least, seems to be out of my system.

The sun came out, and I went out to sit in it. I did my work, I got shit done, I didn't kidnap leftover chicken and dumplings from Best Friend's fridge (seriously something I was considering). I'm not feeling quite so resentful when people remind me this could work out for the better, in the end - because, of course, it could.


...I had a lot more written below, about prospects and rationalizing about the worst case scenarios. But suffice it to say, I know that whatever happens, we'll roll with it. We'll hit the ground running, because it's what we do. Shitty times have always brought out the optimist in me.

We've got a lot to be grateful for.

Love to you all, and as much joy as you can hold.

Things Is Tough All Over

"But Chris is secure, right?"

I don't know how many times I've heard this, now. All summer, all through the start of the choir season, people have asked this or something similar; they've asked how we're doing, and I've told them a little about the budget crisis and the terror this inspires and the carnage already wreaked across our campus and how it doesn't make for peace of mind, or else they've heard some about it already and want to know where we fall in it. And then they want to be reassured that Chris is safe. "But he's all right, isn't he? He's pretty protected? Chris is still secure, right?"

"....No," I say, like I'm apologizing. "He's not."

Chris is a lecturer--contingent. Some systems call this "adjunct." Non-tenure-line. Not even probationary. We call it "visiting" on our campus--he's been "visiting" for 11 years, now, full time (some people call lecturers "part timers," too--often tenure-line people teaching significantly fewer courses per year than a full-time lecturer does, but I digress).

In short: no tenure. No expectation of tenure. No way to get tenure.

He does have three year contracts (the grail in the CFA collective bargaining agreements): if they've kept you for six years, when they could have simply failed to rehire you without penalty beforehand, and there are no "serious conduct issues" or records of bad performance, you're automatically rolled over into three year contracts, which have, themselves, a similar expectation of being rolled over. If you're between three year contracts, you've got a lot less protection--if there's just not work, they can essentially give you a contract for no work and no pay, without actually laying you off--but there is still some protection. There's also a layoff order, and an order of preference for work, and a lot of good structure in place to make sure the contract means something, when people start getting bumped off the ranks.

But when you've already gone through the order by department--say, this department--and have dumped absolutely everyone in the first couple of groups? When the only person left with less "preference for work" than Chris has already been reduced to part time (and he was only protected by two tenure-track profs being off on sabbatical, anyway, who are going to be back next year), and there are more cuts to come...?

(As in, apparently, SEVERE cuts to come, despite the absence of a concrete budget for the next year, in what is probably a punitive, tyrannical, never-let-a-good-crisis-go-to-waste move by people with more power than the rest of us?)

Then, no. Chris is not secure.

The BEST we can hope for, at this point, is that he only get reduced to part time, next year. But for all we know, there could be nothing, as soon as Spring. 30% (...for instance) out of 10 tenure-line and 2 and a half lecturers (or 6 tenure-line and 1 and a half lecturers, depending on what we're counting as this department for these purposes) is pretty bad odds, either way, isn't it?

Speak Truth to Bullshit

....I suppose I should be saving these. I've been getting uppity lately, and it seems worth documenting for a rainy day. It's probably basically shouting in the dark, but I've been doing it just the same: I've been replying to the form emails from my various representatives. Generally only if they say "Keep in touch," or give me a text box. But sometimes if they even just don't say "do-not-reply."

Why?


Well, I've been getting a lot of anathema by email, lately. I think it's mostly because I sent a letter and got sucked into the CA Representatives mailing list, and some reps have identified my location as likely to bear fruit. Unfortunately, I can't unsubscribe from individual assemblypeople without losing the whole list (and I do appreciate some updates), so I just keep getting it.

Perhaps there's something wrong with me that I keep reading it. I know better than to read comments online (mostly), or to seek out blogs. But I suppose this is different: this is something people in a position of some power and with some control over the flow of information are flooding the inboxes of the unsuspecting with.

This is higher stakes, somehow.

Unfortunately, I'm missing my favorite snagged opportunity for uppityism, lately, the one that started me on the Fussbucket jag. I'd gotten a charming push-poll survey from Daryll Issa in Orange County trying to woo me to his version of health care reform, i.e. forbidding public option, resisting socializing any aspect, resisting any regulation, and creating a bigger cookie for programs and corps already causing problems, etc. For context: in my ideal world, we'd have fully socialized single-payer, but I'm willing to start with the co-op option and regulation, I really am.

You know those phone surveys where they phrase a question like, "Do you support allowing [mundane thing x having nothing to do with kittens] bearing in mind it will certainly lead to the torture and murder of 4000 kittens according to [unrelated person y who will lose money if mundane thing x comes to pass]?" And you don't know how to answer, because you support mundane thing x (but not the torture and murder of kittens)? This was one of those. I slogged through and picked the loaded-with-bad-connotations answers responsibly, and cringed a lot.

But then it had a Text Box. Something like, "What would you like to see me (as a representative) do? What are your thoughts on my plan?"

So I told him.

I'm not aggressive; I don't seek out opportunities to piss on people's cornflakes. But being completely irresponsible, propagandizing in difficult times, fear/hate-mongering, and then asking me what I think about it? What if he wants to use the results of that paragon-of-bad-statistics-taking survey to make a point?

I mean, really.

This probably solidified my place on the mailing list, just by responding. But then again, maybe it bumped me off of it. We can but hope.

A day or so after that, I got a helpful letter from California Assemblyman Bill Berryhill (context: I actually actively campaigned for his opponent, doing volunteer work in his office). He was warning me about a dangerous bill that would early-parole non-violent offenders from our prison system (I'm a prison abolitionist at heart, and definitely a rehab-over-punishment enthusiast). He asked for my support, to protect our communities. The letter literally included statistics a non-sociological, nonscientific, non-research body produced guestimating the number of extra crimes, and violent felonies specifically, that would be committed if we released NONVIOLENT OFFENDERS ONLY. Because, clearly, letting out the leukemia patients that got snagged in the raid on the (legal-in-CA) medical marijuana clinic is going to lead to a spike in gun violence. Bear in mind also that our prisons are in violation of every law on the book, most cells occupied at double or triple capacity, etc, and we really cannot sustain them as-is.

....So I replied.

I DO support the early release of non-violent offenders.  We're keeping prisoners in a state of appalling overcrowding, which is immoral, illegal, and inhumane.  We will soon spend more to imprison people than we do to get them higher education.  If we did more with education and rehabilitation and less with misguided punitive measures, the recidivism rate would go down.  

Your email is misleading and offensive, and fear-mongering at best.  Drop three-strikes and overly harsh terms for victimless crimes.  EDUCATE.  THAT is how to make our communities safer and reduce prison overcrowding and overspending.

Thank you,
[Name]
[City]


And then I rested a little easier, content with my conscience. I continued on my merry way, dreaming my dreamy-dreams.

Today, I got another (this one my own fault, I suppose), and from the US House of Reps. A week or so ago I'd sent a form letter to my local congressman asking him to support the repeal of DOMA (the "Defense of Marriage Act," which inexplicably made it legal to ignore the full faith and credit clause in the Constitution, despite the fact that nothing else, not even pursuing serial murderers, gets this benefit). As I do.

I expected either no response (since I'm in a hotbed of Marriage=One Man + One Woman activism and Rep. Radanovich is all over that mess), or a form letter thanking me for my input but-we-disagree. I've gotten plenty of those before. Some of the fancier ones have come on paper with lip-service to some key issue, even if the sender and I are diametrically opposed on how to deal with it.

It means that at least some overworked staffer either skimmed the note for my position, or an email reader program did. It got stacked in an unofficial litmus test pile, somewhere. Some sites even let you scroll down a menu with "issue" and "Support/Oppose?" so it knows which form letter to send in response, and presumably to keep a tally.

Rep. Radanovich (or rather, his office) sent Chris and I identical form letters back to our form letters that, I shit you not, told us to "Rest assured, I will continue to work with my colleagues in the 111th Congress to strengthen the family unit and protect marriage in its traditional form." It was a letter comforting us that he, too, wants to protect hetero-only marriage, and telling us how instrumental he's going to be in supporting a re-up of a Protection of Marriage bid, and telling us how dangerous he knows same-sex marriage can be, and what a good idea it was to buck full faith and credit to protect states from having to respect the laws of other states.

...They don't even have the decency to install a good form-reader, or else to come up with the blank "Thank you for your input"? Seriously?

....So I replied:

My husband and I both sent letters encouraging the repeal of DOMA, NOT support of the Marriage Protection Act (and both received identical copies of this letter in response).  I didn't expect a personalized letter (my original wasn't, either, and I apologize for that), but I do suggest you at least tailor an alternate form letter for those who've sent you opposition, instead of support.  Sending out something that essentially says, "Don't worry, I've got your back by supporting something you find hateful and disingenuous" does not inspire confidence in the constituency.  I will not, for instance, "rest assured" after your letter--your so-called Marriage Protection Act would not "strengthen the family unit and protect marriage," as you say, but would instead DENY protections to families and couples.  See what I mean?

Please at least work up a blank for disagreement.  It doesn't even need to be issue-specific.  "Thank you for your input on this important issue" or, "We differ on this important issue, but your input in the democratic process is valued" would be, while less personalized, far less insulting than being told to rest assured you'd do exactly the opposite of what would let me rest assured.

Thank you for considering this.

[Name]
[City]

...I think the (clear) indication that no one will actually read this email released me of my sense of required politeness and sincerity. I don't suppose anyone will be bothered by this letter, then, either.

Assortment of things

CSN were wonderful! Can't seem to make myself write about it. Don't feel like I need to - but here is what they played:

Helplessly Hoping
Wasted on the Way
Ruby Tuesday (Rolling Stones)
You Can Close Your Eyes (James Taylor)
Girl from the North Country (Bob Dylan)
Midnight Rider (Allman Brothers)
Guinnevere
Dream For Him (David Crosby)
In Your Name (Graham Nash)
Uncle John's Band (Grateful Dead)
Our House
Southern Cross

(break)

Love the One You're With (Stephen Stills)
Marrakesh Express
Rock & Roll Woman (Buffalo Springfield)
Long Time Gone
Just a Song Before I Go
Cathedral
Bluebird Revisited
Wooden Ships

Encore:
For What It's Worth (which is "Stop, Hey, What's that Sound..." if you, like me, can never remember the title) (Buffalo Springfield)
Teach Your Children

Replete with sing-alongs! Fucking awesome tracklist. No Suite Judy Blue Eyes or Almost Cut My Hair, but Crosby had a serious sore throat so I don't expect them to get their really-high-stuff on. AMAZED they did Deja Vu and Cathedral, and they were stunning. They did a lot of covers--they're talking about releasing an album of them, which I would be SO all over. <3

LOVED IT. Had a lovely birthday. Spending too much time online, right now, instead of working. I should at least be writing, if I'm going to shirk my duties. But instead, I'm stealing things from other blogs. Since it was just the day, after all, I followed a link to an astrology-y birthday profiler linked and found my birthday. Which is fairly spookily accurate, as these things can be (in the same way they can be utterly divorced from reality).

Highlights:
The Day of Restless Drive

restless drive to begin all sorts of new projects. Usually they bring the one they are working on to completion but immediately set out on a new one without rest.
capable of handling several projects at the same time
low boredom threshold
outgoing and dynamic types at one time, and solitary and unapproachable at another.
tend to oscillate
Whether in a broad social context or on a personal level, the issues and ideas with which those born on this day are most often involve fairness and equality – in general, matters pertaining to the delegation and exercise of power. In putting forth their arguments, they can be very ironic... Their humor, however, is not for everyone as it is liable to be off-beat, sardonic, and perhaps even macabre.

can display a disturbing lack of stability. Although they may be involved in quite respectable professions, one often gets the idea that the profession itself, or whatever work they do in general, lends the consistency their lives so desperately need
can be at risk when their restless nature brings them into conflict with the powers that be.
think for themselves and will not tolerate others...trying to tell them what to do

warm heart
may find it difficult to open all the way
few friends whom they allow [close]
can often have a greater effect on those around them than they realize, and indeed can register a high degree of shock value
should seek to be more aware of their effect on others

must beware of the depressive effects of isolation
taste in food tends to the exotic, they must be attentive to the effects of spicy, unusual, or rich foods on their body


...And if you take me as already following the must-do's/must-be-aware-of's they give additionally, to a fault? i.e. paranoid about my affect on and reception by others? And trying to exercise absolute patience towards others when they don't behave the way I think would be Better For Them? Seriously, baby.

(It's all about being an equinox/cusp baby, I bet. I am the pendulum.)

Which reminds me: Happy Equinox! (A day late, anyway.) Enjoy autumn! Though I know some of you are already probably under heaps of snow and rain. We're, alternately, still lingering around 100˚F, after only a brief reprieve.

I should really be working. Writing. Something.

But, but, it's Celebrate Bisexuality day, too, apparently! (To echo friend who brought it to my attention: We have a day?!) Via BiNet:

"The day is an opportunity for bisexual, fluid, pansexual and generally queer-identified people and their families, friends and supporters to recognize and celebrate their history, community and culture and the contributions bisexual/pansexual people have made to both the greater LGBT Community as well as to mainstream culture."

Well! Wow! Pan-pride, baby!

Okay, okay, NOW to work. LOVE!